Mt. Molelog: April 2003 Archives

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2003-04-30 23:59:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Meta::Referers

Liberty or Death

2003-04-30 11:39:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Politics

I added a stylesheet link, but my CSS isn't working. Why not?

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="blosxom.css" />

A stylesheet link like that won't work with Blosxom for two related but different reasons.

First, it's using a relative URL for the stylesheet, but what that means will vary depending on how the page is accessed. http://molelog.molehill.org/blox/, http://molelog.molehill.org/blox/Computers/Internet/Web/Blosxom/FAQ and http://molelog.molehill.org/blox/2003/04/29/, for instance, will lead to three different meanings for what "blosxom.css" means (it's slightly worse than that, actually! http://molelog.molehill.org/blox/2003/04/29 leads to a fourth meaning for "blosxom.css").

So, you need to specify a full path for your stylesheet. But what full path? That leads to problem #2.

Blosxom serves up blog pages only; it doesn't serve up individual files. If you specified "$url/blosxom.css", Blosxom would go looking for the "blosxom.txt" story and the "css" flavour. Your stylesheet (as well as other related files, such as images) need to be put in a directory where the webserver can get to them directly, not via Blosxom, and you need to give a full path for that.

For instance, I use:

<link rel="stylesheet"
type="text/css"
href="/blog/flavours/$flavour/molelog.css"
title="Default">

2003-04-29 14:04:00 | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Internet::Web::Blosxom::FAQ::BasicSetup

Ngau Pin

I'm so glad they included safe handling instructions.

2003-04-29 04:06:00 | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | Misc::Food

Multiple and Alternate Stylesheets

It's well known that <link> with "stylesheet" and "alternate sylesheet" relationships can be used to provide multiple user-selectable stylesheets (at least when they're using a non-broken browser).

What isn't so well known is that there are actually three types of stylehseets: persistent, preferred, and alternate. Although alternate stylehseets are differentiated, reasonably enough, by 'rel="alternate stylesheet"', the difference between persistent and preferred isn't so obvious.

Preferred stylesheets are those that are replacable with alternate stylesheets, and are probably what you want to be using for your main stylesheet if you're usign altenate stylesheets. Preferred stylesheets have a rel attribute of "stylesheet" and have a title.

Persistent stylesheets are used in addition to whatever preferred or alternate stylesheet the user has selected. You probably don't want to use any of these if you're supplying alternate stylesheets. Persistent stylesheets have a rel attribute of "stylesheet" and no title.

Thanks to Netscape DevEdge for explaining this. I never would have figured it out on my own by experimentation, and had somehow completely missed it in the HTML spec.

2003-04-29 04:03:00 | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Internet::Web::Design::CSS

DAAP notes mark 1

As you know Bob, Apple today introduced iTunes 4, with two significant enhancements: Music Sharing via Rendezvous, and an online Music Store.

I suspect lots of people will be looking at how the store works, to enable non-Maccies to take advantage of it, but I want to look at the Music Sharing first.

My iBook is still unhappy, but Ken was kind enough to send me some dumps to look over.

Discovery is via zeroconf/mDNS/Rendezvous queries for the _daap._tcp service. After that, communication is via the DAAP on TCP port 3689. DAAP is essentially HTTP.

A typical request header looks like

GET /server-info HTTP/1.1
Host: 10.0.1.7
Accept: */*
User-Agent: iTunes/4.0 (Macintosh; N; PPC)
Client-DAAP-Version: 1.0
Accept-Encoding: gzip

with the matching response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2003 04:02:29 GMT
DAAP-Server: iTunes/4.0 (Mac OS X)
Content-Type: application/x-dmap-tagged
Content-Length: 118
Content-Encoding: gzip

Some things to note it sure looks like HTTP; until the actual streaming, all the responses are Content-Type application/x-dmap-tagged and Content-Encoded gzip; "dmap" will appear later also. There's a DMAP that's the DECT Multimedia Access Profile that's at least in the same ballpark, but doesn't seem to be related.

The x-dmap-tagged data looks a lot like the iPod/iTunes database format, unsurprisingly.

The actual pre-streaming requests are

/server-info
/content-codes
/login
/update?session-id=4409&revision-number=1
/databases?session-id=4409&revision-number=3
/databases/32/items?type=music&meta=dmap.itemid, dmap.itemname, dmap.itemkind, dmap.persistentid, daap.songalbum, daap.songartist, daap.songbitrate, daap.songbeatsperminute, daap.songcomment, daap.songcompilation, daap.songcomposer, daap.songdateadded, daap.songdatemodified, daap.songdisccount, daap.songdiscnumber, daap.songdisabled, daap.songeqpreset, daap.songformat, daap.songgenre, daap.songdescription, daap.songrelativevolume, daap.songsamplerap.songsize, daap.songstarttime, daap.songstoptime, daap.songtime, daap.songtrackcount, daap.songtracknumber, daap.songuserrating, daap.songyear, daap.songdatakind, daap.songdataurl, com.apple.itunes.norm-volume&session-id=4409&revision-number=3
/databases/32/containers?meta=dmap.itemid, dmap.itemname, dmap.persistentid, com.apple.itunes.smart-playlist&session-id=4409&revision-number=3
/databases/32/containers/1861/items?type=music&meta=dmap.itemkind, dmap.itemid, dmap.containeritemid&session-id=4409&revision-number=3
/databases/32/containers/3692/items?type=music&meta=dmap.itemkind, dmap.itemid, dmap.containeritemid&session-id=4409&revision-number=3
/databases/32/containers/3894/items?type=music&meta=dmap.itemkind, dmap.itemid, dmap.containeritemid&session-id=4409&revision-number=3
/databases/32/containers/3897/items?type=music&meta=dmap.itemkind, dmap.itemid, dmap.containeritemid&session-id=4409&revision-number=3
/databases/32/containers/3925/items?type=music&meta=dmap.itemkind, dmap.itemid, dmap.containeritemid&session-id=4409&revision-number=3
/update?session-id=4409&revision-number=3&delta=3

