Category Archives: Tech

Technology, gadgets, software, and the industry around them.

TypeLockPick

Tech,

With all the fuss and bother over TypeKey, you’d think it was the end of the world. It’s being called the Patriot Act of Weblogging because it’s an over-the-top reaction to a problem. People are saying they’ll never comment on blogs that require TypeKey. I haven’t seen this much commotion over vaporware since… MT 3. The FAQ tells you everything you could ever want to know about TypeKey, except whether it’s free for commercial use. I think as someone intimately aquainted with many of the technologies surrounding weblogs I can set things straight.

Calm down. There’s no need to worry. You can leave comments like you always have, TypeKey or no Typekey. TypeKey is basically a centralized authentication

It’s just like the old days, when you could comment on anything you wanted without hassle.

(WordPress only accepts trackbacks sent through POST because according to the spec, “TrackBack pings should now be sent using HTTP POST instead of GET. The old behavior is deprecated, and support for GET will be removed in January 2003.” It’s 2004 and Movable Type and TypePad GET trackbacks, so if you’re in a pinch you don’t have to use the trackback post form.)

But what if you don’t care about making people sign on to a centralized system, you just want to keep those odious spammers off your blog? Check back, I’ll have something for you tomorrow.

This is all in good fun, what Tantek would call “pulling pigtails.” I met some SixApart people at SxSW, including Mie and Joi, and they were delightful.

The Weather

Linux, Microsoft, Tech

It is definitely a stay-at-home and drink-hot-chocolate kind of day here in San Francisco. And I’m totally okay with that. Now if only I could get the 64-bit Windows installation disk to recognize my SATA controller, life would be good. I’m not a fan of Linux for desktop usage yet (I’ve tried it about once a year for 4+ years now) but I might be pushed in that direction, ironically, because of better hardware compatibility. This might be easier if I had a non-USB floppy drive, but I’m not inclined to go out in this weather just to get one.

Welcome 2005

Jazz, Personal, Tech

At midnight I hope to be no where close to a computer, so I’ll post this now because I’m sure it’s 2005 someplace already. Thank you, everyone, for such a wonderful year and I wish you all the very best for the coming one.

Here are my resolutions for 2005:

  • Build up my piano chops — On some level I always wondered how things would be different if I stuck with piano instead of switching to sax. I’d like to learn a lot more piano.
  • Read more — I got some great books for Christmas and I think more offline reading would be good for me.
  • Release more — I let releases build up too long, I think most things I’m doing would benefit from a shorter development cycle. I also still have a lot of code I still need to clean up and GPL, more for the *Press family perhaps.
  • Write more — I’ve been happy with my code output lately, but my regular writing has suffered and I haven’t composed or arranged any significant music in about two years now.
  • No more mental roadblocks — For any of the above it would be easy to say “it would be easy to do X if I had Z” but this year I’ve learned that Z is just holding me back. Physical or habitual crutches may be more comfortable, but comfort is a terrible thing when you’re trying to push the envelope.

Yearly Tasks

Jazz, Personal, Tech

As the year draws to a close, and it has been a wonderful year, I find myself drawn to a few tasks that always seem to catch me around this time:

  • Updating copyright years on sites that don’t use the PHP trick.
  • Archiving old mail and logs to local server.
  • Checking none of the low-traffic stuff broke without me noticing.
  • Backing up.
  • Cleaning out old/dead accounts, consolidating where possible.
  • Putting everything remotely versionable into Subversion (new for me this year).
  • Writing notes to old friends.
  • Organizing music.
  • Making lists (much like this one).

What catches up with you at the end of the year?

SlimServer

Jazz, Tech

Slim Server is “powerful and free Open Source software. Not only will it power Squeezebox, but it also serves the SLIMP3 network music player or any software MP3 player on your network. SlimServer runs on Windows, Mac, Linux, BSD and Solaris.” I’m going to set up the software a little later, and the Squeezebox looks pretty sweet too. Something for the wishlist. Might be the answer to my multi-room audio problems.

Post-Dinner

Tech

Bloggercon dinner was a lot of fun. It was incredibly noisy coming in, apparently bloggers like to talk. Who knew? Met a lot of new interesting people and a old buddies. I’m never going to remember all the names. I came up with Cheyanne and MJ which was fun. Carpooling is excellent, espescially with such beautiful people. Finally met Dave as well, albeit shortly, and he offered a few words on enclosures. I’m sure there’ll be much more talk on that this weekend. I had someone compare me to Dave the other day, I guess because we both have done blogging software, have strong opinions, and my site can look a bit like Scripting News when there are lots of asides.

In SF

Tech

I’ve been in San Francisco for a few days again and seen a lot of older friends like Tantek, MJ, Dave, and Dinah but also met some very cool new people like Toni, Jeremy, the lovely Cheyanne, and MJ’s sister Amy. Note that Amy’s site is Team Monkey, not T-Monkey or TeaMonkey. My flight to Houston is delayed a few hours, but thank goodness for wifi and Powerbook battery life. Finally getting around to setting up Dovecot locally on OS X.