Finishing the Site

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

Tonight I fleshed out the rest of the MT templates. I fixed the CSS on the individual entries, the comment popups, comment preview, comment error, master archive index (which is now linked in the side panel), category indexes, and date-based indexes. Phew.

So that should do it, you won't have to be afraid to leave comments now. Tomorrow I'll do the same for ninjafish.

NewsMonster on Linux

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

Well, it works. I needed to install java and manually register the plugin with Mozilla, but it works. The good news is that it works, and it's pretty damn cool. The bad news is that the java plugin slows the launching of Mozilla way down.

What's worse is that registering the java plugin causes Firebird not to launch at all. This tek-tips thread explains the problem and gives a quick solution - don't register the java plugin with Firebird. I think the issue may be that I registered the plugin with Firebird in the same way I did with Mozilla. I'll look into the proper way of registering it.

NewsMonster itself is great. It's got the familiar 3-pane interface and has the neat "website filters" feature - which grabs headlines and thumbnailed screenshots of non-RSS-enabled sites like CNN. The news items themselves are rendered with a standard stylesheet, but the right-click context menu is that of Mozilla, which allows me to open links in a new tab right from the aggregator. Very cool, exactly what I was looking for. It also allowed me to import my .opml from NetNewsWire, however it didn't leave my folders in tact. But again, it's slow but I think the biggest issue is that I'm running RedHat 9 on an 800mhz laptop with 128mb of ram - so things are bound to be slow.

Update: Turns out I was registering the wrong Java plugin with Firebird. The Java plugin and the Firebird browser need to be compiled with the same version of gcc - in my case, 3.2. Using Firebird makes NewsMonster a bit quicker, but overall it's still crawling along (which again, is probably just the system). I can't wait until Apple and Mozilla get their problems sorted out so I can start using this software day-to-day.

NewsMonster, Mozilla Woes

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

Wow, this one's a doozy.

It all started when I wanted a quick and easy news aggregator for Linux. Mozilla comes standard, so NewsMonster seemed a logical fit. I've always thought that rss/rdf news aggregation was a natural extension of browsing. After using NetNewsWire for quite a while, I've decided that switching back and forth between aggregator and browser was a bit tedious. I even went so far as to submit a feature request to Apple for aggregator functionality in Safari (yeah, right).

Yet I digress, NewsMonster didn't work. This, I later found to be my own fault in not checking dependencies before installing - so NewsMonster may still be an option under Linux. Before finding that out, however, I decided to try installing Mozilla + NewsMonster under OSX. Hey, cross-platform is cross-platform, right?

Well, it didn't work either, for an entirely different and much more diabolical reason. What I missed was that NewsMonster requires Java 1.4, which comes standard in Panther. I checked Mozilla's about:plugins, and it told me I was only using 1.3.1. What gives?

Heading on over to mozdev, I thought I might find a way to upgrade to a new Java plugin. A quick search yielded the plugin support matrix, where I discovered an open bug on the plugin issue. The bug has been open for over 6 months - not reassuring in the least.

Turns out, Apple had ported Java 1.3.1 and 1.4.1, but hasn't documented what the Mozilla developers need to implement support for 1.4.1. So Mozilla stands on OS X, at version 1.5, with Java lingering at 1.3.1. Harsh.

What's a geek to do? Well, as luck would have it, the NewsMonster developer (Kevin Burton/burtonator) hangs out in #joiito - but with my luck, he wasn't online at the time. I was, however, able to find his screenname on a newsmonster-list post and we had a quick chat where he acknowledged Apple's complicity in the Mozilla issue. He's a nice guy and surprisingly accessible.

So until this all gets fixed, the OSX browser/aggregator remains unattainable.

Widescreen NetNewsWire Hack

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

I've just implemented this hack which will move the preview pane of NetNewsWire to the right, giving it a widescreen effect. This just makes sense for widescreen LCD's.

I found this via The Tao of Mac, which is rapidly becoming one of my favorite technical web spaces. The author uses a wiki to blog, which is something for me to look into.

Canceling EMusic

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

I just cancelled my EMusic account. Basically, the company was bought out and they decided all-you-can-download accounts weren't helping their bottom line. I received an email notifying me that for the low, low price of $10/mo I could have up to 40 downloads per month, with a bump to 300 downloads for $50/mo.

Ah, thank you, I haven't laughed that hard since I was a little girl.

So over the past few weeks I've bled EMusic dry, downloading as much of the good stuff as I could. I fleshed out my collection from the Emperor Norton label, also beefing up my selection of jazz.

MBOX, MSF, Mozilla and Evolution

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

It seems that all I needed was to sleep on it and then research the .msf issue. This link proved invaluable, as it bridged the knowledge gap I was suffering.

Turns out, .msf are mail summary files and that Mozilla does indeed still use the .mbox format. It simply doesn't append the .mbox extension to the end of the files it uses. For some reason, this was tripping me up in the Evolution-import process yesterday. Today it's not. Lovely.

Evolution only allows one import at a time, which, quite disappointingly mimics Outlook's limitations. The next challenge will be to figure out NewsMonster's issues, as my linux-on-the-desktop experiment continues.

