I’ve just released my first plugin ever for MT. This is ActionStreams-Blogcritics, a plugin that pulls your Blogcritics posts into Mark Paschal’s brilliant ActionStreams plugin for MT. Incidentally, it also works with ActionStreams Version 1.1-Alpha

Get it here. It’s freeware, and there is a documentation file that explains installation and usage.

If you want to sort your categories in some customized order — i.e., not alphabetically, which is the MT default — there are some solutions. I’ve tracked down three different solutions.

(Note that I am now running MT 3.35, and I’m not sure Solution #3 below works in anything below version 3.3x.)

1. Use the RegEx Plugin;
2. Use the CustomFields Plugin;
3. Use category basenames.

Yet another computer virus warning hoax last night, and from a friend who should have known better. This one was the Olympic Torch hoax, about an email attachment that threatens to destroy your C drive.

Here’s the mail:

Subject: Warning for Most Dangerous VIRUS
> PLEASE FORWARD THIS WARNING AMONG FRIENDS, FAMILY AND
> CONTACTS:
> You should be alert during the next days:
> Do not open any message with an attached file called “Invitation”
> regardless of who sent it, It is a virus that opens an Olympic Torch
> which “burns” the whole hard disc C of your computer.
> This virus will be received from someone who has your e-mail address in
> his/her contact list, that is why you should send this e-mail to
> all your contacts. It is better to
> receive this message 25 times than to receive the virus and open it.
> If you receive a mail called “invitation”, though sent by a friend, do not
> open it and shut down your computer immediately This is the
> worst virus announced by CNN, it has been classified by Microsoft as the
> most destructive virus ever.
> This virus was discovered by McAfee yesterday, and there is no repair yet
> for this kind of virus. This virus simply destroys the Zero
> Sector of the Hard Disc, where the vital information is kept
> SEND THIS E-MAIL TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW ,
> COPY THIS E-MAIL AND SEND! IT TO YOUR FRIENDS
> AND REMEMBER: IF YOU SEND IT TO THEM, YOU WILL BENEFIT ALL OF US

Of course this is rubbish. But that’s hardly the point. The question is, why is that even the most obviously idiotic computer virus warning message makes us abandon all common sense?

After years of doing it donkey-style, I finally figured the easiest and fastest way to upgrade MovableType. I was moving for Version 3.33 to 3.35, so all references are to that.

Here’s my very own Martha Stewart style upgrade recipe …

Had a post a long time ago about ping errors in MovableType. For the past few days, I’m getting yet another error, this time to do with the “recently updated” key. Basically, this is a facility available to paid users of MovableType, and it pings the MovableType servers so that the blog shows up in the recently updated list on the MovableType homepage. For the last couple of posts, I’ve been getting a 404 error. I wrote off to them and, to my great surprise and pleasure, got a reply in a few minutes.

Peculiar problem yesterday — I was using The Journal, a truly excellent journaling software app, when I noticed that using the Ctrl+I for italics was actually generating a tab character plus the italics. I figured this must be a conflict with another app running somewhere with its own keyboard shortcuts or hotkeys. Much checking and testing later (including deleting the digstream registry entry — a utility from the Walt Disney Internet Group for webcam stuff), and suffering a spectacular meltdown, I figured the culprit was nothing more than the Creative keyboard software. Turns out I was using this with a Creative Wireless Keyboard 9000 Pro, and when I switched keyboards, I forgot to uninstall the previous keyboard software. I did the uninstall from add/remove programs and bingo! problem solved.