Maniacal Rage. Monthly archive: July 2003.

Blog Change Bot Scares Me

7 comments (closed), posted on july 30, 2003, tags: software

I have a group of about 15 weblogs I check twice a day. Once in the morning when I get to work, once at about 8PM after I eat dinner. It's a daily routine, and it's nice. Often at work, I'll randomly check a few of the 15 weblogs to see if they've been updated since I last checked. This is bad. It leads to further checking, and very frequently I end up having looked at the same sights 10 times in one day—none of them having changed. If you suffer from the same problem, you might want to check out Blog Change Bot (via WDIK):

Blog Change Bot (blogchangebot on AIM) is a blog monitoring service which updates you via AOL Instant Messanger when a blog you are interested [in] is updated. Subscribe via AIM or iChat to be automatically notified when the blog is updated.

Now you don't even have to type a URL! Or click a mouse button! This scares me. Terrifies me, really. It's one step closer to the inevitable point where I will wake up in the morning, and while still lying there I will shit and be showered, followed by having eggs and toast crammed into my mouth. Then, a robot will pick me up (my legs and arms won't work at this point, and I'll always drool) and put me in a chair. It will wheel me to a large white wall on which tons of visual information will flash and animate and get right in my pale face. Then I'll have all the contents of millions of websites screamed at me in thousands of languages. I'll probably shit again at that point.

It's all terrifying. Blog Change Bot is the beginning!

Update: I'll have you know that I tested BCB with this update (subscribed to codebucket.com), and it didn't work. Whew! I can still use my legs!

Second Update: It did work... it just took 4 minutes to come through. I just shit in my bed!

Best Car Commercial Ever

posted on july 30, 2003, tags: entertainment

The Honda "Cog" commercial, for their new Accord, was created in the UK. It's two minutes long, and is comprised of one single tracking shot (edit: there are actually two shots, one comprising the first minute, one the second, that are seamlessly edited together... still—not bad at all!), in which pieces of one of the six hand-made new Honda Accords work like dominos to further motion. There are no special effects in this commercial. It's all physics, tons of planning, and 606 takes*.

If you haven't seen this, you absolutely must. You can find the commercial at their UK website by clicking here. It's a flash site, so you may have to wait for loading. To view the commercial, click the link with the star next to it that says, "Click here for the two most precise minutes of TV you will ever see."

Simply amazing.

* I know it's hard to believe, but this is all true. For more information, you can check out the ULRP article (snopes.com) about this commercial.

Smart UI Design

2 comments (closed), posted on july 29, 2003, tags: random

Apparently, Safari is not only a web browser, but from time to time also a thesaurus and sayer of deep and meaningful things. Or, quite possibly, this event is just one of those random things that makes you laugh when you see it.

High-Speed Access Soon

2 comments (closed), posted on july 29, 2003, tags: tech

Third Update: I got digital cable and cable Internet! Screw you, satellite!

Second Update: Screw it, what do we have to lose? Anything would be better than dial-up. We're going for it. Satellite crappy expensive Internet service, here I come!

Update: I finally managed to find some real reviews of this service (100s, actually), and it seems to stink. So, once again, I've gotten my hopes up for nothing. Dial-up it shall remain.

Well, it's finally gonna happen. But no thanks to Big Red (Verizon Sucks!). That's right—high-speed Internet access. Finally. How? Satellite.

It has been suggested many times in the past to me that I should attempt to find satellite access, since DSL and cable have not been an option since I moved to Brooklyn. In my defense, I did check into this, but at the time (four months ago now), it was too expensive. That's because at the time DirecTV had closed down their former satellite Internet service (then called DirecPC). The only other options were 3rd party companies that were quite expensive and offered only one-way satellite service (you would download using the dish, but upload over a modem—yuck!).

That all changed recently when DirecTV started their service one more, only this time calling it DirecWay. DW uses two-way satellites, and is a little less expensive than competitors. On top of that, for a small fee, you can use the dish to access both the Internet and satellite television (which is actually cheaper than cable TV).

Download speeds on the dish are impressive, with a non-guaranteed 500 kilobits per second (kpbs). Talking to sales people and reading reviews, it seems some people actually average around 1.5-2 megabits per second (mbps (a megabit is 10,000 kilobits)), which is great. The only downside is that the two-way dish is not asynchronous, so upload speeds are significantly slower (around a 50k minimum non-guarantee). Luckily for me, this is not too much of an issue, as I don't really ever upload anything terribly large, and when I do it's not more than a megabyte or two. Two megabytes in that scenario would take about a minute to upload, which is great compared to now—average of 4k upload via dial-up—when it takes 9 minutes.

This system isn't great for some things—you can't play online games because of "micro-lag" that comes from connecting with the satellite, etcetera—but after being on dial-up for 6 months, it's going to be super. Hopefully this will all happen within the next two weeks. Wish me luck.

