The Geeks Blog

Sorry Blogger. I look at my blog here, and though it is really nice, I find myself longing for a UserLand Weblog instead. I do not like the date based indexing, and much prefer the title based indexing. To my knowledge the blogger service does not have any sort of format choice, and trust me, I have looked. I have searched site after site, but all of the Blogger blogs I have seen go by time and date, not title and date. I am sure I could work it out if I truly wanted to, but I shouldn't have to. I could remove the code for time and just set it up by title my own way. The problem with this is I also dislike the archiving form, whereas it saves and index's by date. One additional problem is that for anything beyond the first paragraph in each post I have to insert the code telling it to keep the text black. This is a major pain in my ass. Dave! Please accept one more weblog user????

Oh, and I forgot to mention, Blogger is screwing up, yet again. I guess they are still not used to their own popularity. Today is really not my day, that's all I have to say.

Ok, if you are a reader of Cheyenne, AKA Gnome Girl, you will see she had gone smiley happy today. Admittedly I have not be in the smiley mood lately, but I do occasionally like to signify true meaning by smiley(eg: when I am joking but it could be taken seriously, I will put a ;-D at the end of a post) and so forth, so I was interested in this. I left a comment inquiring as to how it is done, and Chey got back to me and said that the code is from the So Very Posh blog, specifically this post.

Now I am really interested in this as more of a time saver as that post also shows hoe to assign a set of code, like ::sysblog:: to bring up a link, like <a href="http://www.sysblog.com">Sysblog</a>. The only problem, as I just old Cheyenne, is I want and need to know when in the process that the code is parsed. If I were to look at the source of a page with this, would the code show up as ::sysblog:: is a cool blog, or would is show up as <a href="http://www.sysblog.com">Sysblog</a> is a cool blog?? I would really like it to parse and output the right code.

Ok, so I looked a litte closer to the info on the page detailing how it is done, and it looks promising. The code is parsed and replaced before it gets posted, so when you look at the code again it will show up as the html instead of the code it uses to replace. Basically ::sysblog:: would literally turn into <a href="http://www.sysblog.com">Sysblog</a>. This is what I wanted.

Ok, that last post isn't displaying right. Therefore, here is the uploaded text file with the right info. The problem, I thought, was that the links to Mike, :bob:, and Brian had unescaped /'s. That did nothing. I see it is having some problem with the one for Keith, which I don't understand. This is why I do not program, and only code in HTML. HTML is very simple and easy to use. This.. well, makes no sense to me. Yes, a Geek without knowledge of perl or CGI. Bah. HELP!!!!!

Ok, so I heard back from the originator of this MT hack, and she says it is fine to be putting together a package for this, as long as I give the necessary credit. I have no problem with that, and planned to credit extensively. I just think it will be easier for people to use the hack if it is easier explained to the users. Now, I need to the smiley's. She pointed me to mysmileys.com(I think) and I will look. Is there any other GPL'd smiley's you all know of? Is this something that would be of interest to you all? Would it be better as an MT feature with a GUI interface? Please, voice your opinions.

I just saw a bit on Fortune's cool companies to work for bit on CNN that showed that on their list is Pyra Labs, the people behind Blogger and a bunch of other cool stuff. I have never heard Blog's described so... politically. It was neat to see that blog's, in some way or form, have really caught on and are being looked at by places like fortune and CNN. So, when can we expect to see the CNN Time/Warner blog series?

No, I am not copying Mike. I heard about this last night from Jim, and have been putting it through it's paces. It's working quite well, and with a couple dozen blogs in there, it is working well. The system works like this. You add toaster@zaks.demon.co.uk and then start adding. It will tell you if you make a mistake in a command, but not if a blog URL is bad, so be sure to check those out. Valid commands(case insensitive) are:
ADD http://some.url/
DEL http://some.url/
CEAR
IMPORT http://some.radio.url/myChannels.opml
LIST

this is a really cool tool, and can grow to be addictive. It can, though, get annoying if someone updates a lot. I also wish it had extensions into other IM's, and that is could export a file and send it to you, in the ever popular opml format, for integration into the Radio tool or other's. For a free, easy to use and easy to remove tool, it is fun though, and it can only grow more useful and popular.

