Out of the Woods

I've made the jump to WordPress for this blog, so if you're accessing this via RSS or a direct link to the Movable Type index page, please go to http://kcdavidson.com to access the new blog. Thanks for your interest.

Posted by Ken at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've been bouncing around a bit trying to find a good, free off-line blog editor. I liked BlogJet, but didn't like the price. I've been trying to use ScribeFire from within Firefox, but it doesn't do embedded graphics very well. I just saw a recommendation for Windows Live Writer, and thought I'd give it a try. This is my first post using it, and I like it so far. The price is certainly right. Maybe with the right editor, I'll actually start posting more often.

Wow. This is sweet. It not only formats the post as it would probably look on the blog, it actually learns the blog formatting automatically and shows you exactly what it will look like as you compose it. You can even preview it in the context of the entire blog layout. Very slick indeed.

Posted by Ken at 1:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Several months ago, I noticed that a new version of Movable Type was available, and it took advantage of new support for Apache's mod_fastcgi. However, when I updated my Apache installation, everything broke. I couldn't run CGI scripts nor could I even run PHP programs. Every so often I tried to fix the configuration, but nothing seemed to work. I finally figured it out, though, so now we're back in business.

Now the question is, do I install the new version 4 beta?

Posted by Ken at 1:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you couldn't guess by looking at the right column of this blog, I love those little 80x15 buttons (or sometimes called badges). I'm really trying not to get carried away adding them to the design. I came across a cool site that has literally thousands of these buttons. It's lots of fun to look through, and it would be really easy to get carried away. May be one or two more...

Update: Chris sends along a link for a very cool site that lets you interactively make your own buttons, even including graphics. Thanks, Chris.

Posted by Ken at 5:40 PM | Permalink

I just happened across a blog that had links to some other interesting-sounding blogs, and I hit the jackpot. Weblogs Inc. sponsors lots of technology-related blogs that are right up my ally. Check out some of the entries in their list. I wish there were more hours in a day.

Posted by Ken at 10:34 AM | Permalink

Again, living on the bleeding edge can be painful at times. I finally figured out why BlogJet (and every other off-line editor I tried) stopped working when I upgraded to MT v3.2. Even though I’d searched the Six Apart web site numerous times, I somehow missed this article on a change that was made to XML-RPC processing and password use. Following the simple instructions fixed things right up.

Posted by Ken at 4:09 PM | Permalink

I’ve made the leap of faith from v3.17 to v3.2b1, and it went without a hitch. However, now BlogJet is giving me trouble. Erk!

Update: The good news is it looks like the problem may be with MT and not BlogJet. I've tried two other off-line editors (Zempt and Qumana) and they both exhibit the same problem. The bad news is it looks like the problem may be with MT! At least the number of MT users far surpasses the number of off-line editor users, so we may see a fix much more quickly than if it were an editor problem.

Posted by Ken at 11:59 AM | Permalink

While the Movable Type interface is nice enough, it’s still pretty clunky when creating new entries, requiring you to use raw HTML if you want to do anything beyond simple text. I saw mention in another blog of the concept of a blogging front end, so went looking to see what was out there. What I found was BlogJet. This nifty little utility runs on my Windows machine and provides a true WYSIWYG front end to Movable Type (and other hosting software). If I want something in bold, I highlight it and click the bold button. If I want to create a link, I highlight it, click the link button, and paste in the URI.

The best feature, at least for how I manage my blog, is the “insert image” button. In Movable Type, anytime I wanted to include a picture, I had to tell it where the original was, where on the server I wanted to put it, then hand edit the HTML to make it line up the way I wanted it. With BlogJet, I click on the image button, tell it where the original is, and select formatting options in a dialog box. When I save the blog entry, it handles uploading the graphic and formats it just right. Now dashing off a quick blog entry is easier than ever.

Posted by Ken at 4:43 PM | Permalink

I’m using the latest (v3.17 as of today), and I’m anxious to see what’s new and improved.  The Six Apart people will be slowly talking about some of the best of the new features in the coming days. I’m hoping for better tools to handle comment and trackback spam. I’ve had to turn both off because of the problem.

Posted by Ken at 10:47 PM | Permalink

I don't get many hits here, so imagine my surprise when I discovered comments entered for more than a few of my postings. It turns out I'd been hit with comment spam. Spammers put links to their sites into blog comment fields in an effort to improve their page ranking in Google and other search engines. I disallowed anonymous comments to combat the problem, but that's not a good solution for many popular blogs.

In an amazing display of grassroots effort on the part of Google and other search and software companies, a technique to make comment spam less useful was proposed and adopted within a matter of days. Now, any link that includes a rel="nofollow" parameter won't be followed by search engine crawlers and thus won't improve the page ranking of sites within those links. It's not a solution to comment spam, but it's a good start at making it less attractive.

Six Apart, parent company of Movable Type, immediately released a plugin to implement the technique, and I've already installed it here. I'm anxious to see how effective it is.

Posted by Ken at 12:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)