Mojo needed

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I’m not going to link to her out of respect for her privacy, but a good friend of mine could really use some good mojo and wishes sent her way right now.

Last month, her father was diagnosed with leukemia, and was flown to Seattle for treatment. Unfortunately, by the time he was diagnosed things had moved pretty far along, and he died just a few days later.

This morning, her younger brother was killed in a car accident.

I hate seeing friends go through hard times, and this has got to rank right up there with the worst of them.

Few if any of you know her, but any kind thoughts, words, prayers, good mojo, or anything else that could be sent her way would certainly be appreciated.

I just wish there were more I could do to help.

MovableType 3.0: Ouch

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So SixApart revealed the pricing structure for MovableType 3.0 today.

One word.

Ouch.

Dad, Kirsten — we may have to figure something else out for hanscomfamily.com and geekmuffin.com soon. Since I’m running both of you off of my server, I’m not eligible for the free version of MT 3.0, and the various licensing options are a bit rich for my blood.

Reasons the free version won’t work: No support from Six Apart, No access to paid installation service, No access to fee-based services, No promotion of your weblogs through the Recently Updated list, No commercial usage, No more than one author and three weblogs. Plus a few other apparent caveats that are pointed out in the second and third updates to Shelley Powers’ post:

Just caught this. The following are what you get, specifically, with the paid version of MT 3.0 that are conspicuously missing from the free version:

  • Application updates and fixes (not including major upgrades)
  • A guaranteed path to future versions

From Paul Freeman I found out that you have to be registered with TypeKey in order to download the free version.

We were assured that TypeKey wasn’t required for Movable Type. I specifically remember this being said.

I also didn’t realize the physical limitations of the free version–one installation only, and no installation on multi-CPU machines. Most hosted environments are multiple CPU machines. Does this mean even if you are a single author/single weblog user, but hosted, you still can’t use MT?

I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve figured out which direction to head, and how best to go about it.

Update: I have a few more thoughts on this, and will want to clarify my position (I’m not that upset, nor am I going on an anti-SixApart rampage, and besides, thanks to my use of TypePad, I’m quite happy with sending money their way) — I just need to get my skinny butt in gear, so more rambling will have to wait until this evening. Until then, there’s some good points (both pro- and anti-SixApart) in this MetaFilter thread.

iTunes: “Dancesoundtrackmusic (D.S.M.)” by Front 242 from the album Mut\@ge.Mix\@ge (1995, 8:20).

Should’ve bought a new printer

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Well, this is frustrating: after grumbling last night about the high cost of ink vs. the low cost of printers, I’ve since found out that my printer is apparently broken in some way. No matter how many times I reset it, run the diagnostic routines, clean the print heads, or do any of the other little things to coax it into life, it won’t print.

So I go to the Epson website to see if I can get tech support, and see this next to the tech support phone number:

Before you call, be near your computer and printer and have ready your product name, serial number and proof of purchase information.

Me being me, I have every single one of those bits of information except the proof of purchase. I can’t find a receipt anywhere, and probably tossed it along with the packaging after setting up the printer.

So now I’ve blown \$70 on ink, and if I actually want to print anything at home, I need to buy a new printer. I really should have skipped the whole buying ink stage, and just treated it as a “disposable.”

What a waste.

iTunes: “One Good Man” by Joplin, Janis and the Kozmic Blues Band from the album Janis (1969, 4:11).

Mac OS X Word 2004 Demo Trojan

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For the second time in just over a month, panicky news stories are alerting us about a trojan horse attack against Mac OS X. Last time the exploit was disguised as an .mp3 file, this month it’s disguised as a Microsoft Word beta installer.

And for the second time in just over a month, it’s a lot of panic over very little.

The details are simply this: one person downloaded what purported to be an installer for a public beta of Microsoft Word from the Gnutella peer-to-peer filesharing service. This “installer” — actually an AppleScript application weighing in at a hefty 108k — actually deleted the contents of their home directory when ran.

In other words, someone got stupid, got bit by a stupid (and extremely simple), if nasty, practical-joke style hack.

They then ran to MacWorld UK, who contacted Intego (the anti-virus company whose press release fanned the flames of the previous trojan scare) and Microsoft, and MacWorld UK proceeded to write two shining examples of FUD that have since started to run rampant over the ‘net.

It’s very simple, people. Don’t blindly trust every little file you run across on the ‘net, and use a little common sense.

The two best comments I’ve seen on this so far —

From Codepoet:

See, for there to be real security on a computer, a use cannot be stupid. The computer can only do half the work needed t make itself secure; the user must do the other half. The reason fo this is that a computer exists to do things we tell it to do, and if w tell it to, oh, I don’t know, run a Trojan Horse then it will run the Trojan horse. There’s nothing in the system that will say “Hey! This is a Trojan horse!” nor can there be. It’s a program, you told it to run it, and that’s that.

And from Will Parker:

I just don’t know too many people who, when they find an open soft drink bottle full of foamy yellow liquid at a bus stop, drink it to find out if there’s a new Sprite Remix flavor.

iTunes: “I Don’t Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing (Open Up the Door, I’ll Get It Myself)” by Brown, James from the album 40th Anniversary Collection (1969, 3:06).

