December 29, 2003

Okay

Back to Trebuchet MS. I was getting a headache reading my own blog.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 09:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Christmas is over

Hence the change. Say it to yourselves: "change is good." Don't say it seven times in the mirror, though.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 02:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 28, 2003

Site news

I have updated the site to Movable Type version 2.65.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 05:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 18, 2003

Blatant Blegging Bash

It's that time of year again! I've updated the Paypal code (I noticed it didn't have a working email address anymore). Help keep Spleenville going; hit that tip jar! (There are alternatives on the page if you are having some sort of feud with Paypal. I think my Amazon wish list is working; other people have had trouble with theirs.)

Hey, if Andrew Sullivan can do it, why not me? I'm almost as good-looking! I've just gone and dyed my hair too.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 05:51 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 14, 2003

Blogchange

Okay, okay, due to popular demand (okay, due to the plea of one of my six readers) I have put this blog back in weblog format, instead of single entry format. Anyway, I find that I come across too many things to just put in one blog post. The restriction to post just one entry per day (or, well, no more than) intimidated me so that I had to force myself to write anything. Also, I have decided that you all suck, you lazy readers you, you are addicted to the index page, you wouldn't click on the "previous" link if your dying mother begged you to. Let's see if you've got the balls to scroll down. {Insane glare.}

Hem. Anyway, I'll post more soon. Maybe short little entries as I come across things. Maybe big long entries that I won't even bother to put in the "extended entries" box. Who knows. Stay tuned...

By the way, the "donate" link isn't broken. It leads to something. Hinty hinty. Xmas and all that. (Well, if Treacher can beg, why can't I? After all, Treacher is my hero!)

Posted by Andrea Harris at 11:50 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

November 13, 2003

Memo

Greetings.

You see before you the skeleton of the new blog. I'm too tired to go into lengthy explanations; suffice it to say I have been needing a change for some time and this is the beginning. I'll give out a hint: simplify.

I won't be keeping this exact style sheet, of course; it's just based on Movable Type's dull-but-safe "Clean" template. I have decided to take a one-post-per-page approach to the blog; I have never really been happy with the multi-entry, weblog-type look. I started doing a hand-coded diary-like thing back in 2000 (no link; it's on a Geocities site and that has long since gotten frooked up; besides, I can't remember the password) where I had a more Bleat-like format, and I'm going to try to go back to that to see if I like it better. Links to previous posts are either in "entries" to the left or you can click on "previous" at the bottom to navigate to the last post.

Also, I have closed all comments on my blog (you can read the ones that have already been posted, there just isn't an entry form to add any new ones); I am not at this stage sure whether or not I will bring them back. I have been in a bad mood for a variety of reasons, and I find that the usual snarky give-and-take has been more irritating lately than enlightening. Either the entire Blogospherical thing has jumped the shark, or the solar flares did something to everyone's brain. Or maybe I have had it up to here with everyone and everything. The latest blogfight, for instance, struck me as most ridiculous, but I was apparently in the minority. (However, I may just send that email to Du Toit yet. But that is for another entry.) In any case, when one is weary of being drawn into can-you-top-this-right-back-atcha-I'm-rubber-you're-glue comment wars, it behooves one to not provide an arena for this sort of thing to go on. So until (and if) I reopen commenting, if you really have some burning need to express to me your opinion on something I said, use the email address provided. (You know what to do with the "-at-" so don't even complain. I refuse to provide a clickable link so a zillion spammers can fill my email folders with spam.)

Coming soon: an "about" page, as soon as I decide what I want to say on it; improved formatting, etc. In the meantime, Good night.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 01:37 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 17, 2003

Hostmatters matters

Yeah, I couldn't get to my own blogs because of this either. My email and ftp service was also unreachable; it was as if the entire server had vanished. I was pissed, but I figured either it was some sort of DOS attack (as dipnut says) or a power outage of some sort. There was nothing to do about it but go to sleep, so I did.

Update: apparently it was a DOS attack, on a pro-Israel weblog hosted on this service. Well well well.

