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October 31, 2003

The sun is setting ()

by fluffy at 05:22 PM
I need to make myself scarce before the children start arriving, expecting me to give them the candy I don't have.

It's not that I dislike children. I like them in small groups, when they're well-behaved. Pretty much all the problems I have with children are ultimately the parents' faults.

But on halloween, it's this big horde of grubby little greedy monsters whose existence seems to center around annoying people who don't want anything to do with them at the moment.

Honesty ()

by fluffy at 04:13 AM
Am I the only one who thinks that people who need to say "I'll be honest with you" have a bit of a credibility problem?

October 30, 2003

Undoing the damage ()

by fluffy at 09:52 PM
After last night's incident I got right to work on cleaning things up; at 3 AM I went to bed, and in that time had restored about 60% of the directory tree. This may serve as a guide for people who experience a similar catastrophe.

Then again, it may not.

October 29, 2003

iTunes FUCKING SUCKS ()

by fluffy at 11:12 PM
So, I thought it might make things easier if I just pointed iTunes' library directly at my SMB share rather than having to occasionally tell it to rescan it for new files (which is time-consuming and annoying).

This is the message which I am about to send on Apple's "provide iTunes feedback" form. I'm not sure if it's angry enough though.

PLEASE NOTE

I wrote this entry a long time ago. I already resolved the problem. I locked the thread because I got sick of the random comments. So I certainly don't need people IMing me at two in the morning offering me help!

Jesus christ!

October 28, 2003

I'd like to hear my options, so I can weigh them ()

by fluffy at 09:02 PM
What do you say?

Five pounds? Six pounds? Seven pounds?

Daylight savings time fucking sucks ()

by fluffy at 05:52 PM
We spend so much of the year getting used to daylight centering around 7AM-7PM that when DST ends and everything goes from 6AM-6PM instead, it's just extremely depressing. Especially since the change happens well inside the equinoxes (so it's actually more like 6:30AM-5:30PM at its best, and more like 7:30AM-4:30PM on the solstice)

October 27, 2003

RAM upgrade ()

by fluffy at 09:59 PM
Today, my friend Geof gave me 512MB of RAM which was just laying around at his workplace. I love the Mac's case.

Shoes (, )

by fluffy at 09:19 PM

More OSX.3 lovin' ()

by fluffy at 12:23 AM
The new cmd-tab application switcher is very nice. At first glance it seems like an imitation of the Windows app switcher, but when you start to really use it, it's totally so much better, especially if you've ever had to flip between 20 iconless Explorer windows and one Notepad. (It helps that it's switching between apps, not windows. Natural groupings are a good thing.)

While switching between apps, you can press Q or H to quit or hide the app, respectively, rather than have to actually switch to it. (Unfortunately, Exposé doesnt seem to have anything like that yet.)

Also, there's a very brief delay between pressing cmd-tab and the switcher actually popping up; it's not long enough that you notice a delay if you want the switcher, but it's not so short that the switcher pops up if you're just jumping between the top two apps. It totally feels like DWIM. (That's "Do What I Mean" for the acronymically-challenged.)

October 26, 2003

Reasons I don't like X11.app ()

by fluffy at 12:26 PM
I'd might as well collect the reasons why I keep on trying to get XDarwin working under Panther even though Panther already provides X11.app. (It's amazing how many people seem to think that there's no reason I'd want to run XDarwin instead!)

October 25, 2003

Dust collection ()

by fluffy at 02:03 PM
Since this Mac I bought has a Zip drive on it, I decided to go through my old pile of zip disks which I haven't touched in at least 5 years, just for the kitsch value. One of the disks was labelled "big.wavs."

The largest file on it was a WHOLE 397K!

October 24, 2003

I am thoroughly enjoying OSX.3 so far ()

by fluffy at 10:39 PM
As I discover more things to love, I'll post them here.

Yummy apple ()

by fluffy at 07:02 PM
I just got my G4, which is amazingly quiet... not as quiet as the G5, but still pretty quiet compared to what I'm used to; my SPL meter registers it at about 58dB from 1" away (and doesn't register it at all from even a meter away).

Also got a copy of OSX.3, which is installing right now. But it's the upgrade version so I had to install X.2 first which was annoying. So I guess I'm not going to be selling my X.2 disks anytime soon.

After this asks me for the next disk I'm going over to a friend's party, though, because I'm hungry and don't feel like making dinner myself. Heh.

7:26 I have named the system Inkling, for now. Also, Expos´ kicks ass even when it's not hardware-accelerated. Also, this keyboard which came with the G4 fucking sucks. Also, 10.3's Software Update is much much sexier than 10.2's. (It's kind of funny that there were already updates available when I first installed a system on its first day of release! It was for stuff like iSync which wasn't finalized before gold master though.) Also, setting up my account anew will be a pain, but at least I went ahead and used the 60-day free .Mac trial to sync my contact information and so on, so not everything will be painful. Also, the new finder FUCKING RULES.