Ahh, so they have done it now, haven't they? Ben & Mena have a new version of Moveable Type out, with an option for installation or conversion between the db they use now, and MySQL. I am not sure if this is a critical update, but I will take a look at it while I work on getting Jim up and running with this, assuming his server has MySQL. Either way,

I expect I will be able to give a better run down after the long weekend we have this weekend, so look for a more detailed view of MT 2.2 and how to get it installed. This may be a Tip, but I will be nice and give a few days or weeks of it in the public domain before moving it to the Subscriber section. Please, do consider a subscription, though, because it is worth it.

Oh, and check out the new site layout. More on that tonight or tomorrow.

Ok, I have spent a thoroughly enjoyable evening reading through the updated documentation for the newly released Moveable Type 2.2. It looks mostly the same, with only a few small differences, mostly in the MySQL stuff. I am not through the docs, but they mostly look the same to me. So, now I move on to getting two copies, one Berkeley and one MySQL, working. Jim has granted the permissions to install the Berkeley, which I know more about, on the digitaldrivel site, and the MySQL on another of his domains. So, I guess I will have a tutorial sometime next week, and I know where my weekend, except for Monday, will have gone. Night.

Well, it turned out to be easier to install MT on a highly secured system then I thought. The problem turned out to be that all files except for the images and docs folders need to be in the cgi-bin folder if the system requires cgi and pl files to be put there. Once that was done it was simply a matter of getting the static content mapped right, and then everything went good. It is now installed, and next I will be starting on the MySQL version.

I would say that once we get the export import set straight, and a nice looking template, you may just see Jim on a blog system that will be proudly powered by Moveable Type. I hope to have all of this done by Friday, but it all depends on how long it takes to figure out the import export from his current Nucleus installation. Either way, Jim, as per my email: 'Welcome, you've got Blog!'

Well, the Geek Photo's Blog is ready. I emailed the contact email on BlogStyles, and Kristine emailed me back. Over a couple of emails we figured out that the tutorial forgets one step, in that the default for new blog's is that Convert Line Breaks is on. This needs to be turned off, and if you have already made a post, you need to go in to that post or posts and change them individually. Once that is done, it will be done right. A warning, the blog automatically displays all pictures at 500px x 333px and a thumbnail of 100px x 66px, so make sure that your pictures are automatically made this size. I look forward to more style coming from this site soon.

Well, I said I would, and I just did. A short how to using the import feature of Moveable Type to post offline posts is done, and will be sent off for comments and corrections by Jim and his SO Candi, and will likely be the second tutorial for that section by the time the top secret geek site launches around the 23rd of August, 20 or so days away. It is a short one, but I think it is quite useful, and hopefully some of you who go through the stuff I am now will feel the same way too.

Google! DayPop! This is my blogchalk: English, Canada, Winnipeg, Downtown, Dwight, Male, 21-25!

As of the last few months, Blogrolling.com has become a major tool to blogger's, one of the top 5 or 10 at least. Just ask it's creator, who will tell you how much his server is getting hit these days. :mike: mentioned a few days ago the list for looking up who uses Blogrolling.com for linking to your site, and I finally had a chance to look it up for this blog when I got home. Up until recently all of the blogger's on the list were known to me, I linked back to them, and read them at least once a week. I have noticed as of late a few blog's have shown up both there and in my referral reports from :blogo:, even a new one today!

Basically the last five except for :josh:'s are unknown to me, and I have at best had cursory glances, so I will look at them and give quick thoughts on them. The first is titled curiously Uhhhhhhh...(What's going on here?), and is written, I see form his Blog chalk, by a guy names Scott from Vancouver, Washington. not Vancouver, BC like I would have assumed. Scott if you read this, she sure looks stoned to me. :-{D>

The next is Slobokan's Site O' Schtuff, which while it could use some design help(or maybe it is a problem with screen res) appears to be a very useful site, focusing on news of all kinds, but the geek code gives the impression of a geek bent to it. It has streaming stock roundup(major indexes up or down and by how much) as well as news headlines, though all of them are too small to be read easily. It could use a bit of help, for someone looking for a blog to help improve, but overall it has a lot of features and could quickly rise to fame.

