Looking for a little assistance

by

Okay, I’m hoping someone out there might be able to give me a hand here.

I’m working on moving Eclecticism from TypePad over to my own server. I’ve got 95% of the site framework finished (i.e., the design and the slight tweaking to account for differences between TypePad and MovableType, enabling TypeKey registration, and so on), but I’ve got one little thing that’s causing me issues.

Here, I keep my linklog in the sidebar as a separate weblog, using an SSI command to insert the last fifteen posts of the linklog into my pages. Quick, easy, and very simple to do — and I’m having a bear of a time getting it working on my server.

Here’s what I’m dealing with…

First consideration: I don’t want to break any of the links to the existing pages when the site moves to my server. Because of this, I don’t want to change the extension on my pages to .php or .shtml, so the SSI needs to work within a standard .html page.

Second consideration: My current intent is to take advantage of MT3.1’s dynamic rendering ability, so that only the index pages of the site will be static files on the webserver, all archive pages will be dynamically generated.

Now, one can tell Apache to process every .html page as an .shtml page, but that tends to induce a performance hit as Apache then has to actively look at every single page as it sends it out, rather than just pumping static pages out the pipe and only having to fiddle with dynamic pages. So it’s an option, but one I’ve so far been avoiding.

Apache recommends using the XBitHack to get around this, so that any file sent out that has the ‘executable’ bit set will be treated as an .shtml file, regardless of extension. However, as I want to use MT’s dynamic abilities, there won’t actually be files to set the executable bit (and if I turn off MT’s dynamic rendering, I have no idea if I can tell MT to set the executable bit on the files it generates).

If my pages had a .php extension, I could use a simple PHP include command. However, in order to preserve any and all existing links to my site, I need to keep the .html extention. Now, somewhere in the back of my head I seem to remember reading that there may be some way to include PHP commands within MT templates, now that MT is more PHP friendly (and uses PHP for the dynamic rendering) — if this is true, than it could be an easy solution. However, so far I’ve yet been able to track down any information on whether this is actually the case, or if I was just hallucinating somewhere along the line. So for the moment, I’m going with the assumption that this isn’t an option.

Creating a JavaScript include seemed like it would be an easy solution — have the linklog create an ‘export.js’ file that uses document.write('whatever'); commands, then call the script with JavaScript (using the same basic technique that I use to add things like my Technorati badge, my blogrolls, my Flickr badge, and so on). However, for some reason, that refused to work — nothing ever appeared (and, because of the way JavaScript works, I couldn’t even look at the source for the rendered page to see if it was calling the JavaScript file correctly, as no matter what the browser displays, the source just displays the script call link). I’m not at all sure why this isn’t behaving.

I even poked around at some of the plugins available at the MT Plugins Directory. At first I didn’t think that they would be an option, as they wouldn’t update every time I added something to the linklog, and the list of links on my main page would only update when that page was rebuilt. Some of the multiple blogs plugins looked promising — I even installed MultiBlog, as it includes a way for an update to one weblog to force a rebuild of a different weblog (i.e., adding a link to the linklog would force a rebuild of the Eclecticism blog, keeping the list of links current), but that won’t work either — firstly, it only rebuilds the indexes (so the linklogs on archive pages would only be updated when their particular page rebuilt), and secondly, it doesn’t play nice with MT3’s dynamic rendering (all dynamically rendered pages returned errors — this makes sense to me, though I’ll be buggered if I can actually concisely explain why, so just trust me on that).

So at this point, I’m stuck — every single approach I’ve looked at for getting my linklog working under the new installation has crapped out.

Anybody have some ideas or pointers for me to look into? I’d really appreciate it.

Dr. Hanscom’s Health Clinic

by

Very interesting report from some researchers in the UK claiming that massaging breasts helps avoid breast cancer.

A gentle rub boosts the flow of vital toxins, compensating for the restricting effect of bras.

The New York-based Natural Health and Longevity Resource Centre looked at 4,700 women.

The highest rate of breast cancer was in those who wore bras all day and night. The lowest was in those who never wore bras.

Researchers say women should wear their bra for less than 12 hours a day.

Gentle kneading, rubbing and squeezing with the hands increases blood flow to the breasts, says top therapist Beverly Smith.

I figure it’s the least I can do to offer my services!

Just e-mail me to set up an appointment. ;)

(And on a not-unrelated side note, this year’s Boobiethon is in progress, with all proceeds being donated to support breast cancer research. A good cause, and fun to look at, too — how can you go wrong?)

iTunes “Fix” by Sisters of Mercy, The from the album Some Girls Wander By Mistake (1983, 3:43).

My family, circa 1977 or so

by

This is one of my favorite old family photos. Probably just a proof that was passed on during the selection process, it always makes me laugh when I see it.

Our family around 1977

Mom’s yawning, I’m looking off to the side and could drool any moment, Kevin just looks confused, and dad’s the only one to be paying any attention to the photographer.

I’m guessing at the date of the photo (Kev looks around one-ish, I could be around four-ish), but I think I’m close.

iTunes “Time” by Pink Floyd from the album Dark Side of the Moon, The (1973, 7:05).

