mcavity - chronicles of waste and time

Sorting Categories in Movable Type: Three Solutions

Thu, 14 Jun 2007 16:00:12 +0530

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.)

Use the RegEx Plugin;
Use the CustomFields Plugin;
Use category basenames.

Why Do Virus Warning Hoaxes Make Us Panic?

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 10:00:09 +0530

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?

Recipe for Upgrading MT

Sun, 10 Jun 2007 22:52:53 +0530

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 …

Ping Errors in MT

Tue, 06 Mar 2007 13:00:57 +0530

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.EOB

Creative Keyboard and Ctrl+I

Tue, 06 Mar 2007 08:38:46 +0530

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. EOP

CellPhotography

Fri, 02 Mar 2007 13:12:13 +0530

with my cell phoneNow this is a shot I took some time ago with my Nokia 6681. Pretty crappy phone, IMHO, with a lousy battery life, terrible sound and third-rate connectivity. But it seems to take semi-decent shots in fairly large format.

Is this going to be the future? Everything on one phone — music, pictures, video, email, web? That’s a perfectly ghastly idea and is certainly my vision of hell on earth. These phones are incredibly invasive and take time from the things that matter — books, music, poetry, reading, conversation. More on that anon, requires more thought, I think.

Nokia 6681Here’s the phone.EOP

Fussbudget

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 19:51:09 +0530

Same old, same old. Every year, every single year, at exactly this time the whole damn country goes totally berserk about this thing called the budget. Every single television channel goes on and on about it, shoving all other programming off the air; the newspapers can’t seem to think of anything else. What’s the big deal anyway? Don’t other countries have “budgets”? They don’t seem to fuss about it like this (except maybe the Brits). And then there’s the damned Railway budget a day before. Hoo ha. Why not an airplane budget, or an automobile budget? Actually, in this country we need a bicycle budget and a bullock cart budget.

I wonder what exactly our beloved FM (that’s Finance Minister, guys, not a radio station) does. As far as I can tell he spends an entire year preparing for The Budget, delivers it, and then goes on to do the same thing all over again.

Time was when the late Nani Palkhivala filled an entire stadium when he spoke on the budget, and thousands of people crowded in to listen to him dissect the thing. Imagine. A whole stadium. That’s like someone filling Wembley or the Royal Albert Hall or Madison Square Garden.

And what difference did any of it make, the budget, Palkhivala or anything else? What difference does it make even today? The rich are still getting a whole lot richer, and the poor a whole lot poorer. Wonderful.

India shining.EOP

Migrating MovableType

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 21:21:09 +0530

Recently, I shifted four MovableType blogs to my present host, Bluehost. These were four separate installations, on a personal unlimited license. The existing databases — the ones to be moved — were heavily populated: lots of plugins, customizations, plenty of data, including pictures and long blobs of text. I also had three or four users per blog.

The problem was this: how best to seamlessly migrate the blogs, retaining users, passwords and all customizations, without having to reconfigure MovableType from scratch?

After some trial-and-error, I figured out a way. I don’t claim that this is the best, or even the only, way in which to do this, but it worked for me and should work elsewhere, as long as the new host meets certain requirements (listed below). Here’s my recipe for shifting MovableType to a new host, based on what I did.EOB

Character Entity References

Tue, 27 Jun 2006 10:08:08 +0530

Over at A List Apart, one of the most delectable and beautifully presented websites for webdesigners, Peter Sheerin has a now legendary article titled “The Trouble With EM ’n EN (and Other Shady Characters)” on typography, typographical styles and character entity references. It’s a pity his advice isn’t followed more often throughout the Web. There’s little doubt that it makes for much easier on-screen reading. Apart from anything else, following his advice renders pages that are much more courteous to the reader.

One of the references in that article is to the W3C page on Character Entity References in HTML 4. There is a detailed table there of all character entity references with their HTML codes and CData numeric codes. Unfortunately, the table is difficult to decipher. I’ve taken that table and re-formatted it for easier reading. Presenting the W3C-based table of Character Entity References…EOB

An Unsuitable Boy

Tue, 27 Jun 2006 00:57:21 +0530

Barkha Dutt of NDTV is, arguably, the best TV journalist in the country today — tough, polished, very au courant, incisive and unafraid to call a spade a spade, not easy to overawe. But even she seemed to be overwhelmed by Shashi Tharoor. The only thing I’ve seen that comes close is when BBC’s Tim Sebastian interviewed the redoubtable Nina Simone. It’s the first time I’ve seen the man — who can be thoroughly obnoxious — completely non-plussed. While Tharoor is no Simone (thank God, but that’s not for want of his trying), nor Dutt Sebastian (double thanks for that), she certainly seemed to be under his spell.EOB

Salman Khan, Valmik Thapar and real soft targets

Wed, 12 Apr 2006 21:39:02 +0530

After a judge sentenced the actor Salman Khan to five years, people have come out saying that the law is unduly harsh on celebs. In an editorial homily, the Times of India claims that the law should be “technical”; cites “equality before the law” and says that the punishment is unduly harsh. The unstated assumption underlying this argument is, clearly, that the offence is trivial. Nothing could be further from the truth.EOB

More on XP and a corrupted mailto registry key

Wed, 12 Apr 2006 19:48:37 +0530

Was happy to receive a lengthy comment on my post from Charles Gaefke (nice to know one is being read sometimes). Here’s his email, without editing.

Hi, about your blog …

The same thing happened to me, except I don’t use outlook express. I use Mozilla Thunderbird. Things worked fine for a while, then suddenly, yesterday, it started asking me if I wanted to make it default or not. Of course, saying yes, no, or never ask again didn’t do a thing. EOB

Questioning the Morality of the Moral Police

Wed, 12 Apr 2006 19:25:11 +0530

Pratibha Naitthani was at it again the other evening on TV. She really is the most infernal woman. A panel was discussing all this completely pointless brouhaha about the wardrobe malfunctions at recent fashion shows. There was a professor of sociology from Jawharlal Nehru University, a lady from Delhi and Naitthani. If I am not wrong, Naitthani believes there is something like a conspiracy behind these nip-slips. It was deliberate, obscene and — she actually said this — the “woman was stripped naked before the whole country”. EOB

Windows XP-Corrupted mailto registry key and permissions

Mon, 20 Mar 2006 13:26:06 +0530

Had a peculiar problem last night: Outlook Express (my default mail client) suddenly stopped being recognized as the default mail handler. It kept asking whether I wanted to set it as the default. Clicking a “mailto:” link in IE opened a zillion windows and, finally, got a message that the default mail handler was incorrectly installed or some such. EOB

Movable Type - Related Entries

Mon, 30 Jan 2006 17:59:27 +0530

I’ve long been less than fully happy with the ordinary Related Entries plugin for MovableType. Originally developed by Adam Kalsey, it is now being maintained by Tim Appnel. Tim’s instruction was on the mark — running MT-Related with keywords slows rebuild times and increases overhead enormously.

Back to Adam. Found he had a brilliant (hardly surprising) alternative using Brad Choate’s MTSQL plugin (are these guys gods or what?) EOB