David Raynes

Now that I've got the comment situation under control, or so it would seem at least, I am now back to actually thinking about my blog and what I will be doing with it.

Here are some of my current thoughts:

• Incorporate what Jenn has been writing in her journal blog about what we have been going through with the infertility treatments into the main feed for this site, like I have already done with the main index page
• Possibly splitting my blog into two: a Movable Type-only blog, for all my plugins, hacks, experiments, and so forth, and a personal, diary or journal blog. Do any of you folks out there (other than my mother.. Hi Mom!) have any interest in what I'm doing outside of the MT realm? Or maybe want to hear some of what I've been thinking about the infertility stuff, which I have been meaning to write about more?
• I am also trying to find a way to ask folks that have reaped huge benefits from the major time and effort I have put into writing and testing my plugins, which have all be released freely, for maybe a small donation via PayPal, or perhaps a purchase from my Amazon wish-list (or, for you gamers out there, my Games Workshop wish-list). Asking is not the main issue though; asking without sounding like an ass is.

So it finally happened. My site has been getting nailed by comment spammers over the last few hours (at least). Figures it would happen not long after I required TypeKey authentication for comments.

I will let things settle down some and then re-enable comments with crossed fingers. Maybe later today.

Update (12/20): Okay, so I have turned them back on. Cross your fingers.

Well, I have gone and redesigned my blog once again. This version feels a little less cluttered and less tossed together then previous incarnations. I also now have entries from the side blog listed in the main content section (thanks to my MultiBlog plugin).

It is loosely based on the Tiny Blue style from MovableStyle, with my own color scheme added in, and many other major and minor modifications. I will probably continue to tweek it over the next couple weeks as I migrate the changes to the archive pages, but I wanted to push the new design to the main page and get some general feedback first. Keep in mind that I am by no means any kind of web designer. I just happen to know a little CSS.

So what do you think?

Well, if anybody has had a problem leaving comments on this site recently, I think I have found the culprit. It would appear that about a month ago, I somehow managed to create an entry in MT-Blacklist that would block any comment containing the string tp:. Needless to say, most comments including any web URL would be caught by that, and therefore denied. I hopped into the database and de-activated the blacklist entry (Jay, any way to do that from the interface, or am I just missing something?), so all should be well now.

Comments are welcome. :)

I've gone ahead and given all of my categories their own individual RSS feeds. So, if you could care less what I've been reading, for example, and only want to get all the entries about what I've written for Movable Type lately, you can subscribe to one of the following category feeds:

• Movable Type
  • MT Brainstorming
  • MT Hacking
  • MT Plugin Manager
  • MT Plugins

Or, if for some reason, you only want to read about the books I've read, just toss the following into your aggregator:

• Books

And so on. All the category feed links are in the sidebar on my main index page. Enjoy!

As I'm sure you can see (if you're not reading my RSS feed that is), I've drastically changed the layout of the blog. Since starting my site back in August, I've learned quite a bit about (X)HTML and CSS, along with Movable Type of course.

So, I finally sat down and put that accumulated experience to work over the last week or so. What is see is the beginnings of the results.

I'm not finished yet. I've got some work yet to do in the Individual Entries, but the general look is there.

Comments, thoughts, suggestions, etc. are more than welcome!

I've gone ahead and upgraded to Movable Type 2.62.

Look forward to perhaps some new plugins, polished current plugins, and a new somewhat final beta release of remote post and ComeBack.

Enjoy!

Thanks to Mark Pilgrim's RSS 2.0 Template for Movable Type, Rayners.Org now has an RSS 2.0 feed.

Enjoy!

Just for the record, I'd like to say that, yes, I am aware of the issues people using smaller browser windows are having with the middle column overlapping the right column.

I am currently still now sure how I want to resolve that, but I am open to any ideas people might have.

Here's the idea: I will post a picture of an interesting location or something along those lines, and you guys can post scenes, encounters, scenarios, adventures, etc that might take place there or at least involve it. Or, I could also take a "Whose Line Is It Anyway" approach to it, and post a picture of a group of people who seem to be doing something. I will probably end up doing both. :)

Either way, I have also setup a forum for it.

Well, I've finally gone and done it. I gave up my initial try mostly because I didn't feel like hunting down the IE problems (it work just fine in Mozilla). So, I went and took some CSS code from Blue Robot's Layout Reservoir and starting tweeking it for my site. What you see now is a result. I still have some minor changes to make here and there, but the majority of the work is already done.

Enjoy!

I've been playing with a new look for the blog, using CSS for all that nice layout stuff. No tables whatsoever.

Take a look at the test page here and let me know what you think. Or if it even works for you.

Well, the guys found a little workaround and got Mailman working. Woo hoo!

