More Code Debugging
http://whatintarnation.net/blog/archives/2005/01/06/blast-from-the-past-ii-my-first-field-trip/ For debug purposes, please ignore.
Could I Ask a Favor?
I'm trying to finish my pingback/trackback client implementation for SAFARI. I set up a copy of WordPress to use as a test target, but it isn't working right (my WordPress installation can't seem to locate the test entries I posted on it). Would any asisaid reader using WordPress be willing to allow me to send some test pings/trackbacks to an old blog pos on your site? It would be a lot easier if I was testing against a WP installation that I knew was in working order.
Thanks in advance! I'll provide extra asisaid points — how about 30? — for willing victi… volunteers.
Macmini Co-location
Yeah, you want one… you know you want a co-located Mac mini server for only $22.95 a month (plus the cost of the system). And as I noted when this was posted to a list I'm on, that is the only reason you'd actually sign up for this service: because you'd like to say you have a co-lo Mac mini.
Don't get me wrong, it is a neat idea — and you saw it first on asisaid — but with a paltry 20 GB bandwidth allowance, that skyrockets in cost if you up it to enough to keep a dedicated server busy, and 24×7 onsite monitoring only available after you give up an additional twenty greenbacks, you'll quickly end up in budget dedicated territory minus all the perks of budget dedicated machines.
Still, it's a neat idea if you want to play around with having your own server, but can't justify the price of something a bit more expensive. I actually like the idea, I just hope someone doesn't think they are getting a bargain when they end up having to add all the upgrades later on.
Personally, I think rather than sending a new Mac mini to this place, I'd keep it at home and make it a media PC. Or a file server. Or a kitchen PC. What would you do with a Mac mini?
Trackback and Pingback
Here's a question for my readers. Does your blogware do pingbacks, trackbacks or both? I'm trying to decide how to implement such things in SAFARI. It looks like trackback auto-discovery is fairly clunky, and, if I understand Six Apart's design of the same, it merely looks for an XML/RDF tag embedded inside the page — something I believe would not work on, for example, What in Tarnation!?!?!?!, which, to the best of my knowledge, seems to be lacking any XML/RDF information embedded on the article pages.
To continue to examine Christopher's blog (hope you don't mind, Christopher), I do see that he has a properly implemented < link > tag for Pingback auto-discovery on his site. Given this, I suppose SAFARI could automatically pingback every link mentioned in a post, but only trackback if explicitly told to. Of course, the other question is whether I should pingback to sites I also trackback. My dear reader, how does your blogware work on this matter?
Color me confused and boggled about this element of blogware implementation.
Update: OK, so Christopher's blog does have RDF encoded on the front page. But I haven't figured out how to properly find that if I link to a permalink rather than the front page. And that still leaves the question of whether I should pingback and trackback the same link. So, your insight is still much appreciated.
Update 2: It helps to examine more than one blog. As it turns out, Pressed and Ed both have proper embedded RDF information on the article pages. Kevin does not, but then again, I don't think his blog supports trackbacks now that he's moved off of WordPress.
So Christopher, straiten up and get trackback RDF information embedded in your article pages — it's the WITty thing to do.
And, no, don't bother looking in my blog's HTML, I haven't implemented trackbacks yet.
Leave comments about how pingbacks and trackbacks work for your blogware below… I'll be very grateful for your help.
Blank
My mind is blank at the moment. I can't think of anything good to say and the inspiration mentioned yesterday is certainly elsewhere today (although now that I know what I am doing on SAFARI, I don't need much more inspiration on that, I can use it in other areas!). I am aiming to get a lot done in the next week, maybe that is part of the problem.
And Dream I Don't
But I do think, at least, in the middle of the night. Here's a sign that you've been planning things too much lately: you wake up in the middle of the night with a bright programming idea and start mentally planning how the code will go together. During normal waking hours, I've been thinking a lot more than actually coding SAFARI. But this was a new one. Sure I might wake up occasionally with a brainstorm, but rarely to the point where I'd then spend the next half hour laying in bed developing the idea.
It did, in fact, get better and better and several problems I'd been trying to figure out were resolved during this time. “Hmm… but how would I arrange the database for multiple categories without creating too much overhead? Well, if I created a separate table named categories, then created a table that showed which categories each article went in…” So many ideas inside my brain just kept popping out like that. It went on like this until I finally hoped I'd quit getting bright ideas so I could get back to sleep.
Finally I did, but not before my next few days worth of work was fully and properly hashed out. Today, however, I am tired. This project it taking over my time of rest! You go to sleep to get away from working, you know what I mean?
By the way, an extremely perceptive reader would look back on asisaid Challenge and be able to extrapolate an song title from this post. 25 points to the one who does, but it will be tough — I gotta break y'all back in. Oh, and while I'm at it, another 10 points to the person who can figure out what about this post has to do with my second IBM compatible computer. If you didn't guess, the Challenge is coming back from its forced hiatus.
The Key(board) to Reorganization
You've probably noticed a few tweaks to the look of asisaid for the last few days. Expect some more in the coming hours and days. Right now, I'm mostly still working on the backend, but I'm finally getting around to enabling some stuff that is noticeable on the public side of the interface. Hopefully in a few more days, asisaid will be nicer than it was before the (cue dramatic music) GREAT BLOGGING CRASH OF OH-FOUR.
On the backend side, I must set things up so that I do not have to manually ping Weblogs.com any longer. I'm sick of doing that!
I did get somewhat distracted over the last two days. I replaced my 6.5 year old Dell/Philips monitor with a flat panel, which required cleaning up my desk. While I was doing that, I decided to reorganize the cables under my desk and remove some of the extra stuff before I overload the circuit. I then neatly bundled the cables together and put everything back in place. Just in time to have my keyboard die. sigh At first I wasn't sure it was the keyboard, because it was intermittent and was causing problems with other USB devices as well. But I've been using another keyboard all day today and things seem much better. So now I just need to figure out what keyboard to replace my trusty old one with.
Right now, I'm using a basic Apple keyboard that I had laying around. It was that or and old Microsoft one. Neither one of them is an ergonomic one like my Dell Comfort Key was. Although I think Apple's mechanisms have a better tactile feel, like an old IBM keyboard. But I think I'll need something with a better angle, and perhaps ergonomic shape, again.
Revolution
Apple today launched the Mac mini and iPod Shuffle, at the low-end price points of $499 and $99, respectively. Read my article, linked, for the scoop and mark my words: Apple will reverse the trend of being a marginalized computing platform, starting today.
The Mac mini is sleek and everything the PowerMac G4 Cube should have been, only for way less than other Macs rather than more. This is Apple targeting the iPod generation with a system that will be considered every bit as “cool” as the iPod and priced at the higher low end of the computer spectrum. It would make an excellent extra computer, connected via AirPort to the computer in the home office or den, an excellent Media center PC (with included DVD combo drive, etc.), and so much more. This is the beginning of a revolution in computers, me thinks.
Moving Along
Topics are (almost) working. I've fixed some more bugs and continued to streamline things. Expect more updates tomorrow. Then, maybe I can get back to blogging rather than programming for a blog.
More Progress
Cookies now work (or should), subjects are automatically filled out in comments again, “Read More” links only show up when they should, etc. Am I done? Not even close, but I am closer. Let me know if you see any new bugs (or any old ones I've seemed to have overlooked — other than stuff like padding around text (the layout is on my list to fix).
Oh, and here is the RSS feed, if you are interested.