Once Again, I've Done the Impossible

3 comments (closed), posted on july 25, 2003, tags: me

For some reason, this summer—much like last summer—I've managed to get a cold. I don't know how it happens, but I get a common cold in the middle of the warmest season of the year. If anyone out there is a doctor, I would make the perfect basis of a medical journal article—the man who gets a cold when it's hot—and I'm willing to negotiate my cut of the press you would receive for such writing.

Anyway, it's starting to go away now, so I'm feeling better. But this week wasn't fun. It's always awkward to be coughing and feverish in a time when people are wearing shorts. On the subway, every time I cough people look at me like some sort of freak. If anyone asks I just mutter "SARS" in my broken voice. I tend to get a lot more seats that way.

My Brain Hurts

1 comment (closed), posted on july 22, 2003, tags: xpad

Right, so I've been working quite a lot on xPad, my OS X application since I started up again a few weeks ago. I've managed to get a lot of work done, but I'm still at least a month from release (unless I suddenly get smarter, which isn't likely). I've got a few beta testers lined up now, and they can expect to see some news in about a week (I know I keep putting this off, but only another week, I swear).

The other night I (for some random reason) read the entire xPad changelog from build 2 to current (build 76). It's about 240 lines long, and pretty much lists every single change I've made since the beginning. It's nice to see what I've accomplished in the last few months, and that I'm close to my first release. Most people (my girlfriend included) could care less about this stuff, but I'm extremely excited about finishing up version 1.0 of xPad and releasing it.

Postscript: I still need icons! Badly!

Just Another Day with Mike Lowrey

3 comments (closed), posted on july 22, 2003, tags: entertainment

The unfortunate thing about Bad Boys II is that it tried to accomplish too much. It tried to pull off two and a half hours, and it tried to do so with tons of action and mostly meaningless dialogue. The problem is, it didn't work. While I liked the movie on a whole, I felt as though at least an hour of it wasn't worth the time. Condense the thing and maybe we'll talk.

The good thing about Bad Boys was that it was Michael Bay's first movie. It was good, too. It had the right amount of action and lots of laughs from Lawrence and Smith. It felt almost as if the writers knew the two actors and knew how to make them interact with the best outcome. But in the sequel, that was not the case. The dialogue felt forced, the communication and interaction stale. But the actions scenes were great—if long and often a bit harsh. That, however, does not make a movie good.

This sequel did what most sequels do, by trying to outdo the original. The sad thing is, it would have been better if it were just another day in the life of these two guys minus half of the car chases and minus an hour of footage. The first movie was succinct. It started, it went, it ended. This movie started, stalled, picked up, stalled, stalled further, picked up, etcetera for two and a half hours. Very often you found yourself thinking the same thing Martin Lawrence's character was saying, specifically: "This is the fifth gun-fight in two days!" Yes. It is. And if you're thinking this is ridiculous, what are we thinking?

Today's Ticker Tape

2 comments (closed), posted on july 19, 2003, tags: random

Misunderstanding Causes Problem
ALBANY, NY — In a rare incident over Fourth of July weekend, two men were arrested for fighting after a misunderstanding. "He told me the fireworks weren't 'up to par', and I disagreed," said Thomas Jones, one of the two men involved and an avid fisherman. "Then he said I didn't understand what 'up to par' meant, and I became frustrated. I told him he didn't know what that meant, and he punched me in the face." The men fought outside Jones' rural home until a police officer drove by and stopped them. "Well, I could tell it was a misunderstanding," Officer Grimes told reporters, "Because they both kept asking each other what the hell they were talking about between punches."

Man Had a Mouthful
STATEN ISLAND, NY — Yesterday, Leroy Watkins, 37, ate this own arm at the King's Buffet All-You-Can-Eat restaurant in Richmond. What began as a simple buffet meal, in which Watkins revisited the "fresh meats" bar several times, ended in tragedy when he accidentally ate his own right arm just before dessert. "We've had some close calls in the past," Leroy's wife, Alberta says, "But we usually stopped him before he did anything like this. Today, though, I was just too busy eating pudding to notice he had started to eat this fingers." Leroy doesn't remember how it all happened, but he said he suddenly "looked down and realized I was chewing on my shoulder, and I was really full."

Fruit Blamed in Shooting Death
BIRMINGHAM, AL — Henry Washington, a local farmer, was found dead from a gunshot wound to his right temple on Thursday night. Police quickly apprehended Quinton Sims, the local magician, who said admitted his guilt almost immediately. "I'm very sorry for Henry's family," Sims said in a statement to the press, "But I can't stop myself from shooting whenever I see an apple on someone's head." Apparently Washington had been collecting his crop of apples when one fell and landed on his noggin, just as Sims walked by. "I just had to do it. It's the magician's code," Sims said. No other famous magicians could be reached for comment save David Copperfield who said, "The magician's code is not to shoot people. It's to wear tight pants and have crazy hair."

The End of Netscape

9 comments (closed), posted on july 16, 2003, tags: software

Wow. I honestly thought it would never happen, but AOL has finally destroyed Netscape. Yesterday they laid off remaining Mozilla workers, and got rid of the rest of Netscape (I love how "they've even pulled the logos off the buildings"). As of July 15, 2003, Netscape is dead.