the final stream request looks like

GET /databases/32/items/1553.mp3?session-id=4409 HTTP/1.1
Host: 10.0.1.7
Cache-Control: no-cache
Accept: */*
x-audiocast-udpport:49154
icy-metadata:1
User-Agent: iTunes/4.0 (Macintosh; N; PPC)
connection: close

Note the audiocast and icecast headers. The stream response is somewhat puzzling.

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2003 04:02:59 GMT
DAAP-Server: iTunes/4.0 (Mac OS X)
Content-Type: application/x-dmap-tagged
Content-Length: 1696740
Accept-Ranges: bytes

It still claims to be x-dmap-tagged, but the content this time is clearly just the mp3 stream

More detailed dumps are available.

2003-04-28 22:36:00 | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Macintosh

SeeError 0+1i

Most of my plugins' instructions include like "Look at your error log.". What if your hosting provider won't let you, though?

Well, first, consider getting a different hosting provider -- this one obviously isn't concerned with making it easy (or even possible) for you to do interesting work.

What if that's not an option, though?

Well, the SeeError plugin is a partial solution. In normaly use, it redirects all error output to a temporary file, then appends it to the end of the served page, and removes the temporary file.

If the $handle_die option is enabled, then any raised exceptions will cause a "Possibly-Fatal Error" message to be output to the browser, along wih whatever error text is available. This mode is useful if the only output you're otherwise getting is "fatal server error".

This is not a perfect solution. Drawbacks include, but may not be limited to:

error output before seemore is loaded is lost
error output after seemore's end() is called is lost
if there's a fatal error, no other error output will be printed, even if $handle_die is set; nor will the temporary file be cleaned up
this plugin can't be usefully controlled via blosxom's normal enable/disable mechanism; in particular, disabling it will appear to work but will lead to sustained disk-space loss as temporary files are created and not removed. do not leave this plugin installed but disabled.
the $handle_die option gives quite a bit of spurious output; it's invoked any time an eval fails, even though that's a perfectly normal occurance, and as far as I can tell it can't differentiate the important times from the unimportant.

Using:

download the plugin, unzip it, and put the plugin file in your plugin directory
turn on $handle_die if you need to (ie, if you're getting "Fatal server error" rather than blog output)
configure the $tmp_dir if you need to; the default should work for unix-like systems.
browse to your blog and scroll to the bottom; any error output will be appended. (Depending on your html formatting, you may actually need to look at the page source to see it)

2003-04-28 14:41:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Internet::Web::Blosxom::Plugins::SeeError

National Volunteer at a Charter School Week, 2003

Always anxious to give our puny lives more focus and meaning (preferably multiple foci and meanings at once), Our President has declared this week (April 27 - May 3, 2003) National Volunteer Week and National Charter School Week

This is a time for all Americans to be active citizens, not spectators. For that reason, I have created the USA Freedom Corps to mobilize our citizens and provide opportunities for individuals and organizations to contribute to important causes. As part of this initiative, I have asked all Americans to dedicate at least 4,000 hours over the rest of their lives to serving their neighbors and their Nation.

I call on all Americans to join together to celebrate the invaluable work that volunteers perform every day across our country, and to commit themselves to do more for their neighbors in need through the many volunteer programs available in their communities.

My Administration is working to provide the resources schools need to fund education reform and achieve these high standards. We have increased funding for elementary and secondary education by 36 percent in the last 2 years, and the Federal Government will spend nearly $24 billion on these programs this year. Through the new Reading First program, over $500 million has been distributed to 29 States to assist with reading programs that help ensure that our children will know how to read by the third grade.

third grade?! Reading First?

I commend the States with charter schools, and I call on parents of charter school children to share their success stories with others so that all Americans may understand more about the important work of charter schools.

2003-04-27 19:37:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Politics::Observances

Unhappy Macnam

My 5-month-old iBook is currently an unhappy MACNAM .

It locked up, the screen flashed, there were some horizontal-line interference patterns, and that was that. Rebooted, and it locked up again within minutes. Let it rest a while while wrestling with this @#$#(I#@ Windows laptop, looking for people with similar problems; powered back up and it instantly failed the same way. Working on the theory it was a loose connection between the display and the logic board, fiddled with the screen angle some, and rebooted -- this time it came back up, but as soon as I touched it the screen flashed and it was locked up again.

I guess tomorrow I take it to The Computer Store.

Sigh.

2003-04-26 00:42:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Macintosh

Catherine Zeta-Jones, Pregnant and Topless Followup Followup

The images in question have been removed at the vehement request of Ms. Zeta-Jones' attorneys.

