David Raynes

Now that I have all of the current crop of new blogs setup, I figured it would be a good to let folks know where the feeds are now.

• Everything combined:
  • RSS: http://www.rayners.org/rss.xml
  • Atom: http://www.rayners.org/atom.xml
• Plugins only
  • RSS: http://www.rayners.org/plugins-rss.xml
  • Atom: http://www.rayners.org/plugins-atom.xml
• Personal only
  • RSS: http://www.rayners.org/personal-rss.xml
  • Atom: http://www.rayners.org/personal-atom.xml

I am forking my blog. If you have actually been to my site in the last few hours, you may have had a suspicion that something like that was in the works.

Basically, here is the idea. I want to split my blog into one focused on my plugins and other Movable Type activities, and another one focused on personal stuff. One of the reasons I started this blog in the first place was to force myself to write more often (as I desperately need the practice), but I find myself being reluctant (especially recently) to write about personal goings on so as not to clutter up all of the plugin information with irrelevant personal babblings.

This will be the last entry in the original blog. I have already started the plugins blog and the personal blog comes next. You will still be able to read all of my blogs from the rayners.org page, and I will be providing RSS/Atom feeds for both individually and a combined feed. I will also make sure that redirects keep folks from having to tinker with subscriptions unnecessarily.

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. :)

You have managed to arrive at my site on the new host. Enjoy! And let me know if anything isn't working correctly.

As I will be upgrading to the latest beta of MT 3.0 and moving my site to a new host, I am going to temporarily disable comments and trackbacks until things settle out in the next couple days. I apologize for any inconvenience.

As much stuff as I have going on here (most of which could use some serious work), I figure I may as well put up a public to-do list of some kind so you can get an idea of what I am currently working on, and so on and so forth. :)

Any thoughts on how I could put something like that together? I could always just go the route of another blog for it. Any thoughts on what additional information anybody would like to see (beyond task name and description)?

I had a goofy idea last night. One of my favorite types of puzzles are the types where you get to break substitution ciphers (basically, the alphabet gets jumbled around). For example:

This is a sentence.

becomes:

Guvf vf n fragrapr.

So, once a week (maybe on Friday or Saturday), I'll post an encoded message (and MT shall make this so terribly easy), and whoever leaves the first comment or trackback with the correct decoding wins (or maybe I'll assign points to first, second, third, etc.). I'll keep track of the top scorers and if this takes off, maybe I'll offer a prize each month or so.

So, any thoughts? Does this sound like it might be fun? Can you tell I'm a horrible nerd? :)

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!

First of all, starting in a few hours, my host is going to be movnig this site to a different server. For approximately 48 hours, you could be getting one of two versions of this site (either the old server or the new server), depending on how quickly the DNS change propogates. So, any changes to the site (e.g. comments, trackbacks, etc) may misteriously disappear during that time. I'd suggest holding off on doing any of those until Saturday afternoon or so. (Note to self: look into possibility of creating a "Movable Type Go Offline" type thing, like some forums software have).

And, if you haven't heard already, around when the DNS changes should have worked themselves out, I will be getting married. Unfortunately, some people won't be able to make it, but that just means they'll owe me a visit sometime in the future. :) After that, Jenn and I will be on our honeymoon in another part of the state. Don't go making any sinister plans though. Our four attack cats and my sister-in-law will be watching over the apartment while we're gone.

What does this mean for the Plugin Manager you ask? Well, I've done some work over the last week or so (I do love taking time off work for once), but not enough to warrant a new release just yet. I'll try to finish it up and get a new version out by around Friday or Saturday of next week.

Things to look forward to in the next release:

• Display of new plugins since the last update of the plugin list
• mt-check-like functionality to try to ease the install problems people seem to be having

And hopefully soon I'll be able to iron our my ideas for doing plugin configuration though the Plugin Manager, so I can start implementing, so other plugin authors can take advantage of what the Plugin Manager can offer them.

Fun, fun, fun. :)

I apologize if anybody had any problems getting to the site (or happened to get a "different" site) over the weekend. My host moved me to a new machine and it took some time to get things setup correctly.

Everything is back to normal now though. 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.

Well, Rayners.Org could use a logo. However, I am far from graphically inclined myself. I can't offer much to anybody for a logo, but I can promise to write you a plugin or three. :-D

Since I've got so many plugins out there, I figured it'd be best to have some sort of centralized place for feature/enhancement requests and bug reports, so I setup some forums for just that purpose.

Take a look, and enjoy! :)

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!

For no particular reason, I put some forums up on my site. Take a look and post some.. umm.. posts. :)

Well, seeing as how it's the beginning of a new month, and that I've been with my current host for about a month, I thought I'd see what I can glean from my web stats for October.

The following is what I've found (and remember, this is solely for rayners.org and not my old site at arrakis.homeip.net):

Search Terms:

• what do you mean you lost my wife's kidney (3 times)
• network operation services inc. (2 times)
• network operation services inc (1 time)
• recompile freetype (1 time)
• what do you mean you lost my wife's (1 time)

Top Referrals (filtering out rayners.org pages, other bits of non-information):

• - (Direct Request) (2205 hits)
• http://www.movabletype.org/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi (91 hits)
• http://radio.xmlstoragesystem.com/rcsPublic/ (68 hits)
• http://blogdex.media.mit.edu/ (36 hits)
• http://www.blogmints.com (18 hits)
• http://www.bradchoate.com/ (13 hits)
• http://www.inluminent.com/weblog/ (11 hits)
• http://www.google.com/search (10 hits)
• http://love-productions.com/lovelinks/mt/ (8 hits)
• http://www.weblogs.com/top100.html (7 hits)
• http://www.weblogs.com/ (6 hits)
• http://www.deliriouscool.org/ (6 hits)
• http://www.robruff.net/ (5 hits)
• http://www.brokensky.org/catharsis/ (4 hits)
• http://kadyellebee.com/ (3 hits)
• http://forums.simplenethosting.com/index.php (2 hits)
• http://www.blo.gs/ (2 hits)
• http://www.dshadow.com/links.phtml (2 hits)
• http://rick.978.org/ (1 hit)

Top Entries:

• MTSearches (my first plugin) (153 hits)
• Installed MTMacro As Well (37 hits)
• MTMacro Improved (Slightly) (36 hits)
• The Transporter (33 hits)
• New Plugin: MTBlogAuthorCount (33 hits)
• Random Game Quote Submission (20 hits)
• Hawk is Dead. Long Live Hawk. (20 hits)
• The Blog Has Moved To A New Machine (19 hits)
• New Version of MT Is Out! (17 hits)
• Damned Soda Conspiracy (16 hits)
• The Soda Lockout Is Over (15 hits)
• Added the MTRelatedEntries Plugin (15 hits)

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.

Good news!

I now have the gallery up and running, and have uploaded all of the pictures I've taken for the game so far. It can be accessed at http://gallery.rayners.org/rttoee.

Enjoy!

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.