dirtypotato.com^2.0

I tend to write a lot of articles, but I generally don't finish them on the first run. I usually let them sit for a week or forever, and then I get around to finishing them up and publishing. I have also been using non-published articles as a way to keep track of a todo list, urls, articles I want to read, books I want to get and so on. This way I can access the same info regardless if I'm at work, home, or being a geek on my smartphone.

Eventually this system started to get a little unmanageable, and I wanted something better. So I decided to setup a private wiki on my webserver. By the time I got the wiki setup I was tired, and wanted to go to bed but managed to write a short article on my thought process of what the wiki was for along with some links if you don't know what the hell a wiki is.

Tonight I decided to setup the wiki with different pages for books I want, to do list, daily agenda etc. While doing so I went through and cleaned up my blog, and got rid of any drafts that were purely for keeping track of any of this information. Yep, including the draft of the wiki article I wrote last night, and a few others which I had been working on.

I tried hitting the back button hoping I would find the articles in the cache somewhere and searched the screen and the entire DB to see if my articles were somewhere. No dice. They are gone. I was pissed.

The funny thing is that Moveable Type gives you a confirm "Are you sure you want to delete these 3 entries?", and like a lab rat I just hit yes after years of "are you sure" confirms. I still think that message has no purpose, along with all of the "are you sure" messages you find littered through operating systems and programs; but now like seeing that girl who has always just been a friend for the first time in a dirty way...I see a point in the recylcling bins, and trash cans of the world.

Maybe we should be incorporating trash cans in our web applications as well, and get rid of those ridiculous confirm boxes.

Posted by christopher andersson at 11:11 PM

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We've all been there. You have a bunch of boxes waiting for you at home. Each of which is filled with some strange looking box, wires or other unrecognizable object. Maybe it's the components to a new machine you are building; or the components to a new home theater system. Whatever this collection of nondescript brown boxes may be, in the end the idea is the same; you've got a project, and you are getting it done tonight. Never mind the fact that it's a workday and you got home late; nothing can stop this.

Then panic strikes.

You've dedicated 5 hours to this project, and it's well into the night when you realize you don't have the last cable, screw or plug. All of the stores that first pop into your head have been closed for hours, and all you can think about is this wonderful piece of whatever that you've waited for, and toiled for hours putting together...and it's just going to sit there for another 15 hours or so.

I needed coax cable. I searched through all of the bins I have ripping apart balls of wires that probably haven't been touched since 1997, and still no dice. I decided to hit the streets.

My destination was Times Square. My thought was I would go to one of the electronic shops which rip off tourists regularly hoping they would have spare cable. 15 minutes of walking through 20 degree NY streets past 3 strip clubs, 7 porn shops and one questionable gender hooker I found a store which sold me 12 feet of coax at a price I hope to soon forget.

Thank you generic NY electronic shop; may you rip off many a tourist and fools like me for years to come.

Posted by christopher andersson at 12:33 AM

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but how can you deny that?

Posted by christopher andersson at 3:01 AM

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Like setting up any free or open source software there are always issues which are not detailed in the installation instructions. I figured I would post the differences that I encountered.

First let me detail my platform:

Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition
Movable Type 3.14
MySQL 4.1
Active Perl 5.8.4

After installing MySQL and Active Perl you have to enable web server extensions for cgi applications.

If you are planning on using MySQL and you are in a windows environment then you have to install the MySQL ODBC drivers. To do this you have to enter the Perl Package Manager command prompt, which is not as simple as typing ppm at the command line as the Moveable Type instructions specify. You have to start ppm by navigating to the program group in your start menu, and starting it from there. There is most likely another way to do it, but that was the easiest way I found of starting it up.

Once at the ppm command prompt type the following two command's:
ppm> install DBI
ppm> install DBD-MySQL

This will install all the necessary software for connecting to a MySQL DB from perl.

Finally where I got so frustrated setting up Movable Type I was ready to throw my laptop out the window was when trying to run mt-load.cgi which is the last step in the setup process. I kept on receiving an error when the cgi was trying to connect to MySQL. To get around this problem you need to use the MySQL old password format for your database user. To set your database password in the old format use this SQL statement:

update
user
set
password = old_password('passwordHere')
where
user = 'userHere';

Following all of the other instructions in the Movable Type install other than what I have specified above should allow a smooth install on a Windows OS.

Posted by christopher andersson at 4:18 PM

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We had a lot of fun with this ... something completely harmless, and absolutely hilarious. Stuffed.

Posted by christopher andersson at 11:30 AM

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It's approaching the end of the workday, and I've checked this blog about 30 times for some stupid reason. The excitement of what I can do along with the apprehension of people I know reading whatever spews out of my head is not allowing me to concentrate at work. Hopefully I've done a good thing by following the other ridiculous numbers of bloggers out there.

Posted by christopher andersson at 4:34 PM

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Finally got the motiviation to setup a proper blog. It only took me about 5 hours; and I'm ready to pass out, but who can stop a project like this mid-way?

I'll make sure to post the difficulties I had in setting up Movable Type later today as I'm sure I have a huge audience just waiting for me already.

Posted by christopher andersson at 1:56 AM

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