Don't Back Down

This is some great reporting. Admittedly, it may be less a production of the newswriting staff than the technical folks, but it's still amusing. In case they remove it, check out the saved copy here.

I've installed the new 3.1 release of Movable Type on the site. I've had beta versions installed for a while now, and decided I'd install the new release as it doesn't seem to differ a whole lot from the latest release candidates.

Read "Movable Type 3.1" »

As everyone and their mother knows, iTunes introduced a new affiliate program. I decided to sign up. Easy enough, but I couldn't get the registration to work.

Bewildered, I tried it in Internet Explorer instead of Firefox. Bingo. Does anyone else find it strange that the signup process wouldn't work in Firefox, but would in IE?

I've updated MT-Notifier to include a change that apparently was lost earlier.

There was a subscription method used outside of the management interface (introduced in MT-Notifier 2.2.0) that apparently was lost somewhere along the way, probably in the follow-up release that was supposed to correct other issues. This has now been fixed.

Read "MT-Notifier 2.2.2" »

I've made another small change to MT-Notifier, and released another update.

Specifically, the auto-update feature would work with Movable Type 3.1, but it wouldn't look nice because of some new indenting in that area of Comments.pm.

This release fixes this, so that it looks like the MT-Notifier code belongs there.

Read "MT-Notifier 2.2.3" »

The Panthers cut 14 yesterday. Understandable. They still have 4 to go by today's deadline, but I can't understand why they cut Rod Rutherford, who played as a 4th string QB during the preseason. While Rutherford only had a few snaps during these four games, he made several nice plays - with his arm and with his legs. That alone is a bit of an accomplishment among Panthers' quarterbacks (Jake's red zone scramble a couple weeks ago notwithstanding).

Comparisons to Michael Vick may be a bit overstated, but still - I think they should have kept this guy. While he's listed as a practice squad possibility, that means the Panthers have to cut him first - and with an exciting (though brief) preseason, other teams may have some interest. I hope he makes it through to come back and be on the practice squad. You have to wonder what they were thinking - is it really worth keeping near senior citizen Rodney Peete on the roster to give up potential like this?

I've released another small update to MT-Notifier.

This release will handle the case where you specify an invalid code when trying to login using the akey parameter, and then try to correct that parameter on the same screen and resubmit. Previously, this wouldn't work. Now it does.

Read "MT-Notifier 2.2.4" »

Ooo, ooo! I can finally say that I've got an invitation to hand out to GMail. If there's actually anyone out there who still wants one and doesn't have one, let me know. First come, first served. First name, last name and email required. If you don't want that info to show up on the page, email me directly.

I don't know why I even bother signing up for webmail accounts. I have at least one at Excite, GMail, MyWay, Netscape, Hotmail and Yahoo! I can't imagine the last time I received anything useful at any of these accounts.

So just now, I went digging through the Yahoo! options to see if spam filtering was on. It was. Yet I had 650 emails in the last month that were spam. I noticed that I didn't have a folder named "Bulk", so I thought maybe it couldn't find anywhere to put it, and it wasn't working. I tried to create it. Nope. That's a reserved name. So apparently you can delete the folder - or exist without it - but you aren't allowed to create it. Nice.

So I'm trying to ship a package via FedEx (cheapest price for my needs). First, I find that Firefox won't work. Back to IE.

Poking through options, and find one that tells me that some FedEx service offers automatic sortation. What the heck is sortation, and why can't I do it manually?

In any case, I press on. I find option after option where I'm told that the option isn't available with my account. Why is it that people cannot read your profile or account information and know that the option isn't available? They do it later, in telling you that you can't do it. How about reading it early, then presenting only options that you can choose? Has no one ever heard of usability?

Further on, I find page after page where nothing displays. I received lots of 404 errors when trying to use Firefox. Now I'm using IE and I get a whole bunch of nothing. I don't know which I like better. At least you can blame the 404s on sloppy coding. With an empty page, I'm left feeling like I did something wrong. Don't know if I like that at all...

MT-Notifier does not currently support entry notifications. With some work I am sure that I can add this feature to the plugin.

However, I find that I don't have as much free time as I'd like to have, or as I used to have. As a result, I can't currently justify the development of yet another feature, not to mention the support required to use that feature, when I don't get paid - and in fact, give up paying work - to do so. Thanks to David, we have an answer.

Introducing my first feature ransom using Dropcash: MT-Notifier Entry Notification.

Read "Entry Notifications" »

Apparently inspired by my wildly successful offering of a single GMail invitation, the fine folks at Google have seen fit to offer me another six of 'em. First come, first served. Include first name, last name and a valid email address. If this keeps up, I might have to create a mechanism rather than posting each time I get more...

Update: Looks like Peter was right. Not that I didn't believe you, Peter. So I invited a couple of you, then went back to send another and I'm back to 6 invitations. If you want one, let me know. Remember to send your first name, last name and a working email address (it won't show up on the site).