Results tagged “Housekeeping” from ScottandMargo.net

Since I got back from vacation, I decided that I wanted to make a more concentrated effort to put more into this site. Just looking at the front page, though it doesn't look like I succeeded but I actually am getting some things done.

Once I got Movable Type set up I started moving entries over from what used to be a photo blog that I ran on the site separate from the main blog. Most of the entries from that side are from 2003-2005 (I'm currently halfway through April 2003) so none of that stuff is going to show up as new on the RSS feeds. Because I'm moving the entries over using MT's Asset management system, the photos are showing up under the Photo widget to the right of where my normal entry text goes.

Once I'm all caught up on the archives, things should start getting somewhat back to normal around here, whatever that is.

For some reason, whenever I do a major release upgrade on Movable Type, I have problems with the templates and stylesheets. I do the upgrade, and all of the design elements of the site stay the way they were so when I try to use a new “Style” it breaks.

To fix it, I had to create a test blog so MT4 will create a fresh set of templates and then copy them over to the old blog.

I’m going to stick with the new column layout, I think. Over the next few days I’m going to try to get the content of the right-side bars set. Once that’s done, I’ll get into some of the new things in MT4 (Assets? Finally.) and maybe do a little tweaking. In between, I have a couple of things to post related to vacation.

Going to be a little weird while I figure stuff out.

I was feeling pretty good a couple of weeks ago when I chemically unclogged the master bathroom sink. A couple days ago, Margo went to get something out from under the kitchen sink to find everything soaked. Great. A plumbing leak in the kitchen.

Me being a gadget guy, I start thinking that it's a good reason to get one of those new disposals that can take a pineapple (the Insinkerator Evolution Excel). Sweet. Oops....lowest price I can find on it is $270 and highest was $500. Ouch.

I get back under the sink to see if maybe the problem is something other than the disposal. Running water isn't leaking out anywhere. When I turn the disposal on, water comes shooting out of a hole in its side. Great.

So I'm ordering a cheaper disposal tonight and when it comes in, I'm going to try to install it. I have a plumber ready to take care of it if I can't get it together. When I first bought this place, I never thought I'd have to learn plumbing.

Technorati Tags: Housekeeping, DIY

A long time ago, I had decided to separate my photographs from the main blog here. The intent at the time was for this site to be more for showing my photography than to be a "blog". As time went on though, I decided that I wasn't up to retouching my prints after they had been scanned, so most of what ended up in the /photo blog was stuff from the digital camera.

I've decided that there's really no good reason to keep the photos separate from the main blog here. They're as much a part of my online persona as the writing here is, so I might as well stop maintaining an artificial separation of the two.

Over the next few days I'll be moving the photo posts over. They'll be added with their original posting dates, so they shouldn't flood the RSS feed. The ones that are done so far haven't, so it should be OK. Anyone that gets a Google Images link here might not find what they're looking for until I get a reindex though.

I'm doing some back-end work on the site today.

This site's anti-spam setup is doing a great job at keeping spam from being displayed on the site while hopefully not interfering with the experience of legitimate readers.

The problem at this point is that the attempts at comment spam are are actually starting to account for more site traffic than actual visitors are. The referrer spam also has pretty much made my referrer stats useless too.

Because of that, I'm working on blocking spammers' access to the site now. There are some interesting tools and ideas out there and I'm going to be trying some of them out starting today. Hopefully, it won't interfere too much with any of the regulars getting here.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Spam

I added my coComment feed to the right sidebar today. I've been meaning to do it for a while but didn't get around to it for a bunch of different reasons.

I tend to comment out there in the world more often than I write here. coComment is a good way for me to keep track of those discussions...when I remember to tag them. Maybe making them more public will serve to make me remember more.

There's still some work I want to do with the design of the site (it's too narrow, for example). I'm not a developer though so that's going to happen really slowly.

I'm playing around with the layout a bit today. I worked out how to add a third column. I'm planning on adding some things in the sidebars that would be too much if I only had one column to put them in.

Problem at the moment is that the overall width set in the current template (actually in the stylesheet for MovableType) is set too narrow, so the middle column ("beta"...where the content is now) is getting squashed.

I'm a sysadmin, not a programmer, so it takes me a little longer than normal to straighten things like this out. Will get there. I'll try not to post anything too wide til I get it worked out.

Technorati Tags: Blogging

Since the upgrade to MT 3.31, I noticed that I lost the formatting of the entries in the ATOM feed for the site. I also stopped using ecto to post entries at the same time, which seems to be the problem.

