Hey gang— I'm having a few troubles with Movable Type that I think might be related to the size of the database (I have well over 2000 entries in this blog alone, not to mention all the other blogs and the comments on each) and the fact that I'm still using Berkeley DB. I'm going to try two things to ensure the long-term health of all my MT blogs: (1) upgrading to MT 3.34, and (2) converting from Berkeley...
November 5, 2006
The day before I left for MAX, after dropping The Beaner off at sharecare, I went to the local CBOP Photo store and asked to look at point-and-shoot cameras that were small enough to carry in a pocket, that had image stabilization, and had the shortest shutter delay possible. I was shown three cameras: the Nikon Coolpix S7c, I think one from Casio, and the Fujifilm Finepix F30. I had also wanted to look at the Sony DSC-T9, but...
July 18, 2006
My new MacBook actually arrived last week, but as I haven't had to do a Mac build until today, I didn't bother setting it up. Now it's up and running, and man, is it FAST! It's quite a thrill to see two files compiling at the same time in XCode. I kinda want to stay up to see how long it takes to do a clean build so I can compare to the regular PowerBook, but I also want...
February 24, 2006
So late last night, as is often the case when I work too late, I had a total brain fart and couldn't remember how to do something really simple that I've done a zillion times before. In this case the really simple thing was how to connect to a server on my company's network via OSX. [It may or may not be important to my story to know that until my company sent me a lovely new PowerBook and...
October 18, 2005
I'm finding a lot of hilarious (and not-so-hilarious) stuff in my referrer logs. It turns out like a third of my traffic is from people linking directly to the Red Sox logo (and by directly, I mean including the actual image in their pages with an http link, not linking to the post), which irritated me enough to turn off hotlinking of images. Let me know if this interferes with your ability to see any images in their proper...
October 7, 2005
So I finally bit the bullet and upgraded to MT3.2 despite my concerns about (a) the interface, which I actually find less intuitive and more labor-intensive, and (b) the new comment-management system, which seemed unable to find comments from any unregistered commenters when I tried out MT3.2 beta 3. I knew the interface wouldn't be changed to suit me, so I figured if I wanted to use any of the new 3.2 features I'd just have to suck it...
September 1, 2005
As should be obvious, if you're reading this on the front page of the blog, I'm working on a new design. I haven't propagated it out to all the archives yet, but it'll get there eventually, and I'll probably end up fine-tuning it a bit in the process. Anyway, just seemed like time for something new....
June 13, 2005
Instead of just linking to the rm -r post, there's now something at http://www.avocado8.com/. (In other words, the face is back!) Once I get the book reviews (and possibly the movie reviews) back up, those will also be linked from the home page....
March 27, 2005
Things I'm enjoying but don't have time to write individual posts about: John Adams, by David McCullough Honeymoon With My Brother hadn't come in yet at the library, and I was in the mood for more Revolutionary generation reading anyway after finishing Founding Brothers, so I picked this up at the branch library off Rittenhouse Square (called the Philadelphia City Institute branch, not Rittenhouse, strangely enough) last week. I was a bit worried by its size, and that it...
February 7, 2005
To those of you who started visiting avocado8 during the pregnancy (or the election; they were going on at the same time)—and also to those who've been reading this blog for years—I want to apologize. Not for all the broken links, but for blogging about all the broken links. Just because they're tormenting me doesn't mean they should be tormenting you....
Austen slept for 7 hours straight on Saturday night (and I didn't soak the sheets with breastmilk!). It was lovely, for a couple reasons: (1) I also got to sleep for 7 hours straight, and (2) I didn't end up lying awake in bed at 4:30 in the morning thinking about missing files. This morning Austen woke after only 4 hours, and after an only partially-successful attempt at feeding him in the side-lying position, I found myself awake—with pasty...
February 4, 2005
For the past few nights I've had a hard time getting back to sleep after the 4am, 5am, or 6am feeding (the time varies depending on how long Austen decides to sleep). What keeps me awake is usually remembering one more thing that's gone forever. Like the slideshow of Annie photos. The photos of our trip to Mechanicsburg. The New Zealand photo journal. Basically, photos everywhere are gone. Because I didn't have a lot of space on my hard...
February 3, 2005
Yay, another blog makes a comeback. about town II is now live again!...
February 2, 2005
I can't quite believe it, but I found ALL the images that go in the about town (san francisco) blog on various backup CDs. I hope I'm as lucky with about town II (philadelphia). In thinking about how I want to rebuild things, I've reconsidered moving The Ice Hockey Escapades back to avocado8.com. Although it started on this site, the entries I'm adding now are really about Al's hockey experiences as much as mine. So it seems fitting that...
January 9, 2005
Just re-installed MovableType and rebuilt the database for this blog. This will be the first test post to see if everything went OK......
October 21, 2004
A while back I decided to revive my book reviews by moving the existing reviews to a mySQL database and adding new ones. The database was on the fritz for a few months, which put a damper on reviewing books as I read them, but now that it's back up and working again, I've decided to link my "Additional Reading" titles to the reviews rather than to Amazon.com. Here's how it will work: The heading, "Additional Reading", will always...
October 12, 2004
OK gang, I've finally gotten the commenting system to work properly. Yippee! I knew that MT-Blacklist 1.65 wasn't compatible with MT3.11, but somehow I didn't interpret that to mean "you must remove MT-Blacklist from your server." Duh. So here's the deal: If you don't have a TypeKey identity, your comments will still require approval. You should see a message alluding to this when you post. If you *do* have a TypeKey identity, you'll still need to be approved the...
September 20, 2004
Hey gang— In the upgrade from Movable Type 2.661 to the new-and-improved MT 3.11, the commenting system changed. I now have the ability to accept comments only from registered users or from anyone (I've opted for "from anyone") as well as to approve comments before they are posted. Comments from registered users who have already been approved once should post automatically; if you haven't registered, you're supposed to see a message that your comment is pending approval of the...
September 8, 2004
I upgraded the blogs at lori-and-al.com to Movable Type 3.0D weeks ago (though I've yet to rebuild the completely hosed about_town databases, which accounts for why I haven't added to them in forever), but I've been procrastinating when it comes to upgrading over here at avocado8. Well, today's the day I take the plunge. Things might look broken or weird for a while, so please bear with me while I get things organized. Thanks! In the meantime, for your...
September 15, 2003
After hunting around in the Movable Type support forums for a while today, I finally found someone who was having the same problem I was—and more importantly, someone who had pointed him toward a solution. Turned out that moving from one server to another does indeed hose Berkeley DB files, so I had to dump and load them *one at a time* to get rolling again. Took a couple hours and caused a few hand cramps, but I'm back...
July 16, 2003
I love regular expressions! And I especially love when I get the pattern right on the first try. Woo hoo!...
April 30, 2003
Though I was late in finding these entries (hooray for Movable Type categorization!), thanks to Meg and Jason for helping me get my links to Amazon.com straightened out....
March 10, 2003
I finally caved and installed Movable Type on avocado8. This after moving my hockey blog over to lori-and-al.com because it had MT... <sigh> I'm not sure if I'll move it back now. Anyway, I was using Blogger for this general-blathering blog, but the archive settings were a pain to manage, and it didn't seem to have a bunch of features that I wanted. Plus, I've gotten used to manipulating the templates in MT. Oh, that everything were as easy...