This is a huge disappointment to me, even though I've not been a fan of the Netscape browser for a long time. We all have our stories, of using Netscape 1.0 or 2.0 or whatever, 'back in the day,' when the Internet was fresh and Netscape was one of the few companies serving it to regular people. I remember building my first web page ever with Netscape's composer. But, somewhere along the line, things just ended up going the wrong way. After years of "Browser Wars," in 1998 Netscape's Communicator finally lost advantage to a growing Microsoft Internet Explorer. In November of 1998 they were purchased by AOL.

All the while, however, something else was growing in the background: Mozilla. In a letter written by Jamie Zawinski entitled "Fear and Loathing on the Merger Trail," just after the announcement of AOL's purchase of Netscape, Jamie wrote the following which I find to be appropriate to reread today:

So, assuming that they [AOL] still want to have a Netscape Navigator, it is not unreasonable to assume that they will adopt the same attitude that Netscape has: that open source works, and that the best way to have a top-of-the-line web browser is to keep it open.

But let's think about some worst-case scenarios. Let's think about the nightmares. What if AOL hates "open source"? What if they want to undo everything we've done, and make Mozilla be evil and proprietary again? What if they just think that browsers are a waste of time, and that they should just use MSIE forevermore?

Well, they simply cannot undo what has been done. The Mozilla code is out there, and it cannot be recalled. It has been distributed under an open source license, and nobody can ever take that away from you. Ever.

It's unfortunate that AOL did end up deciding to use Internet Explorer 'forevermore,' and even more unfortunate that the decision will hurt the Internet more than closing Netscape ever could. Regardless, the point of Jamie's article is more important: Mozilla cannot be destroyed by AOL. It cannot be destroyed by anyone. It's open, it's free, and it belongs to everyone.

Does it matter now that Netscape was pushed out by Internet Explorer in the 90s? Does it matter that Internet Explorer kept pushing, and pushing hard, and made it's way to the ridiculous 90-something-percent market-share? Yes, of course it does. But does it matter than Netscape is dead? Not at all. Netscape was a means—a means to Mozilla.

Frankly, I'm glad Netscape is gone. I'm glad because eventually people will stop using Netscape 4x now (hopefully). That's a good thing—it gets more people using standards-compliant browsers. Now the point is to make sure the market for standards-compliant browsers contains options, not Internet Explorer and Mozilla. Camino, Safari, OmniWeb, Opera—they're all important to the future of the Internet. Never again should there be a 'war' between two browsers. Never again should the victor of that war be able to effectively control the market and it's future and it's direction.

Mozilla will live on. A newly formed Mozilla Foundation, a [soon to be] non-profit corporation will now manage the Mozilla project. They've released a new version of their website, and continue to work on all of their projects. The good news is, though, that they don't have AOL looking over their shoulders. Obviously it's never good when a bunch of people* lose their jobs, but I say good riddance to Netscape. Let's move on.

* If you're interested, you can visit Ex-Mozilla to read posts from Netscape employees who have left the company over the years (including yesterday).

Ticker Tape

posted on july 15, 2003, tags: random

Local Man Not God, Apparently
BROOKLYN, NY — After many years of trying to convince friends and family that he's God, Garrett Murray found out today that he is, in fact, not. "Well, I never claimed to be the God, but at least a God," Garrett told reporters outside his Williamsburg apartment this morning. "But either way, it's not true. I found a zit, or pimple—if you will—on my face today. Gods don't get pimples." When asked what he planned to do, now that he knew he wasn't a God, Garrett replied, "Well, I'm probably going to have to stop smoking so much and daring people to shoot me."

Eating Rocks Good For You, Study Says
HARTFORD, CT — A new study conducted by six-month-old babies has produced shocking results: eating rocks is good for you. Yesterday when the group of babies released news of their findings via the Fisher-Price Winnie the Pooh Friendship Phone, scientists around the world were instantly voicing their opinions on the subject. Frank Davidson, PhD, said, "It's about time someone did a study about eating rocks. I've got to give those tiny babies credit—they're stepping into unknown territory here." Findings from this study were difficult to understand, but to dispel confusion one of the babies demonstrated how to properly eat a rock by sucking on it for a while and then accidentally choking on it, then turning blue, then receiving the Heimlich maneuver, then swallowing. The babies' group leader, Stinky Pants, could not be reached for comment.

War in Iraq Not Over—There Are Still People to Shoot
BAGHDAD, IRAQ — United States Army Soldiers are finding that it isn't quite time to go home yet. Their mission in Iraq, which started months ago now, is still technically active due to an awkwardly worded clause in their orders. "It appears someone in high command wrote 'Make sure you've shot everyone before you come home,' as an order instead of 'Make sure you've got everyone before you come home,'" says Lt. Gerald Walker. "It was an honest mistake, but it's causing some problems here." Soldiers are randomly shooting in circles now, hoping to complete the typo-order in the near future.

