This is a test…a test of the emergency blog repairing network.

If this works, my sick day was not in vein….even though I did sleep from 9pm last night till 6am, and then off and on till noon.

Most the time I spent very feverish, with a nice bit of chills in my extremities. Don’t you love it when your body deprioritizes your fingers and toes to make sure your torso has enough blood.

Well, this is to test is my re-install worked, hope it does.

I have the nested comments working again, I lost some stylistic changes I made, and I will get around to fixing those. Later today or tonight I will keep adding back in old journal entries, and hopefully catch up to the last few I made. Then the very tedious task of adding comments back in will commence….that is going to suck.

I also need to find out if I have to make any database changes for the MT 3.01, or MT3.1, but if this works after I add the entries back in, I think I’m going to wait until I’m in Minneapolis to fix this stuff, since MT 3.1 will be out then.

Anyway, cheers people, I’m going to bounce into work in a few, and then get back here and help clean the kitchen so it is ready for the bachelor party tomorrow night. BTW, if you are reading this you are pretty much invited. Just call me any time after 11 am and we’ll be doing something for bachelor party fun.

I just upgraded MovableType to the brand new version. It was susposed to be painless, but of course since I use that silly SQLite for my database, and it doesn’t enjoy adding or removing columns from already created tables, there was no automated update script for me. I’m going to post a file that I made while upgrading, I might send it in to the MT people. This file contains first the differences in tables that are already there. The second part is what I typed, almost exactly (without the parts that screwed up), to get the database up to snuff. I think this the second part of the file could be implemented into an update script for people using SQLite, but I already spent enough time fixing this, so I’m not going to figure that out.

Well, at any rate, I’m going to re-install my nested comment plugin a little later, and get that to work, so I’m going to use this post to fix that.

Ok, so everything is cool.

Sometimes when you add stuff to these kinds of scripts that run web stuff, like blogs, you have to fiddle with them. Especially when you upgrade a script and you had an add-on plugin installed. I had to make sure the “Threaded Comments” plugin worked correctly, and now it does. So things should be good. Post comments away people…everything is good.

I might be taking the webpage down for a little bit, or it might not work correctly for a little while, because I’m upgrading the blog script to help keep people from spamming my comments. Not that this has happened, but it would be good to keep up to date with the latest and greatest stuff so that I don’t run into future propblems, so commenting might not work for a little while, and there might be a little of that kind of thing. There is a slim chance that livejournal will spam your friends pages agian, but I hope to avoid that if at all possible, but if it happens I appologize in adavance.

Also, I will be using this post to test comments and see how it is working out, so ignore that stuff.

There is now the ability to “reply to” different comments…so it looks like the LJ comments posting system. So if anyone had some problems posting comments, it is now fixed….I should actually detail how to install the MTThreadedComments plugin with sqlite for the database system used to control MovableType. The only reason I will write this down is because it was a serious pain in the ass to learn to use a type of sql database system that hasn’t been well documented and is not completely compliant with the sql ’92 standard. If you are interested read on in the extended part of the entry.
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I’m testing a nested comments plugin, so you can mostly ignore this, and the replies which are going to be “does this work” type of stuff.

So, point number 1…..there is a link…..at the top of this entry as it will appear when syndicated….use it, cuz I cannot reply to the Livejournal feed, so put the comments on my site. Number 2, since I updated the site, it changed some stuff around and LJ was like all “Look….NEW STUFF!!!!!,…must add more posts” because their RSS parser is retarded and cannot see the “dc:date” tag in the feed and figure out that is when I actually posted….so it flooded your stuff with posts….they will go away and that will stop. Finally, there will be a link to the comments on my page soon, I’m working on it right now, but until then, use the link at the top of the page….it is like one extra click u lazy bastards…and it will be simpler very soon….in fact…if something I just did worked, the link will appear next time LJ grabs my feed. But I appreciate the feedback from some people already, just I would like it where it is easiest for me to get to it and manage how it is sorted in my comments. Bear with me while I’m tweaking this stuff….i’m focusing on the functionality first…and then I’ll make it look pretty, but it will be an improvement for me, and make my site easier to use.
But I need to stop fiddling with this and get back to work….Later, Ben

