So if you ever visit my site (as opposed to just reading RSS), you've probably been noticing things changing lately. Ever since the RSS updates I've been chipping away at other things. The titles are one, which I've made show up everywhere now. Due to the way the site is built it's not available when it prints the normal header, so there's a script to put it up there. On navigation through main and category history it will also show position in the title bar. All URLs to entries changed. I have a bit of code in the new RSS feeds to prevent them all from flagging as new entries there, but if you visit it'll convert. The new format should be cleaner for linking, indexing, and stats (query strings confuse things).
Comments have a few changes. Assuming one's browser is capable of it, you can add them from the same page as viewing. This fixes both the issue of not seeing other comments and prevents loading another page. In case you're wondering, the reason the form isn't there directly is so the page itself can be indexed, but the comment form isn't indexed. That's important to keep comment spam away. Also, you can now include a URL with your comment. I'm planning on making name and URL saveable, but it's late and comcast sucks (my connection to the net keeps cutting out) so that's for another day. I plan to implement that with another interesting feature.
Categories are also there. They exist for new entries, and are still filling in for old ones. There's not a preset list, which means it's mostly for finding related entries. On a category page there's also links to my del.icio.us links (if any) for that category and a Technorati search. I'll probably have more metadata in some of them eventually too. Note up to the 5 most popular categories for an entry are listed, listed in order of declining popularity (for this defined by how many entries have it, not views). So the list may change/reorder over time as entries are added to the site. Note that categories not listed both due to not being popular enough and being flagged as hidden will still show up in a category view, so that's why you may see stuff that you don't see as being in a category. Each category also has entry and comment RSS feeds (/entries.rss and /comments.rss) if you're interested, but I haven't figured out how to best get them in the headers for them (same issue as titles).
I've started posting links on del.icio.us more than here, unless I have some extra comments on them. Currently there's just a link to it on the left ("My del.icio.us"), and that has RSS too if you want. I'm curious if that's OK, or if I should aggregate them and post some or all of them back hear (maybe daily)? Leave a comment on that one.
You can see links to blogs I read pretty regularly under "My Reads" over on the left as well. As noted at the top, let me know if you don't want to appear there. I'll probably convert it from a javascript include to plain HTML at some point just to make it cleaner.
The most popular entries and categories are now also linked under Most Popular on the left as well. Probably not useful to regular readers, but it's there. It pulls the views and rebuilds the listing at the same time it checks whether sitemap updates and external pings are needed (about hourly). I think sometimes odd old stuff is gonna pop up in there...
I think the other things are the email updates (another probably gonna be unused thing) and the geo-map (at the bottom, somewhat interesting). They don't really need any explanation though. Enjoy poking around with or ignoring any of the other stuff as you see fit. Let me know if something is broken or doesn't seem to act how you expect.
Joss, when asked about continuing Serenity/Firelfy even if it's only direct-to-dvd, said "Whatever format it is. If it's a chance to work with these actors again, to live in this world again, I'm there!". This is contingent on someone backing it though, so buy the movie!
Those of you on the movie-night list have heard at least part of this, but we'll be having a movie night soon with it. At this point it's sounding like sometime Dec 27-30, but that's not set in stone. Let me know if you're not on the list but are interested. Or if you are on the list and want to come but have conflicts and prefer certain dates. Should be a fun time.
I see this and the first thing I think of are schdav's comments while watching Firefly. :) Now those of you watching The OC with him can hear them too.
Don't be a tool. Enough said. Brad found this when someone asked him for a definition.
As noted previously, I've been taking Mondays off in December, mainly because I can (I have personal time to use up). So last Monday I got new tires for my car. At first I wasn't too happy with them, and then I remembered they're all season tires and not snow tires. I'm starting to get used to them, but I do have to change how I drive slightly so I don't spin them or slide around corners too much. Still better than the old ones which were pretty much bald. Those were great on dry pavement though, but I had to coast over snow. I guess the benefit is the new ones are quieter. Such is life.
Work is better, but still busy. Nothing special. I think there'll be a couple ideological arguments coming up though, which should be interesting. It looks like I have a lot of email to go through when I get in tomorrow too. :( Guess if you want to bug me it'll probably be send an email (even more than usual) and it'll be answered somewhat in the order it was received.
Friday night was movie night at Paul & JoeBuck's place with the usual crowd, and the movie was Fantastic Four. Not the best movie ever, but it was fun anyways. Weekend otherwise was a lot of sitting around and reading, and a lot of sleeping. I don't really remember how much since the alarm clock next to my bed is still an hour and sixteen minutes fast, which makes me pretty much ignore it. Today was Sesame Beef "one last time" (according to the sign) in the DC for dinner, so went there and ate with my sister and her roommates. Can't argue with free dinner because students need to burn flex. After that I went back home and Run Lola Run. Can't complain about that movie. It's odd but interesting, and short so even though it's semi-repetetive it doesn't feel dragged out. Now it's time to get some sleep before
Microsoft Virtual Labs are available. Basically you can get 90 minutes of time to play with a virtual lab environment in their system just by signing up. Apparently you can sign up for additional 90 minute time blocks too. Seems like an interesting way to try something out.
So I'm poking around with Google Alerts, pointing it at bloglines subscription addresses. I'm not logged in since I'm making individual addresses per query, and need to enter an email address. There's an issue where I haven't received the confirmations (which is probably due to bloglines' flakiness lately), so figure I'll enter them again just in case. I enter one, and it comes back with "You've already created this Google Alert. Please enter a different search.". Is it really that easy to check whether someone has subscribed to a google alert on something? I suppose they could be tracking me since google tends to track everything, but you'd think it would have thrown an error at the different addresses or pretended to remember me in that case. So wipe out all cookies in that browser, and try again. Wow...
Someone tried to sell a security vulnerability on eBay. Of course Microsoft complained and eBay pulled the auction.
Finally, something that's more of a mess than our server rooms. Looks like they had cable management, but it filled up and they didn't do anything to fix it. Those free hanging 20ft runs of CAT5 have to be great for reliability.
Found this tool today, which is cool. Seems Windows Server 2003 SP1 finally caught up with Netware 4 on a nice feature.
I just saw this. The video (13MB, about 4 minutes long). Apparently the marketing guy paid for it, but it sounds like he did it because he thought it'd be cool and likes Vista that much, and they didn't pay him to get it or anything.
Lots of things like this floating around, but saw this and it reminded me of them. Death by PowerPoint. I like the "Most of your audience probably knows how to read" line best.
Copyright ©2000-2008 Jeremy Mooney (jeremy-at-qux-dot-net)
