A Sea of Flowers

Another half a year, another upgrade.

The installation instructions suggest untarring on the server and installing the files on the server.  It's still all geek to me.  I know how to install by FTP, and that's what I did. 

The upgrade brings some new functions on the author and administrator side including a real WYSIWYG editor.

They have done some work on the design side. When I was tempted to apply their new default styles, I realized that I had not adopted their new template model somewhere in MT 3.2, and that I had to upgrade my templates and write in my customizations.

A few hours later, I think it's working decently. The style (at this moment) is called Portland.

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

After some reading and experimenting, I found an acceptable way of creating thumbnail links to the photos in my Gallery site. I loaded the photos that I had used in this blog into the Gallery, and then edited the articles, replacing the photos with links to the Gallery versions. This works better. The blog loads faster, the pictures are visible in the blog, and then scale up to 2 viewable sizes. The Gallery program is nicely supported collaborative freeware. I upload the full image file to Gallery, and let Gallery create thumbnails and two prints. Gallery can process several images on one upload, and then I just past the links into a block of text. I have a couple of old stories left, but the process is largely done. I have started to shoot more pictures and to load them to my Gallery.

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 7:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Over the couple weeks, I have had three web projects: fixing the email contact function in the sidebar, getting a cycling log, and finding a better way of getting digital photos published. The latter two ideas were vaguely connected.

Continue reading "Pictures & Spam injectors" »

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 8:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's time to shake up the category list. Social Practice becomes Zombies. In the next few weeks Culture will be folded into Zombies. Politics is Liege & Lief, which is obscure but accurate, with an arcane folk music reference. The old names were too formal, and I had too many subcategories. I will phase out some subcategories, add MT tags to my entries and let the tags lay the trail.

Why Zombies?

Continue reading "Zombies" »

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 9:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have not been posting regularly since the end of 2005, but I have kept up with Movable Type upgrades. The upgrade to 3.33 or 3.34 involved new features that had previously been implemented by the BigPAPI plugin, and made BigPAPI and plugins that depended on it stop working. I had been using CCode and TCode. I had not installed the new versions of CCode properly. It has to do with adding a script to the head of a template and adding a tag into two or three templates. Registered commenters were getting an error message, as I found out yesterday.

Once I turned off CCode, my junk comment folder began to fill up. That's not a problem - it doesn't get published and I just delete it. It looks like CCode plugin was working and doing its job, which is hiding the blog from spam comment bots. Giving the bots a false return must put a load on my bandwidth, but saves me from having to clean out the junk folder.

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 6:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Another new release of MT, another upgrade. The FTP chugs along, the upgrade is easy. Once again, some little surprizes. The new online manual is clear enough, but the installation documents were not. There was a plugin for MT 3.2 called BigPAPI, which has been superceded by functions in MT 3.3. One of the instructions missing from the installation Doc was to turn off BigPAPI and plugins that used it. So I had some interesting error messages when I tested the new installation.

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 6:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The original registration of sea of flowers as a domain name was effected through Domain Direct, which is affiliated with Tucows. I had signed up for a year. I didn't buy a particularly expensive package, and I think their pricing was competitive, but I bought a bigger package than I needed. I thought I was going to host my web site and blog there, but they didn't support server side scripts at that time. All I really needed was registration and DNS settings. Blogomania, where I host my sites, is not a registrar. Domain Direct extended my initial one year account to two years,, which put off the need to make any changes until early April. They started sending me renewal notices months ago. The renewal messages had links to pages on their site which gave me the option to renew my existing service or to upgrade. While Domain Direct offered simpler and cheaper services, there was no way to order them except by ordering a new account. Meanwhile, there are lots of services advertising domain registration service, with domain transfers priced at $10.00 or $15.00, with a year of service. I have a .ca domain and I need a CIRA Registrar, which narrowed the field.

Continue reading "Domain Name Transfer" »

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 8:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Another change, after some reading and experimentation. I installed partial dynamic publishing for archive posts this weekend. I had to run at it twice. It involves creating an .htaccess file and installing it on the server, and customizing some lines in it, creating a new directory on the server and changing some settings MT. The first time I omitted some slashes in some path names in the .htaccess. Once again, the MT documentation was right - just not clear.