Some Common Misconceptions

3 comments (closed), posted on july 15, 2003, tags: random

True:

I once ran a website all about Katie Holmes. It was called Katie Holmes Online (KHO).
I am left handed.
I have a shaved head, and have for a year now.
I talk about OS X, weblogging and other technical things too much for my girlfriend.
So does [Shawn](http://morrisonfilm.com "MorrisonFilm"), especially when we're all at a local bar and I'm yammering on about xPad.
I love movies.

False:

I am the current owner of the domain kh-online.com.
I write with my hand all curled up as if I were pointing the pencil at myself (like most lefties do).
Before I shaved my head, I had hair 25 inches long that I would braid into tails and then whip them around while yelling, "Get out of my way, the hair's out of control!"
I created OS X and weblogging and other technical things as well as my girlfriend.
Shawn only drinks cranberry juice at bars and often urinates publicly.
I wrote and directed E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial.
ManiacalRage used to be called BonerRage.

Just thought you might like to know is all.

Competing With Linux

5 comments (closed), posted on july 15, 2003, tags: software

Right, so I somehow ended up over at the Microsoft Partners website the other day (not sure exactly how), and stumbled upon their Resources for Competing with Linux section. How disgusting. I love one of the sentences on the front page:

It's becoming ever clearer that the Windows platform offers better total cost of operation (TCO) than Linux. Use these resources to make the case that Windows will save your customers' time, frustration, and money.

What is this based on? I've set up plenty of Windows web servers, and plenty of Linux web servers. It takes, on average, about 30 minutes to have Linux up and running with Apache, PHP, MySQL, and FTP access. It takes about 45 minutes to install Windows.

And what is this nonsense about TCO? A simple price comparison proves this wrong from the get-go. For instance, as of the time this entry was written, here are the costs (from Buy.com) to build both a Linux web server and a Windows web server of equal proportion (not including hardware, as they both run on the same boxes):

Linux

Red Hat Linux 9.0 Professional - $133.99
Apache Web Server - Free
PHP - Free
MySQL - Free
FTP/Mail Servers - Free
Total: $133.99*

* It should be noted that you don't have to buy an expensive distro of Linux to run a web server, so the total price here is actually more than it would cost you if you went with a free distro. This is not an option using Windows.

Windows

Windows XP Professional - $270.99
Microsoft Internet Information Services - Free (bundled)
ASP - Free (bundled)
Microsoft SQL Server 2000 (Developer edition) - $439.98
FTP/Mail Servers - Free (bundled)
Total: $710.97

Maybe I'm crazy, but it seems that the Windows box would cost $576.98 more just to set up. So far I'm not seeing this better TCO that Microsoft is claiming. Now I know MS would claim that maintenance of Windows is easier, therefore lowering the long-term cost of server up-keep. I've found that not to be true, however.

Every day something goes wrong with one of our servers here at work. Every day. If it's not Exchange (something I didn't include above because of the free SMTP server bundled with the OS, but Exchange is $1245.99 for 5 users), it's IIS or permissions are screwed up or the server crashes because of load. The last Linux web server I set up crashed twice in 6 months, both times due to the T-1's router going down. I also never had to modify permissions once they were initially set. Also, not a single file made itself read-only whenever it felt like it.

It's crazy to say that Windows is cheaper to use than Linux. It's just not. But that's how Microsoft likes to present information—falsely. The rest of that developer page is littered with ridiculous news headlines, features, and articles all about how to sell Microsoft products in spite of the rising success of Linux. There's even a "news" headline about how there was a security flaw found in MySQL... that's funny, I just downloaded Service Pack 3a (that's the fourth since release) to fix more of the hundreds of security problems in SQL Server 2000.

These kinds of things are the reason people don't like Microsoft. It's the constant Nazi-esque feeling you get when reading their press releases or visiting their website. Everything feels so fake and so anti-open source and so anti-competition. I used to be a huge Microsoft fan, but over the past year or two I have really started to dislike their business practice (and some of their products). I just don't understand why they need to do business this way. If Microsoft is better than Linux, why do they need to have a whole section to prove that? I can't find that kind of section on Red Hat's site.

I Must Say

5 comments (closed), posted on july 15, 2003, tags: random

I must say that Diet Coke is something only illegitimate children, menopausal women and gynecologists drink. In fact, I'm willing to widen that spectrum to include people on the Atkins diet, but even they would probably just drink regular Coke (or pig's blood—whatever, so long as it doesn't have carbs). I love listening to people order a bacon-cheeseburger and a Diet Coke. "I would like eight pounds of fat shoveled into my throat, and then please bring me a Diet Coke—I have got to watch my weight." Also, Diet Coke tastes closer to raw chemicals than Coca-Cola Classic, which is already too close. I feel like some sort of synthesis is happening in my mouth every time I taste Diet Coke, and since I'm not a scientist—that's not good.

