Category: Blogging

Test post from Alphasmart Dana over 802.11b wireless connection, using Azure…

…It works. Sweeeeeeet.

If it seems like I’ve been awfully quiet of late, well, it’s because I’m currently working on a full-time contract about an hour’s commute away. Combined with the demands of a toddler and a four-week old infant, that just doesn’t leave much time for anything else. My previous entry (favourite TV series) may look relatively coherent, but it was actually cobbled together from fifteen minute chunks of time here and there over the last fortnight.

If I owe you an email, you can probably expect it, oh, around Christmastime.

As if I don’t have anything else to do with my time right now (like sleep), I’ve been tinkering with the sunpig web site again. Here’s a list of the main changes:

• Moved the permalink/timestamp/comment count/category indicator from the end of each entry to the beginning (just after the entry title). The idea behind this is that you can scan this summary information at the same time as you read the entry title. I like having the information up there, but it does deviate from the blogging “standard.” Depending on feedback, I may add a permalink/comment count to the end of the entry as well.
• Likewise, in the comments section for each entry, the commenter’s name and date/time of their comment now comes before the comment itself, not after. (Tip from Electrolite.)
• Entry comments now have their own permalinks.
• I’ve removed the “remember me/forget me” checkboxes/radio buttons/command buttons from the comments form. If you fill in your details, the site will remember them for you–period. If you’re sufficiently paranoid about accepting cookies not to want this, I figure you’re plenty capable of removing them from your own browser cache.
• Applied Adam Kalsey’s fix for the standard Movable Type javascript, which allows your details to persist across the whole site, rather than just on one single entry.
• Fixed the comment preview and comment error templates so that they show the sidebar properly.
• I’ve added a new Linkdump blog. So many links, so little time. The most recent links from the Linkdump also show up in my sidebar, and it even has its own RSS feed. (You may notice similarities between the Linkdump and Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden’s “Sidelights” and “Particles” sideblogs. That’s because I think they’re particularly good examples of the species, and worthy of emulation.)
• I’ve spruced up Abi’s blog, Evilrooster Crows with a new stylesheet. I’ve also fixed Abi’s RSS feed, and enabled trackbacks on her entries.
• I’ve completely overhauled the Quick Reviews blog. Each review now has an individual archive page, and can accept comments and trackbacks. The sidebar on the main page shows a list of all reviews on the site, sorted by type (books, films, et al.) and star rating. The reviews are now also available as a separate RSS feed. And although I haven’t written any yet, the blog can now also handle music and videogame reviews.
• The Quick Reviews sections in our sidebars now show permalinks to the archive pages for the reviews, and also show the number of comments received (if any).
• Plus various font and colour changes.

Phew. Comments and suggestions are more than welcome.

If you have a moment, why don’t you consider stopping by Rick Horowitz’s blog? If you don’t, he might take my head off. On the other hand, if I pass him enough visitors, maybe he’ll set me up on a date with Famke Janssen. (But don’t tell Abi….)

Well, we’re back. Remind me not to change web hosts again any time soon.

Getting set up with Pair was easy. They have more user-friendly configuration tools than EZPublishing has, I have more space to shuffle around files (enough to keep a complete backup of the whole site lying around), and their servers are noticeably faster. And we’re running under cgiwrap for added security, too. (Note to self: need to write a little tutorial on setting up MT under cgiwrap. The MT documentation says you can, and I’ve heard crusty old sailors tell drunken tales of brave folk who have done it themseves, but there seems to be bugger all in the way of step-by-step instructions for those of us who go “cgi-wha…?”)

However, I’m not happy with the way I managed the DNS change. I tried to set up redirects from the old server to the new one, but my knowledge of Apache redirects and mod_rewrite is limited. Basically, if you’ve been trying to access sunpig.com over the last three days (the time it takes for a server IP address change to propagate across the internet), you stood a better than even chance of seeing something closer to monkey poo than a traditional web site.

What I should have done is either shut down the entire site for that time, and presented a straightforward “out of order” page; or I should have just set up a straight copy of the old site on the new server, and not bothered with the redirects at all. Managing a seamless transition between servers is hard. I realise now that making it all work smoothly would have taken a lot more effort than I actually put in, and a lot more effort than I would have had time for. And all to avoid a personal web site having three days of down time? Not worth it.

One blog back from the dead, and a new blog that has arisen from the ashes of a newsletter.

First up, the Barenaked Ladies started a blog when they were recording their new album (Everything to Everyone) in LA earlier this year. It went quiet after they’d finished recording, but the blog now has a spiffy new look, and they’ve started posting again. Yay! (And their blogging software even appears to have been updated to allow multiple paragraphs in a single post! Wow!)

Secondly, Amy Gahran used to write the “Contentious” newsletter which focussed on writing content for on-line media. It went quiet about a year ago, but Amy has now started it up again, as a blog. (Note that the old newsletter archives are still available, and still worth reading.) Well worth tracking.