Power supply ()

by fluffy at 05:02 PM
This is the second time I've had to do a quick-and-dirty annoying-as-hell solder job on the plug of the iBook power supply.

Using phpBB as your MovableType comment engine in 23847392 easy steps (, )

by fluffy at 01:52 PM
Here's a writeup which should at least help other people get MovableType (or anything else which is based on or can otherwise embed PHP) and phpBB working together, if they so desire.

It's not difficult (especially if you already have phpBB set up and working), but it's time-consuming.

2008/03/31 Note that I'm not actively developing this anymore. Notably I have no plans of upgrading it to work with phpBB 3.

2005/02/22 Added a 'url' column to the table; now recent discussion can work a bit better for people who use fancy-pants archive URLs (at least for new installations; if anyone needs help populating their table for existing installations just let me know).

2004/07/02 Added some more anti-spam measures.

2004/11/20 Some more wording changes to hopefully clear up a few parts of the installation.

Yatta? ()

by fluffy at 11:55 AM
Apparently, "yatta" isn't just guys dancing around in fig leaves — it also refers to a Beowulf cluster designed specifically for running Folding@Home.

But what's the point?

October 23, 2003

Stupid bank redux ()

by fluffy at 04:54 PM
The stupid bank is still stupid. Yet another bit of stupidity thanks to their ATM operations being totally separated from the rest of the bank...

October 21, 2003

Songs ()

by fluffy at 09:00 PM
Couple of things... first, I participated in this week's Frontalittle Squad entry at Songfight, but like pretty much every IRC-based Songfight thing, it's mostly unfunny inside jokes so don't bother listening to it unless you, like, pay really close attention to Songfight. Or something. Also, my verse sucks.

Other neat thing is that Bryan finally posted his cover of Fool in the Middle (which is pretty good, though he changed it into basically a different song with the same lyrics — not like I'm one to talk in that regard, of course), and also said that he liked my cover of Blue Signal a lot (and that he was originally going to do the Babelfish thing on it too but decided not to).

MT/phpBB integration! YAY! ()

by fluffy at 11:25 AM
I have now (I think) successfully integrated MT with phpBB! It's not yet complete, but it should be totally functional now.

11:43 Argh, timezones are a bitch. At least this problem was caught now when there was only one comment to remove. :D

October 20, 2003

Burnt toast ()

by fluffy at 10:31 PM
This is what a 1.1GHz Athlon looks like if its heatsink fails.

October 19, 2003

Okay, I just ordered it ()

by fluffy at 11:06 PM
While my friend Alex is composing an email to his former boss on my iBook, I got onto my Windows machine to check my current snipe bids and none of them were going to go through and GOD DAMNIT I FUCKING HATE HATE HATE HATE WINDOWS WHY DID MY MOUSE STOP WORKING FUCKING STOP BREAKING ON ME I JUST WANT TO BROWSE THE GODDAMN WEB and so I just ordered the damn G4/450 from Macofalltrades. Christ.

Wow, it really does Just Work! ()

by fluffy at 07:22 PM
Had to do some scanning and printing today. of course, my scan/print server is still dead, so I decided to go out on a limb and plug its USB hub into my iBook.

The scanner Just Worked, and it was faster and higher-quality than it ever was in Linux.

The printer Just Worked, and it was faster and higher-quality than it ever was in Linux.

Jesus fuck, why didn't I get a Mac ages ago?

Yes, I think I'm clever. ()

by fluffy at 12:31 PM
Don't worry, I won't make a habit of posting IRC logs.

October 18, 2003

The smell of solder ()

by fluffy at 05:56 PM
Not what I want to be smelling from my graphics workstation/media server.

RIP trikuare.trikuare.cx :(

6:16 PM Hm, actually, I guess it's not dead, it's merely pining for the fjords or something (its heatsink fan is dying but if I let it cool down then it'll boot up again). Still, I should use this as an opportunity to consolidate things anyway.

8:53 PM After talking it over with Geof, I've decided that yes, I'll get a G4/450 for a studio system, which is more than enough power for its intended purpose (and any heavy-duty stuff will just happen on whatever laptop I end up getting when I can afford a proper new system.

October 17, 2003

Three dreams ()

by fluffy at 10:03 PM
I slept a lot more than usual last night, and with it came more dreams than usual.

Odd referer log spam ()

by fluffy at 01:11 PM
Apparently the City of Lake Charles is really hard up for tourist money, since they keep on spamming their website URL into my referer log.

So let's all help the City of Lake Charles out, because they obviously really need their site to be indexed by Google so that they can get more tourist money.