Update to update: more on this.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 05:42 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 14, 2003

Crap

Well that fizzled. I didn't see anything in the MT-Blacklist documentation about not being able to post an entry once it's implemented. The "rebuilding your site" message just sat there and sat there. It was like posting on fucking Blogspot. I can't figure this out, and I'm too tired to try. I guess I'll just stick with closing comments after fifteen days and deleting stupid viagggggraa spam by hand.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 09:50 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

test 3

oh yeah, another test

Posted by Andrea Harris at 09:35 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Testing

Test post, please ignore.

test 2

Posted by Andrea Harris at 09:15 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Destroy all spam

Well, some spambeast left some crap in the comments on one of the blogs here at Spleenville, so MT-Blacklist has been applied, and I have also added Kevin's lists of spammer websites to the configuration. We'll see if this stops the junk.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 09:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 29, 2003

Some cautions

I've been getting comment spam. Since I will be deleting the spam as soon as I am able to, it would probably be a good idea to refrain from commenting on it ("Why is that stuff about phenylatylalinineketomine here?" Ugh, spam" -- and so on).

Also, there is a nasty little troll who signs himself "A-V," or "Analogue Voter," who has just accused me of supporting dictators because I refused to get into some sort of tedious argument with him on his chosen topic. I will be deleting this person's further comments as soon as they appear (and I am sure they will -- he's too cowardly to post from a static IP address so banning his ass is not an option) so don't bother replying to any of his droppings.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 06:00 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

September 21, 2003

Domainatrix

Well. That was an odd and rather upsetting email to receive: someone I have never heard of who happened to have as their email name (the first part of a yahoo.com email name) the same combo of words that I used a couple of months ago to register as a domain name (for a site not currently for public consumption) sent me an alternately wheedling and snippy missive complaining about the fact that I had done so before this person thought of it.

Strange. Back when I was trying to think of a domain name for my bit of internet real estate, I naturally searched first for my own name. At the time I found that most combinations of "Andrea Harris" that I wanted were already taken. It never occurred to me to send these people an email berating them for registering the "andreaharris" combo before I was able to. In any case, I sent a reply to this person. I was polite, I think, but I also made it clear that I was not about to "give" my domain name to this person because they had an email address using the same word combination, and because, apparently, they felt that I had registered the domain as some sort of personal attack on them.

PS: It seems that now most combos of my name are free, except for .com. Anyway, this isn't me -- my painting style is somewhat different. And I'm not her either.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 11:06 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

September 12, 2003

Please stand by

I had a silly post up here but I decided that I was too pissed off to leave it up so it's gone to draft status for now. My apologies to the person I trackbacked; the post will be back later.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 10:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 10, 2003

Color suggestions

Note to self: perhaps I should go back to black; apparently that color scheme is a pest deterrent.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 01:49 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Well that looks like crap

No, I don't like it, but I am too tired to futz with this thing any more tonight. The background image is okay, but I am really dissatisfied with this color scheme. I hate "web safe" colors.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 01:27 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

September 09, 2003

Colors clash collide

Don't mind me, I'm just futzing around with the look again. Today was the first day that the weather had that autumnal feel (or as much of one as Central Florida gets): the sunlight had that certain silvery cast, the lower temps are down in the low seventies instead of the mid-seventies... and so on. Time for some changes.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 10:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 23, 2003

Work notes

Okay, the php randomizer script works just fine. That's one task down. (I wanted to find a really simple php randomizer script for loading random images or text. See the line at the top of the page; refresh a few times and you should get a new one.)

Posted by Andrea Harris at 11:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Gather, darkness!

Okay, that's all for now. Yes, I know it's dark. I feel like dark. Go here for blinding white light. More changes coming soon -- there might even be content!

Posted by Andrea Harris at 10:44 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Do not adjust your screen

Ooh, yes, I am once again in the mood for a site redesign. And later I'll be working on some other sites around here too. Oh yes, I will. You can't stop me! Bwahahaahahaaaa!