Has flickr been hijacked?

by

Flickr hasn’t been loading for me at all today — all morning long it was giving me a DNS error saying that the server couldn’t be found.

Now I seem to be getting something…but I don’t think I’m getting what I’m supposed to be getting, and I’m afraid that were I running an exploitable browser (like, oh, Internet Exploder), I might be getting some nasty surprises.

Loading the main flickr page ( http://www.flickr.com/ ) stalls for a while, and then loads one of the many generic “looks like a search page while we install exploits onto your system” pages that float around when domains disappear. Included in the page are two javascripts, one of which ( http://www.flickr.com/js/pu.js ) is loading a popunder window.

This is really a shame. Looks like someone forgot to renew their domain on time, and it got snapped up from underneath them. Hopefully it all gets straightened out soon.

Update: They appear to be back. No word (yet?) on the flickr blog as to what might have happened.

iTunes “X-Lover” by Sheep on Drugs from the album One for the Money (1997, 3:55).

I so need this toy!

by

Plush Facehugger

I came so close to blowing some money just a few minutes ago — if this wasn’t rent week, I probably would have.

There’s a plush Alien Facehugger available now (I saw it at Suncoast).

Plush.

Facehugger.

It even has wires run through the fingers and tail to make it posable (huggable?). Cuddle up to it, or wrap it around your skull.

Creepy. Eerie. Deadly. Cute. Cuddly.

I want!

Update: Hey, mom, dad — babies like plush animals, right? Think this would make a good first Christmas present for Noah? ;)

iTunes “Mantrap: The Seduction” by Beborn Beton from the album Tales From Another World (1996, 5:00).

The DJ tried to kill me

by

Last night at The Vogue was really good — Ogre was DJing, standing in for Evan, and he kept making it damn near impossible for me to get off the dance floor. Always a good thing, of course, since it means that the music is consistently good — but then he topped it all off by playing Pop Will Eat Itself‘s “Can U Dig It?“, off of This is the Day…This is the Hour…This is This! I’m a big PWEI fan, and would never have expected to hear that at a club. Too cool.

iTunes “Def.Con.One” by Pop Will Eat Itself from the album This is the Day…This is the Hour…This is This! (1989, 3:59).

Fox news really is Faux News

by

While their rather strong obvious bias has earned Fox News the nickname of ‘Faux News’ for a while now, this past few days they seem to be doing an incredibly good job of living up to their nickname.

The first incident was Friday, when the following story appeared on the Fox News website:

Rallying supporters in Tampa Friday, Kerry played up his performance in Thursday night’s debate, in which many observers agreed the Massachusetts senator outperformed the president.

“Didn’t my nails and cuticles look great? What a good debate!” Kerry said Friday.

With the foreign-policy debate in the history books, Kerry hopes to keep the pressure on and the sense of traction going.

Aides say he will step up attacks on the president in the next few days, and pivot somewhat to the domestic agenda, with a focus on women and abortion rights.

“It’s about the Supreme Court. Women should like me! I do manicures,” Kerry said.

Kerry still trails in actual horse-race polls, but aides say his performance was strong enough to rally his base and further appeal to voters ready for a change.

“I’m metrosexual — he’s a cowboy,” the Democratic candidate said of himself and his opponent.

A “metrosexual” is defined as an urbane male with a strong aesthetic sense who spends a great deal of time and money on his appearance and lifestyle.

Josh Marshall of the Talking Points Memo picked up on this and started looking into it. Over the course of the day, the article was taken down, and then later replaced by an apology. Turns out the article was written by Fox News staffer covering the Kerry campaign, Carl Cameron.

Then, later that same day, one of Atrios’ readers picked up on a post-debate article on Fox News in which this appeared…

Of course, there were some Kerry supporters in attendance who had no doubts whatever about their candidate.

“We’re trying to get Comrade Kerry elected and get that capitalist enabler George Bush out of office,” said 17-year-old Komoselutes Rob of Communists for Kerry.

“Even though he, too, is a capitalist, he supports my socialist values more than President Bush,” Rob said, before assuring FOXNews.com that his organization was not a parody group. When asked his thoughts on Washington’s policy toward Communist holdout North Korea, Rob said: “The North Koreans are my comrades to a point, and I’m sure they support Comrade Kerry, too.”

It is unclear whether the Kerry campaign has welcomed the Communists’ endorsement.

The kicker is that when you visit the Communists for Kerry website and check their ‘About Us‘ page, you find this:

“Communists for Kerry” is a campaign of the Hellgate Republican Club, a tax exempt non-partisan public advocacy “527” organization that exists for the purpose of;

“Informing voters with satire and irony, how political candidates make decisions based on the failed social economic principles of socialism that punish the individual by preventing them from becoming their dream through proven ideas of entrepreneurship and freedom.”

Our members help elect candidates who support economic growth through Entrepreneurship, limited government and lower taxes. Communists For Kerry is separate and distinct from the Communist party of America and any of its organization. None of it’s members are members of any communist organizations.

The Fox article has since been updated to indicate that Communists for Kerry is a satirical orignization.

Does Faux News hold itself to any standards whatsoever?

iTunes “Don’t You Want Me (Hot Tracks)” by Human League from the album Edge, The Level 2 (1995, 6:52).