Lumpy's Corner

Well, looks like i finally got it up and runiing... A blog...

The only thing is that it is so late.... I can't really think of much to say.

how do you set the time on this darn thing?

Well this took like two hours but I finally got the CSS working, FTP working, and even figured out how to set the time... Everyone is even leaving the lockergnome chat room. I am just like too excited to sleep. Three valid pages on my site. ALL valid XHTML and now a blog. Too kool!!!

I really should just go to bed. But I know that is not an option. I am obsessed right now...

Well, I did have a pretty good day all in all. I am finally starting to get the hang of this XHTML and actually generating pages as a pretty decent rate. Work is going much better, things are starting to get real organized and we have a good crew.

Considering it is 3:30 AM, I am going to bed short tonight. Hopefully, I will have more to say tomorrow.

So much for a short, sweet, goodnight blog, insomnia set in so I thought I might try to get the movable type thing going except it is now five AM and It's still waiting for it to finish it's FTP. Then all I get to do is debug it!!.

Ahh the pleasure of being a complete, moronic n00b! And MySQL takes forever to run on the server.

Well it is almost now noon. Still haven't figured it out. I can't find where to set the file authorization. Time to give up' I have to go to work.

Well 34 hours later and I think i got everything all debugged. I do have a valid CSS. After I post this I am praying for the valid page.

I got to meet Foofy finally. But i really didn't get to say much to the blog master because i was too busy trying to work all the kinks out of this. It was really a mixed bag because I also got to meet Randy....

I see what you mean dil... My n00b ass even had to kick him around.

Maybe i will extend this in a bit but i am more concerned with validating the code tonight than much else...

l8tr

What this site is about.

For those of you who have visited here before, you will have noticed things have changed much. I have opted to go with a simpler cleaner look in blog format. I owe much of this look to Blogmaster Foofy, Dilandou and Geek who have all helped me in their own way.

First off Foofy's site Blogstyles.com is where I got the style sheet and templates for this site. This made the whole process much easier than had I started from scratch.

Then there is Dilandou. I aptly refer to this man as "Dil the Jedi Code Master". He sat for hours in front of his PC an ocean away and coached me through the process of writing my first page of valid XHTML code.

Dil convinced me to go KISS and I promptly burned my "Dreamweamer" CD (with lighter fluid) and switched over to GVIM. This really got me going. Then he brought up the idea of using a style sheet. Again with Dil online, a simple CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) emerged next. It was this direction from then on. Of course, school comes first.

Sadly it was going to have to end. My course load would be just too demanding. But into a certain chat room entered a Canadian nicked Geek who likes to blog and even has a blog-support IRC channel. By the time I met him, I was ready to try "Movable Type"... Guess who walked me through that process? So I then had a blog running as an experiment. I blogged and liked it. Lumpy's Rabid Rants and Lunatic Ravings was born.

Well I finally got the "look" right.

Thanks to Geek, Dil, and diligence all you Internet Explorer users can even read it now. Funny what comment lines can do to ie.....

I have spent a few hours tonight modifying the blog rollling list so that will be all until after Christmas weekend. I will be going home to my parents and doubt I will blog much then. But when I get back, I plan to write like the fiend I am.

I know I have heard a good bit about my web site lameness of the late. Well I am finally getting a chance to try and remedy that SIN on my part. (Honestly, I never recalled promising to write any minimum number of blogs but since I have heard about it so much it must mean that someone is reading what I write.. go figure...)

So what is new? First off, I have added a "personal" blog due to some repeated requests. Second, I am adding a new category to this already clustered mess I refer to as a web site. That is where this little mess of a blog falls to the category is "general Site News". (I also never promised to be overly creative.) And no, that is not all there is... If you know me, of course, more... Just keep your pants on OK?... (well most of you anyhow, those of you who I wish to see pantless already know who you are and are free to do as you wish. :)))

This blog has been put off long enough. I was hoping to solicit a few other people's opinion but it looks like it is not going to happen. The original intent was to solicit the opinion of several people in the know on bloggin software. Of course, most of my contacts are also college students and major geeks. This means most of us disappear during the school year. That is exactly what happened here.