Fink 0.6.1

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

Fink 0.6.1 is now available with Panther support. I've got it installed and am now installing gimp to test out the integration with Apple's X11.

Mail Blues

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

Well, I'm giving up for the night. Wrapping things up...

I started with .pst files on cd (well under the 2gb limit) and the goal was to import the .pst files into Evolution. The first obstacle was that Evolution simply wouldn't import the files. My prior post listed the options given to me by Ximian's support center and a quick google search - and they basically told me to get Mozilla or Netscape. That route had problems as well and I had to scrounge to find a Windows box with Outlook still on it.

Then began the arduous process of re-importing my .pst files one-by-one, because importing multiple files would've been too intelligent for some Redmond engineers to handle. Sigh. Once they were all imported into Outlook, I got to import the folders and messages into Mozilla - which intelligently enough, imported them all at once. Unfortunately, that's where Mozilla's intelligence ended. Instead of the .mbox format of previous versions, the latest version (1.5) stored the mail in .msf format - which Evolution can't import. Yuck.

So tomorrow I'll be reverting to an earlier version of Mozilla and starting the process all over again - simply because Microsoft hasn't learned its lesson regarding proprietary data formats, and the world hasn't learned its lesson regarding Microsoft. I need to research this new .msf format and find out why in the world Mozilla made the switch.

Interestingly enough, Apple's Mail.app uses the .mbox format. If i were switching from that, it'd be easy.

Website Syndication

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

A little late on this particular bandwagon, but I've finally signed up over at blogrolling.com. A new side panel has been added for my "techroll" - that is, the technical sites that I frequent and subscribe to via NetNewsWire.

Blogrolling has some nice include options - I'm using javascript, but that may change if this site ever goes php. I was also able to populate my first blogroll with an exported .opml file from NetNewsWire.

I've also installed NewsMonster on my linux-on-the-desktop box, err, laptop... though it doesn't appear to be working quite yet. I'll dig a little deeper later. Right now my mail filter process is just about done and I'm itching to see if I can get this stuff into Evolution.

Mail Fun(k)

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

The goal was simple, import my old Outlook .pst files into Ximian Evolution. It's a sort of Outlook clone, y'see. This should be simple, nay?

Evolution itself wouldn't import the .pst files, so I hit google in search of an answer. Word on the net says Netscape or Mozilla can handle these imports. No sweat, I say, Mozilla comes standard with RH and I'm all up-to-date with my patches. Let 'er rip. Nope. Won't work either. So I download Netscape - which believe it or not is up to version 7.1 now. Besides needing to use a netscape.net/AIM-network login to launch the app, it won't import the .pst either. Egads.

It seems there's no way to import a .pst into Evolution without quite a hassle. There's LibPST, but that seems like quite a hack and was last updated about a year ago. My other options restrict me to using a Windows machine - and they are Outport or Mozilla for windows. Why on earth Mozilla for Windows would allow you to import .pst's and Mozilla for linux would not, is beyond me.

Luckily, I brought two projects to entertain myself with tonight. The mail can wait, the really fun stuff is .opml, RSS feeds and php. Woo.

Panther Installation

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

Panther came yesterday, so I backed up the data in my home dir on my laptop and installed it. The whole process took just over an hour and went without a hitch.

When reading the following, please keep in mind that the installation is being performed on an 800mhz Powerbook with a 1mb L3 cache and 512mb of RAM. Here's the breakdown:

Minutes/Action

• 1-15: 12+ gigs of home dir being backed up to firewire drive
• 16-33: Reboot, begin installation - skipping disc verification, I choose to erase and install from scratch.
• 33: Disc 1 prompts a reboot, finishes installing and asks for disc 2
• 33-48: Disc 2 goes through its installation process and finishes successfully
• 48-53: User interaction begins. I'm prompted to create a user, fill out product registration information, set up a network connection, and enter Mail configuration.
• 53: Finder launches for the first time and software update immediately launches itself.
• 53-58: Software update installs new iPod software, iSync 1.3, iTunes 4.1, and Security Update 2003-10-28 (which requires a restart). While this process is running, I begin to clean up my dock.
• 60-66: Disc 3 installation begins. I have chosen to install X11 and the additional fonts (as I can barely read some Arabic) - but not the additional drivers for ancient printers. While this process is running, I begin to explore the System Preferences and start personalizing my OS X experience.
• 66-79: I begin the XCode disc installation with the default settings. I continue to tinker with my System Prefs. Oddly enough, when I try to turn on FileVault it prompts me to log out and log back in - but the Installer cancels the logout request automatically and prompts me to tell me I'm an idiot. I shrug and let it finish.
• 80: Fully up-to-date, usable, Panther installation on my laptop. Hooray!

So there you have it. It takes an hour and twenty minutes to get Panther installed from scratch. Figure another half-hour or so of meticulously going through my backed up ~/Library to selectively restore preferences for applications like Safari, iCal, iChat, NetNewsWire and my Keychain... but while I'm doing that I can be installing Panther on my iMac.

Webalizer

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

Today I got a localized copy of webalizer up and running on the web server.