Third up is one I am not sure I have mentioned before, but who is a Fellow Shaw customer, and Canadian(nice CTV link, I'll have to add that to my own), it's Paul's blog, though I have no idea where in this great nation he is located! I guess if he is Canadian it shouldn't matter, and that he is a Shaw customer reduces it a bit, but either way, nice blog, and email me!(said in a Marty Sargent desperation plea). I notice Paul is a gnomie, so hopefully we can have a drink and chat it up at the show in 1 week(wow, that soon, eh?). See ya there! Ohh! I found it. He's in Sault Ste. Marie, ON. Cool! the Soo is nice I am told. Traveling with the Canadian Gnomedexer's?

Next is the Blog of Brad McRoberts, a Christian who lists me as a Tech Blog, so obviously Mr. McRoberts is a Christian techie, though I am not sure how he would have come across this blog. I am a Christian, though fallen of sorts, and I wouldn't think the language of my blog would be appropriate for a reader of a blog where the last three posts were his worrying about the church, about the lack of church attendance by many Americans, as well as one about marriage and quality thereof. all good topics, but far beyond my content, I think. Perhaps he agrees with my views on the cries of death to all Arabs.

Last up is one that confused me at first, as I thought maybe Jazy's Blog had moved, but I checked to be sure and it really looks like a different one. There's only one problem I have with the layout of Jazz's Life, and that is the post text gets increasingly smaller as the posts go on, until it is entirely unintelligible. Perhaps changing my text size to largest would fix this, but I would rather post this to the author, hoping he reads my blog.

I am also unsure of how he got here, perhaps my frequent Diana Krall mentions, and while I do love a good Jazz tune every so often, I think my brother :shawn: is more of a fan of the genre. Upon reading the About the Author page, it appears he is a Web Designer from Montreal, which gives us 3 things in common(he likely speaks some French, we are both Canadians, and web designer's by choice and love of the art). I am not sure if Jeff reads my little piece of the net often, but I beg, please fix the code that makes old posts shrink to unreadable sizes. I am not sure what browser you read it on, but it is hard to only be able to read 3 posts per visit.

So, there you have it. 5 or 6 new links for you all, along with the other linkers like :mike:, :jim:, :josh:, :gnome:, Sam, Tom, MSML, Stuart, and apparently myself. there is the total of the 15 who link to me using Blogrolling.com. Feel free to search by URL for any other blog or site that might be linked to.

Well, at work today I was bored, and surfed to some news sites and what did I see but an add on MSNBC that had the word Blogosphere in it. That is a term that is rarely used in blogging, never mind news articles, so it needless to say, caught my attention. The article, by, I assume, author Steven Levy(who's book Crypto I just finished, and it was awesome, more soon) who appears to have his own blog, and while he does a lot of good, and has some facts

I didn't know about, like the fact there is one new blog every 40 seconds or so, and there are about half a million blogs in existence now, but I don't know if I like the article. I mean I don't know who he used as a reference for it.More later when I have a chance to re read it under a less stressed air. It looks promising, and I will be sure to try to get a copy of the article the Free Press writer is going to be doing locally about Blogging, especially if I am in it.

Ok, so I know that the guy behind BlogRolling mentioned that any problems with Weblogs.com, which every update notification tool uses to check for updates, were the fault of Winer and the Userland crew. Well, I have noticed I have not had any updated alerts from BlogToaster in more then a day, and those I have had since getting back online have been sparse and missing several of my watched blogs. I really relied on that service to help me avoid having to go to blogs that weren't updated,and look forward to another one coming out, or that one being fixed.

I haven't had a chance to get a hold of Jason at Blogrolling.com since my return from Gnomedex, but since we spoke last I have swapped hard drives, done a complete reinstall of my OS and checked on the problem at different patch levels, and seeing as it does not change, my only possible idea at this point is ISP. I don't know how the error I get, 'Unterminated String Constant' could be from an ISP issue, or why they would do this, but I can find no other reasonable excuse for what I am experiencing. I know it is not my OS, HD, or patch levels. I cannot imagine how my modem or my other onboard hardware could cause this. Sadly, I cannot imagine how Shaw could either, but I am not much of a coder and don't understand the error. Neither does Jason. Curiouser and curiouser.

