June 29, 2005

MuNuEcoCommunity

Thanks to the estimable N. Z. Bear, we is now a community!

Yay!

Posted by Pixy Misa at 11:23 PM | Comments (10)

Crap

I forgot to reinstall my crapfilter when I updated MT Blacklist, with the result being what you've probably seen - we got crapflooded.

This will be fixed today.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 04:08 AM | Comments (2)

June 27, 2005

It's finally out of the bag

OK, despite the fact that I have not actually received the revised proof, I feel safe in saying that

Alien Attitudes:
Alura Allen, Alien at Large

is officially
available for sale.
Although I wanted to take a few hundred along for next weekend's Roswell Annual UFO Festival premiere, I was only able to order 24 prior to my receipt and approval of the this latest version. I am unsure, given my previous experiences with the first version, that those two dozen volumes will be in my custody prior to my scheduled disembarkation on next Friday.

OK, fellow Munuvians -- it's time to spread the word. I'll appreciate all the publicity any and all of you can give to my efforts. This is, after all, something I have spent the last seven years of my life preparing for public release. Also, feel free to beat the rush and get yours today!!! The future will hopefully show your experience to be a lot like your having been one of the first people to have read the first book, being The Fellowship of the Ring, of The Lord of the Rings right after it was released for public consumption. Go ahead, read my book and tell me I'm wrong.

Posted by Tiger at 05:49 PM | Comments (3)

Permalinks

I'm confused. Permalinks to posts on my blog don't go to the individual post, they bring up several posts at once.

For example, this post from the 23rd.

This is probably due to something ignorant that I've done. I thought it had to do with my archive template, but now I'm not so sure.

Thanks for any help.

Posted by Owlish at 04:09 PM | Comments (8)

Lend Me Your Ears

Okay, I didn't really want your ears, so now you can have them back.

I just wanted to let everyone know that there is a new Truth Laid Bear Community called Life, Liberty, Property. We are all about those inherent rights and how to promote them in the blogosphere. If you are interested in being part of the community (quite helpful for getting traffic, if you're not the altruistic sort) come check out how to be assimilated join the group.

Posted by EricC at 06:05 AM | Comments (3)

Friends Romans Munuvians

Lend me your brains.

I have begun an open source project to compose a Constitutional Amendment in response to the recent Supreme Court decision in Kelo v New London. Its been through 2 revisions and we've made some good progress but it needs more input and some different perspectives.

If there are any Munuvian lawyers who would be willing to give us a little free legal critique it would be most appreciated.

Also, anything you can do to help promote the project would be wonderful. I don't have any delusions about ratification but if we can get it to congress and get it looked at an discussed we'll have accomplished something.

For more info here's the press release I have been sending out.

Posted by Stephen Macklin at 04:07 AM | Comments (1)

Trackback spam

I know we've discussed this before, but the sea of trackback spam is getting overwhelming. Is there some MT forum we can get onto to ask if there is an easy way to shut off trackback after (say) 1 month? I remember in the last discussion it had to be an all or nothing decision so if anyone objects they should say so now. I think a one month cut-off is enough, and while you may miss some links to the gems in your archives, it's a small price to pay. My count this morning was 72 trackbacks spams...and that's just from the weekend! I don't have the time nor patience to deal with it en masse.

By the way, do NOT buy diamond rings from Ideal Cut diamonds. Just saying.

Posted by Simon at 01:24 AM | Comments (9)

June 25, 2005

Sitemeter + Categories

1. I follow Sitemeter's instructions perfectly for MT, but cannot rebuild the Sitemeter template. MT doesn't recongize it/see it.

2. I've inserted pertinent e-mails into my categories, but when I click on those categories, I get a "page is not found" notice.

Posted by Mark N at 08:18 AM | Comments (6)

General Blog Question

I need help from the technologically gifted folks out there.

I want to be able to do two things: FIRST, I want to be able to create an RSS feed that will show the five most recent posts for several feeds. SECOND, I want to be able to put an XML button next to each blog on a blogroll so that people can subscribe to that blog's feed.

Both of these ideas are related to the SBC Aggregator site I'm working on. I have some definite ideas about what I want to do, but absolutely no clue as to how to do it. I THINK I've found a way to do the first, but not the second. And I DON'T want to have to hand edit my blogroll. I already thought of that ....