I must say that I would be a happier man if only attractive people wore revealing clothing. But as it seems, only Diet Coke drinkers feel the urge to cram their buttocks into a thong, pull the band up over their hips and then put on a pair of whitewashed, low-rise jeans. I especially love the way this looks when combined with that effect really large asses have of almost eating themselves (you know what I mean—the closer to the crack the cheeks get, the more they squeeze in, but they're all flabby on the outside). Also, it seems the style for 20-something women now is to grow a large beer-belly before wearing a revealing shirt. Yummy.

I must say that with all the beauty in the world, I cannot help but get angry. I mean, I don't know if you've ever seen a flower or a cute little birdie, but those things have a tendency to really piss me off. It's the little things that really put me in a foul mood... like morning dew or a pleasant "Hello" from a coworker. I know these things make other people happy, but I can't stand the sight of morning dew. Makes me feel rotten. My guts hurt. I just can't take it sometimes.

I must say that if the L train keeps taking forever to get there in the morning, I'm gonna fucking lose it. It's bad enough that I have to stand on the platform with all the confused, new-to-New-York, fat people, but now I have to wait for a late train? I hate it! How many more times do I have to complain about this before it stops? I guess a lot.

I must say that having a camera is great, unless you just take a bunch of pictures and never show them to anyone. This is what creepy 40 year-old men do in movies like One Hour Photo. If you're going to paste all the pictures to your bedroom wall, at least have the decency to show everyone a picture of that.

I must say that hurricanes are a serious problem.

I must say that this feels good. And bad. Depending.

[All due respect to [Shawn](http://morrisonfilm.com "MorrisonFilm") and his entry.]

Britney Spears Needs a Man?

10 comments (closed), posted on july 11, 2003, tags: random

This has got to be one of the most ridiculous things I have seen in a long while. In an MSN article on July 8, Britney Spears admits to having sex with Justin Timberlake during their two-year relationship. But that's not the ridiculous part (come on, everyone knew she was doing it, let's not kid ourselves)—the ridiculous part is a quote near the end of the article. Britney says:

"Yes, I kissed him [Colin Farrell]. Of course I did! He's the cutest, hottest thing in the world — wooh! He's such a bad boy. But it was nothing serious. Seriously, I haven't had a boy in a really long time, and I'm really craving ... just a kiss, man. Just a kiss would be nice."

Are you telling me Britney Spears is having a hard time finding someone to kiss her? What the fuck? Jesus, she could probably walk into sex if she wasn't wearing pants. I don't understand this for a second. Hell, I bet even the interviewer made a comment like, "Are you fucking nuts? Fuck it, I'll do you right now." What is the world coming to when Britney Spears can't get laid?

I Need Help

posted on july 11, 2003, tags: xpad

So I've finally, after about 2 months off, started working on my OS X application xPad again. I'm not really sure why I stopped (I think it had to do with busyness at work and the recode/redesign of ManiacalRage), and now I'm going to try to finish my to-do list and hit 1.0 within the next few weeks. This brings me, however, to a few requests.

One: I need beta testers. Badly. So far, it's been me and Shawn, and while we're intelligent guys, I need more people to test this thing for me. Obviously, you have to have an Apple computer. You also need to be using OS X 10.2.3 or later. If you have these specs (even if you sent me an email before about this), and would be interested in beta testing xPad, please email me.

Two: I need someone to design icons. Someone who can design OS X-like application icons that range from the app icon itself to the toolbar icons and more. I'm looking for someone who has a really great design sense, as I want these icons to fit into the OS as perfectly as they can. I am willing to trade meaningful items for this work (money, links, etcetera). If you know someone who can do this, or you yourself can, please email me.

That's all for now. In the near future I'll go a little more in-depth as to what xPad is and does, as well as provide some visuals of the application.

Rise of the Machines [and Apathy]

7 comments (closed), posted on july 8, 2003, tags: entertainment

Making a sequel for the purposes of making a sequel is never good. And that's exactly what Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines felt like. From the [weak] beginning until the [stronger] ending, T3 was more about lengthy effects-laden battle sequences and catch phrases than anything else, even though the fate of the world was at stake. In fact, that whole 'nuclear holocaust' thing is actually, as Ebert wrote, secondary:

The movie cares so exclusively about its handful of characters that what happens to them is of supreme importance, and the planet is merely a backdrop.

While that might work somewhere else, it fails in T3. The film does not earn its ending, although I can say that the movie did get better as it progressed. It's unfortunate that by the time the storyline and action sequences start to become less jarring and out of place, the movie's remaining time is down to 20 minutes.

Also, I don't know why the director and special effects people felt this was an acceptable film to release, since you can see the digital blurring-out of Arnold Schwarzenegger's crows-feet (and various other wrinkles) throughout the whole film. And speaking of the effects: what the hell is going on when, 10 years after Terminator 2: Judgement Day, in which the effects were unbelievably great for their time, you can't pull off liquid-metal effects? Craziness! I can't believe how poor some of the effects were in this movie. In fact, the only really great ones were when the T-101 (Arnold) was beaten up at the end and you could see through parts of his body. But, much like everything else, just when this gets good, it's over. Unfortunate.