The article about the benefits and drawbacks of dynamic publishing at Learning Movable Type may be out of date. It warn that plugins often involve Perlscripts (and I still can't use the word Perl.) which may not run in the dynamic environment. One plugin generated a Smarty error - so I removed it. The important ones, like Spamlookup, are written for php and run under Dynamic publishing. I didn't have a lot of plugins and the one that didn't work has been superceded by newer MT tags, so I am not worried about it.

It makes rebuilding of the blog so much faster, which is convenient when I get into design changes, changing category names and all the other changes that show up on the published page. Rebuilding all the individual entries took a couple of minutes, and it was just annoying.

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 5:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Upon installing MT 3.2, I took the plunge and refreshed the templates, which brought me to the MT default Vicksburg Style. I spend some time with the Site Styles sheet, changing colours to get my old scheme back, and then in the Main Index and Individual Entry Index. I was still writing CSS by trial and error, so I invested in an O'Reilly book and spent some time on a few Web sites.

Continue reading "Site Tuning" »

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 5:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The upgrade to MT 3.2 was fairly smooth. I ran into 2 problems before being able to post this entry.

Continue reading "MT 3.2 Installed" »

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 6:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

My upgrade to MT 3.16 was reasonably smooth, but there were a couple of annoyances, which relate back to the upgrade instructions and documentation. It has some nice improvements in the interface - for instance a more clear listing of categories and subcategories in the category selector field box in author post screens.

Continue reading "Upgrade to MT 3.16" »

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 7:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last week and the week before I noticed that someone kept running searches for Sister Jane or Jane on this Web log. The IP addresses varied, but they all were within a range. The most recent searches were today, April 21, 2005 at 13:06 and 13:08. (The activity log shows the times in Greenwich Mean Time). The visitors haven't left comments or sent me an email so I don't know what they are looking for.

Continue reading "The Sister Jane Query" »

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 9:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A few weeks ago Jay Allan, the designer of MT Blacklist posted some suggestions for new plugins to fight spam. I followed up at the time and installed Trackback Moderation. I also went back later and installed MT-Keystrokes. The idea is that it blocks any comment that does not contain a bit of code that can only be created by a human user who has opened the comment window in a browser. The template that creates the comment field in the browser for the human user has javascript that inserts the special code if the user types something or pastes the comment into the comment window. Spiders can't comment, which should screen out a lot of comment spam.

Continue reading "Spam Fighting" »

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 6:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Late last week Jay Allen, the designer of MT-Blacklist posted recommending a plug-in called MT-Moderate and some other anti-spam tools. MT-Moderate originally force-moderated comments, which is basically one of the things that MTB does, but it has been redesigned to force-moderate trackback pings too. That was a privacy hole in MTB (and MT) which doesn't have a trackback moderation feature. Some blog spammers send pings - usually in large waves. If they managed to evade the MTB blacklist scan, the pings got into the public site. Spam comments that got around the blacklist, on the other hand, usually ended up in moderation.

Continue reading "Trackback Moderation" »

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 8:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Today I changed the names of many of my top level categories, shuffled and renamed some sub-categories and shuffled a few posts into different sub-categories. I didn't like some of the category titles, and I wasn't writing anything new in many categories, so I reindexed the material and changed the index.

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 5:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Within a month of the last MT upgrade, another upgrade. This time, to fix a vulnerability in the program. The details are at MT's site, access through the "powered by Movable Type" link in the side column. Well, I'm getting my money's worth out of my FTP client. I like the program, I like the company's diligence at fixing problems. I do get bored sitting around while the FTP client uploads whole directories of unchanged files in upgrade packages.

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 9:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There has been more blog maintenance over the last month, and today I attempted to install the MT-Approval plugin.