As far as what I prefer, I prefer Movable Type. I, however, am no expert. I like my older version because it supports multiple blogs and authors. (My old free version supports up to 5 authors and 5 blogs. The free 3.1 version supports 1 author and 3 blogs.) It works simple enough and well enough to meet all my needs. It is widely supported and numerous templates are available for it. I am comfortable with it, like it and endorse it.

As far as an expert, I turned to Geek who got me hooked on bloging and held my hand via Internet relay chat while I configured and modified Movable Type. All of what is written below, minus my comments in italics, is his penmanship.

Recent changes in the two most popular blogging tools, the buyout of Blogger and the revised licensing of Movable Type, have led many to look elsewhere for blogging software, and programmers, be they professional or beginner hobbyists, have stepped up to the plate to try to make the next Movable Type. There has also been an explosion in non-traditional blog uses, and I will also cover these, from PhotoBlogs to aggregate blogs.

Well all I have finally upgraded to MT (whatever the newer version is). I have also imported all of my other blogs into this site so excuse the temporary clutter.

I will be housecleaning soon.

BTW you can comment but I must approve it first. So if you think my member is small.. heh

Actually folks, it is the assimilation of several of my old looks. I am finished with the switch upgrade to Movable Type 3.15 and have imported everything into just one blog. It shall remain a few more days in this state of disarray but I shall have it looking decent again soon.

Lump has a busy boy. (Okay Sin, maybe better put a busy dirty old man.) I guess some one's writing tempted me to get busy with my site's CSS and such.

The site is now up and valid.

I hope to have a few more post up in a day or so.

Well, it should be simple enough.

All I want to do is take the content from a textbox, preserve its formatting and output into a php page. (Now, if you do not understand any of this, read no further.)

First of all there was this security issue of having it query the sql db and not allow an injection attack. Mucho thanks to Helio and Usrbingeek for help on that little issue. (And no, I did not forget, Helio does not have a website.)

I am not really doing much of a blog here. I am playing with my site's CSS and wanted to test something right quick.

I know it is not much but in the future any links which go to photographs (warning this one is REAL ugly) should look different than the other links on the site.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work.

Greetings Fellow Cyber Junkies,
I hope all is well with you. I just wanted to comment on a few things:

1. Thank You all for your advice on the comment and trackback spam. I have noted all of it. Currently my renaming of things seems to have it well in check. I do agree with the many of you who feel that is temporary. i am simply experimenting a bit to see how well different methods work.
2. Thank You all for the legit comments and I thank all the blog listing sites for the sudden jump in my site's traffic.
3. As far as linking to all those blog sites goes, I am in the process of editing my templates and will be doing a good bit of reworking the next few days so keep checking.

Keep coming back to the corner all,
Nice seeing you here,
Lumpy

I know I mentioned in a previous blog that I thought it odd the timing of my site's spam baragge. I also mentioned that Geek had warned me of a rather serious flaw in my version of Movable Type. Seems like some freak likes to try and force us to play "Texas Hold em' Poker" by comment spamming my blog. Heck we have a poker night at my Fraternity house almost every month and i still don't attend it and I live there. (Okay, maybe i do live on the Internet but the whole point is poker is not for me.) It was getting a bit old though. I was spending almost an hour a day deleting comment spam.

So I upgraded to MT 3.15 which allowed me to moderate comment postings. This was one possible solution but there is an inherant flaw in it. I spend just as much time deleting them. (Well actually a little bit less cause MT lets you do it enmass now.) Unfortunately, things actually got worse. I started receiving trackback spam as well. I was recieving spams at a rate of about 60-90 comments and/or trackbacks per hour. I noticed the attack early one morning while I was at work. The script ate about 3% of my monthly bandwidth in, what appeared to be, about 6 hours.

What did I do? Well, I started off doing what I do best, I found the comment script and broke it. I know this may seem like a ridiculous place to start but I had to use the skills I had. I had a bit of an idea as to what else I could try but i wanted something rather expedient. I am, after all, the expert at making programs and scripts not work.

Well I finally got the upgrade to 3.2 working. It is amazing what a misplaced pound sign can do to you configuration file and cgi script.