I appreciate any input you all can give me. I'm not totally new to this stuff, but I'm venturing out into uncharted (for me) territory. Anybody got a map?

Posted by Warren Kelly at 01:13 AM | Comments (1)

June 24, 2005

Code Assistance?

Jennifer, who is a lovely lady, has a sidebar that shows what book she's currently reading complete with an Amazon link and image that I imagine she cuts and pastes every week but I am curious how to do this thumbnail and URL link. Since I am a literature whore I want to add it on my sidebar, too. Anyone know the code?

Posted by Everydaystranger at 05:04 PM | Comments (3)

June 23, 2005

Help. My Banner is Boring

1. My name at the top of my page is too small

2. The entire banner area is boooring.

I'd like to add some artsy Van Gogh-type of painting up there with my
name overlapping. I generally want to snazzy up the banner area, but no clue
how. (With Blogger, I could simply insert some jpeg in the code, and my name and
the image would overlap nicely. Can I do that with MT?)

Posted by Mark N at 10:24 PM | Comments (6)

Carnival of Mu[Nu]sic

Fellow Munuvians, I have kicked off another link-whoring extravaganza carnival, a Carnival of Music, which has gotten some good traffic in its first three iterations (including two Instalanches! Yay!)

The Carnival is going on the road this week, to fellow Munuvian Owlish. Let's help him extend MuNu's world domination by making this a large and successful Carnival. Please send your submissions about anything musical here.

Our own Llamabutchers will also be hosting the Carnival at a yet-to-be-specified date in July, so check back at the archive page periodically to follow the Carnival's progress through the 'sphere. If you would like to host, please send an email to the submission address and indicate the date you're interested in.

Thanks!

Posted by JohnL at 04:44 PM | Comments (1)

June 22, 2005

Battle Call

It occurs to me that we Munuvians are not doing our part to ensure a timely take-over of the blogosphere. I mean, here we are, probably the largest blogging community on earth not bankrolled by a corporation, and every single one of us links to every other single one of us, and munu was not even a blip on Sobriquet Magazine's radar. Hey, we fit his criteria for "link doping": we don't share a common blogging topic of interest, like the military or God, and we link the heck out of each other with a handy blogrolling code that's available either alphabetically or chronologically. Yet, tragically, he focused his criticisms on the joke-that-wouldn't-die instead.

Rise up, Munuviana! Demand our badge of infamy! Badger Pixy to enroll us as one of the Communities at the Ecosystem. We have nothing to lose but our obscurity!

(Cross posted at Practical Penumbra)

Posted by Susie at 04:46 PM | Comments (16) | TrackBack

June 21, 2005

FTP Help

Ok. I thought I was decent at FTP until now. Please see extended entry for error and be kind to me. I'm sure this is a simple thing that I just can't see.

Here is what I'm getting:

220 ProFTPD 1.2.10 Server (ProFTPD) [67.19.5.4]
User (http://onehappydogspeaks.mu.nu:(none)): "vw bug"
331 Password required for vw bug.
Password:
530 Login incorrect.
Login failed.

It just doesn't like me. Or is it because Jim so kindly put a space in my login id? Anyways, would someone help me out here? I put a bunch of images in the wrong spot and would like to move them. Thanks!

Posted by vw bug at 02:14 PM | Comments (3)

Rotating Banners II

Crossposted at Rocket Jones.

Madfish Willie posted an excellent banner rotation script that I used as the starting point for some tweaking to allow it to handle banners of different sizes. I'll just post the changes here and go through it step by step.

(in the extended entry)

Here's the original code to randomly display a different banner each time you refresh the screen as posted by Madfish Willie. If you look it over, it's simple, elegant, and perfect to use if all your banners are the same size.

