Gecko Bloggle

Got an email last night from another John (DJ John Mills from MyCityRadio, more recently Brandi’s fame, and just an all-around good egg), claming that he’d finished recording his first podcast, and since we’ve been talking about doing a podcast together, I’m going to do a test post of an MP3 riiiiiiiiiiiiiiight…
HERE.
Let’s see if that’s an iPodder (RSS) downloadable thing.

[Edit: That worked! Just have to remember to add the custom field ‘enclosure’ with a value of the url for the mp3 you’d like to include. I *think* I can put the file wherever I want to (as long as it’s World-Readable by WWWUser.]

deviantART: Focus by *Jesar is really quite gorgeous…

  Check it out, and everything else Jesar does.  It’s got this great “looks like someone could make one” look about it.  Mixed plastics and metals in the images, putting me in mind of the Bjork video or “All is full of love“

(Also, I found an excuse to use Performancing, the blogging plugin for Firefox).

So… I’m *told* that WordPress does enclosures automatically, so if I post a link to an audio file, I’m told that WP1.5 will deal with everything by itself…

Let’s see what happa, hmmmmm?

I’m trying out the LiveJournal Crossposter, but if I post using w.Bloggar client (which I usually do), does it autosync to LJ?

Let’s find out, shall we?

[Edit: Nope, not so much, but if I add something via the front-end in WordPress, I bet it updates.]

Trying out Deepest Sender, which is made for LiveJournal with FireFox, but works with WordPress too…  Neato.

Okay, so anyone who’s ever worked with me, listened to me talk about work, or just stood next to me when there’s a decision to be made will know that I’m not the sort of person who usually Reads The Fine Manual when it comes to a lot of things. I tend to just sorta pile on into whatever’s the new toy, and see what happens…

The result occasionally goes a little something like this:

Okay, not really.

Well, last night, I tried that with WordPress 2.0 (the software that displays my blog on my home site)

So let’s just itemize what I did to myself, shall we?:

• Ignored the stuff where they tell you to completely back up your database (let me get to that in a minute).
• Ignored the bit about disabling all plugins
• Ignored the stuff where they tell you to remove all files
• and just clobbered my old install with the 2.0 install

and then ran the upgrade.
Hilarity ensued, let me ensure you.
Including, but not limited to, a 30-minute ABSPATH hunt (the location of the web site in general, meaning once the upgrade was completed, there was now way for the blog to find it’s own files).

…and I totally did it to myself.

Got it all back in this morning (thank goodness for ChefBoyArdee PHPMyAdmin)
I managed to backup my (very sadly broken) database, and then copy/paste the parts I needed (liked the settings, options, POSTS! and comments). The really scary thing was that any large paste (of maybe 15 posts at a time) would cause a connection reset in PhpMyAdmin (at least, under Firefox browser).

One thing that was sorta scary (and I should keep in mind if I’m stupid brave enough to try that at any point in the future):
I’ve got two plugins installed: WP-StatTraq (for statistics and inbounding linking information) and WPHashCash (for anti-comment-spam, so please comment on this at my Home Blog and see if everything’s still working).
I *think* the combination of these two plugins, and their nature of storing data into the database (which means every visit I get to the site gets an entry into the database, and every comment attempt also goes in, I think), lead to a much larger database file (once exported) than I would normally have had. Subsequently, when I tried to import the exported file back into the DB, it choked at the 5minute mark (300second timeout during a single request).

But usually, I’m really lucky and happy with WordPress (and again, it was not WP’s fault, it’s totally MINE).

So yeah. I’m going to get the new server going, first and foremost, and quit goofing around with the blog for a bit. I’ll still post (I hope) during January, but this whole migration from Server 2000 to Server 2003 (and Exchange 2000 to Exchange 2003) has been kicking my butt for months now…

Oh, and Happy New Year everyone. I’ll do a proper “State of the Union” type post in the next few days.

Claire says:
all hail the Great Burton! Remember-er of cool trivia and neato stuff!
This humble forgetter has a question for thy mighty brain!
JBurton @ EAX says:
Type mortal, that you may be enlightened.
Claire says:
hee hee.
what the hell was the name of that weird little CD-rom/game thing that Peter Gabriel was involved in?
JBurton @ EAX says:
EVE.
Claire says:
bah! you’re so smart
Claire says:
I knew you’d know that
JBurton @ EAX says:
Nah, just have a section in my brain for that stuff.
Claire says:
that must be a really cool bit of brain…
JBurton @ EAX says:
Where most people have the lyrics to horrible 70s and early 80s songs? I’ve got software…
Claire says:
har!
JBurton @ EAX says:
Makes Karaoke a little tricky…
Claire says:
speaking of MirrorMask – if you guys haven’t seen it yet – I recommend it. The last show was last night unfortunately, but it should hit DVD pretty quick.
JBurton @ EAX says:
Wooooaaaah… We’re halfway there….
WaaaaaOOH… living on an opensource cyberlife strand bearing cycle…

So I was bombing around this morning before setting up a laptop for a presentation, and found out about Windows Live.

I went there to check it out, and a slightly mangled site came up, with a little “Firefox not currently supported…” message.
Fair enough, I though, so I went to the same site with IE, and got this: (click to view 151KB image)

That’s right: using the browser they require, on a fully patched and supported OS, I got an error message, and by browser had to close (mshtml.dll had bombed out in iexplore, for those who are following along at home). The error’s consistent, so it’s not JUST me. It’ll probably get blamed on my Google Toolbar, since Ballmer has decided he wants to destroy Google.

Remember Firefox? Looked a little funny, but worked.

Fools.

Well, at least they aren’t charging for it (yet).

Coming soon: Office Live (you think I’m kidding, don’t you?)

So, I’ve been playing around with Ubuntu Linux over the last few years, downloading the occasional LiveCD to see what things look like, and what does/doesn’t work on my tower and/or laptop. For the most part, the main thing that’s scared me away from seriously trying Linux is that I’d have so much fiddling around to do to get my WiFi working in the house. This version (5.10 “Breezy Badger) just plain worked. No messing around, no preconfiguration with another NDIS wrapper or something. Just… worked.

So then I downloaded a proper installation disc (non-live), created a little 5gb partition on my laptop, and now I’ve got dual booting XP/Ubuntu.

Pretty neat, and now I’m finally getting some experience in this particular flavour of Linux. Oh, and if you call it Leeeeenux within earshot, I will giggle at you.

Just a bad idea.

I don’t know what sorta rookie would do that, not *ME* of course, but just in case someone out there was thinking about doing it, I’m telling you it’s not a good idea.

I have this… friend who’s now got a 1.0.7 installation that will load up, but won’t LOAD a page, or let me enter an address, or pull down any menus. Safe mode, too. Was playing with extensions, and found that more than half of my faves (especially SAGE, Googlebar, and Sidebar), don’t work under 1.5b.

Poop.

Boy, I sure feel bad for my friend this morning. What a dummy.