It didn't seem to work. After I installed it, I couldn't comment at all. There is a tag missing or in the wrong place in my individual entry template. I have removed the plug in and will live without it until I can get it set up properly. When I get it installed - if I do - it will change the comment procedure. Commenters will have to preview the comment before being able to post a comment. At that stage the plugin adds some extra hashes to the comment. These steps will foil spamming spider programs. I don't know if this will reduce the flow of comments that MT-Blacklist has to filter - that's my hope.

Continue reading "MT 3.14, MTB 2.04b, MT-Approval" »

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 2:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have changed the appearance of this blog by importing a stylesheet called Tiny Green from Movable Styles. I also got around to upgrading to the latest version of Movable Type.

Continue reading "Tinkering" »

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 10:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

I have downloaded and installed the upgrade to the new release of Movable Type, version 3.1, which came out August 31. I had been running version 3.0D. I didn't need or want the Developer edition but the tried and tested version 2.6n was no longer available when I moved my blogging from Typepad to my own hosted web site.

Continue reading "Upgraded to MT 3.1" »

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Movable Type has released version 3.01 which is a bug fix on 3.0D. The notes at MT's web site said just download and unzip a file which contains upgraded files - no scripts. Just unzip and upload to the server.

Problem 1: which file? The download box gives you two options - full version or "upgrade". Which one is the bug fix? Is "upgrade" a new set of files for people who installed 3.0 by upgrading from an older version or is it the bug fix for everyone running 3.0? Why is there a full version option on a page for downloading the bug fix??? Then Problem 2 - uploading. Remember the original installation? I have operating files in /cgi-bin/mt/ and I have a separate /mt-static/ container, which is the recommended configuration. Some of the files go to /mt-static/ and some of those files should be ftp'd in binary. There is no documentation in the upgrade zip archive. There is no warning or reminder on the SixApart web site. They assume you know or remember.

On the first try, I managed to overwrite mt.cfg, and loaded everything to /cgi-bin/mt/. I broke my blogging tool. After careful study, I reloaded the 3.01 files into the right containers on the server, and edited mt.cfg repeatedly until the whole thing started working again.

It came back in stages, like my colon coming back from my colostomy. Such great pleasure from such a modest accomplishment. This is not for the faint of heart. I feel like an Internet Red Green - pass me the duct tape, Harold.

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 8:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I posted a number of book reviews in this log over the last few months. I joined the Blogcritics site. At first I simply republished book reviews from this site there, and then I tried to publish the same material on my site and the Blogcritics site concurrently.

I don't need to publish the same post twice (although I will keep copies of the Blogcritics version of the reviews as text files, as backup and publish those again sometime if Blogcritics ceases to publish them).

So for now, if I publish something offsite I won't necessarily duplicate the material here. I will try to post a short note with the Permalink to the published review.

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 6:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Over the last week or so, I fiddled with the design and content of the Web pages. I think I have it organized properly for now. I have some "about me" information and a links list on the Web pages, and I have links in the blog pointing back to those pages. I have a few ideas for getting some pictures and images, and to dress it up but I am going to try to leave it alone.

I closed my Typepad account which means that the old versions of the Web log will be erased.

I have started to receive comment spam. There hasn't been much and I erased it. However one post seemed to have come from an automated source and I am concerned about getting more that that, and I took a few steps to make it harder for spammers to post to my site although I haven't taken all the countermeasures discussed in the comment spam articles at the Elise site.

I made some changes to comment configuration. I have enabled comment registration. Once I approve a commenter, that person can post comments. I will hold and review comments from unregistered commenters which should take out the spam comments.

Don't hesitate to comment.

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 7:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Over the last 10 days, I have been working on installing Movable Type and transferring the Web log to my own hosted web site. You are in fact reading this Blog in its new location. Entering www.sea-of-flowers.ca in the browser navigation bar brought you to a new Welcome page. The new location of the Sea of Flowers blog is www.sea-of-flowers.ca/weblog/sea/

Follow this link. Then please add the page to Favourites or Bookmarks the usual way.

Continue reading "Hosted Site Running" »

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 8:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I got an email from Steve who asked me if if I had registered Sea of Flowers as a domain name. That wasn't a bad idea, and I registered sea-of-flowers.ca. I haven't set up the web page redirector yet.

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)