Running in Place

It was a bad weekend for computers. I managed to fry both my processor and my floppy drive. The computer was shutting down intermittently for no apparent reason, so I suspected that the processor was overheating. (I had had problems previously with the heat sink that came with my AMD Athlon 2000.) I upgraded the heat sink, but I managed to install the it incorrectly (it was asymmetrical) and fried the chip. Arrrrrrrgh! Fortunately, I was able to buy a relatively inexpensive AMD Athlon 2400 as a replacement without having to upgrade the motherboard. I got everything hooked up, and it appeared to be working fine. Fine, that is, until smoke started pouring out of my floppy drive and the power cables began to melt. I cut the power before any more damage was done. The computer (minus floppy drive) is working fine for the moment. (Otherwise you would probably not be reading this. I guess I should look on the bright side; at least it was cheaper to repair than my car, I was able to do it myself, and everyone survived.

Another One Bites the Dust

The baby managed to kick my coffee onto my keyboard today. The baby, thank heavens, was unscathed, but the keyboard perished. I bought a new Memorex USB keyboard, model MX2710, and was somewhat surprised to find that the cord to the keyboard had a warning stating that the cord contained lead: "Handling the cord on this product will expose you to lead, a chemical known to the state of California to cause [cancer, and] birth defects or other reprodctive harm. Wash hands after handling."

A quick investigation on Google suggests that this is a California legal excess, and that Memorex cords are no more lethal than anyone else's. However, the warning is disconcerting to say the least, particularly to those of us with small children. (And no, I do not intend to let the baby get that close to the coffee again.)

Staying the Course

Despite the recent brouhaha over Movable Type's licensing terms, and the terms' subsequent revision, I think I will stick with Movable Type, at least for the moment. Since I run a one-author, two weblog site, I am not really going to get bitten by the new licensing terms. I have too much invested, and Movable Type meets too many of my needs, for me to really want to move.

Text Edit

With some trepidation, I have downloaded and installed GNU Emacs for Windows. I have started working my way through Learning Perl by Tom Christiansen, and I want and editor in which to write perl scripts. Emacs is my editor of choice (at the moment) on Linux, and while it may not be the perfect choice for Windows, I think there is something to be gained by using a consistent cross-platform tool.

Spam Claims Another Victim

unbillable hours

I have just learned that TPB has shut down comments on his site, after Ernie the Attorney did the same. TPB states

You know, I hate to do this, but I was just comment spammed over thirty times in the past ten minutes. It fills up my inbox, it distracts me, and it forces me to go post-to-post, deleting comments and blocking IP addresses. Ernie the Attorney responded to this by blocking comments on his site, and I think I may have to do the same.

I agree that this is a real shame, since one of the prime attractions of a weblog is the interaction between readers and writers. I hope that TPB and Ernie have called this situation to the the attention of Six Apart, the makers of both TypePad and Movable Type. As an interim measure, Movable Type users can install a copy of the MT Blacklist plugin, and I would have thought there might be something similar for TypePad. The next iteration of Movable Type (3.0) is supposed to include a somewhat controversial comment registration system designed to deal with spam. From the note of desperation in TPB's post, it sounds as though he might well be willing to trade off the potential inconvenience and loss of anonymity of a comment registration system in order to retain the comment feature without subjecting himself to a flood of spam.

Note: A quick check suggests that Ernie the Attorney, like TPB, is still allowing comments for some posts.

Evolution of the Blog

Unbillable Hours has a lengthy and thoughtful essay on the mutations of the Blog form into journalism, criticism, scholarship, and literature. What his essay suggests to me is that Blogs are subject to a kind of natural selection. Out of the thousands, perhaps millions of Blogs, many are little read and quickly abandoned. Of the smaller number that persist and survive, many qualify as journalism. A few devote themselves to serious criticism or scholarship. The handful that will endure as literature represent the evolutionary apex of the form. As with life or literature in print, it is almost impossible to tell in advance which these will be. I share TPB, Esq.'s confidence that there willl be some, however.

Geek, Geek, Geek!

One more thing for which Srijith is responsible. Eight years after they were hip, I've finally got a geek code:

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version 3.12
GJ$/L d++ s: a C+ UL P+ L+(++) E W++ N o-- K- w !O M(+) !V PS++ PE Y+ PGP>+ t 5 X-- R- tv-- b++ DI D- G e+++ h r+++ y++++
-----END GEEK CODE BLOCK-------

To decode, see Decoded Geek Code.

