Don't Back Down

I've recently come to a point where my archives aren't building well. I thought it had to do with subcategories, but that doesn't seem to be it. Yet I don't think I have too many items in any particular category. This category, for instance, will have 123 entries when I finish writing this one. That's not a huge number. But I've disabled category archives and things seem to work just swell. So something about the way that I'm doing things is obviously not working right.

As a result, I'm going to be tweaking the archive setup soon. I don't exactly now how I'm going to do so, but I will be doing so. Sorry for any inconvenience that this may cause, but I'll try and keep the dust to a minimum. Please bear with me. And if you have any ideas, send 'em along. I can use all the creative juices I can get!

After seeing this short-but-sweet post from Phil, I figured Scuttle sounds really interesting. I am frequently annoyed at how often del.icio.us is slow, barely responsive, or even down altogether. This isn't to fault the service - it's free and I have no place to complain. But it is annoying. So off I went.

I have now downloaded Scuttle 0.1.0 and managed to get it working. I say managed only because there was some tweaking involved to get it going on my system. It was actually functional pretty quickly (well, once I set the database and user information), but I found some other annoyances along the way that I fixed for presentation purposes.

First, import.php. The import process didn't work for me. I suspect it doesn't work for anyone, since the project page lists this as a bug. The problem appears to be the check for the cookie. Simple changing $_COOKIE[poke] to $_COOKIE["scuttle"] did the trick on my system.

Next, I received messages about headers already being sent. This is because there are some echo statements in there that send output to the screen prior to sending a header, so PHP chokes a bit. I also didn't like how the query information was sent to the screen. Personal choice, really - I just didn't want it, even though it worked okay. So I commented the two echo statements. The import worked!

Finally, I don't intend on opening this service up to everyone (though it may happen one day), so I removed references to registering in both about.php and toolbar.inc.php. I also removed register.php in case anyone decided to try to hit it manually.

The end result is nice. I like the interface way better than that of del.icio.us - it's just prettier. Plus, being on my server, it seems to work most of the time, and when it doesn't, I (theoretically) can do something about that, as well as back up the data when needed. I also like that you can mark bookmarks private, and that if I add a bookmark it takes me back to the Scuttle interface - not to the page I just entered. Thanks, Marcus!

It could use some (more) enhancements, but again since I'm in control, I can do that. Notably, I'd like to be able to search multiple tags, like with del.icio.us (that is, select a tag, then see all available sub-selections to further refine the search). That would be cool. A change password function would be nice, but is by no means necessary. I don't have any other ideas at the moment, but I suspect I will. I'll keep you posted.

One note - if you need to get your del.icio.us bookmarks, try this link to export them.

Update: Scuttle supports multiple tag display (for instance, tag1+tag2, as with del.icio.us). What it does not (appear to) do is to give you a list of available tags to add to the current selection. I think that would be a nice feature to have.

Update: I also updated index.php by moving the logout function above the HTML output. This prevents the error about headers already being sent when you logout (and actually allows you to logout).

As is typical, I've decided that I'm no longer happy with my current blog layout, so I'm playing with some other options. I like the colors and the layout at this point, but we'll see if it sticks. If you're reading in an aggregator of some kind, drop by the site to check out the header and footer - those are the only visible changes.

I also noticed that my (X)HTML wasn't validating, and neither was the CSS. Blech. I fixed the (X)HTML by closing a tag and fixing a keyword, but it was still only "tentatively" valid. Something about needing to specify the character encoding. After browsing a couple of options, I settled on a meta tag - mostly because I couldn't get the .htaccess-based methods to work right. Seems to have cleared up the problem.

The CSS was about to get me, but then I read this piece on generic font families. Seems that I put quotes around the monospace font-family declaration in the CSS, and because that's a generic font famliy keyword, quotes aren't allowed. That's just goofy. But it ought to be fixed. At least on the index page. Who knows if the rest will work. I'll give it a better look in the near future.

It seems that nearly every time I drive these days, I see those monitors that provide you with the speed you are traveling, in conjunction with the speed limit for that area. As a bonus, when you're above the speed limit, the displayed speed flashes. If you're way above (5mph+?) it flashes rapidly, as if just flashing won't tell you - it has to blink to let you know you're going as fast as you are.

