Trying out a new application on Facebook. So, this post is just a test to see if it really works.
Recently in Technical Category
Wala! Upgrade completed. I am not sure of all that was lost. I have none of my plugins. They were not compatible with the newest version, requiring me to wipe out the old installation. Also, I might have deleted some of my old images. Anyway, here's to having a new MT version.
Yes, the style is ugly. I once again have a learning curve to overcome. Patience is still requested. Should I actually have any readers left, register your complaints in this post.
Update: Old style quickly re-instated. Rook is happy.
Yes, the style is ugly. I once again have a learning curve to overcome. Patience is still requested. Should I actually have any readers left, register your complaints in this post.
Update: Old style quickly re-instated. Rook is happy.
I signed up for a service years ago called Gravatar. The original picture I used for an Avatar sucked, but I figured the service would not last long. Imagine my surprise when WordPress became associated with them recently. That called for a new Avatar.
Unfortunately, it seems to be taking it's time filtering through the intertubes. The old Avatar is still showing up at Bryan's blog.
Unfortunately, it seems to be taking it's time filtering through the intertubes. The old Avatar is still showing up at Bryan's blog.
Because I have not posted for a bit, and because I am bored, I decided to play around with Apple's Safari. So far, it is not much different in speed from Firefox, but the bookmark interface leaves a lot to be desired.
Okay, changed my mind. Safari is much quicker in showing a preview than Firefox.
Geez, you'd think I would know how to administer my own blog. Turns out I didn't have a system email set, which means that every time someone registered under my MT installation, I was not notified. So, I also discovered I had about 48 people registered, most simply because they were manually attempting spam comments, others who wanted to bad mouth me about my political stances, and about 6 or 7 who are actually bloggers I read and visit regularly.
So, for some of you who are regulars, or who I recognized, there is a good chance I sent you a password recovery email. I have deleted most, but those whom I recognized. All of you whom I sent emails, are enable to leave comments.
Now that I've got a system email set, any future requests for registering under my MT installation should get a response soon enough.
My apologies for being an idiot.
So, for some of you who are regulars, or who I recognized, there is a good chance I sent you a password recovery email. I have deleted most, but those whom I recognized. All of you whom I sent emails, are enable to leave comments.
Now that I've got a system email set, any future requests for registering under my MT installation should get a response soon enough.
My apologies for being an idiot.
So, I received a threatening email, one that suggested I put cream and sugar in Sumatra coffee. Such vileness. I was properly offended. Oh, okay, it wasn't threatening, it wasn't vile, and it most certainly didn't properly offend me. Yes, yes, I was offended by the suggestion that copious amounts of cream and sugar be added to coffee, but that's just my issue.
Anyway, Carl of Unpopular Ideas sent me an email complaining about my comment registration system. Yes, I do hear a lot about my registration system. So, I increased the amount of ways to register to Rook's Rant. It seems the last few updates expanded login avenues. So, now, if you have a Google ID (all you Blogger bloggers have a Google ID), you can now use that to log in when you want to leave a comment. I also found that those with WordPress IDs can also login.
I'm not sure what the problem is with trying to register through my Movable Type installation (that is, registering through my server's MT software, not through some 2nd party application). I suspect it has to do with MT failing to send me emails, or some such thing. I do have a few people that have registered through my MT installation, but not many, considering the difficulty that exists for registering with my site.
Anyway, Carl of Unpopular Ideas sent me an email complaining about my comment registration system. Yes, I do hear a lot about my registration system. So, I increased the amount of ways to register to Rook's Rant. It seems the last few updates expanded login avenues. So, now, if you have a Google ID (all you Blogger bloggers have a Google ID), you can now use that to log in when you want to leave a comment. I also found that those with WordPress IDs can also login.
I'm not sure what the problem is with trying to register through my Movable Type installation (that is, registering through my server's MT software, not through some 2nd party application). I suspect it has to do with MT failing to send me emails, or some such thing. I do have a few people that have registered through my MT installation, but not many, considering the difficulty that exists for registering with my site.
So, I upgraded Movable Type to 4.30 this afternoon. It went without a hitch.
This one's for the bots!
I'm in the process of importing old entries. I figure, since I can't seem to import the whole kit, cat, and kadoodle at one time, I'll do an entry at a time. It will allow me to correct any errors in the individual posts.
I don't know if anyone else had problems getting my site to load, but for the last two days, I've not been able to log on to post, and most of the time, my blog would not load, or took forever. This is the first time I've been able to get to my MT interface. So, sorry if my few faithful readers could not visit. Hopefully, it's finally cleared up.
What's on my desktop on several of my computers.
This is a test of my new plugin. It's job is to automatically tweet twitter when I post a new entry. This post is a test of tweeting twitter.
Is it me, or does the above somehow sound dirty?
Is it me, or does the above somehow sound dirty?