Posted by Andrea Harris at 09:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 19, 2003

An MT question

Does anyone know of a script or plugin that can implement something for Movable Type like the member registration capability that Pmachine uses? So far the closest plugin (or hack, or whatever it is) that I have found for MT is one which puts new comments on hold until the blog owner can review them. I'm more interested in something that makes people have to register in order to comment -- and that needs a real email address so the password can be sent to them. In other words, I am sick of pseudonymous posters who use fake email addresses to troll the blogs I run, and I'd rather not switch the site over to Pmachine (which I'd have to pay for if I wanted to run more than one blog from it) unless I absolutely have to.

PS: in other site news, I have made the individual comments linkable from the individual entry pages.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 08:40 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

August 05, 2003

And that's that

Okay, I have decided to close comments on all the posts until further notice. I just don't have time for either trollfights or normal discussion right now. I may not be posting here much from now on; this journal will be closed down or something close to that state very shortly. I thought I could make it last out the year but now the concept feels stale and I am getting that cramped feeling that is the equivalent of running out of pages in a diary and having to cram the last few entries on the endpaper.

Don't worry, when the new journal site is ready (yeah, I'm not about to stop writing, so you trolls can put the champagne back in the fridge) I will be putting up the announcement.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 10:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 04, 2003

Don't even bother

Whoever "yabba@hotmail.com" at IP address 210.50.216.165 is, your comment has been deleted and this IP banned. Yes, I get all my comments emailed to me automatically. I don't know who you are and I don't trust people who leave comments consisting solely of the word "test" in old posts on my blog. Also, your IP is too much like that of some joker I banned yesterday. If you keep it up, I'll ban your access to this entire domain. (That's in case you are the shithead who has been making an ass out of yourself over on Tim Blair's blog.)

Just so you know.

Update: yes, I was serious. (The relevant comments have been deleted. Don't worry, they weren't at all interesting, and the commenter knows what he/she said.)

Heh. Now anyone banned from the site -- the entire domain, mind -- will get redirected to this page. It's not much now, but I'll be dressing it up some later.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 07:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 26, 2003

Weirdness

Okay, that was weird. I just tried to post an entry with a trackback to someone and links and stuff and I got a "index.php parse error on line 92" code where my blog used to be. I was able to get into the management area just fine, I deleted the offending post and rebuilt the site, and everything was back to normal. Whatever. I think that this blog might be getting to "full" -- in any case, I may have to unveil my "surprise" earlier than I meant. Stay tuned...

Posted by Andrea Harris at 11:32 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

What's going on

Changes a-comin'. Stay tuned.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 10:03 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 17, 2003

Now that's what I call service

Wow. All I did was send a note to Hostmatters help desk saying I couldn't get my web protect utility to work, and they promptly set me up with a whole new control panel with more functionality! Kewl. icon_mrgreen.gif

Posted by Andrea Harris at 10:42 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

July 15, 2003

Addition to the site

If you look over to the left you'll see I've added a little blogroll. This has samples from my Top Secret Blogroll™, chosen at random. I will be changing the links from time to time, for no particular reason.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 11:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Site stuffage

The "closecomments" script (found here if you want to play with it) has been re-implemented. Now I can close comments on all my blogs at once. (It's been set to close comment threads older than 15 days.)

Posted by Andrea Harris at 10:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The ping's the thing

Okay, I've decided to manually ping for now, because I'm tired of all the pinging errors I'd get when I'd post from my site with auto-ping on, and also my new posts load faster if they don't have to ping every time. Weblogs.com's ping form seems to be having problems, but blo.gs and blogrolling.com's ping forms worked just fine. Now you'll see a little sign in your blogroll, if I remember to ping, anyway.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 07:14 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Donation updates

Someone donated to me through Yahoo! PayDirect, so I had to set up an account. The person who donated said that it was easier than Paypal for people who don't want to give all their bank info (I have never tried it myself) so I've added a link for people who'd rather not use PayPal.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 03:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Site fix

I've gone and reinstalled Textile, so now the old entries have the proper formatting.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 12:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Links problem

Aargh! Something I didn't expect to happen, and can't really figure out either, but importing all my Movable Type entries from the old site to the new site somehow changed all the filenames. (What was "http://www.spleenville.com/journal/archives/004067.php" is now apparently "http://spleenville.com/journal/archives/001865.php." I had no idea this would happen, but I did a fresh install of MT and imported the entries instead of just gzipping the files and moving them over, because I thought it would be easier. Oy. Sorry, guys.