What I really don't get is that these monitoring devices are invariably on a relatively busy, but not too busy, street. That means that, more than often, there is a stream of cars headed by the device. As a result, I have no idea which one I am - even though I try to match up my speedometer to the sign to see if it matches. Maybe they ought to use some sort of technology so only the current measurement would be visible to you - otherwise I have no clue if it's me, or one of the boneheads in front of or behind me!

Just yesterday, only minutes apart, I received two emails from Site5, explaining how I had two credits for referrals coming to me. The first thought was that it was odd, because there were two of them back-to-back. So I wonder if perhaps someone out there signed up and then did so again, mistakenly, meaning it was only one.

After talking with Denise, we decided that perhaps the affiliate signups are done on a periodic basis, meaning that the two accounts may have been created over the last week/month/something, and that they just sent them out in a batch. Nonetheless, it's neat. Whoever signed up using our link, thanks!

As mentioned, I've recently been tweaking the network, and today I was finally able to make it all work again. our wireless had been a bit spotty since making the changes. It turns out that the big problem is that D-Link devices don't like talking to non-D-Link devices (or vice versa) at anything over 11 Mbps. Once I set the access point (DI-614+) to a max of 11 Mbps, and the repeater (DWL-800AP+) to connect to the access point, the whole house is wired again. Er, unwired. You know what I mean.

One other quirk was that the repeater requires a MAC address to connect to when it's trying to establish itself on the network. My gut would say that this is the wireless MAC address of the router. My gut was wrong. It was the Ethernet MAC address (which is incidentally listed in the quickstart guide). After setting that correctly, it all just worked.

And for another default IP address - the DWL-800AP+ has a default IP address of 192.168.0.30. Wacky, but it's easily changed.

Well, Denise was involved too, so you can wish her a happy one as well. But regardless, today marks our two-year anniversary. I was trying to hit it on the hour (about 5pm), but too much other stuff came up, so this'll just have to do.

With all of Peter's talk about his digital cameras, I figured I'd throw my own hat into the ring.

A few weeks ago, I purchased a Traveler 6.31 Megapixel Digital Camera, from, of all places, Aldi. As mentioned in the comments, the camera appears to be a rebranded Vivitar Vivicam 4000.

Read "Traveler Digital Camera" »

Every once in a while - usually on smaller companies who only have a single server - you may need to permit a particular user or group permission to log onto the domain controller. Naturally, this is a bit of a security risk. But let's face it - not everyone can afford a new server just to overcome this sort of issue.

Read "Terminal Services to Domain Controller" »

While I updated MT-Moderate to include the moderation of trackbacks, I'm starting to realize that, on my blog at least, it's really not doing much. I get trackbacks from time to time, but the vast majority of trackback spam that I get is being stopped by my modified version of dsbl_deny.pl.

If you'd like to use it, just open that link in your browser, save as dsbl_deny.pl and stick it in the plugins directory under your main Movable Type installation. Chances are high that you'll soon see an increased number of log entries telling you about trackbacks blocked from open proxies.

Seems that Arvind is talking up some Firefox search plugins. That's cool. I really love the extensibility of Firefox and how it is so easy to add stuff to it. What I really don't get is why you'd want a search plugin. They simply aren't necessary.

I mean if you like having a little drop-down that goes specifically to your engine of choice (and having to click that drop-down list as well), that's great. But I'm definitely much more a fan of the keyboard. Using Firefox Keyword Searches, you can do this without an extension, without a restart and more importantly, without a mouse.

Once you've added a keyword search, just CTRL-L to select the address bar (heck, click it if you are so fired up to use your mouse), then type your keyword into the bar, followed by the search string. That's it!

I'm currently coasting along at #270,695, perhaps not as good as I would have liked, but not bad either. I had one big loss, and that was Kansas. While my Final Four is alive, I can't have a perfect round of 8 at this point. That one hurt. But it's not all bad. There is lots of ball left, and at least a bit of excitement to this year's tournament.

And to the one other player in the 1st Annual DBD Basketball Tourney, welcome. We're tied at the moment, looks like it could get exciting!