The letter is copyrighted and very clearly states that i'm not allowed to publish it, so I can't even tell you exactly why the pictures were removed.

2003-04-25 16:10:00 | Comments (23) | TrackBack (0) | Smut::PrettyWomen

Boob Shirt

To go along with Marilyn with Mickey Boobs, here's...two random folks, with Mickey and Minnie boobs.

2003-04-25 02:33:00 | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | Smut::JustWeird

More Popaganda

Prints are available, but not for any of those. Some of them are available from galleries, but I can't find prices listed, which I'm pretty sure is code for "more than you could afford, even if you were employed". There was also a book , but even the publisher is out of stock, alas.

2003-04-25 01:22:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | CopyrightCartel::Art

Referer Blocking

I've had to do something I didn't want to do -- referer blocking for images.

If I've done it right (and my tests seem to be working okay), you can view images just fine from my site, or by browsing directly to them (or with a browser that never sends Referer). You can't, however, by embedding them in another page, or by linking directly to them.

C'mon, people -- either use your own bandwidth, or give me some readers. Don't take the bandwidth without giving any indication it's not yours. And certainly don't be so rude as to steal my bandwidth by embedding images in fora I don't even have permission to read. (I'm looking at you, off-topic.net)

2003-04-24 18:52:00 | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0) | Meta

ExtremeTech Reviews Touchstream

ExtremeTech is reviewing alternate input devices this week. Today's review is of the Touchstream LP keyboard/mouse/gesture system.

big minus:

Let's make no bones about it, this keyboard is difficult to use for a touch typist, such as your standard ExtremeTech writer. Since there's no tactile feel to the keys, it's virtually impossible to touch type. It's not rare to type on this keyboard while looking down at the keys for the entire duration of your data entry.

big plus:

Also, the ability of the TouchStream keyboard to recognize gestures really wowed us. Within minutes we were able to efficiently use the copy/cut/paste gestures. After a week of use, we're starting to branch out and learn more gestures. It's remarkable how much time and effort using these gestures can save you. Big, big thumbs up here.

To be completely honest, the TouchStream LP is our favorite keyboard yet. It's so simple, succinct, and efficient--we just love it. Now, it does have its share of flaws, as does every technology gadget, but the pros far outweigh the cons.

I'd really love a chance to try one for a few weeks without shelling out the $330 -- if I could get used to touch typing with it, it sounds like a huge huge win.

2003-04-24 17:59:00 | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Hardware

Tatu in Maxim

Ken points out that Тату's media blitz is continuing. They're gonna be big, they are.

2003-04-23 23:41:00 | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0) | CopyrightCartel::Music::Tatu

Ron English's PoPaganda

2003-04-23 01:51:00 | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | Smut::ArtSmut

Catherine Zeta-Jones, Pregnant and Topless Followup

Ask, and you shall recieve!

Two of the four (presumably) topless pregnant Catherine Zeta-Jones pics arrived in my mailbox this evening.

Catherine Zeta-Jones, pregnant & topless

2003-04-23 00:48:00 | Comments (34) | TrackBack (0) | Smut::PrettyWomen

Tim Bray on Unicode & Emoji

Tim Bray's On the Goodness of Unicode is a good introduction to Unicode and why you should care about it.

Today, he writes about Emoji, DoCoMo-defined characters embedded in Unicode's Private Use Area, presumably for use in SMS. Japanese and other ideographic languages are much more susceptible to new characters being invented than English is, though, so these may well end up being part of "Japanese" in a few decades.

He also mentions Dr Suess's On Beyond Zebra, which includes a set of proposed new letters (to name a set of proposed new anmals, of course). He doesn't, however, mention the proposed Unicode extensions to include SEUSS LETTER YUZZ through SEUSS LETTER ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ as U+E630 through U+E64F.

2003-04-22 17:04:00 | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::CharacterSets

Distributed RSS Discussion

There's an interesting distributed discusson on RSS's past, problems, and possible future going on, includng a concrete proposal for how to move RSS 2.0 to a fully-embeddable namespace-protected format.

2003-04-22 17:04:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Internet::Web::RSS

Tor Schedule

From the "I wish they did RSS" file...

Tor keeps a more-or-less updated upcoming-title schedule available. Since they're by far the dominant US publisher of SF-of-the-types-I'm-most-interested-in, it's a good list to keep on top of, but it doesn't change very often so I forget to notice when it does.

There was a new Nancy Kress novel, Crossfire , published in February. It doesn't actually look very interesting, so no big loss, but it could have.

The expanded version of Michael Flynn's In the Country of the Blind was published in paperback in March. This is an expaned version of the original 1990 paperback version, which was a terrifically fun secret-history story in which early advances in computing were used in rather disturbing ways. I'm not sure how expanded it is -- the original paperback was 526 pages, this one is listed at 560.

Flynn also has a brand new book out this month, The Wreck of the River of Stars , that looks plausibly interesting.

2003-04-22 15:38:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | CopyrightCartel::Books

The Human Front

I just finished Gardner Dozois' 19th annual Year's Best Science Fiction , and as good as most of it was, Ken MacLeod's "The Human Front" was by far the most spectacular.

It starts in 1963, with a death that everyone of the narrator's generation remembers clearly. No, not that one -- the death of "Uncle Joe" Stalin at the hands of American forces, hoping to finish off WWIII.