I ran into a snag when the webalizer binary couldn't find libgd.so.2 even though I had compiled it with the --with-gdlib and --with-gd flags to point to the proper directory. With some minor messing about, it was quickly resolved by re-configuring with a new --prefix set. It's important to note that this snag was simply a result of my trying to install webalizer and gd into my $HOME dir instead of their rightful places in the system. Such are the constraints of not running your own server. :)

A few config files later and all three of my websites have usage statistics for the month of October. All that's left to do is set up and hourly cron to run the script for each of the sites using their respective config files. To be honest, I had no idea I had so many readers - and the search strings that found me are rather funny. Perhaps I'll compile a list of them.

Quick Change

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

I changed the CSS for the side menus because bolded links were beginning to wear on me. I've also changed the archive link format and added a list of categories.

I'm considering adding Google search results for the topics I blog about. It's a neat way to use the API, on the other hand, you're all perfectly capable of googling things yourself. Anyone have any thoughts?

RedHat 9.0 for the Desktop User

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

Tonight in a fit of misguided geekdom, I resurrected my old ThinkPad, which had been kicking around my room. I didn't expect it to fully boot, but when it did, I decided to take advantage of the opportunity. With Panther on its way and my Yellow Dog installation a fun success, I felt it necessary to try out RedHat's desktop experience.

While I suffered none of the installation issues I had the other night with YDL, the ThinkPad doesn't seem as responsive as the iMac, which is odd since they're similarly spec'd. A pleasant surprise came when my Lucent Orinocco card was found and easily configured for wireless access.

With YDL using KDE, I chose Gnome for my RedHat installation, and I have to say I still like Gnome better. Maybe it's the fish.

Mozilla Firebird 0.7.1

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

I haven't used a Mozilla product in a while, but was prompted to do so today with the news of 0.7.1's release for Panther compatibility. It doesn't launch quite as fast as Safari, but once it's going navigation seems to be just as fast. Page rendering, however, is a tad slower.

Even though Firebird is a lightweight version of Mozilla, it still sports more features than Safari. If not for the speed issue, it'd be a toss-up as to which would become my primary browser.

Yellow Dog Linux

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

I'm typing this from Konqueror in YDL 3.0. There were some initial problems with Monitor detection and Screen configuration in the XF86Config file. Trolling around the ydl-lists I found the correct configuration and got myself up and running.

I was pleased when my XHTML standards-driven sites rendered properly. I was also pleased to find MT working smoothly.

After a celebratory bottle of root beer, I'll begin to tool around with my first Linux-on-the-desktop environment for the PPC.

Yellow Dog Linux & a Rebuilt Server

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

Now that my legit copy of Panther has shipped I'm feeling the urge to explore new horizons. To that end I've begun a download of Yellow Dog Linux to run on my iMac. It looks neat, I just hope it doesn't destroy anything.

Meanwhile, I've built another server since the HD in my PowerEdge died. It's got RedHat 9 and I've begun configuring Apache, Jabber, PostgreSQL and MySQL. I'm also copying my backups from HQ over in order to build a repository of code. I've been given a verbal all-clear to display generic versions of the code I wrote for HQ on my site, so hopefully that'll give me something productive to do and maybe help in the search for finding the right job.

In My Dock

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

Almost a month ago a craze swept the blog world, but I was too busy to take part. Rabid Mac users posted screenshots of their docks and explained what they have in them. I won't waste time with a screenshot, but my dock contains:

Finder, System Preferences, OtherTime, iPulse, iSync, Activity Monitor, iTerm, X11, VNCThing, iCal, AddressBook, Mail, Safari, NewNewsWire Lite, iChat, Psi, Fire, X-Chat Aqua, Sherlock, BBEdit, Stickies, TextEdit, Preview, Quicktime, iTunes

I order mine roughly by function. Since the new version of iPulse (of which I use the Tron.2 jacket), I've been keeping the iPulse window on my desktop and keeping the icon from rendering the changes in the dock.

Kilogram Scale

(originally posted at ninjafish.org)

As happens so often this late at night, I've just had a relatively mundane eureka moment.

As I stared down at the nutrition information on a package of fake hot dogs, I realized the fat, protein, and all the rest of the good stuff was measured using the metric system.  Whereas I, like any good American, measure myself in pounds.

So rather than bother with unit conversions, I've decided to start keeping track of my weight using the metric system.  It should help me get a better grasp of the actual amounts I'm ingesting.

I just wanted to remind myself to find an appropriate scale.

Wong Kar-Wai

(originally posted at ninjafish.org)

Julie and I have just finished watching Wong Kar-Wai's film Fallen Angels for the first time as a couple.  I first caught this flick late one night on IMC back when I was living in Murray Hill.

What initially drew me to the film was the blend of "kaleidoscopic" color, cinematography and the amazing soundtrack.  The fact that it was filmed in an urban asian locale (Hong Kong, which I had initially mistaken for Tokyo) was also a plus.

Jules loved the execution of the film and is looking forward to experiencing both the works that came before and after Fallen Angels.  As I've never seen anything else from this director, I'm quite intrigued as well.

(actually this entry was posted by jules and i together)