All the importing of old Greymatter files into Movable Type is complete, so it is about time to kick this into gear. Also I have a default Style set up for Movable Type, and it isn’t exactly the layout I have now on the site, but I think shortly I’m going to “go live” by replacing the greymatter files (i.e. log.html, bigcat_news.rdf) in the root directory by letting movable type overwrite them. I’m going to keep my stylesheets around, and my current layout and templates within greymatter so I can use them as references while deciding if I want to keep most the layout the same or not. But at any rate, check out the new blog and all it’s majesty at this temporary location and let me know if that looks ok for a temporary solution. Also, I’m going to make the decision as to if I’m going to have my site a 3 column style with links within the site at the left (i.e. friends, stupid stuff about me, and that kind of junk), and blog related links on the left, or if I’m going to throw it all into a DHTML menu in a frame, like my beta site. Your feedback about these ideas is appreciated.

And one final thing before I wrap up my last GM post, I found an update client for MT that has spell checker built in, so that never will I misspell the word “again.”

That being said….Thank you, and goodnight.

Well there are a few things to note around here…..

1. Yes, the basement did flood, not like standing water flood, more like wet mildewy carpet.
2. GreyMatter has started to piss me off, due to lack of updates, and lack of some features I want, I will be migrating to Movable Type and I will be importing all my greymatter entries into MT, so nothing will be lost.
3. I am working on a complete site that is not just my blog. If you want to see what I am doing check out my beta site.
4. I’ve already simplified my actual html code quite a bit, but I’m thinking that even a simpler html layout controlled by CSS is the way to go. But at any rate, I am open for suggestions to layout changes for the whole site and more specifically my blog, so please check out different peoples blogs (not standard livejournal ones tho) and see stuff you think I might like, and put a link to it in the comments for this post so I can check it out.

So I will be using greymatter for a while and when I change, it will be almost transparent to anyone reading this….But I will post when I do.

Untill then, Later

Well, LiveJournal now has a feed to my RSS file. You can find it HERE for you livejournal people who want to add it to your friends. So everyone should thank Andrew Wu since he has a paid account he was able to add my syndication feed to livejournal. So now no-one can complain that they can’t read my site in their “friends” list….so add my feed….it is even down to .5 points now…so it is cheap. Anyway, I fixed one of the problems that Andrew talked about in his post, and I’m gonna fix another very soon, so you can all see the date and time I added this.

So anyway, I’m out, and as Rob has made a habit of saying…..The Dude abides.

For those of you who migh actually read this that don’t know what LiveJournal is, it is a free community style blog site that will host free blogs for anyone who gets invited by a friend. Well that is all well and good if you are looking for something simple…but me being an internet “indy” guy would opt for the more difficult route of hosting my own blog so I can customize it at will, and integrate it into my site easily. (If I do ever finish the rest of the site) But there is a problem. My friends on livejournal have this link they can easily make called “friends” that is a page created by all the other “friends” with livejournal accounts most recent posts. Which is hella cool, cuz one click checks all the latest updates from all your friends. But here is the catch, there is no good way to just add my site to theirs….making it more difficult for the lazy to actually come here. But the good news is that there is a solution to all this. Livejournal users can add syndicated blogs and news sites to thier “friends” list. So you would think that I am set and so would my friends. But there is also a catch to this. Some features in livejournal work on a point system. And to add an unpopular feed (read my blog) you must have at least 1 point. But free accounts on LJ only have .99 points. So someone with a payed account, which start with 10 points, has to add me. Now the more that people add me the less expensive it becomes, in points, to add my site, so if someone did add me that had a point, it could quickly drop into the range of the free accounts and soon it would be very cheap cuz many of my friends could add me. So, if you read this…and have a LiveJournal account with at least an available point…..add this feed so that other people can add it to.

But with that last desperate plea, I must be off to sleep and dream of my upcomming semiconductor physics class……Thank you, and goodnight.

I’m trying out this new thing where I can use some different type of news feed….since I broke the script with upgrades for security to the blog scripts…but try this file if your interested in a feed to read my blog from whatever rss reader your down with.