PGP Signed Comments

As an intellectual exercise, more than for any practical reason, I implemented OpenPGP Signing of Movable Type Comments on my weblog. As Krishnan Nair Srijith, the author of the Movable Type plugin, points out, "installing Crypt::OpenPGP's prerequisites is no easy work :)" So much so, that if I had know how much work it would be, I might not have attempted it. Nevertheless, I am glad that I did, if only because I learned a little bit about Perl in the process, perhaps enough to pique my curiosity to learn more.

My experience installing the prerequisite local Perl modules for Crypt::OpenPGP in my home directory can be summed up as follows:

Create the following directories in your home directory:

mkdir usr

mkdir usr/local

Set the environment variable (my shell is "/bin/bash")

export PERL5LIB="/home_directory/usr/local/lib/perl/5.6.1:\
/path_to_home_directory/usr/local/share/perl/5.6.1:" You may eventually want to add this line to your .bash_profile so that it will set the variables every time you log in.

You can see if you have properly set the environment variables by typing the command

perl -V

(Note that the flag is a capital "V"). Your library path (path_to_home_directory/usr/local/lib/perl/5.6.1) should be listed under @INC.

Download the required modules from http://www.cpan.org. The README in Crypt:OpenPGP lists the prerequisite modules, although some of these may also have prerequisites on your system.

Unpack the module with:

tar -xvzf module_name.tar.gz

cd module_directory

perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=/path_to_home_directory/usr
make test
make
make install

Repeat until all the modules are installed without errors, and finally install Crypt::OpenPGP. You then need to edit your Movable Type templates to take advantage of the new plugin. Be sure that you have put an ASCII copy of your PGP Public Key (e.g. /pgp.asc on your site so that you can test the key verification feature of the plugin.

I found that once I had properly set the environment variable (which took me some time to get right), most of compilation errors that I experienced resulted from my having not yet installed a prerequisite to the prerequisite module.

NOTE: Although installing the local modules manually rather that automatically through CPAN was somewhat tedious and time-consuming, I found that it was the only way that I was able to make the local installation work properly.

Also, Srijith suggests that it may be a good idea to edit OpenPGPComment.pl to set the variable called DEBUG to 0.

Nostalgia

I mentioned to a collegue that I took one programming course in college, in FORTRAN. First, he asked, "What's that?" His second question was "Does that go back to the punch cards?" I said I did not know, since I did not use punch cards. A quick Google search yielded the answer to his question: yes, FORTRAN does go back to the era of punch card programming.

Universal Address Book

The quest for the universal computer address book continues. For years I have wanted to be able to have one address book for all my applications on my computer at home, all my applications on my computer at work, my Palm, and preferably my cell phone. For some reason, software designers seem determined to balkanize the address book market, so that address books in different applications and on different platforms will not work together. It seems so simple . . and yet so elusive. I think that I am making some progress with a combination of Intellisync and Outlook, from which I am importing addresses to WordPerfect. Some progress . . . but a long way to go.

Power Laws and Weblog Popularity

Clay Shirky gives a short explanation of the Power Law and its application to the number of readers each weblog attracts. The Power Law basically posits that distribution in certain kinds of networks -- whether weblog or wealth -- is weighted in such a way that a disproportionate share of resources -- readers or dollars -- are allocated to the top performers in a group. In other words, the most popular weblogs get most of the readers, just as a few rich people control most of the wealth.

I came across the Power Law upon reading the unfortunate news that BlogShares has closed.

Spam Relief

How do you spell RELIEF? Jay Allen has come out with a great blacklist plugin that helps address the recent wave of comment span that has besieged Movable Type users. For the moment, my weblog comments are certified Spam free!

Bye Bye

Dave Winer is not happy about a rather clever parody of Don McLean's American Pie. I am not enough of an insider to catch all the references, but apparently the author touched a few nerves. Unlike Mr. Winer, I do not think that "paying your dues" is a prerequisite to writing a satire. Some authors, like Pope and Swift, basically wrote nothing but satires, and Byron lauched his career with "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers." This little blogger doggerel is not in the same class, but the same principle applies: satire should be judged on its wit not its antecedents.