Extra88

This is just to take up space.

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Kung-Log is an Mac OS X application for writing & publishing blog entries. I'm trying it right now. The purpose of programs like this is to let you write blog entries without having to use the web interface. The web interface can be slow and this allows you to do things a real application can do, such as spell-checking and having a button which inserts the song iTunes is currently playing (as demonstrated below). I'm sure there are many programs like this, especially for Windows but this seems pretty nifty and it works with the particular blog software I'm using.
Currently listening to Hell from the album "Hot" by Squirrel Nut Zippers, The

So here's something Kung-Log can't do. You can upload files with Kung-Log but it can't use the optional image manipulation features of the blog server. By uploading a picture through the web interface, I can choose to have a thumbnail image like this one automatically created which can then be linked to the original uploaded picture (which is big, btw).

It's crazy but the software used to run this blog seems to have problems saving entries which contain links to files ending in ".mov" (QuickTime movies). This is why I didn't link directly to the new Animatrix QuickTime movie. If I tried to save the entry containing a URL ending in ".mov," the form submission would never finish and eventually just stop. If I changed the ".mov" to ".html," the entry saved as quickly as it ever does.

Other people seem to link to QuickTime movies without problems so I wonder what the deal is.

One of my earlier criticisms of Kung-Log was it couldn't take advantage of MT's use of ImageMagick to create thumbnail versions of images. Well, now it can create thumbnails.

Currently listening to Radio Paradise - eclectic intelligent rock - music info & listener community at radioparadise.com

This morning I'm kicking myself because I should have done April Fool's Day entries in the blog.

"Switching to a stand-up desk"
"Got a tattoo"
"Announcing: CurtisOS for Palm"
"Everyone's password should be 'password'"
"Cat can talk!"

Eh, at this point it's like being critical of my performance while singing in the shower.

I followed some basic instructions for enabling WebDAV on this server. In the httpd.conf I uncommented the modules and I added a new directory with access controlled by an htpasswd file. I created the directory, created the htpasswd file and when I tried it (using iCal publishing) it worked. Browsing the blog worked just fine but I ran into trouble once I tried to save a blog entry. I could create, edit, preview entries but when I tried to save, the browser just spun its wheels. I couldn't save an entry again until I went into the httpd.conf, commented out all the stuff I added, and restarted the web server. I'll have to look into this some more, I'm sure at some point I'll want to use WebDAV. I noticed other problems related to the order in which Apache modules loaded, perhaps there's an order issue between mod_dav and mod_perl.

I guess I hit "Rebuild" too many times in a short period. I was editing my RSS Feeds page.

Update 2:40pm: Guess the 72Hrs. thing was a lie. I'm back in business.

I'm Fair and Balanced, why aren't you?

The Daily Show's take (QuickTime format) on the issue. See BoingBoing for more Fair and Balanced insight.

I've been using an RSS reader at home, NetNewsWire Lite, and I think it has cut into posting on my own blog. The good stuff is always from some place like BoingBoing so go find it your damn self ;)

Anyway, this is a "Meta" post not just because I'm talking about not posting. It's also Meta because I felt like pointing out something you should avoid doing to your MySQL daemon (upon which my blog relies). Make sure the daemon has permission to write the files in the mysql directory. If you do something like "chown -R root /usr/local/" you're probably screwing your self. /usr/local/mysql/ (or whatever the "real" path is) probably should be owned by the mysql account and if its not, you better give the group expanded permissions and make sure the account is in that group. Looking at the *.err files in your mysql/data/ directory can help diagnose this problem.

I finally purchased a domain name, cognize.org. I've reconfigured this blog to use the new name but the old URLs, http://www.extra.dyndns.org/~blog/, will probably keep working for a long while. I don't have any reason to get rid of that free hostname.

There may be other changes coming. The software I've been using for the blog is getting an upgrade but the licensing terms have changed and I'm not sure it'll work the way I want it to. The challenge will be to migrate the site to new software without it falling apart.

I'm also starting to get more comment spam so in the meantime I may need to take other actions, possibly turning off comments entirely (I know, it breaks your heart).

This site was down for a number of hours today as the Cognize NOC required "maintenance." In the future, I will try to arrange a failover system so that you, gentle readers, are not abandoned.

Someone did a nifty job of stringing together the keywords & phrases from the GOP convention (things like "9/11" and "global terrorism"). I'd already seen this via an email forward before it showed up on BoingBoing.

Actually my real reason for this post is to see if MT still has a problem with posts containing links to .mov files.

Link to QT movie

I guess it works.

Apparently last night my residential broadband connection's ip changed and I didn't know it. This is no big deal to most people but it is to me because A) this web site is hosted on it and B) it hasn't changed in many years. To make matters worse, this change seemed to have somehow upset my router so when I tried to reach the web site by the new ip address, the router wasn't forwarding the connection. I had to come home for lunch to reboot the router to get things going again.

If this is a one-time thing it's no big deal but if not it's going to be a hassle and probably cost me some money. Either I'll need to pay a dynamic DNS service to handle my domain or I'll use this as an excuse to switch my web serving to a paid host.

I'm tired of cleaning up trackback spam so I've turned them off. Trackbacks are an interesting idea for carrying on a conversation without having comments strewn across various sites but at this point the spammers are getting more out of them than real people.

I missed posting in July so I am making up for it with a very special entry made from my pda. Of course it takes a lot longer to write it this way.

I should have posted this ages ago. I'm interested in the topic but this domain name was just one that I found when I was trying to pick one that was available and a real word that I found interesting.

BoingBoing: "Technology for 'cognizing'"