Just finished upgrading to MT 4.25. It went off without a hitch. Nice.
They are the only blog rolling team in town. There are no plugins for Movable Type that easily handles a blogroll. Actually, there are no plugins at all. There are no other internet link managing services equivalent to BlogRolling. So, it really, really sucks that BlogRolling is not living up to it's past performance. For several months it was down while recovering from a DOS attack and then while redesigning their site. Now that the redesign is completed (for the most part) it is slower than dial up from 1998.
Sigh. I really don't want a better mouse trap. I just want one that works.
Sigh. I really don't want a better mouse trap. I just want one that works.
Okay, time to stow the stoic Minnesota Nordic humility and do some crowing about this page. Prior to someone giving it a thumbs up and adding it to the Atheist category on StumbleUpon, my lowly blog was at an anemic 39,000 hits. In less than 3 days, I was over 100,000. It took me over 5 years to get to 39,000. With StumbleUpon, I more than doubled my total hits in 3 short days.
Now, I'm not getting the 6500 hits like I did at first, but I am getting 400 to 500 hit days from time to time. I can't explain why I have various influxes of hits, but I am definitely enjoying the dramatic increase in traffic.
Now, I'm not getting the 6500 hits like I did at first, but I am getting 400 to 500 hit days from time to time. I can't explain why I have various influxes of hits, but I am definitely enjoying the dramatic increase in traffic.
Well, I finally got around to installing the MT 4.24 upgrade properly. No hiccups there. I also tweaked the layout just a bit, switching the titles to small-caps, increasing the font size, and justifying the text. Hopefully it will make reading easier for those old eyes out there. Not that I had any problem with the small font size of earlier. My eyes aren't old. They're not!
THEY ARE NOT!!!!!!
Okay, that's it. I'm out-a-here.
Oh, and have a nice Sunday. It's warm and sunny here in the wonderful Northern State of Minnesota. So, I'm going to shower, get all dressed up to go hit the town with The GirlFriend™, and have myself some fun. Me and my not old eyes.
THEY ARE NOT!!!!!!
Okay, that's it. I'm out-a-here.
Oh, and have a nice Sunday. It's warm and sunny here in the wonderful Northern State of Minnesota. So, I'm going to shower, get all dressed up to go hit the town with The GirlFriend™, and have myself some fun. Me and my not old eyes.
Well, Blogrolling is back up and running. However, they have quite a few bugs to work out. The first, and probably the most important, is to fix the Blogroll It script. Otherwise, the whole point of Blogrolling is mute. If I have to go through more than 3 clicks to add a site to my blog roll, it's a pain. The whole concept of computers and the internet was to make things simple and easy.
No doubt, they will get their service smoothed out, but that doesn't mean I can't complain. I'm a blogger for crying out loud. For me not to complain would be like Rush Limbaugh not to be ignorant.
No doubt, they will get their service smoothed out, but that doesn't mean I can't complain. I'm a blogger for crying out loud. For me not to complain would be like Rush Limbaugh not to be ignorant.
So, I have been without anti-virus protection on my computer for months. Yes, of course I should know better. I had Symantic, which sucks beyond suckiness. I tried the free McAfee offered by Comcast, which turned out to run neck in neck for the title of suckiness. So, I went without for a bit.
Unfortunately, I allowed The Fuskers™ to play on one of his game sites, and he accidentally hit one of the advertisements, sending him into viral hell. By the time I showed up, he had managed to get the ever popular Trojan.Win32.Generic downloaded into my system.
Well, after many hours of rigorous searching I managed to find a program to use in conjunction with Kaspersky to eliminate the dastardly virus from my computer. No more hijacking of my browser to bring up irritating and worthless products that do nothing but continue to inflect mindless, corrosive files into the system folders.
Don't kid yourself. If you think you can get along fine without an anti-virus program, your wrong. I found out there were many other viral files in my system that I didn't know were there until that program (I forgot the name-I had to change it before running it, or the virus would have recognized it and infected it) deleted them along with all the Trojans.
Unfortunately, I allowed The Fuskers™ to play on one of his game sites, and he accidentally hit one of the advertisements, sending him into viral hell. By the time I showed up, he had managed to get the ever popular Trojan.Win32.Generic downloaded into my system.
Well, after many hours of rigorous searching I managed to find a program to use in conjunction with Kaspersky to eliminate the dastardly virus from my computer. No more hijacking of my browser to bring up irritating and worthless products that do nothing but continue to inflect mindless, corrosive files into the system folders.
Don't kid yourself. If you think you can get along fine without an anti-virus program, your wrong. I found out there were many other viral files in my system that I didn't know were there until that program (I forgot the name-I had to change it before running it, or the virus would have recognized it and infected it) deleted them along with all the Trojans.