After watching the movie last night, I kept thinking more about the time paradoxes that take place in the series, and came across a depressing realization that nothing in any of the three films matters. Sending a Terminator back to the past to kill someone doesn't work, since, if it were to succeed, it would negate its own existence. That means the Terminator could never exist unless it failed, meaning it would never succeed, meaning 6 hours of my life have been spent hoping John Conner survives regardless of the fact that he will because he can't not [succeed]. Either way, it's all a big loop—a loop that didn't need T3 to be involved.

Infrastructure Tutorial

5 comments (closed), posted on july 7, 2003, tags: site

Since the release of the newest design of this site, I've received several requests for more information on how I structured the code side of the site. Initially I had planned on making the source-code of the website available for viewing, but that became too much of a hassle. Instead, I'm going to describe, with examples, how everything works. If you have specific questions, please feel free to comment on this entry or send me an email (garrett at codebucket dot com).

Let's start with a simple diagram I whipped up when I first decided to re-code the site from the ground up a few months ago. I know you're supposed to use a program like Visio for this sort of thing, but I've always preferred to just create something in Photoshop or Illustrator. Works better for me. Click the image below to see the diagram.

Maniacal Rage Server Diagram (21KB)

So then. That was the plan, and it ended up working exactly like that. I'm still using MovableType, but I've completely circumvented the templates system (well, almost completely as you'll see), and I've switched all content handling to PHP and Smarty™. Why do this? Well, MT has this annoying feature were it "builds" pages each time something in your content changes (comments, new entries, etcetera), and this building function actually creates hard-coded versions of your files. Why is that bad? Well, it's not, technically, but there's a reason I've decided to use a dynamic system—I want my site to be dynamic. There are also practical reasons for doing this: by not using MT's templates, you significantly cut down on the amount of information that has to be rebuilt when something changes in your content. That means a faster site. Noticeably faster, actually.

But how did I do this? It was actually quite simple. I got the idea from reading one of Brad Choate's entries about Smarty, and put his foundation to use. Basically, everything here starts with Template Modules. One of the great things about MT is its flexibility when it comes to playing with the system. In fact, other than the search template (which has to be in CGI form to work), you can pretty much have MT output your content any way you want. Like, say, into PHP arrays. Obviously, you'll need PHP to do this. You don't, however, need Smarty if you don't want to do that part. Here's how it works:

Start out by creating a basic template (or modifying a current one like Main Index). Only this time, instead of filling this template with a bunch of HTML code, just toss in a few important lines:

<?php
<MTInclude module="Index Array">
$section = 'index';
include_once($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/manage.php');
?>

You may be asking yourself how this is going to work with just that many lines of code. Well, it won't. But, what we've done here is just to get the ball rolling. Now when someone hits index.php, MT will run the "Index Array" template module (we've yet to create this), set the section variable to "index" and include a PHP file called "manage." Now we need to create the template module. It's going to do the real work. Create a new TM (bottom of the templates page) and name it Index Array. In the module body, you're going to need to create an array of all the content you need to build your index page. Click here to see my Index Array template module for an example.

So now you've got a multidimensional array called $entries that contains everything you need for each entry to be shown on your index page, and it and the section variable can now be used in the file you included, manage.php. Manage.php is going to do all the legwork now that we have our content. It's really easy—all you need to do is either call template files, or, if you don't want to use Smarty, write XHTML to output, based on the section variable. For instance:

<?php
switch ($section) {
     case 'index':
          // echo HTML here
          break;
}
?>

But remember, since you've stored all your content in a multidimensional array, you'll need to loop through it to utilize each item. If you used my index array example, and wanted to echo the title of each entry in the array, you could use a loop something like this:

for ($i=0;$i<count($entries);$i++) {
echo 'Title: '.$entries[$i]['title'];
}

Once you've handled all the elements of the index, you can continue to build a new template module for each section of your website. There are special circumstances where you're going to need to get a little trickier using this method, and that's when there are multiple content items within a content item (ie: comments). To handle this, you can simply create multiple arrays. For instance, if we wanted to also get all the comments for each of the entries in the index array example, we could modify the $entries array to contain one additional key whose value was an array of the comments, like this:

<MTComments>
$comment[] = array(
     'author' => '<$MTCommentAuthorLink spam_protect="1" encode_php="q"$>',
     'datetime' => '<$MTCommentDate format="%B %d, %Y at %X"$>',
     'body' => '<$MTCommentBody smart_quotes="2" smart_dashes="1"$>'
     );
</MTComments>

// Then, change your entries array to include the comments array
$entries = array(
     'entryid' => '<$MTEntryID$>',
     ... etcetera ...
     'comments' => $comment
     );

Then later you can do a loop within your loop to get that information. I know this might sound a bit complicated, but it's really not once you get the hang of it. Using this system you can build a very efficient system that still utilizes the power of Movable Type, but allows you to really squeeze in a lot of PHP power as well.