Update: And any images I had loaded with popups don't work now. The thumbnails work, but the popup scripts don't. I may reload them one by one, or I may not.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 12:28 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

July 14, 2003

Site announcement

Okay, the spleenville.com domain is now resolving to the new site. Reset your bookmarks.

PS: I haven't re-selected the weblogs.com or the blo.gs pinging utility. I may not do so; I have noticed that posts load up much faster if each one doesn't have to ping. But you all visit my site religiously every hour, right?

Posted by Andrea Harris at 11:07 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

July 13, 2003

Things

I just realized why none of my imported posts have "convert line breaks" on; because they weren't saved that way, I had Textile installed on the other server. I haven't re-installed the plugin yet here. D'oh!

I meant to sleep all day, but I was awakened around 9am by some moron sounding their car horn over and over. Whoever it was is lucky I can't function without a pot of coffee in me. I was going for a walk, but the temperature is now in the nineties, so there is no way I'm leaving the house unless it is to get into my airconditioned car and drive somewhere else airconditioned.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 12:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

First new entry on the new site

Okay, that was fun. I reinstalled MT from scratch, imported my entries (old and new -- I also copied the ones from the old Spleenville World Domination HQ blog over, into its own site) and Tim Blair's as well. I redirected the domain name but it will take a day or two to resolve to the new nameservers so my blog is here (http://63.247.131.180/~lilith33/journal/) and Tim's is here (http://63.247.131.180/~lilith33/timblair/).

Further changes: I am not sure I'm going to keep the webmistress-at-spleenville.com address; for now just use my main Earthlink one (it's on the sidebar). I also changed my primary address on Paypal to the Earthlink address, so I updated the donation code.

Another thing: I was going to keep this particular blog for a year, but I have been experimenting with different blogging software, ones built with php, and I might open a new blog in a new folder. We'll see.

I still have to install my plugins and the close-multiple comment script and a few other things. I am doing all of this for fun, right? ;P

Oops, forgot: all the images I had on the other server are still sitting on my hardrive, I have to upload them, right now my old entries that had pictures with them will show pathetic broken image links. Oh well.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 05:26 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

July 12, 2003

Moving site

Okay, folks, I'll be moving the site tonight. If you get some weird messages just or the site won't load or a demon possesses your computer briefly and causes it to levitate, don't worry, all will be well eventually.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 10:18 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

As the blog turns

I just wanted to send a brief thanks to everyone who is sending me advice, suggestions, hosting offers, and donations -- thank you thank you thank you!

I have already set up compression on the site's main index page using the php thing from this site, and the leknor site confirms that it is now gzipped, so that should help. The spambot/spider/etc. usage is under investigation as we speak. I am still shopping possible new hosts. Repeat after me: chaos is our friend, chaos is our friend, chaos is our friend...

Posted by Andrea Harris at 02:22 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

July 11, 2003

Bandwidth problems

I need some help here: I just got a notification from my web administrator that this site is pulling 1 GB of bandwidth per day. My account allows 3 GB per month -- I can't afford this sort of thing. I will probably be moving the site soon, but even the plan I found only allows a little under 15 GB of bandwidth usage a month. Any suggestions of what could be causing this (beyond the rampant popularity of Tim Blair's site). I was thinking DNS attacks and things liket that; also is there anything I can do to make this site not so resource-intensive, if that will do anything about this problem.

Update: I took a look at the logfile for Tim's site for just today and one thing I did notice what that something called QuepasaCreep v0.9.14 hit the site hundreds of times just today. (I lost count after 110, and I was only a fraction into the logfile.) It seems to be some sort of search engine for Spanish websites -- I don't know why it's hitting this site, since it is not in Spanish. I found instances of other search engines hitting the site today, but they only seemed to do it once or twice. I wonder if that could be the culprit.