But the Rocket Jones banners aren't all the same size. Here's how we'll modify that code to handle it. First, after this line in the original code:

var logo = new Array() // do not change this

We'll add two new arrays, one to define the height of each banner, and one to define the width. Like so:

var tall = new Array()
var wide = new Array()

Next, are the definition statements where Madfish loads his images into the image array. You'll place your images here by replacing the part after the "http://" with your banner names (don't forget the path). It's important to start with the zero, and if you have more than the three listed, add more lines as needed. Original:

logo[0] = 'http://madfishwillies.mu.nu/images/madfishmetalB.jpg'
logo[1] = 'http://madfishwillies.mu.nu/images/madfishmetal2.gif'
logo[2] = 'http://madfishwillies.mu.nu/images/madfishmetal3.gif'

And modified to display four imaginary RocketJones banners:

logo[0] = 'http://rocketjones.mu.nu/images/RJBanner1.jpg'
logo[1] = 'http://rocketjones.mu.nu/images/rocketbanner1.gif'
logo[2] = 'http://rocketjones.mu.nu/images/LadyRocket.gif'
logo[3] = 'http://rocketjones.mu.nu/images/SaturnVbanner.gif'

And then add these lines to load the corresponding dimensions for the banners above.

tall[0] = 100
tall[1] = 150
tall[2] = 125
tall[3] = 150

wide[0] = 500
wide[1] = 400
wide[2] = 450
wide[3] = 450

Note that those are supposed to be square brackets for all of those value assignments like "tall[3]=150".

Now what these are saying is that the banner in slot zero can be found at the path described in logo[0], and it has the height (in pixels) described in tall[0] and the width (again, in pixels) described in wide[0]. The banner in slot 1 corresponds to tall[1] and wide[1] and so on. If you mix up the dimensions given for the banners, they'll still display, but the browsers will distort your banners to match the dimensions you entered (which is useful if you want to force the images into a set size).

The next bits of code do some initialization and setup that we don't need to mess with, so we'll move straight on to this line:

document.write('{img src="'+logo[whichImage]+'" width="780" height="173" border="0"}');

In the line above I changed the opening and closing angle brackets to squiggle brackets so that they'd display. You'll want to change them back to the 'less than' and 'greater than' symbols.

Madfish's original banners were all 780 pixels wide by 173 pixels tall, and those are the two numbers that we're changing with those two new arrays called tall and wide. See how simple this is? Almost logical, even.

document.write('{img src="'+logo[whichImage]+'"
width="'+wide[whichImage]+'" height="'+tall[whichImage]+'" border="0"}');

In the line above I changed the opening and closing angle brackets to squiggle brackets so that they'd display. You'll want to change them back to the 'less than' and 'greater than' symbols.

Leave the rest of the code exactly as he originally provided (beware that mix of single and double quotes), and put it into your template per his instructions.

To call it from your main template, add this bit at the top where your banner is called:

[div id="banner" align="center"]
[!-- Rotating Banner Script --]
[script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" ]
[!--
showImage();
//--]
[/script]
[!-- End Roating Banner Script --]
[/div]

Once again, all the angle brackets were changed to square, you'll need to change them back.
Technically, what you've done is created a function that randomly selects and displays an image from the list you've provided each time the browser page is refreshed. In terms even I can understand, it's freakin' magic.

Posted by Ted at 11:41 AM | Comments (2)

June 18, 2005

Amazon Wishlists

There is a way, with Typepad, that you can set up a graphic that tiles books on your Amazon wish list, along with a link to that list. Is it possible to do this in MT?

Posted by Warren Kelly at 11:44 PM | Comments (4)

June 17, 2005

Parenting Magazine

While normally I am not a total publicity whore, Lilan Patri at Parenting Magazine commented today on my blog that it is mentioned in the July 2005 edition of Parenting in an article about Mom Blogs. Link here.

Posted by Elizabeth at 05:33 PM | Comments (8)

June 16, 2005

Alien Attitudes is nearing the finish

I am unsure how many of you have been following my progress on my trilogy project, but the first book is available for sale ... although I suspect you'll have to wait awhile before it will be delivered to your door.

Posted by Tiger at 04:44 AM | Comments (2)

June 15, 2005

Help with Banner overlay

I hope this is the right place! If not, please direct me to the place to go put out questions on fixing my blog. I'll put the details of my problem in the extended entry.

It seems that when I open my http://onehappydogspeaks.mu.nu in firefox I get the following:

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us

Notice that the entry is overlaying the banner. I have tried setting the width/height of the banner to a %, and a few other easy items. None of them work. If I resize the window manually AFTER seeing this, it goes away. It does not seem to happen in Internet Explorer.

Does anyone know how to stop this? Thank you!