The world just gets more interesting from there, and then even more interesting. My only complaint is that I want more -- more backstory, more forestory, more of all of it.

It was published separately by PS Publishing, in a limited edition that's long-since sold out, and along wth Eric Brown's A Writer's Life in the UK , but I don't think those versions are any longer than the version in Dozois'.

2003-04-22 15:37:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | CopyrightCartel::Books

Charlotte Ross

There's just not enough nudity on TV. NYPD Blue sometimes tries to correct that, but seems to have been tamed down quite a bit the past few seasons.

This Charlotte Ross shower scene was one very nice exception.

2003-04-22 01:49:00 | Comments (13) | TrackBack (0) | Smut::PrettyWomen

Catherine Zeta-Jones, Pregnant and Topless

Robb's OOps has a new set of nice Catherine Zeta-Jones pics, which apparently originally included some topless pregnant pics. Unfortunately, they're no longer there...I'd be very appreciative if anyone out there happens to have copies stashed away somewhere.

2003-04-22 01:30:00 | Comments (8) | TrackBack (0) | Smut::PrettyWomen

Tatu Kissing

All of you who got here looking for Тату kissing should go check out Ken 'Tatu kissing' Williams's weblog -- he knows way more about them than I do, and knew about them way before I did.

2003-04-22 01:18:00 | Comments (37) | TrackBack (0) | CopyrightCartel::Music::Tatu

National Park Week, 2003

Cherish, Citizen!

Today marks the start of National Park Week, 2003.

in 1916, the National Park Service was established to efficiently administer our growing number of parks, which today includes 388 national parks on more than 84 million acres of public lands. These lands continue to be cherished by all our citizens.

Remember, if you don't cherish the national parks, you're ipso facto not a citizen.

There may be 388 national parks, but there's still not a single one in Oklahoma. My proposal for the "John J. Kilpatrick Tree Farm National Park" (to be in the median of I-235 just north of 23rd street) never went anywhere for some odd reason.

I call upon the people of the United States to join me in recognizing the importance of our national parks and to learn more about these areas of beauty, their historical significance, and the many ways citizens can volunteer to help preserve these precious resources.

2003-04-21 11:20:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Politics::Observances

Nebula Winners, 2003

The 2003 Nebula winners have been announced.

For those of you who aren't familiar, the Hugo awards are fan-awarded while the Nebulas are awarded by th SFWA -- somewhat akin to the difference between the Viewers Choice Awards and the Academy Awards, except without the huge difference in prestige.

The eligibility requirements are enough different that it's hard to directly compare between the two, but it's somewhat interesting that I've already read the winning Novel (Gaiman's American Gods) and Novlette (Chiang's Hell is the Absence of God).

2003-04-21 10:43:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | CopyrightCartel::Books

Dian Hanson Interview

We also made used panties in the office to sell in the back of the magazine. We had two women working full-time with cans of mackerel, paintbrushes, and glue.

Index Magazine has a fascinating interview with Dian Hanson, long-time editor of Leg Show and Juggs.

Those of you who don't read smut, or won't admit to it, may remember her from Crumb, too.

She's now working on a two-volume history of sex magazines, and I can't wait to see the results.

2003-04-20 13:11:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Smut::Business

Who's That, #3

Woodrow Wilson

So, who is that? It's Woodrow Wilson.

33 of you gave (more or less) correct answers, up 10 from last time. Other possible presidents named were Calvin Coolidge (2), Franklin Roosevelt (2), Warren Harding (6), Harry S Truman (2), McKinley (1).

Non-presidents included Sigmund Freud (5), Alister Crowley (1), Carlos Santana (1), Thomas Watson (2), Thomas Edison (1), Adolf Hitler (1), Lloyd George (1), Niels Bohr (1), "some old fuck" (1) and me (1).

I'm not sure if "Hermann Zapf" was a guess or an attempt to search. I certainly hope that these were search attempts:

CLAUDIA PRESECAN
Iyari Limon
James Marsters
Jennifer Gardner
angel orpheus
lavinia milosivici
presecan
prozac nation
tatu (4)
tatu naked (2)

Whoever said "My aunt Frida", well...I hope you didn't get those genes.

2003-04-19 11:20:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Meta

More WinerStuff

I'm not looking for things to be annoyed at Dave Winer about, honest. They just keep appearing.

Dave wrote a whine about CSS (which includes the rather odd implicit breakdown of all browsers as either "MSIE" or "buggy").

Mark Pilgrim wrote a parody of that, about a 'standard' Dave actually cares about, RSS.

Sam Ruby linked to Mark's article, and Dave saw it..and commented, and commented, and commented.

Mark -- what an asshole you are. You can be so smart, and so much fun to work with, but a large part of the time you're just snotty and prickly.

Can you read? Try reading the back issues. How dare I say anything bad about Mark? Is that a joke? What are you going to do -- kick my ass? I'm tired of all the candy-asses around here. Mark can dish it out he should be able to take it too.

(And yes, it's really Dave -- the IP address posted from matches the one he sent me his censor notice from.)

2003-04-19 10:14:00 | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Internet

Grinder Girl

Grinder Girl on Letterman David Letterman's "Is That Anything" segment and variants have featured a lovely fetching Grinder Girl for a while.