Fourth of July, Part II

1 comment (closed), posted on july 6, 2003, tags: me

So, after resting from our long day at Coney Island, we were ready to view some fireworks. The best place, we decided, would be a few blocks down the road at the Brooklyn waterfront in Bedford. At around 8:30 we hopped the L train and walked with the masses down to Kent Avenue and found ourselves a spot on the sidewalk. An hour or so later (a bit of a delayed start), the fireworks began. I managed to grab some time-lapse photos of the show. When everything was done we headed home, tired from a full, long day.

Fourth of July, Part I

posted on july 6, 2003, tags: me

Woke up at 9:30AM. This is not normal for a day off, specifically a holiday. But, none the less, managed to get onto the subway by 10:20. The G train. Took that to Bergen, then grabbed the F train all the way to Avenue X (the avenue named for it's super-heroes, apparently). Then we skipped the shuttle-bus and instead walked the seemingly 40 blocks to Coney Island. On the walk, I happened to snap a picture of a Raggedy Ann doll who met her maker when she tried to climb over one of the many tall fences topped with razor wire. Ouch.

The plan was to see the Nathan's Hot-Dog Eating Contest, but by the time we got there it was too crowded to see anything. Here's a nice panoramic of the crowd. We kept trying to see, but it was no use. Katia was sad and Shawn was, well, Shawn, as you can see. Twelve minutes later, the contest was over (quite disappointing, actually), and we were stuffing our faces full of our own Nathan's hot-dogs. After stuffing ourselves we decided to walk up to the beach. Shawn was looking for a garbage can to throw away his soda for a few blocks, and finally had to put it on top of a garbage can that was already way too full. Everyone looked at him with disgust, which was nice.

Then there was the beach. I've never been to Coney Island before, and I expected it to be crowded, but it was crazy. There were people everywhere. Here's another panoramic, although I must admit this picture makes it seem less busy than it was. Just note that the empty space in the foreground of that image is only about 20 feet—the rest is solid people. After walking by the upright-urinating palm tree, we walked down to the water-front where Katia splashed around and I watched a little boy construct one of the strangest sand-castles I've ever seen.

After the beach it was time for the boardwalk. We ended up riding the Tilt-A-Whirl twice (Shawn should have some interesting pictures of this), and avoided the Wonder Wheel and the Observation Tower. We eventually ended up going to the aquarium, where we saw some of the coolest 2-ton seals in the world. Oh, and there was a sea-otter than, I think, was as smart as me (is that saying much?).

Since it was still at least 200 degrees outside and we had all managed to get enough of a sunburn, we decided to head home at about 5 o'clock. It took a while, but eventually we made it back to our apartments for much needed showering, air-conditioning, and food. A few hours later we re-grouped for fireworks.

Big and Green

3 comments (closed), posted on july 3, 2003, tags: entertainment

Let me start off by saying I can understand why 75% of people who see Ang Lee's Hulk absolutely hate it. I can also understand why 15% of the remainder sorta liked it maybe a little I don't know it was sorta boring in places and he looked weird oh and what was that all about I know but it could have been faster. I fall into the remaining 10% who really liked it.

Hulk is not an average comic book movie. It doesn't have a concrete good versus evil story (hell, Hulk isn't really good at all anyway), it doesn't have a sweeping, epic love story or a moral. What it does have, though, is a giant, completely CG, completely green, relatively crappy in parts Hulk. Oh, and Jennifer Connelly. And fantastic cinematography. And some really great transitions. And an enormous amount of silence, in those places where you would expect loud and yet the quiet is even more interesting and powerful. And the editing—well, it's amazing.

Yes, it takes about 45 minutes before you get to see the Hulk. Yes, the movie is over two hours long. Yes, the Hulk looks really bad in parts. But see, what you're missing is that this isn't Spider-man. It isn't supposed to be. It's supposed to be a story about a man. Not a super-hero. Not a saviour. Just a man who has something inside of him no one expected. Something he cannot control. It is, very much, the opening act of Bruce Banner's life.

I really enjoyed it, but I can understand why you wouldn't. Absolutely. With no ill-regard, either. I don't think I'll ever seek out seeing this film again, but I'm glad I saw it today.

More On WiFi

3 comments (closed), posted on july 3, 2003, tags: tech

I need to clarify a few things [in this entry] because I posted hastily. First of all, I am not whining. I don't know why this keeps coming up. People keep making some random assumption that I'm crying about how things I want aren't free. That's not it at all. I'm more upset that I don't have any way to make something like this happen (since I don't have broadband at home yet!), and that others who do don't match my mindset on the matter. Second, let me answer some questions I've received about this whole thing:

Who is paying for it? I am. You are. Anyone who participates is. The idea is not that everything will be free. That couldn't work. The idea is that I help contribute to the free WiFi, and you do too. That way, when I'm in my apartment or on my street, I have a WiFi connection. At this point, I'm paying for it. When you come to my house or my street you can use my connection. Then, when I go to your house or your street or your neighborhood, you're paying for it and I can use your connection. Now imagine many other people in-between our streets each sharing their WiFi and you have a connection all over. I'm willing to pay for/share my connection if it means I will be able to use my PowerBook all over the place.