Update 2: this is another interesting page full of info. I need to learn how to set up an .htaccess file or edit my robots.txt or something, that is for sure.

Update 3: I've had a communiqué (I use that term 'cos it's neat) with the web administrator over at Cornerhost. He set up a bad bot-blocking thing on the .htaccess file, so maybe that will help; I also cut down the amount of entries showing on Tim Blair's main page, because it was getting pretty huge and just viewing it was sucking bandwidth. Question: would it help if I put some sort of file compression on the blog? Something like the various methods described on this site. I saw the magic phrase "curb your bandwidth usage," so I think I will try out one or the other of these.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 02:41 AM | Comments (26) | TrackBack

July 10, 2003

Possible future site changes?

I could take this site completely dynamic, completely php. It worked for Erica. But it would be a big step to take -- it would mean bye-bye MT tags, hello total dependence on the efficient working of my mysql database. Dare I mess around? Maybe someday, when I get up the nerve...

Update: well, it worked on my test blog -- kinda. There are still some kinks to work out, but they (and all other site tinkering) will have to wait until I take care of some other business.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 12:50 AM | Comments (15) | TrackBack

July 05, 2003

Now where was I?

Well, the so-far-unexplained site downage is now apparently over. So far.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 03:03 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

July 04, 2003

Changes to the comments

Note to all commenters to this blog, past, present, and future: I have added the MT tag that shows commenters' ISPs in the "posted by" line to the comments template. If you are nervous about revealing your IP, don't comment here, or use Anonymizer or something to read this site.

Update: if you would like to comment but don't want your IP to show, just email the comment to me (webmistress-at-spleenville.com) and I will add your comment to the discussion at my end. At my discretion, of course.

This is, by the way, part of my anti-troll policy.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 12:36 PM | Comments (11) | TrackBack

July 03, 2003

Comment tard

I deleted a comment to the post below because I decided that it had fuckall to do with the subject, which was -- to review -- "Harry Potter vs. the Fundies." Also, I do not plan to have any "random comment" posts, or anything like that. My blog, my rules, etc.

Oh -- and using a cutesy fake email address that says "foundyou@hidingplace.com" because you followed me from some other site's comments just makes you look like a total twat, because I put my URL into the "your site" field wherever I comment, so yeah, duh, you "found" me. Wooh! You're a regular Sherlock Holmes, you know how to click a couple of links; give yourself a gold star.

The poster in question has clarified his comment, so the above post can now be considered defunct.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 01:49 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

June 27, 2003

Just fooling around

I'm just fooling with the site and the image and everything. Frodo was getting a little tired of holding that sword. As you can see he's got a headache right now. My stylesheet is a mess. But the site is readable in Lynx (text only browser, see the handy link at the bottom of the menu, or just telnet or something into your shell access and start Lynx from there), so just about anyone should be able to read my site now. I'm all about the readability, me.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 10:26 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Some cosmetic enhancements

There, I think setting the main blog font as a sans-serif makes it easier to read. I have also set the print-friendly page to a serif font, since according to design manuals serif is easier to read in print.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 03:11 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Site changes and stuff

I'm going to be doing some changes to the site. One major change: I am taking down my blog roll. I will still have a blog roll, but it will be private, accessible only to me from my browser. I admit I had it available on my web page so I could read blogs during down times at work. Anyway, it's not going to be available from the website anymore. No one needs to see who I am linking or not linking too. What I will have instead (eventually) is a small list of links on the side, of blogs or other sites I feel like featuring.

Also, I may take the hatemail page down. It was a bit of a fun joke, but now I'm kind of bored with it. We'll see.

I also have another personal project I am working on. I am still tweaking it and trying to decide what I want it to be. Stay tuned. If you happen to have come across it, kindly refrain from mentioning it (such as its url) until I announce it.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 01:23 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

June 23, 2003

And now to bed

Oh, one final thing: the comments should remember your posting info now. Nitey-nite, all.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 04:00 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

June 22, 2003

Site stuff

Yes it looks different, no I'm not doing it to torment you. I had to go back to a standard MT stylesheet and template setup to solve the comments info problem. It's a temporary fix -- when I have more time (hah) I will try to figure out what they changed in the templates that caused my cookies or something to go belly-up.

