Breaking the silence …

Yes, things have been quite but not really due to a desire on my part to remain quiet :p Rather, it has been due to the fac that I just simply hate to post using the web interface and my work on Blog to get it working with WP was progressing very slowly. Actually, the Blog coding was doing pretty well generally but it was the little stuff where things were going crazy. For instance, I got Blog to retrieve posts from a WP server with no problems at all and to even post back to a WP server but then, Blog seemed to develop a weird slow down effect in selecting a post for the very first time. I finally traced that to the PlusMemo component though I’m still not sure how/why this happens. I’ve kind of sidetracked that problem for the moment but then I started getting another error where Blog seems to hang for the longest time before it shuts down and sometimes I get an access violation error. So, I’ve been struggling with all these problems and while I have stuff to post about, I can’t post because there are just too many problems and I’m just not that sure of Blog itself. Yeah, I know I can use the web interface to post but there’s no point in taking the easy way out :p

And then it happens …

I’d tested the WP blacklist plugin quite extensively and it all seemed to work fine on my notebook machine and so I uploaded it yesterday and set it up for this site. And of course, I never tested the plugin on the site since it had worked before :p That is just asking for things to fail and fail they did – and most spectacularly too. Anybody who tried to post a comment probably got hit with a long string of PHP errors and not much else. Ainslie, who’d tried to post a comment earlier and couldn’t (due to a different error – this time due to me trying to set up permalinks with a nice directory structure :p) let me know about the problem and when I tried it, sure enough it wouldn’t work. So tried to fix it on the server itself for a bit. Bad idea! I finally simply turned off the blacklisting on the server and went back to my local machine. I could duplicate one of the PHP errors on the local machine and after a bit, I figured out what was wrong – there was a logical error in the code where I was checking for IP bans. If there were no IP addresses in the ban list (when I originally tested, there was of course an IP address entered for testing purposes), you get a PHP error. I fixed the code, tested on the local machine and it seemed fine. So I upload to the server and try again … another error! So I recreate the blacklist that I use on my local machine off Jay Allen’s blacklist file and try again and this time I get the error on the local machine too :p So I took a look at what was happening and it turns out that the blacklist that I’d originally imported off of had a few of the regular expressions modified so that they wouldn’t throw a fit with PHP. Unfortunately, when I pulled the list from Jay Allen’s site, I got the stuff as Jay Allen had them and PHP seemed to gag on that. I finally figured out how I should modify the fetched blacklist to play nice with PHP and ran through another round of testing and everything seemed to work fine. So back I went to the server with the blacklist and finally it all worked fine 🙂 Ah well, I’m glad that it works fine now – or at least it seems to … So I guess it’s time to add a few more plugins to the mix to see how soon things will break again :p

The fairest of them all …

Yes, I’ve finally switched … and not only have I switched, but I’ve switched in a big way :p I switched over to using WP yesterday and since then, I’ve updated my install twice – first to the WP 1.2 RC2 that was available for download yesterday and today to the WP 1.2 final. Not only that, I’ve also in this timeframe, written a script to import all of my MT entries, categories, users and comments to WP and a plugin to allow me to blacklist comments posters so as to get rid of all that pesky comment spam.
Sure, there was an existing WP script to import from MT, but I hated how it worked and there was already an existing hack for the blacklist functionality but I hated having to modify the source files and then having to do that again when I upgraded to a newer version – so the plugin takes care of all that nicely 🙂 And now I want to get cracking on Blog so that I can get back to posting here via Blog but that looks as if it might take a while since the blacklist plugin is keeping me busy these days. But then again, the first release of the plugin is ready – I’ve actually installed it here already and it seems to work fine :p So maybe it’s time to move back to Blog …

Miscellanea

I was planning to do some work on the Blog code today but a friend of mine asked me to take a look at an HTML page she’d done since the page wasn’t working properly, and I got sidetracked. She was using a lot of layers and one layer was not aligning properly. Now a simple word of warning, if the following sounds condescending or patronizing, I can only say that it wasn’t meant to be – I hate people being oh-so-high-and-mighty-just-because-they-know-something-that-others-don’t and try not to be that way myself but sometimes I get the feeling that I come across as if I am what I hate most. Well, anyway, this was not meant to sound like that :p The problem she had (and the situation itself) was an interesting one and so I thought of writing about it. She had over 20 DIV layers each nested within the other and when she gave me the source code to look at, I didn’t realize this was the case. I however, am unable to take a look at code and then simply decide what was wrong – I always need to putter around a bit with the code before I get a "feel" for it. So I began reformatting the source so that the tags would be indented and so I would be able to figure out if there were any non-terminated tags. The end result? I ended up removing all the DIV tag nestings :p I realized my error only after about an hour of work and then had to go back and work from the original code but actually figured out the problem – it was indeed in the DIV tag nesting and the indenting did help – it’s just that I’d never seen like 20 levels of nested DIV tags 🙂

My friend Robin, who’s probably my closest friend in real-life, is leaving the company for a different company. He joined about a year after I’d been with the current company (the first time I was with them) and stayed on when I left to go to the US and now he’s leaving. Since I hardly go out after work and don’t socialize much, he and I basically associate only at work. Wonder what’ll happen when he leaves? Of course, he and I are pretty similar in that we’ll both pick up a friendship after years but wouldn’t try to maintain the ties of friendship while we are in different places. So we’ll probably drop out of touch unless of course, he happens to be online from his next place of work :p Robin leaving is going to put me in an awkward situation in a way – it is possible that quite a bit of his work is going to come my way and I might not like doing that. I’m tempted to find a different job quickly so that I can leave at the same time as him (not that I’m not looking now mind you – but currently it’s kind of a laid back search … :p) but then again, I don’t know … I guess it’s best to wait and see in this case …

I’ve been playing "Rise of Nations" the last couple of days and if you are a "Civilization" and "Command and Conquer" fan, you’ll probably love the game since it seems to be a cross between the two :p In fact, I’ve only played the game only twice so far – once last night and once today but I’m hooked! The game play is interesting, fast and keeps you moving all over the place – and I’ve only played the tutorials so far :p In a way, the game seems to be what Microsoft tried to do with "Age of Mythologies" (incidentally, this is a Microsoft game too but developed by Big Huge Games whereas AoM was developed by Ensemble Studios) but I feel that this succeeds where AoM failed. I didn’t like the feel of AoM what with the full 3D engine and the kind of blocky looking graphics. While not 3D, "Rise of Nations" looks better and plays better – at least in my opinion. I’ll have to get in to a couple of actual games before I can tell for sure but considering that I started the first tutorial last night around 8 o’clock and didn’t even realize it was 10 o’clock till I started losing <g>, it seems to me as if I’ve found a new addiction :p

Raving rant ….

Sometimes things just keep on getting weirder – or maybe I am paranoid and imagine that they are weird to begin with :p I usually do my blogging in the morning before I leave for work but for the last couple of days, I can’t dial-in to my ISP at all from home in the mornings. Enemy action? Probably not – but I immediately start thinking that it’s weird that I have no dial-up in the mornings now but things are fine in the evening – at least it was yesterday. Maybe the guy in charge just sleeps through the night and does not get up till about 8 o’clock or so and by that time, I’m already at work. Another mystery to be solved … one of these days :p

I use BlogMan to make these posts since it gives me the familiar interface of Blog and provides spell-check and a thesaurus while letting me post to my Movable Type installation on my server. However, I discovered yesterday that I can’t retrieve older posts from the server (posts that I did not make from this machine – otherwise the post would be in BlogMan of course …) because the latest release of Movable Type has changed some of the API functions. Argh! Why can’t they make up their freaking minds in the first place so that I don’t have to keep on updating the code? Now I’ll have to figure out which version of MT is on the server and depending on that, call a different version of the API function – if that is even possible that is!! Sorry, I’m calm now …. and barely frothing at the mouth :p Oh well, another bit of code to do and I just don’t feel like coding. I’d like to roll into a ball and just lie there dreaming and thinking … but oh well, we can’t always have what we want :p

Of work, vampires and various other things …

I stayed at home since I felt like a little bit of rest since I’ve not been feeling too well the last few days – plus, I’ve been at work for almost everyday for the last month or so. So it was time for a little break :p Incidentally, I need to learn to keep my mouth shut – or at least not be totally honest all the time <vbg> This friend of mine from work asked me about my site since he’d seen some of the PhotoShop work I was doing for the SM layout and I gave him the URL – I didn’t realize till after I’d given him the URL that I talk about work and the current situation with the boss etc. here. Of course, it’s no big deal since he’s a very good friend but the problem is that there is the possibility that somebody else from work will visit next and then somebody else and so on till the site becomes an open secret and before I know it, the boss himself will be reading it :p Ah well …

Since I was at home today, I actually managed to get a lot of work done on this new project that I got started on. It’s basically a tagboard system which runs on your server but anybody can sign up for their own tagboard off your server 🙂 The source is based off an existing system called QBoard but they decided to opensource it and put it up as a project on SourceForge. I had picked up the source a while back but couldn’t install it at first because the installer was a bit clunky – I began cleaning up the installer to suit my need, then spoke to the main developer and offered to give him my changes and he added me to the SourceForge project and so I actually sat down today and wrote a full-blown installer for it in PHP :p It all seems to work pretty well but I’ll probably have to do a little more testing and then it’ll probably get released on SourceForge.

Other than that, I’ve been watching the DVD collection of "Kindred: the Embraced". When I first saw the show (must have been five or six years ago) I thought that it was pretty cool but when I saw it this time, I was struck by how bad the show looked and how cheesy the acting was :p At first, I wasn’t sure if it was the second viewing or if it was just the mood I was in but now I think maybe it was just the original show which was so bad. I don’t think I’d seen the original the first time but it was on the DVD collection and I watched it. Of course, I watched the original yesterday (when I was feeling really bad) and I watched three more episodes today (when I was feeling better) and so I am not so sure if my frame of mind had something to do with it or not :p But I kind of like the three episodes I watched today and am again becoming hooked on the story …

Under the weather …

I’m not feeling too well – both my parents are sick at home and I think they’ve passed on the virus to me too :p My parents left for the other house in Kurunegala on Friday and I’ve been fending for myself over the weekend <g> They’ll be coming back today though and I will probably take the next few days off from work and stay at home since I have a feeling that I’m going to be even more sick than I am already. Ah well – this is the problem with not being sick more than about once a year – when it hits you, it hits you bad :p I am hoping to get some work done while I’m at home – either on the layout for The Developer’s Corner or on the freeqboard project (which is an opensource project at SourceForge) since I’ve been asked to come onboard as a developer for the project. I’ve not done much PHP and mySQL development work (except to do the usual hacks to pre-created scripts to get them working) and I’m looking forward to seeing if I can do something there. There’s so much work to be done in this world that it’s simply amazing that I get anything done at all 🙂