October 14, 2003

Jesse's car is parked in front of my house ()

by fluffy at 01:44 PM
but that's okay because it's because they're finally BUILDING A GODDAMN GARAGE, which Jesse should have done four paintjobs ago to begin with.

(I bet it's his mom paying for it though.)

(4:30 PM Yes, she is. Go figure. Maybe I should have mentioned the $40 I gave Jesse for the car cover he never bought.)

phpBB integration half-way there! ()

by fluffy at 02:10 AM
That came quicker than I thought.

NOTE!!!!! This entry is obsolete. Check out the complete solution instead, if you want complete phpBB and MT integration.

October 13, 2003

Short-term spam solution (, )

by fluffy at 09:33 PM
Okay, this solution seems to work pretty well. Describing it will make it useless in a few days if the spammers find out how I'm doing it, but that's okay because it looks like I'll have phpBB integration by then anyway (since I finally got the information I needed). Not as if any of the spammers actually read my site anyway...

So, if anyone else wants this stopgap measure (which is more than enough to stop the current bot and many of the changes which the spammers could make to try to overcome it) while they search for better solutions themselves, read on!

October 12, 2003

[un]Disabled comments for now ()

by fluffy at 12:21 PM
I've disabled comments entirely for now. I can't keep up with the spammers, what with MT's FUCKING HORRIBLE moderation interface. This is very frustrating, because I love getting comments from everyone. Fortunately, I still have the forum operational... it's suboptimal, but necessary for now.

Time to invest some serious time into phpBB integration...

6:16 PM I've reenabled comments with a few subtle changes as a stopgap measure which shouldn't affect real readers. Things may be broken as I test a few things.

October 11, 2003

Coming home (, , )

by fluffy at 08:54 PM
The moment we were all waiting for...

Children should only be allowed on airplanes as cargo ()

by fluffy at 06:09 PM
Based loosely* on actual events on October 9.

October 10, 2003

More cooler (, )

by fluffy at 11:58 PM
Hung out with the people in the department I interviewed at at a bar. Downtown Johnstown is beautiful. The city is great. Everyone involved hopes I get this job, so it seems extremely likely.

Also, J and I are working on reconciliation, so I've unpublished the respective weblog entry just to keep things simpler for everyone involved.

(And remember, you can't spell "reconciliation" without cilia.)

Two good newses (, , )

by fluffy at 02:17 PM
  1. The interview went very well and they will be making me an offer in two weeks after they do the full research into what I'm worth (they have a fixed payscale based on experience and skills)
  2. Animal control found Shooby this morning (after three weeks)

October 09, 2003

How quaint! (, )

by fluffy at 07:24 PM
Las cruces → El Paso (drive)
El Paso → Houston (full jet)
Houston → Pittsburgh (commuter jet)
Pittsburgh → Altoona (tiny dual prop plane)
20-minute layover in Altoona (due to some weird government subsidy issue)
Altoona → Johnstown (same tiny dual prop plane)

One person's treasure... ()

by fluffy at 04:43 AM
HIV hitting young at rate of one every 14 seconds:
The spread of Aids among adolescents may significantly slow the growth of the world's population, a United Nations report warned yesterday.

They make that sound like such a bad thing!

October 08, 2003

Another thing I like about the R520m ()

by fluffy at 11:42 AM
Its "low battery" indicator doesn't suck.

Crates ()

by fluffy at 09:50 AM
Lately I've been getting a lot of spam letting me know that my crate shipment is ready.

Which makes me wonder: are crates shipped in successively larger crates? I just have this mental image of an assembly line with a Russian doll-esque progression.

October 06, 2003

More comment-related metablogging ()

by fluffy at 04:04 PM
George Hotelling linked me to a great Joel Spolsky article. It's pretty good, though I have a few minor quibbly disagreements with it. So I sent Joel a lengthy email, which I've reproduced below.

10/8, 4:50 PM He replied to me. His response: "Thanks for the ideas!" Huh.

October 04, 2003

Searching (, )

by fluffy at 10:21 PM

October 03, 2003

User icons on weblog comments ()

by fluffy at 07:23 PM
I really hate doing the whole "weblogging about weblogging" thing, but man, this implementation of LJ-style user pictures is really cool. I might experiment with it on here eventually, when various issues have been worked out.

A perfect roux ()

by fluffy at 07:17 PM
When making Cajun food, particularly soups and stews, it is vitally important to have a good, consistent, nicely-toasted roux. The darker the roux, the more flavorful, but also the more difficult.

CoverFight: aoi shigunaru ()

by fluffy at 04:34 PM
If you listen to SongFight, you may have heard Blind Mime's The Blue Signal entry.

For the most recent Coverfight, I was assigned to cover Blind Mime, and so I elected to take a totally different take on the song.