I know it does not really look too different but I have changed things around here at the corner again. Some of the changes are:

• First of all, I have upgraded to Movable Type 3.2. I know it took me a while but I have just been busy and have had less than optimal connectivity. It is a good upgrade. So far, I like it very much. Other than being a total n00b dork with a pound sign, install was easy.
• I tried to install a captcha and dorked the server. No biggie.
• I found this neato RSS to JavaScript converter. Kudos to Amy Gahran at Contentious for bloging about it. I am now using this service along with Delicious to add some things to this site.
  • Off to the left there is now a list of my more recent comments.
  • Just below that is a list of my more recent additions to my delicious account.
• I put some of the old stuff back up on this site. I did so because of popular request. I added a table below the blog body for this stuff. I think it looks cluttered but, if it bothers you, do what I do. Just grab the RSS feed.

I have changed things around a bit more here at the corner. I have added another color code for news related links. They will appear black form now on.

I have also added the tags plugin for Movable Type. This will allow you to better search my 200+ posts. I have also removed all the category links at the bottom of the page for they are simply too redundant with the tag generator.

Speaking of Tags, I am also working on cleaning up my delicious tags. There is a great deal of standardizing that area of the web.

I have also added the JAVA based chat applet again.

I am trying Xenu to check for broken links on this site. So far, I am very impressed. It only took about 20 minutes to crawl this entire site via my 115.2 kbps modem.

Now I have to fix them all. :(

A bloggers battle with SPAM is on-going. Recently, I had a baragge of comment spam slipping through my filters. I decide it was time to try a few more plugins. I tried TCode and CCode. So far the result is perfect.

They say this is the ugliest dog in the world. I think it looks like a pet hell boy would have. Here are a few more "dog gone" links:

• Here is a bad dogie story
• If every vote does count, does this mean the world, like this blog post, has gone to the dogs?

Is this for real? Microsoft was distributing Ubuntu? And if that is the case, how should we take this?

I found this over at digg. Look at this photo for a few seconds and see if you can see what the problem is.

I can't resist this one. Don't we all wish we could have seen this?

I found this one via Digg. It is a great little piece of writing. If an Architects had To Work Like Webb Designers. Frank Lloyd Wright would have been challenged.

I know I say this often here but you gotta see this! There is another clip that I think is even funnier.

This one reminds me of the Cheech and Chong Movie, Up in Smoke - 1 ton of Pot Burn in warehouse Fire

Another one from Digg, Pentagon Admits E-mail has been Hacked!

One more link, check out this NASA Image of the Day.

Still playing with it and making suttle and not so suttle changes. I like this theme. I doan't like some of the issues with widgets. NTL I shall make it submit

I have often, likely too often, gone off about how great a resource all of the Gnomoies are at Wyldryde.org in the various channels they host. One of them being the person behind this stunt. Before I saw that video this AM, I had already begun this draft. I decided to add this little intro because Chris Pirillo has been mentioned here before and, after viewing it, I just had to... too funny.---

Nonetheless, before Chris' production served as a drafting intermission, it had dawned on me that I have yet to mention one geek of lore here at Lumpy's Corner. Possibly, the worse "how could I ..." in Cyber-history. Actually, I have mentioned this individual here before but only in passing.

I have mentioned many a blogger, author, podcaster and tech gurus here. I mention a podcast almost every show over at Radiostatic.am.

So, a podcaster, an author, a blogger, a tech guru... hmm. He is all of that. Am I leaving anything out?

Well I dunno who would want to look at me but it is up and running.. LumpyLive

Sometime life is so ironic. I was planning to visit my folks this weekend but my cat kookie decided it would be best for me to stay home and deal with his infected eye. Instead of getting better after visiting the vet on Wednesday, the poor feline's eye was only getting cloudier on Saturday. The vet gave me additional instructions. Meaning more frequent applications of eye irrigation and eye ointment.

Now both of my feline roommates are very well behaved and docile animals. This however matters little when the animal does not understand that the "treatment" going to benefit him. His only though it "God gave me claws, you are not putting that stuff on my eye!"..

I have found that the only method I can deal with the furry spastic fearful ball of fur is to toss the poor little bugger into a military laundry bag. The draw string allows just enough cloth to bunch up around his neck so that he can't get those claws into me and ruin another set of pants but not tight tnough to choke him or bind his neck. He is actually adapting well to this new 5 time per day ritual. He hasn't hissed and growled since Saturday now.