Can it be non-metered and sustainable as a business? I'm not quite sure what this means, but I think I'm being asked if free WiFi could provide its own self-sustaining value. In that case, no, absolutely not. But that's not the point at all. This is a community powered—more so individually powered—idea that does not have anything to do with creating/maintaining/running a company. The idea here is not to incorporate or create a formal group of individuals, but rather the opposite. To get a group of people together who are all willing to donate something to creating a free WiFi network. Whether it's bandwidth, money, time, etcetera—that's what this is about. Of course it's not sustainable as a business. If you had 20 people keeping up this network and 10 of them left, it would probably fall apart. I'm not interested in creating a business, though.

As far as making your connection public being a violation of your cable/dsl company's Terms of Service—this is true. And an issue. Although I think this was brought up less for a point of "illegality" than it was for a point of "someone's paying for it," meaning that by violating your cable TOS, you are, in essence, making your cable company pay for the free WiFi you're creating. I don't really think this is true, however. While you would be violating the TOS in a very technical way, you wouldn't be creating a significant amount of overage in your daily use. For instance—having an Airport Extreme Base Station at home allows me to broadcast my Internet bandwidth to up to 50 computers in my house. This is already not how ISPs had intended their services to be used, but they have ratified their TOS over the years to allow for homes to use wireless connections for multiple computers.

I think that I could create just as much use by myself with three machines on my home network (by downloading big files constantly, or something like that) than I could if I just didn't set a password on my APE base station and let people in the area connect to it. The point of this whole thing is not to create a network for extreme usage (this is not all an idea for MP3 downloading and porn searching), but a network that allows for normal Internet connectivity in lots of places.

I keep hammering at this topic because I think it's a good idea. I don't think I'm out of line here, and I don't think what I'm saying is impossible to do or anything of the sort. I feel like I need to find some people who actually agree with me and would be willing to try starting something like this. I dunno, maybe I'm also just crazy. It seems like most people who comment just don't want to hear about it and wish I would stop talking. That's fine—I don't think you're the right audience then, for this kind of conversation. I'll keep this to myself in the future.

Free WiFi Not Crazy After All

4 comments (closed), posted on july 2, 2003, tags: tech

The other day I wrote an entry about Starbucks not having free WiFi Internet service. In response, Shawn wrote an entry about how crazy I was, basically stating that wishing for free WiFi is not only stupid, but not at all reasonable. My reaction to this, and to anyone who believes that, is still the same: free WiFi is not crazy, is not unreasonable, and is worth it. But I also conceded that maybe my views on this matter are not in the same tone as people from this area (New York). Other places, however, have similar ideas.

For instance, there's WiFi Charlottetown (via aov), a group of individuals in Charlottetown, PEI (Canada) who are trying to create a free WiFi network in their entire town. This is something I think could be a really positive and fantastic idea if it works out (and it seems to be). The basic idea is that a bunch of people donate time or bandwidth or money, and eventually the whole town has free and open WiFi access.

Ellie also sent me a Seattle Times article about WiFi becoming wide-spread in small coffee shops and stores in Seattle. The article describes how small business owners are finding that offering this service is attracting more customers and helping out with word-of-mouth advertising. From the article:

The typical proprietor or chief executive of these venues says "free" can have a way of paying for itself by bringing in more repeat customers and encouraging people to linger in the shop and spend a little more money.

Perhaps I'm being too positive, but I believe free WiFi is a cause worth supporting. I'm actually quite surprised that more areas in NYC aren't doing this (maybe I just don't know about them). In areas like Williamsburg, I wish more people thought like they have been in Charlottetown. I think that creating a free WiFi network would be a great thing—not only for the current residents of the area, but for future residents too. I'm sure there are plenty of people interested in this sort of thing—maybe they just don't know where to start.

In a place like New York City, a place where everything is fast and on the cutting edge, I expect a technological idea like this to be supported and nurtured. Instead, I'm apparently in the minority of this opinion. I think that's crummy.

Update: Please see the entry entitled More On WiFi for more on this subject.

Cats Love Lasers

5 comments (closed), posted on july 1, 2003, tags: random

A few days ago I finally got replacement batteries for one of my old laser pointers, and since then we've been having all sorts of fun with our two cats. Apparently, cats want to kill lasers, but do not seem to understand that they are just dots of light. That's what makes this all so fun. Another nice thing is that the cats don't seem to understand that we are controlling the laser, so they will chase it infinitely and when you stop, they don't dislike you any less (although they do sit for about an hour looking for the laser).

Last night I decided the outside world must see our cats in the act—specifically Oscar, who has a habit of jumping quite high while attempting to destroy the stupid little red dot. I captured a few 30-second movies with my digital camera and then edited them quickly and poorly in iMovie. You can download this movie if you have QuickTime 6. It's definitely worth watching to see Oscar panting like a dog in the end (even if the movie in its entirety is of shitty quality and compression). Enjoy.

Requires QuickTime 6 (8.2MB)
If you don't want to stream it, you can download this ZIP file at 7.9MB.