Her name is Kiva Kahl

Kiva is Russian-born who is world-renowned for her performances as Grinder Girl. A veteran of Coney Island, she has performed her act all over Europe and Asia. Her TV credits include the TONIGHT SHOW, RIPPLEY'S, JERRY SPRINGER, and A&E'S SIDESHOW SPECIAL. Kiva is also AntiGravityY hair/make-up artist and has created hair/make-up designs for Trisha Brown and for numerous print advertising campaigns

She's also Combustible Kiva with a fire-eating act.

2003-04-19 00:23:00 | Comments (18) | TrackBack (0) | CopyrightCartel::TV

Never Forget

2003-04-19 00:00:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Politics::PoliticsOfTheInsane

My Adventures in WinerLand

Last March 30th, I sent a message to the weblogs-com mailing list, the official place to discuss the Weblogs.Com pinging service.

I'm working on improving weblogs.com support for Blosxom -- the initial
pinging plugin had a race condition causing it to be reinvoked when
weblogs.com requested the page in response to the ping, leading to a vicious
circle until the limit for pings within a certian time period was reached.

Anyway, I think I have this fixed, but I'm still seeing two requests rather
than the I'm expecting:

64.75.32.137 - - [30/Mar/2003:11:53:36 -0800] "GET /blox/ HTTP/1.0" 200 14441 "http://subhonker7.userland.com/rcsPublic/" "Frontier/8.0.5 (WinNT)"
64.75.32.137 - - [30/Mar/2003:11:53:41 -0800] "GET /blox/ HTTP/1.0" 200 210929 "http://subhonker7.userland.com/rcsPublic/" "Frontier/8.0.5 (WinNT)"

The pattern is always the same -- a small response (frequently but not always
14441 bytes) followed by a long one.

Is this expected behavior, or do I still have something broken?
--
Todd Larason | Soon to be an illegal: main() {int c; while
3500238865/p | ((c=getc())>=0){putchar©;}} Bad idea? Let your Senators
UIN: 4713026 | know. http://www.politechbot.com/docs/cbdtpa/
AIM: Militar | http://www.eff.org/

Yesterday, having received no replies, I sent it again with a brief addendum:

No responses to this, at all? Do other people get two requests in response to
a ping, or is it just me?

This time, Bill Kearney of Syndic8 posted a followup with some helpful information, but he didn't have an answer for why I was seeing double responses.

We had a brief civil conversation before Dave Winer, head Weblogs.Com honcho responded

I just turned off moderation on this list to save time and trouble for everyone -- so please edit your own posts and keep the paranoia out of it. Thanks.

Is there a question that I can help with. I don't think Weblogs.Com checks twice. What evidence do you have that it does.

Dave

He had directly addressed my main issue, but didn't think it was actually happening, and asked for evidence -- so I provided exactly that (again -- note the original message, posted twice, included a log snippit of just that)

64.75.32.137 - - [15/Apr/2003:13:14:33 -0700] "GET /blox/ HTTP/1.0" 200 12981
"http://subhonker7.userland.com/rcsPublic/" "Frontier/9.0 (WinNT)"
64.75.32.137 - - [15/Apr/2003:13:14:39 -0700] "GET /blox/ HTTP/1.0" 200 210378
"http://subhonker7.userland.com/rcsPublic/" "Frontier/9.0 (WinNT)"

64.75.32.137 - - [15/Apr/2003:18:38:17 -0700] "GET /blox/ HTTP/1.0" 200 12981
"http://subhonker7.userland.com/rcsPublic/" "Frontier/9.0 (WinNT)"
64.75.32.137 - - [15/Apr/2003:18:38:24 -0700] "GET /blox/ HTTP/1.0" 200 213472
"http://subhonker7.userland.com/rcsPublic/" "Frontier/9.0 (WinNT)"

64.75.32.137 - - [15/Apr/2003:22:44:45 -0700] "GET /blox/ HTTP/1.0" 200 14441
"http://subhonker7.userland.com/rcsPublic/" "Frontier/9.0 (WinNT)"
64.75.32.137 - - [15/Apr/2003:22:44:50 -0700] "GET /blox/ HTTP/1.0" 200 213653
"http://subhonker7.userland.com/rcsPublic/" "Frontier/9.0 (WinNT)"

64.75.32.137 - - [16/Apr/2003:08:23:26 -0700] "GET /blox/ HTTP/1.0" 200 12981
"http://subhonker7.userland.com/rcsPublic/" "Frontier/9.0 (WinNT)"
64.75.32.137 - - [16/Apr/2003:08:23:32 -0700] "GET /blox/ HTTP/1.0" 200 214568
"http://subhonker7.userland.com/rcsPublic/" "Frontier/9.0 (WinNT)"

64.75.32.137 - - [16/Apr/2003:08:29:54 -0700] "GET /blox/ HTTP/1.0" 200 14441
"http://subhonker7.userland.com/rcsPublic/" "Frontier/9.0 (WinNT)"
64.75.32.137 - - [16/Apr/2003:08:30:04 -0700] "GET /blox/ HTTP/1.0" 200 214145
"http://subhonker7.userland.com/rcsPublic/" "Frontier/9.0 (WinNT)"

64.75.32.137 - - [16/Apr/2003:11:11:14 -0700] "GET /blox/ HTTP/1.0" 200 14441
"http://subhonker7.userland.com/rcsPublic/" "Frontier/9.0 (WinNT)"
64.75.32.137 - - [16/Apr/2003:11:11:25 -0700] "GET /blox/ HTTP/1.0" 200 214006
"http://subhonker7.userland.com/rcsPublic/" "Frontier/9.0 (WinNT)"

64.75.32.137 - - [16/Apr/2003:23:30:36 -0700] "GET /blox/ HTTP/1.0" 200 15901
"http://subhonker7.userland.com/rcsPublic/" "Frontier/9.0 (WinNT)"
64.75.32.137 - - [16/Apr/2003:23:30:41 -0700] "GET /blox/ HTTP/1.0" 200 216133
"http://subhonker7.userland.com/rcsPublic/" "Frontier/9.0 (WinNT)"

64.75.32.137 - - [17/Apr/2003:06:05:21 -0700] "GET /blox/ HTTP/1.0" 200 15901
"http://subhonker7.userland.com/rcsPublic/" "Frontier/9.0 (WinNT)"
64.75.32.137 - - [17/Apr/2003:06:05:25 -0700] "GET /blox/ HTTP/1.0" 200 219094
"http://subhonker7.userland.com/rcsPublic/" "Frontier/9.0 (WinNT)"

64.75.32.137 - - [17/Apr/2003:06:31:47 -0700] "GET /blox/ HTTP/1.0" 200 15901
"http://subhonker7.userland.com/rcsPublic/" "Frontier/9.0 (WinNT)"
64.75.32.137 - - [17/Apr/2003:06:31:52 -0700] "GET /blox/ HTTP/1.0" 200 218539
"http://subhonker7.userland.com/rcsPublic/" "Frontier/9.0 (WinNT)"

and so on and so on and so on
--
Free the mouse! http://eldred.cc/

Despite giving him exactly what he had asked for, Dave responded rather rudely

Dumping some log into a mail message does not make a very good bug report.

Geez Louise. Can you say, in English, what you did, what the software did, and what you think it should have done.

Dave

I replied, copying my original message again, with an addendum giving even more detail.

As I said -- I ping weblogs.com (HTTP ping,
http://newhome.weblogs.com/pingSiteForm in particular). I get two requests
back in response. I was only expecting to get one. This happens repeatedly,
in the stated pattern.

Is this normal? You said not, and asked for evidence, so I gave more
evidence.

Now Gregory Blake joined the conversation.

I've actually always seen this behavior out of weblogs.com, no matter
what blogging software I've used. I'd send a ping to weblogs.com and
see two hits in the server access logs from a machine at userland.com.
It is pretty easy to see if you have access to the logs and can watch
them as you send a ping (I just verified it). It's always done this
and I just assumed that's how it worked and never really questioned it
(though I was curious why it was hitting the server twice).

gregory

So at this point, two interested bystanders have replied politely and with evidence of having read my messages and understood them; one of them reports seeing exactly the same behavior I was seeing and wondering about.

Dave, however, seems to have either not ever read or completely forgotten what the question was, despite the subject line and the other messages over the previous few minutes

I can't tell from what you said here what makes your weblog different from the thousands of other blogs that ping Weblogs.Com every day. If you decide to post the information I'll try to figure out what's going wrong. Dave

I responded to Gregory -- yes, somewhat rudely, but it was only in response to Dave's repeated rudeness and unhelpfulness.

Thank you. I'll consider my software working and Dave Winer broken, and move on.

And I responded to Dave, rather more civilly than I think he deserved.

If I knew of anything materially different, I would of course have mentioned it.

Gregory Blake sees the same Weblogs.Com behavior I do, so it's entirely
possible there's not anything different.

Dave replied to my "Dave Winer broken" comment

Ouch. Now you have an idea why I don't rush in to help random people. Dave

Another bystandard, Matthew Trump, joined the fracas, telling me how to give a bug report (something I know well how to do, thank you very much, and which I wasn't trying to do in the first place as was clear from my messages).

One more bystander, Mike Rodriquez, replied to Dave's message, showing clearly that he had read and understood me perfectly well.

This isn't about his weblog being different. He just wondered if it
was normal for there to be 2 fetches from one's blog after a ping. that
is, why isn't one fetch (to check for true newness) sufficient?

many others noted this is normal behaviour; the reformed question now
is, why? not that it's a problem, but we're a curious lot, all of us,
including you ...

By this point, I had decided (again) not to follow up any more, but Dave's response to Mike just pushed my buttons.

He sure didn't say that. I thought he was saying that something at weblogs.com wasn't working. Also I'm not that curious, if I had nothing else to do maybe I would be, but I'm lucky to have lots of interesting stuff to keep me ridiculously busy. Dave

My replies to Dave and Matthew aren't in the web archive, though, because Dave censored them -- he replied to me, scolding me and saying I should be ashamed, and declaring the thread dead. Fine, I thought, let him have the last word, even if it's just totally insanely wrong.

Later, however, this showed up. I guess the thread is just closed to people who don't worship at Dave's feet.

Regrettably, when it comes to the written word, there are varying
degrees of communication abilites, and as such, I have a lot of
miscommunication incidents hurting a lot of people's feelings. As
for me, I never worry about what other's say anymore. If they give
me the information I want, I thank them, if they are rude, I just
ignore it, and if they get all their fun out of aggravating people,
I just ignore them. Keep helping people, Dave. Most of us appreciate
your efforts.