Now everybody who wants to get in on my CoC Halloween game can sign up for coc-halloween here. I'm going to try and get the discussion started in a day or two.

Well, it seems that mailman is having some issues with Comcast email addresses. Or, perhaps, Comcast is having issues with mail being sent from Simplenethosting. Either way, it's being worked on.

I just got a reply to the support ticket I submitted. The first line read:

NOT YOU AGAIN! :)

Apparently I am becoming quite famous at my host. But, I can't praise the support here enough. The staff has been very responsive (even at night on weekends) to my multitude of requests. :)

I can't recommend these guys enough.

As you've probably noticed by now, I've reimplemented the Random Game Quotes in the main index.

Enjoy!

If you'd like to submit a quote of your own, just add a comment here.

Thanks to my constant pestering, my host was able to get Mailman up and running finally.

Now I can run that mailing list for my Halloween CoC game!

I've also gone and installed MTMacro. Though I did have some trouble with it initially, in the end, I discovered it was entirely user error.

(Note to self: Marcro != Macro) :)

I've added back in the Related Entries plugin for movetype.

For those of you who are either new to the site, or are just totally blind, you may have noticed a change in the layout. I installed the new version (2.5) of MovableType.

The new default templates have taken into account some suggestions from 30 Days to a More Accessible Web site, pretty much all of which I happen to agree with. So I figured I'd just bite the bullet and start from scratch. I'll be adding back in my Game Quote Submission System in a couple days, as well as tweaking some of the templates back to where I want them.

Hopefully, when all is said and done, I'll actually have me a nice litle website. Who knows? :)

Well, after having a couple problems with my setup, I submitted a trouble ticket to my hosting company, SimpleNet Hosting, and they said they'd just move me to a newer machine. Now I am on that new, faster machine.

I am still having a couple setup issues, but I am confident I'll be able to work them out with the company. They've been extremely good about fixing things during my first week here.

This is my first entry on the new host. Hopefully, I can find the time to improve things some in the coming weeks.

Any suggestions are appreciated. :)

This will be my last entry on arrakis.homeip.net. From now on, my blog will be located at http://www.rayners.org.

I finally bit the bullet and registered me a domain name (with Go Daddy if anyone is interested). I've also signed up for hosting at SimpleNet Hosting (whose customer support has been great so far).

So, look for something at http://www.rayners.org soon.

After a request from Jenn, who cannot keep up with my book/movie/game purchasing (understandably, 'cuz I can barely do it myself), I have put together a wish list of things I'd like, and I figured I may as well go ahead and put a link to it here, so I did.

Well, it is done! I've tested it and it seems to be working without problem.

And here's how I did it:

I eventually came to the decision to use Movable Type's built-in comment system instead of taking the time to roll my own. I created what I'll call a shadow entry in the blog. Basically, it's an entry that will forever stay at Draft instead of moving to Publish.

After adding that to the database, I grabbed the entry_id out of the mt_entry table, and copied the Individual Archive Entry template into a new Index Template I called Submit Random Game Quote. I snipped out every template tag having to do with entries, and I was left with a title and an html form. I put the entry_id of the shadow entry into the form fields, and that was it. My submission page is complete.

And here is the code I used to pull out the Random Game Quotes:

$link = mysql_connect ("localhost", "username", "password");

mysql_select_db ("mt", $link);

$query = "SELECT comment_id
          FROM mt_comment
          WHERE comment_blog_id = 1
            AND comment_entry_id = 26";

$res = mysql_query ($query, $link) or die ("Invalid query: $query<br />". mysql_error ());

$total = 0;
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array ($res)) {
  $id[$total] = $row[0];
  $total++;
}

$quoteId = $id[rand (0, $total - 1)];

$query = "SELECT comment_text,  comment_author, comment_email
          FROM mt_comment
          WHERE comment_id = $quoteId";

$res = mysql_query ($query, $link) or die ("Invalid query: $query<br />".mysql_error ());
$row = mysql_fetch_array ($res);

$quote = str_replace ("\n", "<br />", $row[0]);

echo $quote."<br /><br />\n";
echo "<em>Submitted by:</em> <a href='mailto:".$row[2]."'>".$row[1]."</a><br />\n";

echo "<br />\n";
echo "<center><font size=-2><a href='/submitquote.php'>Submit a new Game Quote</a></font><br /></center>\n";

Well, with any luck, any comment added to this entry will go into the Random Game Quote list.

I am sure by now you have noticed the little box spitting out Random Game Quotes on my site. At the moment, it's configured to pull out only quotes involving Joel, but I think I'll go back to a general Random Quote soon.

In addition to that, I am going to work up something so people can submit more Game Quotes for me to use. Should be a neat little programming project for me.