Tue, 25 Nov 2003
Blosxom on Debian Stable with Publicfile
Setting up this blog took a small amount of effort because it's hosted on a Debian
stable system. That meant building the blosxom
deb in a stable chroot [debootstrap is incredibly handy for something like this] and then
installing it. It has minimal dependencies and the only thorny one I fulfilled using equivs to tell apt not to worry about giving me an httpd.
Then I wrote flavour files so blosxom would generate two variants. publicfile
doesn't know how to handle .xml files so that became .text=xml and I added a .text=html for xantha and other readers who prefer an inverted color scheme.
[Yes, I do realize the mouse-over color in the xanthatized version is horrible and I will fix that soon, it's a legacy of my simple minded inversion.]
An hourly cronjob parses the .txt files I write [I long ago got past the suffix == filetype mapping but it was the blosxom default so I use the convention]
and outputs them in the tree where I told publicfile to serve from in the three flavors I want.
The biggest annoyances have been in modifying my templates and the plugins I use to append / after their paths. Publicfile is adamant about wanting it
there to find the index.html underneath and blosxom's default templates and the plugins I've found all neglect to do so. Of course, some plugins are
absolutely unusable because they require CGI but I can live without them. Who needs writebacks, anyway?
posted at 11:02 PST (-0800)
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Mon, 24 Nov 2003
My Rock With Andre
Look who's playing the
Tractor! Not to mention my very favorite
family. Oh my yes.
posted at 20:52 PST (-0800)
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Sat, 22 Nov 2003
Democracy and Other Myths
Those of you who have been living under a rock may not realize that your votes are at risk of never being counted at all.
Here are some links. You should probably at least check out the Wired ones so you can hold informed conversations with
the people who retain some notion of preserving a semblance of representational democracy. You know, cranks.
I gather California has recently passed a law saying that their voting machines must provide a receipt to prove that a vote has been scored as
desired by the voter. By 2005. Yeah. Right.
But news is boring so read these other websites which can point you at other resources.
posted at 13:29 PST (-0800)
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Fri, 21 Nov 2003
New Worlds For Old
Prof. Membrane hooked me up with another spiffy website. This is China Mieville's
Fifty Fantasy & Science Fiction Works That Socialists Should Read.
I'm surprised at how many of these I've actually read in my aimless meanderings.
posted at 21:58 PST (-0800)
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Sat, 08 Nov 2003
Prof. Membrane Teaches Biology
Prof. Membrane showed me beetles and the
vampire squid
from HELL! Also, a very pretty octopus.
I may not be smarter but I should have some really good dreams, now!
posted at 09:40 PST (-0800)
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Wed, 05 Nov 2003
You're Jamming Me
So Will's got this friend who does things like
this and this and
even this. I am so astoundingly jealous. It also reminded me that
it's been a while since I heard from the Adbusters people.
posted at 10:55 PST (-0800)
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Murder and Vice Live Again
Drew pointed me at this announcement of the revitalization of the Thieves' World stories.
A reprinting of the first two anthologies, where it [from my perception] all began. All the amazing fantasy stories which got me thinking I
liked fantasy after I'd been burned out on Piers Anthony. All the treachery and gritty low level grubby ambitions of wastrels, drunks and thieves.
Those of you who've played in one of my D&D campaigns will recognize these themes.
posted at 10:30 PST (-0800)
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Mon, 03 Nov 2003
Won't Someone Think of the xUnits?
We interrupt this trashy novel to share an alert from Crag with you. Namely, that the
Tests-Formerly-Known-As-Unit are now Programmer Tests.
So are all the testing frameworks of the form fooUnit going to have to change their names?
And here you thought the phrase "unit testing" was suggestive. Now they're going to test your whole programmer.
posted at 06:59 PST (-0800)
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