Well, I finally figured out how to make my blog publish dynamically. There really was no clear direction from the Movable Type Manual. I sort of stumbled upon it by accident, really. I noticed, finally, that the list of templates state whether they are published statically (an html file is produced and stored on a server) or dynamically (the post content is stored in a data base, then recalled and quickly produced on the spot). So, I took a look at the individual templates and discovered you simply choose at that point which which type.
So, I now have all my templates publishing dynamically. It should decrease the wait on submitting comments, and immediately show them, instead of displaying the cached page saved on your computer, which never has your just submitted comment.
That means, Bryan, you won't be doubling up on your comments, leading me to delete one of them. Not that I enjoy deleting your comments.
No, seriously Bryan. I don't enjoy deleting your comments. I only enjoy deleting the comments of assholes who think insulting me, or another commenter, on my own low traffic blog is going to be tolerated. It's why I switched back to registration. I want to be able to weed out the trolls intent on simple ad hominem attacks.
So, I now have all my templates publishing dynamically. It should decrease the wait on submitting comments, and immediately show them, instead of displaying the cached page saved on your computer, which never has your just submitted comment.
That means, Bryan, you won't be doubling up on your comments, leading me to delete one of them. Not that I enjoy deleting your comments.
No, seriously Bryan. I don't enjoy deleting your comments. I only enjoy deleting the comments of assholes who think insulting me, or another commenter, on my own low traffic blog is going to be tolerated. It's why I switched back to registration. I want to be able to weed out the trolls intent on simple ad hominem attacks.
As always, I end up with problems when I upgrade. I received an email informing me of difficulties in commenting. If anyone else should have problems email me a rook at rooksrant dot com. You know what to switch around.
I'd say more, but I have to get ready for work.
I'd say more, but I have to get ready for work.
Well, that took a while. But, I've now have a shiny new MT upgrade installed on my hosting company's server. It allows for much easier manipulation of the side columns. I can switch different widgets in an out with extreme ease. It was just the initial creation of the widgets that took a bit.
On a more sober note, I lost 2 months worth of posts. Not like my lost achieves that are sitting in a flash drive waiting for repair. These two months are simply gone. Puff! It seems my old installation just didn't have quite the oomph to download every single post. Or, the program I used didn't have enough oomph. Either way, I've lost August's, September's, and the first few days of October of this year.
There really was only one post I regret losing; My popcorn recipe.
Now, I've removed the CAPTCHA widget because I understand it's a pain for some. But, that also means I've resumed requiring registration. There are multiply ways you can register. You can just register with my native Movable Type system. That requires approval from me. Or, there are several other services, OpenID, Vox, TypeKey, and LiveJournal, all of which don't require my approval, but do give me the ability to ban.
Now, I understand some of you already registered once. Unfortunately, I wiped my database clean to eliminate some bugs that were held over from my 3.XX version of Movable Type, so you'll have to register once again. Yes, Brian, I am sorry.
Now, I have a few more images to upload, then my work should be complete.
On a more sober note, I lost 2 months worth of posts. Not like my lost achieves that are sitting in a flash drive waiting for repair. These two months are simply gone. Puff! It seems my old installation just didn't have quite the oomph to download every single post. Or, the program I used didn't have enough oomph. Either way, I've lost August's, September's, and the first few days of October of this year.
There really was only one post I regret losing; My popcorn recipe.
Now, I've removed the CAPTCHA widget because I understand it's a pain for some. But, that also means I've resumed requiring registration. There are multiply ways you can register. You can just register with my native Movable Type system. That requires approval from me. Or, there are several other services, OpenID, Vox, TypeKey, and LiveJournal, all of which don't require my approval, but do give me the ability to ban.
Now, I understand some of you already registered once. Unfortunately, I wiped my database clean to eliminate some bugs that were held over from my 3.XX version of Movable Type, so you'll have to register once again. Yes, Brian, I am sorry.
Now, I have a few more images to upload, then my work should be complete.
At 6:30 PM this evening someone from Saint Mary's, Georgia was the 55000 visitor. They were doing a Google search for "iraq war budget."
I just did a quick check of the search results, and I am #2 on that search list result, on page one! There is something wrong when I am higher than most of the major newspapers. If there is such a commotion for holding down government spending, than the cost of the Iraq war should be getting a lot more coverage.
I just did a quick check of the search results, and I am #2 on that search list result, on page one! There is something wrong when I am higher than most of the major newspapers. If there is such a commotion for holding down government spending, than the cost of the Iraq war should be getting a lot more coverage.
Seems that there's a problem, so I did this test post to see if it would clear up the problem.
Update: Yup, that worked.
Update: Yup, that worked.
Two things I want help with, both involving the RSS template. One, I'd like to insert some ads into my RSS feed. May not actually amount to any additional revenue, and I've none now with this blog, but any extra won't hurt. Two, I would like to know if there is a way to add RSS hits to a counter?
Recent Comments