Also, I now have a new comment troll policy. Trolls will not be banned and their comments will not be deleted. Instead, all trollish commentary will be changed to slavish praise of myself. For example, "Mork" left the following comments in this post:

What I don't understand, Andrea, is this: why do you keep linking to pages on which you've been slapped down like a two-bit crack whore?

Can it really be that you imagine that your back-of-the-third-grade-classroom insults pass as witty repartee in any company but your own?

I mean, I had been chortling away to myself that you seemed to have fifty different ways of saying "I know you are, but what am I", and then on this thread you come right out and say it . . . seriously!

Wetherall had one thing right: you're not in his league.

And:

Gee, Andrea, posting comments under other people's names.

That, as we say here, is as weak as piss.

As you can see, I changed each to:

What I don't understand, Andrea, is this: why do these silly people keep coming back for more?

Can it really be that they imagine that their back-of-the-short-bus insults pass as witty repartee in any company but their own?

I mean, I had been chortling away to myself that they seemed to have only one way of saying "I am an idiot, but I can't help proving it to the world over and over", and they keep on commenting!

Wetherall had one thing right: you're not in his league. You're actually the most intelligent, sexy, amazing woman on the internet! I want to be your body slave!

And

Gee, Andrea, posting comments under other people's names.

That, as we say here, is a brilliant idea!

That will be the comment troll policy from now on, or until I get bored. If you don't want your witty, devastating putdown to be changed to pathetic praise of me, then I suggest you don't post here.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 08:46 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

June 21, 2003

Stupid template problem

icon_wall.gif
Yes, my comments aren't remembering anyone's info. No, I can't figure out why. The "var HOST" line says "www.spleenville.com" like it should. This isn't a problem on Tim Blair's site. I am exhausted, and I have to get up early tomorrow, so I will look into it further sometime over the weekend.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 02:46 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

June 20, 2003

Site downage

Yikes! Sorry, my loyal readers, the site was down for a bit. (As was Tim's.) Well, it's back. I hope that the problem is solved. Stay tuned!

Posted by Andrea Harris at 01:49 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

June 10, 2003

Blegging

As you can see, I've decided to be more crass. What can I say -- I was inspired by Da Man. And the irritation it apparently causes many people is always an added bonus.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 01:36 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

June 09, 2003

How to freak me out

I love waking up with a splitting headache, then trying to comment on my own blog and getting an error:

(Got an error: Connection error: Access denied for user: 'myusername@my.server.ip' (Using password: YES)

Then trying to log in and getting the same freaking error. (With my actual user ID and server IP, not the aliases I put in their place.) Anyway, I was just able to sign into my database control panel and everything seemed fine to my inexperienced eyes, and here I am able to make a post. Right?

Posted by Andrea Harris at 11:39 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

June 02, 2003

Updates to the site

I just upgraded the site to version 2.64. (Tim Blair's blog as well.)

Posted by Andrea Harris at 11:37 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

May 22, 2003

Movable Headache

Dang, I forgot how much of a pain in the ass setting up a separate MT blog is. I should have just made a spin-off from my set. Anyway, stay tuned for something spiffy.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 02:59 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

May 17, 2003

Blogrollup

I have had to cut down on the number of blogs on my blogroll. If your blog has vanished from the list, it doesn't mean that I don't love you or anything like that. I just had to get rid of some of the sites that hadn't been updated in a while, or that for some reason or other I had stopped reading, or had linked to on a whim and become disinterested in -- or just plain had no time to read! This way maybe I won't be so intimidated into reading some of the remaining seldom-read (by me, anyway) blogs that are still on it. The roll had just become too huge for me to deal with.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 10:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 10, 2003

Two things

One: It took nearly twenty minutes for this site to do a complete rebuild. I had the same problem last night.

Two: I've reset the size of the titles to each post. Now to figure out how I want the dates to look.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 02:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

New site look

Right now I've set the site up using this template from Empty Pages. I'll be fiddling with it, but I think that I have at last broken free of divs. Now to test in other browsers...