Silly quiz time

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I’ve mentioned Something Positive a time or two in the past, but in case you’ve missed it, it’s a great little web comic. Highly recommended. So when I stumbled across this quiz tonight, I had to take it…

I'm Jason

Which member of something positive are you?
Quiz created by heatherbat

iTunes: “Of Time and Rivers Flowing” by Havens, Richie from the album Where Have All the Flowers Gone: The Songs of Pete Seeger (1997, 2:30).

Why bother buying ink?

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I bought ink for my printer today — an Epson Stylus C82.

The ink — one cartridge each of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black — cost me \$70 from Office Depot.

The printer, which isn’t even sold by Epson anymore, can be picked up on Amazon starting at \$39.

The current comparable printer from Epson — the Stylus C84 — can be picked up on Amazon (complete with ink) for about \$84, only about \$14 more than what I paid for the ink.

Why even bother buying ink anymore? Seems to me that it’s practically more cost effective to just buy a printer and use it until the ink runs out, junk it, and buy a new one. Go for a printer that’s a little bit cheaper than the C84, and I’d be willing to bet that it is cheaper to treat them as a “disposable” item.

That’s just flat-out ridiculous.

iTunes: “Masters of War” by Dylan, Bob from the album Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, The (1963, 4:34).

A visual I didn’t need…

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While I’m sure that a benefit run to support the Seattle Animal Shelter is a very good cause, when we’re living in an era with some rather well-known odd kinks, maybe naming it the “Furry 5K” wasn’t the best choice in the world…

At least I wasn’t the only one to have that thought!

iTunes: “Mister Superstar” by Marilyn Manson from the album Antichrist Superstar (1996, 5:04).

U-District Street Fair

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This could be an entertaining way to spend some time this weekend — the annual U-District Street Fair.

For 35 years the University District StreetFair has been the kick-off event for the festival season in the Seattle region. Attracting more than 50,000 people and nearly 400 booths to the District, the StreetFair is an energetic and exciting celebration of arts and crafts, community, music, and food. You’ll find a whirl of color, craft, creativity and downright craziness! Join the thousands of people who attend. There will be two entertainment stages, and unique local and regional arts & crafts and an array of international food. The StreetFair is a free event, located in the heart of the University District on University Way NE, and is produced by the Greater University Chamber of Commerce.

Sounds like a good opportunity to grab the camera and go wander off people watching for a few hours.

(via LJ Seattle)

iTunes: “Atomic Dog” by Wreck, The from the album Black Box (1991, 4:03).

Google bits: redactions and spam

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Two interesting Google-related bits today.

Firstly, a paragraph about outsourcing jobs mysteriously disappeared from the Google Weblog at some point during the day. Mark Pilgrim pointed this out (along with /., MeFi, and Hello Typepad) and quite rightly took Google to task for the unremarked changes:

This kind of revisionist history is unacceptable, regardless of who does it. If you don’t want it saved for all time, don’t publish it on the Internet. Putting “blog” on the top of the page does not absolve you of all responsibility.

NetNewsWire‘s “show changes” feature caught the edits, though, so here’s a quick screen capture showing just how the post was reworded:

Google's outsourcing remarks

The second bit is more on the amusing side, and has less to do directly with Google. I got a piece of comment spam earlier that, when I looked at it, made me laugh, simply because in an effort to make it look almost like a real comment, the spammer had mixed links in with a paragraph of real text. It just so happens that the paragraph they chose was one from Google’s website, discussing how pages are indexed after being submitted to Google. I’ve replaced the links with bolded text in the following snippet, of course:

When a URL is submitted to Google, Sex Toy Shop we look for it in our Hotel Booking next crawl. If Low Interest Credit Card you’ve already submitted your Buy Cialis URL, your site could easily Atkins Diet appear in our new index, which will go Nude Celebrity up when the current crawl is completed. However, Online Casinos if no other site links to yours, it Dating Personals may be difficult for our crawler to find Tag Watch you. Conversely, if many sites link to Seiko Watch your page, there is a good Car Hire chance we will find you without your submitting your Register Domain Name URL. Occasionally, websites are not reachable Ladies Watches when we try to crawl them because of Coral Bookmaker network or hosting problems.

It almost makes sense when you read it…

iTunes: “Another One Bites the Dust (Wyclef Jean)” by Queen feat. Free/Jean, Wyclef/Pras from the album Small Soldiers (1998, 4:22).

Manly Pink #1

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That was fast!

Mere hours after I put up my silly little challenge, Matt responded with a ready-to-go stylesheet that’s very pink!

I’ve dropped Matt’s stylesheet in, so in theory, it should be what everyone’s seeing right now. ~~In practice, though, as of 10:30pm May 11th, the new stylesheet doesn’t seem to be getting served. Eventually it should kick in, though, and “Manly Pink #1” should be live!~~ [Okay, the stylesheet finally updated after about half an hour — we’re good to go.]{.underline}

The call for submissions is still open, of course, if anyone else wants to play. Should I get any more concepts tossed my way, I’ll put them up when I get them, and in the meantime, I’ll start looking for a good stylesheet switcher (Javascript or pure CSS [I think that’s possible…]) so that there’s a choice between the old default design or the Manly Pink version(s).

Of course, now I need to go get those t-shirts and put the photos of me wearing pink up….

Update: Now that new designs have started to appear, here’s my original stylesheet: styles-default.css.

iTunes: “We Must Awaken” by K.M.F.D.M. from the album Money (1992, 5:02).