Well, as :brad: posted the other day, it appears, since it has been days since my last notification from BlogToaster, that it is at the very least, having serious issues, and at worst been removed by it's owner, when though it is still logged on to MSN and I can still get my list of blog watches. It was a useful service, but I am now forced to look for another way to be notified by something like IM when the thing goes down. Anyone else out there know of a decent replacement? I can't and therefore have been trying to move everything to AmphetaDesk(:josh:, your RSS feed is buggy, or so AD shows me, email or comment for more info if required), but it is not the same thing. I need a BlogToaster replacement, and I need one now!

I only just recently moved to Moveable Type 2.1, after being sure there were no additional bugs. Well, I just upgraded to the new version 2.5, which is available here, a little below the 1 year speech. I hardly realized how long it has been, indeed I thought MT was older then a year, but it is great to see that they have pretty much become the blogging tool for those who have flexible server's, and is considered step 2 in a lot of people's blogging lives. Yes, Blogger is step 1, for most, but for a lot of people Blogger is a short term step. I know it is a step I used only as long as it took to find a MT friendly server, which came in the form of :blogo:, my host. Ben, Mena, here's to another dozen years of making the best tool in blogging.

Ok, so I recently did a favor for :jim:, in that I set up a couple of new domains he controls with new Moveable Type installs, and one day yet I will be upgrading his blog to 2.5. So, I have to ask, what is required to be a professional MT installer? I mean I know Ben and Mena probably do most official, paid installs, but I don't require payment(I won't argue with a few bucks, though) I just like doing them. One of them was :candi:'s new blog, at the CandiAnn.com domain , and the other is at a new blog site yet to be formally announced, but it is a cool domain name. So, anyone else want an upgrade or install? I do :blogo: ones especially well. I have done my own, :brad:'s, and now 3 for Jim. I admit I have yet to do a MySQL one, but I would love to try!

I just did an install of MT in the SQL variety, and you know what? It is really, really easy. I did a few extra config options, and a quick upload, and it was done. Now, I need to do some work on the export file to make sure that it is right and properly edited before I import it. This move will likely throw off a lot of people, and I am not sure what export will do for the comments, nor any links thus far, but I assure you I will do my best to make sure things work seamlessly when I move to the MySQL install. As well, since this is the one that I will use for good, I am likely going to work on a new look for when I move to it. This may take awhile, but the look should be a lot cleaner and smoother when it is finally done. Hopefully this will allow for a cleaner install, and look.

So, I notice that Movable Type's long expected new version, 2.51, is now out and available. The previously mentioned Anil Dash has a feature that was added, and another new feature that I can simply say is for the programmers. It has a number of bug fixes from 2.5, and is looking to be an overall improvement. That said, I have downloaded all three(full with libraries, full, and upgrade) for my own uses, and so I do not have to go out and download them each time I need to do a new install or upgrade. I am going to soon contact those at MT and ask them what would be required to do MT installs as part of my business. I mean if I charge $30 for the install, and $20 goes for registration, then we both get paid, and blog template design would go to :jim:.

I still do not charge money, and am considering sending out offers to host a few of the better blogs out there that currently use Blog*Spot, and use Blogger for their hosting. Some of these include Life after b0rg, and a few other blogs. I would happily assign sub-domains, which is not bad for the time being, but then they could also point domains if they have them, to this sites DNS, and then I could accept those requests and redirect to their own sub-domain. It looks like it is going well, to be honest. So, WebGirlie, interested? :)

Ok, so I now have MozBlog working(forgot to patch) and w.bloggar(reboot fixed a crash) fine, for all they are worth. The first thing I noticed for both was the apparent inability to work with extended post area that MT has. I noticed this, I might add, only due to the fact the first post I was trying to edit was the TTT review, which you'll notice is the first in a very long time that I have used that section, preferring to just post it all on the front page. Well, the two tools appear to be decent enough, with all the tools you'd expect(bold, italics, underline, link) and many more that MT does not have by default. At this point, it seems both tools are currently adequate for use, though I will have to look harder to be sure.

Ok, so I have a few idea's of things I would like to see in the next version of Movable Type, other than what is already on taps, which I admit is a lot. The first thing, and a major one at that, is that I want the ability to create non post pages, like my maillist page, using the same template as my blog, and using the same links, and have it update when I change my main template. Right now to create a new page I need to save one of the pages, open an HTML editor, edit out all the post stuff, add in the content, and upload the new page with a new name. This is a pain. I also have to go back to those pages every time I update the code layout. This is far too complicated for the average user, and that is the customer base of MT. More idea's later.

Word is out today that Movable Type 2.6 has been released. I can think of at least a half dozen site I will be updating very soon, thankfully I think most of them are the same layout and similar configuration. Here is a link to the list of changes and how to make use of them, and here is a link to download. This is very cool, and it adds a lot of cool memes like the implementation of Creative Commons Licensing and XML-RPC auto discover, or RSD. I am waiting for 2.61, though, as this is always a good policy to follow.

On Thursday the author's of the Movable Type blogging tool, one of the most popular, respected and widely used blogging tools around announced that their long promised and developed Movable Type Pro software is almost done, and should be out sometime this summer. "A small sampling of some of the features that will be in Movable Type Pro:

Improved author management
Remote publishing
Custom entry fields
Integrated spellchecker
Registration for comments and posting"

The press release has more information, and they are describing the tool as "The first professional-grade personal publishing system". I hope to get a review copy to try out and review for :gm:, which I hope to announce is relaunching very soon.

I am shocked to read, for the first time(it broke 2 days ago) that Blogger's parent company, Pyra Labs, had been bought by Google, the one search engine that crawls blogs regularly enough to keep the results relevant. Evan announced it on Sunday, and the blogging and news stories have been spread far and wide. I even saw this covered on CNN, with a hilarious attempt to define blogging, and many errors in terminology and not one mention that blogger was the company bought.

In the end, I guess it is not so surprising that Google would go after Blogger, they are the usual launch pad of 90% of new blogger's, and they still house at least half of the numerous new blog's each year. Kottke.org says the feeling around the blogsphere is one of pride, and I have to agree, and I also feel the same sense of pride. When one of the biggest, and best known companies, one that has quickly become a verb, noun and every other form of descriptor, buys a blogging founder, one has to feel happy for the whole community.

Wired shows how the news of the buyout spread in true blogging fashion, by a blog like column from Dan Gillmore, then announced by Evan Williams, and even Doc, who is quoted as saying in true fashion, 'Holy Shit!', has blogged it, but not really given much commentary, other than "Pretty amazing: I was there and even now I still have less to say about the Bloogle Thing than anybody else. Just wait." I assure you all, this blog and the rest of the blogsphere is watching, waiting, and wondering. Evan has assured us this event is not likely to affect the frequent crawling of non Blogger(Bloogle?) blog's. Good thing, but I really had no doubt. Blogger and Google are both not that kind of business people.

The following is a post to the MT mail list, and proves why I always wait a revision or two after major releases:

Due to a vulnerability that's been discovered in the file Author.pm, it's imperative that any installation of 2.6 be upgraded immediately.

Download the new Author.pm file here:
http://www.movabletype.org/downloads/Author.pm
And replace the version on your server at lib/MT/Author.pm.

Note: If you have yet upgraded to 2.6, you may disregard this message
and upgrade to 2.61 at any time.

Thanks,
Mena

Please upgrade any 2.6 installs immediately. If you do not know how, please contact me, or someone else familiar with the tool, and we can do it for you very quickly but this file, as it says, is a major vulnerability. Apparently, according to :nfo: and the MT site, they are now at 2.62, though no word on what caused the next revision nor when this happened, as only just yesterday did they release version 2.61.

Ok, I found some more info on the new Movable Type 2.62 release.

Vulnerability in 2.6 and 2.61 02.17.2003 If you upgraded to 2.6 or 2.61, you need to upgrade immediately to 2.62. There is a security vulnerability in 2.6 and 2.61. If you have already upgraded, you can either download the upgrade distribution and perform a normal upgrade, or download the Author.pm file to replace the lib/MT/Author.pm on your server.

We're sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused. Because beta-testing with the number of testers we use makes it difficult to catch all bugs, we will most likely be implementing public beta tests in the future.

I like the idea of public beta's, and assure all of my users that I will be participating as soon as possible. So, once again, download the file, or the upgrade if that is your cup of tea, and I will be, this weekend I hope, upgrading and reinstalling as needed for the sites I maintain, users beware.

:Mike: just mentioned on his blog that he read on scripting.com about Microsoft's new blogging tool ASP .Net Community Starter Kit. Microsoft Watch reports that the tool "consists of application code, templates, documentation and forum-based help. According to Microsoft's own definition of the kit: 'The Community Starter Kit enables you to quickly create a community Web site such as a user group site, a developer resource site, or a news site.'"

Well, as I moved towards getting this redesign of my blog ready to go by my birthday, hopefully far sooner, I decided to make use of the new Creative Commons license that Ben and Mena have integrated into the tool in the 2.6x version, but got the following error
An error occurred: Undefined subroutine &MT::Util::cc_name called at lib/MT/App/CMS.pm line 3598.
This is a problem and while it is not critical, it is very heavily desired to get this working before the new design is launched. If anyone has any idea why this is happening, and how to fix it, please let me know. Thanks.

I have been emailing and IM'ing with Jim today, and there seems to be a problem with his install of Movable Type. I am not sure what happened to it, but it is really messed up and giving off an error listed below under the MORE option. I am told this has spread to one other blog hosted on his hosting companies server, but not others, which is highly unusual. If anyone has seen this before on a previously good install on a Linux server, please do email me. As the MT pro on the server I want to resolve this issue quickly, to ensure the problem is done with and covered well, but at this point it is seemingly mysterious. Google shows a lot of sites who had the problem, but only MT on XP solutions.

America Online, the service that may well have brought about the use of the internet by the average consumer, has now decided it should turn down a now well worn path, one that they did not create, nor can they revolutionize. AOL Journals launched today, a service meant to take advantage of the blogging revolution, and one that AOL will hope will bring users to it, and stop the high turnover rates it experiences. "The launch of AOL Journals is part of an ongoing revamping of AOL's proprietary online service. Last month, AOL unveiled the latest version of its service, called AOL 9.0 Optimized, which places a heavy emphasis on appealing to broadband users through multimedia features and enhanced security. AOL's campaign to improve its service comes at a critical juncture. AOL is suffering from subscriber defections to broadband or cheaper dial-up services, and it is continuing to watch its online advertising and commerce revenues plummet. Subscriber declines are particularly troublesome, because AOL's subscription business was considered its bedrock throughout turbulent times for online advertising."

Google today announced they will be consolidating the Blogger and BloggerPro services and not, as many would expect, forcing Blogger's free users to upgrade, instead they are making the service once again completely free. According to CNet Even Williams, co-founder of Blogger said the following in an email: "Pro subscribers helped keep us going as a struggling start-up, when servers and bandwidth were at an extreme premium," Williams wrote. "We wanted to keep basic Blogger free, but we needed to start charging in order to keep the lights on…Today, as you may know, Blogger's situation is much different. For one thing, we're part of Google. Google has lots of computers and bandwidth. And Google believes blogs are important and good for the Web." It is good to see the service's new owners see the benefit to the net.

One of the web's most popular blog tools, Movable Type, has been found to have a little problem that is allowing spammers to use installations of the tool to send spam through other people's mail servers that are otherwise secured from such uses. The hole, in the mt-send-entry.cgi file, has been fixed by those who maintain the tool, and the patched file version is available by either single file download or by simply installing or upgrading to the current 2.64 version. On the same topic, of spam and blogs, MT-Blacklist version 1.62-beta is now available for beta testing for those on the cutting edge of their installs. The tool prevent annoying bots and users from spamming on your blogs, and gives an easy interface for removing those that do from being able to post.

In an email that both heralded the best of the season, and let the users of Movable Type know what is up with out favourite blog tool, Ben Trott has also warned us that there is a bad bug in the XML-RPC implementation, and those who use the tool should immediately get up to date. The ways to do this are wither by a full upgrade to 2.65, which includes the mt-send-entry.cgi fix
released about one month ago, and an Atom syndication template(no, no idea what this is). The other option is to just download a zip with a fixed XMLRPCServer.pm and upload this to the server housing the tool. Either way, please, fix your MT installs. As for the next version of MT, the word on 3.0 is "we plan to have a beta release in Q1 of 2004." Yes! Finally!

I have found out from Mike McBride that there is yet another new version of Movable Type, this one another attempt to solve the problem of automated comment spam. I will, though, not be as eager to install this one as I use MT Blacklist, and just got 2.65 installed. Still, those who have not installed MT Blacklist, and want to end the deluge of comment spam, please do check out the MT download page, and keep your eyes peeled, as this was a previously unannounced revision of the software, and no mail list publicity had been provided.