Okay, it works in Mozilla and Opera 7. By the way, text is resizable.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 01:05 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

May 08, 2003

Irritation threshold reached

An announcement: from now on I will be deleting any comment that mentions the Dixie Chicks. I am so sick of those boring women, the Wilson-Phillips of the country scene. From now on this is a Dixie Chicks-free blog.

And I don't care who you are or what your subject is. Pick another entertainer/set thereof to use to illustrate your point. I do mean this.

PS: the comment that inspired this has been deleted. I do have it saved elsewhere (not on my server space) and I emailed the commenter's words to him so he would not have his First Amendment Rights to be a smug asshole breached by a fascist nazi bitch like me. I would never want to abridge anyone's rights to spread their smarm all over someone else's web space. 'Cos that's what my comments section is for, right? It's like a toilet that all of humanity can use and they don't even have to flush or clean up.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 02:10 AM | Comments (13) | TrackBack

May 02, 2003

Nothing's wrong with your browser

You know, me and my site changes. But don't worry -- no matter what this place looks like, it will always be mine. The look might change but the content stays the same.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 02:50 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

April 22, 2003

Gripe

One of these days I'm going to sort my blogroll out. And I will have two blogrolls: one called Spiffy Movable Type (or Other Blogging Software That Works Like Pmachine) Blogs, and the other called Still Stuck on Lameass Blogspot Blogs.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 12:59 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

April 21, 2003

Stepping out

Okay, folks -- I've finally got AIM installed (I tried Trillian, but that program is just whacked for me for some reason). You'll see my AIM ID over on the sidebar. So if you want to chat, and you aren't a freak, I'll add you to my buddy list. (Freak = I decide who is a freak. You'll know if I decide you are a freak, believe me.)

Posted by Andrea Harris at 02:24 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

April 14, 2003

How to make a link

Guys, I haven't put my handy formatting buttons back on the comments form, and I have noticed that some people are having trouble making links. Here is how to do it:

<a href="puttheURLhere.com">Link text</a>

There.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 01:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Comments tidiness

Well okay! I used this nifty little script to close all my comments on both blogs that are older than thirty days. So don't try posting to something from back in February, because you won't be able to. I am debating, actually, whether or not to set the comments to close at fifteen days, or maybe even a week. It's not as if many people are posting to anything that runs off the main page; but at least this will cut down on any possible future troll fights. (You need your blog set up to use the mysql database to use the script, and also your server must have php installed.)

Posted by Andrea Harris at 01:18 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Oh look, the site is different again

Dark, light, dark, light -- can't she make up her effing mind?

No. Shut up.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 01:00 AM | Comments (12) | TrackBack

April 13, 2003

Jebus

Okay, that's an hour without a site. I don't know what happened (I am waiting on an email) but it happened while I was converting this thing's database to MySql. I did that because I have read that it is more stable than the Berkeley Database MT starts out with, and the script they provide to change it isn't too nerve-wracking, though it is somewhat hands-on. I always get the heebee geebees when I have to edit one of my config files. But it all seemed to go fine -- probably because my database lives on a different server than my main site. Anyway, now I will see if I can set up some of those MT hacks you can only use with a MySql database.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 11:43 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Aaagghh! Part 2

Don't worry, peeps, this is just temporary. I just really screwed up my template last night, so I went and grabbed one of the templates over at MT at random. Also, I was feeling a little... dark. But it probably won't stay like this. Intention: to provide at least two choices of skins (light and dark) for people with various needs. I'm trying to do it the most cross-platform way I can. But I can't please everyone. If you are really having trouble, you have two other ways to read the main blog: the print-friendly page, and the PDA version.

PS: sorry for the excess medical detail for you sissies extra-sensitive folks. What I meant by the reference was that I shouldn't play with my templates when I am not feeling well, not that I was bleeding on the keyboards or anything.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 02:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Aaaarrrggghhhh

Back to square one. I really shouldn't play around with my blog while I have my period.

Posted by Andrea Harris at 01:02 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack