Tag: macvillage

Categories
Personal

Semester IV

My 4th semester of college starts tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll be able to pull up that GPA. Accounting II should be a boat load of fun (why I can’t be an accountant).

Also in the works this week is some template porting for MacVillage.net, locking down the template, and writing some smaller scripts that will be used on the site (those silly little things that need to be done, but aren’t fun like the more complex systems in the work). Also on the agenda is getting Thunderbird’s source to download/compile.

Categories
Accettura Media

Server Outage

There was a rather serious server outage yesterday. Server has been up since this morning, but the backend wasn’t quite there, so I couldn’t post until now.

Sorry.

On a sidenote, the syndication feeds for category archives changed a few weeks ago. I know a few places including Mozilla Blog Updates haven’t updated their links yet.

Sorry for the abrupt change.

On a plus side, things are looking good for MacVillage.net, despite loosing a day of work due to a server outage.

Categories
MacVillage.net

Were transitionally compliant, and transitioning

Today I hit a milestone for MacVillage.net. During the transition to the new systems, I will be keeping the old layout. But since it’s going into a new Content Management System, it will need to be updated a bit. As a result, I made it valid HTML 4.01 Transitional.

So far most of the test pages in the staging area, are completely HTML 4 Transitional VALID. I hear so often it’s “impossible” to make larger sites with content management systems valid… well I’m well under way.

Valid HTML is better for everyone, and I’m glad that the site will be valid.

At the current time, I’ve decided to officially freeze the current site. Only automated systems, and other key news systems will be updating as usual. But I’m done developing under the old system. I’m downloading an image of the current system, which I will use for porting the initial relaunch with.

It’s still a little while away, but this is a major shift from R&D to “staging”. After extensive work in this level, we will move to production.

All systems GO!

Categories
MacVillage.net

The last Macworld for the OLD MacVillage.net

I anticipate this to truly be the last MacWorld for the old MacVillage.net. The new system is nearly complete, and most likely reliable enough for this, but I didn’t feel comfortable enough with it to speed up the process and roll out last night. I made the decision about Dec 26. So I will keep the News site idle, and just handle Mac PR as usual.

So far the QuickTime stream is pretty very crappy. Things better shape up!

More later.

Categories
Mozilla

Midas in forms

I’m working on a new Content Management system for MacVillage.net. To enhance it’s capabilities, I am turning to Midas.

A perfect time to give a little edge to Mozilla users 🙂

I’ve been looking into this some info a bit. Sadly, there isn’t a ton of good documentation on it for a webmaster right now.

I have a basic HTML form right now. Can anyone provide some insight on how one could take a regular form (such as this forum here), and implement midas, so that the value sent to the server is the rich goodness of midas?

I’m pretty pretty much looking for a drop replacement for a text field in a HTML form. Note there should be a fallback to an equivalent, or plain text field for any browser that doesn’t support Midas.

Comments or Email is of course open.

I think this will be a nice reason for people to use Mozilla.

Categories
Personal

Worked way to late/early

Worked way to late last night… well early this morning. Started at 6:30… finished 4:00 (a few minutes early).

It was a bad experience, and I’m not thrilled. I’m quite tired, but that nap I took helped a ton. Will take another later so I can watch South park. Then to bed.

Still, a moment of downtime, so I’m working more on that CMS.

Yet another side note: For those that don’t know already, Jay Allen’s MT-Blacklist/Comment Spam Clearinghouse is a godsend. Since I’ve been using it, nothing has gotten by so far.

I’m just waiting for perl based auto-updating of the master-blacklist. I don’t do Python here. I recommend it to all my blogging buddies. It’s a great product. And props to Jay for the release. He’s saved blogging.

Categories
MacVillage.net

Programming Butt Kicking

Sunday and Monday were great programming days. Got tons of bugs fixed on the MacVillage.net CMS. Started Indexing, that’s now done (partly). Also got some limited search functionality. And tons and tons of stupid bugs, and odd functionality fixed. More than I noted in my change log. A lot more. It was good time. Some code cleanup, removed some bogus code, and consolidated a few things…. all was good in happy town.

Then this Computer Science & Programming Lab came around. And I feel like I took a shower in a Turkish prison, and dropped the soap.

It hurts. I’m tired, and I want sleep. And I want a decent grade. And this internal conflict might be the war to end all wars.

Spam Filtering is starting now on my server, so my email should be cleaning on my server, rather than client side, meaning my CPU should be free a bit more. A great thing.

Categories
Software

I blew up Windows

I seem to have blown up Windows… here’s my tale:

Got a message this morning, that my USB Hub had a short or overload (no reason to believe that). All devices hooked to that hub, stopped responding (bad news).

Later today, had several programs just crash on me. Typical of Windows. So I reboot.

No network connection. Most startup programs no longer startup. Lots of screwy things. Tried system restore… no success. No difference, no matter how far back I go.

Can’t restore until at least Thanksgiving, as that’s the first time I can afford to spend the time (as I said earlier, I’m strapped for time this week).

So here I am in Knoppix, with my USB Keychain Drive (512MB) as my HD. My XP drive is using NTFS, hence it’s good as dead in Knoppix. This is a laptop, so no 2nd drive.

I’m considering a 2nd HD. That new Hitachi 7200 RPM drive looks great (60GB). I wanted to get one of those… but wanted to wait a while. So now I’m debating when to upgrade (do it now, or just use my old one for now, and do it later)?

So my XP installation is useless (even worse than when it “worked”). Knoppix is dead slow off the CD ROM. It’s not good around here as far as computing goes.

Thank you Bill Gates. Your technology is just wonderful.

Everyone help make the new MacVillage.net relaunch a success, that way I can afford to have an Apple laptop next to this PC junk.

I’m pissed.

Categories
Personal

Why must my ass get kicked?

School is starting to kick my ass. I’ve got lots of studying this week, meaning much less outside work (read: anything visible online) will be done in the next few days. Unfortunately, MacVillage is coming along, and is becoming very standards compliant. I’m thrilled to be working with standards more than ever. So much so, I’m becoming addicted to it (yikes).

But cool stuff will follow the silence.

Categories
MacVillage.net

Quick shoutout to standards

Just a real quick shoutout to standards. MacVillage.net’s News System… currently in development, will support valid RSS feeds. That’s right. Valid. I implemented the feature last night. It’s working with relative success (still not complete, but valid).

Still to be done is indexing, searching, mailing, and several dozen bugs. Not to mention the mentioned features to be done are going to be buggy at first.

Standards are a wonderful thing no?

Any suggestions on other feed formats other than RSS? Would something else be recommended in addition? I’ll most likely implement a JavaScript feed (just insert a javascript line to output headlines to a page). Other formats? Let me know, I’m open to making it a very standards compliant system. When I’m done it should be 100% valid CSS, HTML, RSS, anything else.

I’m a fan of standards (as you can tell). I think they make the net what it is. And will make the net what it’s capable of. Standards are what make the Internet special. Millions of computers, many different types. All connecting to the same data source. All interpreting the same data. Pretty cool no? Wasn’t to long ago 2 computers made by different companies couldn’t do anything together.