Posted by vw bug at 11:38 PM | Comments (19)

Trickling?

Well I'm trying to get this trickle thing working before I head out on vacation, but it appears there's a PEBKAC problem...

I've followed the instructions the best I can, but I'm not seeing any automatic posting.

I've tried naming the category deferred with a capital D and a lower case d. I've tried creating posts that have a future time and waited for that time to happen. I've tried making posts with timestamps in the past. I've tried adding and removing the deferred category. I've tried only putting times with 0 seconds. I've left deferred category posts in place for over 24 hours. No matter what I do, it doesn't seem to be picking up those posts. I've tried new posts, and I've tried deferring older posts.

Anyone out there using trickle have any idea of what else I can try to get these working?

For the record, I write a post, click save with a Post Status of Draft. Then I add a category of deferred, click save, then close. Then I head to the bottom of the post screen and change the timestamp. Save once again. Then...nothing?

Posted by Ogre at 12:52 PM | Comments (10)

June 14, 2005

Importy Time!

Okay folks, the magic importeriser is ready. (As long as you're not on MT3. I'll set up MT3 tonight.)

How To Import Your Posts

1. Get a valid MT-formatted import file. (See below for instructions on how to choke one of these out of Blogspot.)
2. Rename it as import.txt
3. Upload it to your archive directory, whatever that might be. If it's small, you can simply use the Movable Type file uploady thing.
4. In Movable Type, click on Import/Export.
5. Select Import Entries As Me.
6. You probably want to set the default post status to Publish.
7. Click Import Entries
8. Watch as your entries are imported.
9. Yay!

How To Choke A MT-Formatted Import File Out Of Blogspot
1. Log into your blog on Blogger.
2. On the Settings tab, choose Formatting.
3. Set it to show the last 999 posts. If you have more than 999 posts, you'll have to export them in pieces somehow.
4. Choose the first Timestamp option. This is the MM/DD/YYYY HH:MM:SS AM format.
5. Set Convert Line Breaks to No.
6. Save.
7. Go to Template.
8. If you don't hate your current template with the fury of a thousand suns, you might want to save a copy. The easiest way to do this is to copy it into Notepad or your local equivalent.
9. Paste this puppy in its place:
<Blogger>
AUTHOR: <$BlogItemAuthor$>
DATE: <$BlogItemDateTime$>
-----
BODY:
<$BlogItemBody$>
--------
</Blogger>
10. Note that this doesn't do recent Blogger stuff like post titles. (Blogger has titles now, right? You can add this line to export those, I think:

TITLE: <PostSubject><$BlogItemSubject$></PostSubject>

Put that immediately after the DATE line and see how you go. (I'll test this and see if it works.)
11. DON'T SAVE!! If you save, it will crap up your blog.
12. Click Preview.
13. On the page that comes up, right-click and choose View Page Source or View HTML or whatever it is on your browser.
14. Cut and paste the results into anything other than Microsoft Word. Notepad or Wordpad are good choices. So is vi.
15. The first few lines, before the first line beginning with AUTHOR:, are crap that Blogger insists on putting there. Delete them.
16. The last line might also be crap, but it probably doesn't do any harm.
17. Save this as import.txt. This will work with Mozilla or Firefox. I'm not sure about Internet Explorer, but I will test that. There's a big problem with this process breaking up your formatting, so that each paragraph is broken down into a number of lines of fixed length and it doesn't flow properly. This will happen if you simply save the page using Save As.... I don't know why. If you follow these steps exactly, though, it will work.
18. Upload your file and import it as above.

It might not be a bad idea to try this with Blogger set to only show 5 posts. Then when you mess it up, you will only need to delete 5 posts rather than 999.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 03:14 AM | Comments (35)

This is a test

This is a test post imported from Bloggererer.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 12:06 AM | Comments (2)

June 10, 2005

I Wasn't Paying Attention...

So can someone please enlighten me...who is this "emigre", then?

Posted by Jennifer at 05:36 PM | Comments (29)

Geek question

The situation: Acquired a new desktop PC with not much in the way of IDE devices. Hard drive and CD ROM drive only, to be precise. I've got a second hard drive and a CD/DVD burner to put inside it. Most burning is going to be from the 2nd hard drive.

The question: What's the best layout for the four devices on 2 IDE channels?

My first thought was to have the primary drive (master) and burner (slave) on the primary channel and the 2nd drive (master) and CD ROM drive (slave) on the secondary channel.

Your thoughts?

Posted by Jim at 02:43 PM | Comments (2)

June 09, 2005

Question marks, always question marks

Please, somebody help me!

I usually write my posts in MS Word and then copy and paste them onto the blog. But everytime I do this, all my apostropies, quotation marks and pound (sterling) signs come out on the blog as ? because of Word's stupid formatting.

In order to fix it, I have to copy my post into another utility which strips out Word's funny characters and replaces them with the normal versions.

Any ideas on what to do so that I don't have to do this and can paste straight from Word?

Posted by Tris at 12:09 PM | Comments (8)

L'il help?

I have a backup of my old blog pre-munu , a manually edited text file, combination of mt and an export from wordpress. Wondering if someone can give me a hand importing them into my new blog? I emailed Pixy, but haven't gotten a reply, perhaps I had the wrong addy.

I'm pretty happy with my new digs, it's nice and quick, but of course I have maybe 30 posts.

Posted by Oorgo at 12:20 AM | Comments (11)

June 07, 2005

Oh no...

Tuesday is the only day that traffic seems to matter to me, but my AWSTATS seem to have died a sudden death... Anyone else having this problem too?

Posted by Sadie at 05:30 PM | Comments (10)

June 06, 2005

Trackback issues

Every single post I've put up in the last 2 days has given me this error: "One or more errors occurred when sending update or TrackBack pings. Check the Activity Log for the error."

And they don't appear to be tracking back to posts I linked even though auto-discover is on.... Anybody else having this problem? I haven't messed with the template or settings....

Posted by caltechgirl at 02:59 AM | Comments (3)

June 05, 2005

Sub-Domains

How can I set up a sub-domain? For example: http://grumbles.mu.nu/stuff. Is this something that I can do? Or do I need one of the Munuviana administrator types to do it for me? Once set up, can I run a blog in it?

Posted by EricC at 08:26 PM | Comments (6)

June 04, 2005

O.H. M.Y. G.O.D.!!!!!!!

Who the hell turned off Blacklist? I just woke to find 132 comment spam in my mailbox. I don't have enough coffee to get through that much spam. Holy cow. This is the worst I've ever experienced. What has happened?

HOLY **** There's 135 more in my email box now. I can't deal with this much. If this happens again, I'm going to have to shut this blog down. This is ridiculous. No one should have to remove 270 comment spam on a Saturday morning. UGH!!!! INSANE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted by Auterrific at 01:01 PM | Comments (12)

June 03, 2005

Horizontal Blog?

I'm not sure I'm supposed to pimp my own blog here, but I'm going to, just this once. I'm sure if I'm not supposed to that I'll get a giant Slap On The Wrist and this post will be deleted. If not, whee!

I've finally opened the new blog for fun and entertainment. However, it's horizontal. That's right, no vertical scrolling -- the page extends way to the right. I know it's odd and abnormal, but that's the point. Head on over and see if you are completely confused, think it's neat, or just really, really hate it. It's at http://www.ogresview.mu.nu

Posted by Ogre at 12:27 PM | Comments (6)

Category listing

Probably a stupid question, but I was wondering how I get my categories to show up on the side, including the number of posts in each category. My latest post has an assigned category but I don't see a any categories listed on the side.

Thanks in advance.

Posted by Physics Geek at 03:01 AM | Comments (4)

Support Your Munuvian Women

The Cotillion, a group of Conservative Women Bloggers, made it's debut this week and there are a few Munuvian Women in the group.

Go throw a little lovin' at'em. It's been an exciting week, what with being mentioned by CNN, Free Republic, Townhall, Wizbang, and the Bad Boy of Munu, Ace, not to mention several smaller sites.

Posted by Mamamontezz at 03:01 AM | Comments (1)

June 02, 2005

Technorati Tags

Ok, so the vibe out in the blogosphere is that tecnorati tags are the new shiznit.

I'm over at Tecnorati now trying to figure out how to install and then use them, but frankly, it's leaving my head spinning. Any munuers using them? If so, how do you go about it?

Posted by Rusty at 05:51 PM | Comments (2)