As there appears not to have been a major bug in MT for awhile, or it was just fixed now, there is a new version of Movable Type, 3.15, that need to be download by every user of the software all the way back to 1.0. They also have a plugin available if your version doesn't have a copy with it built in. The plugin has been tested with 3.x and 2.661, though may or may not work with older versions. This, as described by movabletype.org, "fixes a vulnerability in the mail sending packages for all Movable Type versions which allows malicious users to send email through the application to any number of arbitrary users. All users should install this update." As I write this I am in the middle of updating my version of MT(after backing up) and hope all MT users do the same. Thanks go to Aine, at her new location, who tipped me on this.

It becomes clearer every time I check the news from the blogosphere that two giants are gobbling up the sphere as we know it. Between Google, new comers to the sphere on the tool side with their purchase of Blogger, who have always widely supported bloggers as a valued source, and Six Apart, makers of the most widely used next step up from Blogger, who now have TypePad and LiveJournal under their belt, the movers and shakers of the blogoshpere's tool department are gradually fading. I don't think this is a bad thing, but it is something to note. WordPress is, I think, one of the few tools not likely to be gobbled up because it's Open Source and honestly, it's not all that great. Most people who use it only do so for 1 of 2 reasons. 1. It's free as in beer. 2 It's free as in speech.

A lot of the users I know who use WordPress do so because either they are rebelling from MT licensing or because they know someone who raves about it who does. I have tried Word Press, and while it does have features I like, a thorough look over the MT plugin landscape shows me many offerings that easily replicate the feature I liked most, and even some that replicate the features I hated most about it. I run 6 blogs off my single MT install. If I hadn't recently eliminated 3 that were never being used and the owners of which hadn't even logged on in several months, I would have more. I will not install 9 copies of WordPress. I will not do 9 updates every time they deign to update the tool, which seems to happen a lot.

Sorry, I shall now digress back to my topic. Movable Type is an awesome tool. TypePad is a far more powerful, but less self controlled tool. LiveJournal, and I will apologize now to those I know and respect who use it, is for the kiddies without much important to say. Sorry, but I have found far too much noise compared to signal in that community in the few times I have posted there, even compared to the relatively boring blogs maintained by most people. Maybe it's just easier to flame and troll on LJ, I don't know. Blogger, on the other hand, is an elegant beginners tool, easily grown out of by the more experienced and tech savvy among us in the blogosphere. It has it's uses, though. I tip my hat to the Giants of the Blogosphere, and wish them well in their reign.

So I am finally getting around to reading all my months old bloglines feeds, and I decided to hit the plugin makers first. The first one i hit was rayners.org, the maker of some of the most widely used plugins in the MT community. I was up to about December and I found his mention of a new plugin he was thinking about, called Workflow. The aspect of the plugin that attracted my eye was this "transferal of ownership of an individual entry from one author to another". This is something I have been looking for in a blog tool for a long time, but I have not the skill to code it myself. I always felt that it might be very important to a blog manager to be able to have posts and threads transferred from one person to another. Thanks David, you did it!

Sorry for being gone so long. You see, there was an issue with Movable Type in that I could not post to the website, but all of those who are on my site could. Very weird. However, my awesome host Jim over at Mindstorm Hosting made sure I was one of the first people set up on a new dedicated server they have set up, and while I am waiting for the DNS to propagate, you seeing this means that I can, in fact, post to my site and it is working. I would love to share with you the cause of the problem, give you a harrowing geek tale of how I singlehandedly fixed a bug that has, to this day, stumped the brains at Six Apart, but alas, I cannot, the only fix I found was fresh installing over here on the new server. Oh, yeah, and Justin is the kick ass tech support at Mindstorm!

Three cheers! Well, ok, 3.2 cheers. Movable Type, Six Apart's primary blog tool, has reached a new plateau, hitting version 3.2, what is being described as a new stepping stone for the tool. The new version has a new spam protection system built in, Spam Lookup, and has a number of changes that have become popular in the community built into the tool itself. There is also changes in the editing area, and a lot of changes in the management side, making it both different, but easier if you can take the time to learn where the feature you are looking for went. I look forward to installing it onto the Geek Blog blogs, and hope you'll all join me in applauding another amazing release from Six Apart.

I have recorded an audio blog, as I felt that voice for this was the best way to convey my thoughts. Enjoy.