So, for the first time visible to the public, the last two censored messages I tried to send to the weblogs-com list.

From jtl@molehill.org Thu Apr 17 12:44:19 2003
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2003 12:44:19 -0700
From: Todd Larason <jtl@molehill.org>
To: weblogs-com@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [weblogs-com] Re: doubled requests?
Message-ID: <20030417124419.A11458@molehill.org>
References: <024501c304e6$1cd20160$2000a8c0@wkearney.com> <20030417070843.A2910@molehill.org> <02a701c304f0$511504e0$2000a8c0@wkearney.com> <005701c304f1$38886c40$47d8f78c@DELL63> <20030417082046.A4619@molehill.org> <00b301c304f5$9e085270$47d8f78c@DELL63> <20030417082743.B4619@molehill.org> <28d901c3050f$0ab3cdf0$0201000a@murphy3> <20030417120058.B10184@molehill.org> <64627.68.161.220.164.1050611928.squirrel@www.matthewtrump.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i
In-Reply-To: <64627.68.161.220.164.1050611928.squirrel@www.matthewtrump.com>; from matt@vivacapitalism.com on Thu, Apr 17, 2003 at 03:38:48PM -0500
X-PGP-Key-URL: http://www.molehill.org/~jtl/public.asc
X-Blog: http://molelog.molehill.org/
Status: RO
Content-Length: 1180
Lines: 25

On 17 April 03, Matthew Trump wrote:
> One of the hardest things--perhaps the hardest--about software
> development is interpretating complaints from users about bugs and
> features.

As a developer, I know this. And I was rude, and I'm partially sorry.

The fact remains though that Dave wasn't reading the information I was
providing, and when I provided the evidence he asked for he was rude to me
(see http://groups.yahoo.com/group/weblogs-com/message/749,
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/weblogs-com/message/750 and
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/weblogs-com/message/751)

> This is obviously the result of something deep within the paradigms
> of software development. But the point is: be patient. If the
> developer tells you that you are not providing the right information,
> then, well, you aren't, even if you've said everything you think you
> possibly could have said about the problem.

It helps if the developer reads what you've written and gives some idea what
information is missing.
--
The MPAA, RIAA and their paid-for Senators don't think you need a computer you
can program. Disagree? Fight back. http://www.politechbot.com/docs/cbdtpa/
http://www.eff.org/

From jtl@molehill.org Thu Apr 17 12:46:41 2003
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2003 12:46:41 -0700
From: Todd Larason <jtl@molehill.org>
To: weblogs-com@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [weblogs-com] Re: doubled requests?
Message-ID: <20030417124641.B11458@molehill.org>
References: <024501c304e6$1cd20160$2000a8c0@wkearney.com> <20030417070843.A2910@molehill.org> <02a701c304f0$511504e0$2000a8c0@wkearney.com> <005701c304f1$38886c40$47d8f78c@DELL63> <20030417082046.A4619@molehill.org> <00b301c304f5$9e085270$47d8f78c@DELL63> <20030417082743.B4619@molehill.org> <28d901c3050f$0ab3cdf0$0201000a@murphy3> <3E9F03F8.5060302@mike-sheryl.com> <2a3c01c30519$1f1161e0$0201000a@murphy3>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i
In-Reply-To: <2a3c01c30519$1f1161e0$0201000a@murphy3>; from dave@userland.com on Thu, Apr 17, 2003 at 03:39:53PM -0400
X-PGP-Key-URL: http://www.molehill.org/~jtl/public.asc
X-Blog: http://molelog.molehill.org/
Status: RO
Content-Length: 1683
Lines: 56

On 17 April 03, Dave Winer wrote:
> He sure didn't say that.

posted three times now, twice already today
---
Anyway, I think I have this fixed, but I'm still seeing two requests rather
than the I'm expecting:
....
Is this expected behavior, or do I still have something broken?
---

How was I supposed to have phrased it?

>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Mike Rodriquez
> To: weblogs-com@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Thursday, April 17, 2003 3:43 PM
> Subject: Re: [weblogs-com] Re: doubled requests?
>
>
>
> Dave Winer wrote:
> > I can't tell from what you said here what makes your weblog different
> > from the thousands of other blogs that ping Weblogs.Com every day. If
> > you decide to post the information I'll try to figure out what's going
> > wrong. Dave
>
> This isn't about his weblog being different. He just wondered if it
> was normal for there to be 2 fetches from one's blog after a ping. that
> is, why isn't one fetch (to check for true newness) sufficient?
>
> many others noted this is normal behaviour; the reformed question now
> is, why? not that it's a problem, but we're a curious lot, all of us,
> including you ...
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Sponsor
> ADVERTISEMENT
>
>
>
>
> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
> weblogs-com-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.

--
Todd Larason | Obligatory 'blog: http://molelog.molehill.org/ | UIN: 4401513
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Free the mouse! http://eldred.cc/

Dave never did tell me how I should have phrased the question so he'd have understood it.