When I first did the upgrade, I was getting some errors pushing posts from ecto to the site so I started using the MT New Entry form to get the past several posts done. I'm not sure what the MT forms are doing that makes the feeds lose their formatting.

The problem is resolving the tagging issue now. Ecto (as of 2.4.1) doesn't support Movable Type 3.31's new tagging system so if I want to use the MT tags, I have to go back into the MT forms interface. I would like to see the MT tags translate back to Technorati tags somehow. And I'm not sure what sense it makes to have both Categories and Tags on the blog to group similar posts together. To me it seems that the only difference between the two at the moment is that it's easier to add tags than categories to a post in the default Movable Type form.

If I was smarter about coding, I'd add something to MT to take the MT tags, and convert them to Technorati tags when displaying them on the entry. Then I wouldn't have to worry if things are getting tagged correctly externally. I might get some ideas while I'm having dog-related insomnia this week.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Technology

Obviously, it's been a long time since I've even looked at the website because otherwise I would have been shamed into adding something sooner.

I've thought about how to turn the site into something that is more useful to me in a way that will make me add more actual content to it. Haven't figured out how yet. Will keep trying.

At least the front page won't be blank for another month.

Upgraded to MovableType 3.2 this morning. Easier upgrade than before which is always a good thing. Might get around to playing with it some later.

Might get around to posting my summer reading list from my vacation last month.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Technology

Well, I think I got some things worked out on the site.

I had some problems the last time I upgraded MovableType from 3.14 to 3.15. It looks like I goofed up the upgrade and missed some files. When I started messing with ecto again, I got some errors updating the site, tracked them down and it showed that I missed something in my last upgrade. I pulled the full download of MovableType 3.17 and went through directory by directory and updated everything again.

It looks like it's working now, which is nice. Hopefully I'll be motivated to keep up with things on the site now. I need to do some cleaning of the filesystem on the server...there's a lot of extra directories and files that aren't linked anywhere that I need to decide what to do with. I also have MT installed a little weird and I need to take the time someday to work that out.

I re-rolled my trial of ecto, so I lost the draft I had of a pen review I was working on, so that needs to be started over. Not that it's a bad thing because I have a lot to add since I first thought of the posting. I'm playing with fountain pens these days. :)

Technorati Tags: Software, Blogging

Well, obviously I'm neglecting the website. Great.

I was going pretty well for a while there. I was really excited about Photon to help make dumping images to the website easier. Then I was looking into ecto to make posting easier.

Then Photon stopped working. Then ecto expired. Then life got in the way.

Am I going to do anything about it? I hope so.

I updated the software on the site a little bit. I'm going to see if I can fix my software situation a bit. I'm going to try to get that pen review out that I've had in draft for a few weeks. Hopefully I can get my job stuff straightened out.

The post yesterday from ecto seems to have worked. I'm thinking that I should probably work this into some kind of workflow to keep the blog stuff moving. Maybe I'll get good at it someday.

Part of the "workflow" comment is coming from what I've been getting into these days. I've been reading Getting Things Done by David Allen and have started picking up on ways to get myself organized and productive. I'm already seeing improvements...let's hope it keeps up.

I'm testing out a posting from an application called ecto. ecto is an OSX application that automates some of the work that I'd need to do to post things to the blog. It does some stuff like some automatic trackback pings to technorati and a couple places.

I'm trying to work out some ideas to make it easier to post, so maybe I can put something more interesting on the site.

I figured this was going to happen. I promised myself that I'd get back into keeping up with this thing and then I didn't. Figures. It's been over a month since the last update now. That's not cool.

What's going on? Well, I'm still doing taxes (late in the season for me to be still messing with it). Getting ready to grill out for the first time this year..probably tomorrow or Tuesday.

Getting ready to try GTD. Not sure if I'll have the discipline to keep up with it but if I can use it to get my shit together, I'm going to do it.

One of these days I'll be able to keep a stream of thought together enough to post something interesting here...today's not the day obviously.

Still working out the photoblog thing. Posted a photo tonight. Still some things to work out but I'm getting there..

Move along...nothing to see here...

I did a bunch of looking around yesterday and found a nice piece of software that will make it easy for me to set the photo section up. There's a plugin for iPhoto called Photon that will let me directly export photo sets to the Movable Type system that I'm using to run the site here.

I set up a secondary blog already. I need to work out how I want to organize the photos from there, and then get started. I might end up finding a new template for the blog that's better suited to this kind of content. Not sure how much time I want to devote to it at this point.

Since I'm trying to keep up with the site, I upgrade MovableType to 3.12. No obvious breakages which is nice.

Next trick will be to get the RSS to full formatted text. Then maybe an article or something later.