2003-04-18 22:28:00 | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Internet

External Link Icons the Right Way

William at MyDimension points out the right way to mark external links -- CSS3 attribute selectors.

div.content a[href^="http:"] { background: transparent url('/images/aoutside.gif') 100% 50% no-repeat; padding-right: 10px; } div.content a[href^="http://my-dimension.com"], div.content a[href^="http://www.my-dimension.com"] { background: inherit; padding-right: 0px; }

Of course, you can guess the drawback, I'm sure -- that's right, it doesn't work in most users' browsers. It works in gecko-based Browsers (ie, Mozilla, Camino, Galeon) and Safari (and other KHTML-based?), but not in Opera or IE.

William credits As Days Pass By for the method.

2003-04-18 21:29:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Internet::Web::Design::CSS

Five Year "Speedy Trial"

The Ninth Circuit today ordered the release of and dismissal of charges against Dock McNeely, who has been in California custody since Aprl 13, 1998, and has yet to have a preliminary hearing or trial.

Although some of the delays are (or arguably are) McNeely's responsibility, even by the reading of the record most favorable to California, nothing has happened in this case since December 2000, for no apparent reason.

The State does argue that more than two years of the delays are McNeely's responsbility in one way or another, but the recordkeeping appears distinctly shoddy.

As an initial matter, we note the difficulty in discerning what happened in state court because of the absence of transcripts of contested hearings. The record before the district court and this court does not include the state trial court transcripts for most of McNeely's court appearances. Instead, it includes only some cryptic handwritten notes, purporting to be the Clerk's minutes of the hearings, submitted out of order as attachments to Respondent's answer. It is unclear whether these correspond to the State's official record and whether they are complete. No key to the abbreviations is provided and the parties speculate as to their meaning. The parties disagree as to what happened at numerous hearings. Significantly, they dispute the reliability of notations in the record that purportedly reflect waivers of time. While the minutes contain many undecipherable abbreviated entries, they do clearly indicate that the state court denied McNeely's repeated requests to obtain copies of hearing transcripts. The magistrate judge in this case ordered Respondent to provide "any and all transcripts or other documents relevant to the determination of issues presented in the application." Nonetheless, Respondent did not produce transcripts for numerous hearings as to which it disputes Petitioner's version of events. Given Petitioner's lengthy incarceration, his proceeding pro se before the district court, the State's refusal to provide him with requested transcripts, and the parties' disputes over the meaning of numerous minute entries, the State's failure to provide an adequate record is particularly egregious. Because, however, Respondent bears the burden to explain the delays, this ultimately works to his own disadvantage.

(emphasis mine)

The record also contains other significant, unexplained delays. In addition, the prosecution dismissed the action on August 10, 2000, three days before the 60-day speedy-trial deadline under state law and re-filed the complaint the next day, starting the sixty-day clock over. Respondent provides no reasonable explanation for this action and it appears to be an obvious, deliberate tactic to avoid the speedy-trial deadline.

Note that: there's a 60 day statutory deadline. This fellow's been in jail 5 years without a trial.

2003-04-18 18:47:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Politics::Legal

Hugo Nominations

This year's Hugo nominations have been announced.

I haven't read any of the novels (although at least 3 are sitting on my shelf), nor novellas, and I think only one of the novelettes.

I feel so very far behind -- is it that this was a bad year for SF, a bad year for SF of my tastes, or just a bad year for me?

I'll be reading the short work as they become available online, so maybe we can narrow it down some.

2003-04-18 18:15:00 | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | CopyrightCartel::Books

Automatic LuckyGoogle

Inspired by Danny O'Brien's lucky Google VIM macro, but being both an Emacs user and even lazier than him, I've whipped up some automatic lucky Google macros.

Proper nouns, acronyms, and anything in {{double braces}} gets linked to a Google search for that term, with the "I'm Feeling Lucky" option turned on.

I'm sure there's problems with them -- in particular, I'm worried about the proper noun one leading to nested <A>s -- but they seem to be working pretty well, and they're kinda spiffy, so here you go.

I may turn off the completely automatic ones after a while, but I think I'll be keeping the double braces.

Update: I'm now running a new version of these, with the following improvements:

the double-brace one matches inner-braces rather than leftmost-braces, making the display on my example look better
the REs are spread out and somewhat commented, using perl's /x mode, so there's some hope of understanding what they do
the nested <a> problem is taken care of. Unfortunately, this required a new feature in the macros plugin, a 'redo' flag, which causes the macro to keep being run over a block of text as long as it's still changing it; the nested-anchor stripper needs this to be able to deal with an arbitrary number of anchors within another anchor; for any specific maximum, you could just repeat the macro definition that many times.

If you want to use these now, you can as always grab a copy of the actual plugins that I'm running, but as those are by definition works-in-progress they're more likely to have problems (and be harder to install, and be underdocumented) than the real releases.

2003-04-18 10:38:00 | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | Computers::Internet::Web::Blosxom::Plugins::Macros

National Fair Housing (Half-)Month, 2003

Note the date on this proclamation

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim April 2003 as National Fair Housing Month. I call upon the people of the United States to learn more about their rights and responsibilities under the Fair Housing Act and the roles they can individually and collectively play to combat housing discrimination.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this fifteenth day of April, in the year of our Lord two thousand three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and twenty-seventh.

Yes, that's right -- we have to cram a full month's worth of fair-housingness into half a month!

2003-04-17 21:34:00 |

Mt. Molelog

Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice