BrockLi Soup

After a long Twitter hiatus, Fonny returned to MICROBLOGGING, and we got to talking about it online.

Fonny: I think Twitter is a little silly personally

Fonny: I’m making fun of my friend who told me that lately he’s been “getting into microblogging”

Brock: that’s like saying concerts are a little silly because you don’t like boy bands

It reminds me of that line in Team America: World Police about “use your acting,” as if “acting” was the solution. A few years ago, people were going on and on about how “blogging” can give your company a good image, and be used for personal branding, and will groom your dog. Now, microblogging will solve everything! And widgets! WEB TWO POINT OH!

I don’t want to name names, but some people I’ve seen around the Internets seem to attribute a lot of power to reasonably abstract concepts. “Blogging” isn’t a thing anyone can really pin down, because it means different things to different people. It’s not a solution, or a problem, or anything specific even - a blog is a means of delivering content, and anyone that tries to give it a more specific or meaningful definition probably doesn’t understand it as well as they think they do, or at least works in marketing.

It drives me nuts when I hear people say things like “blogs are stupid,” because it’s so generic. I think the concert analogy I made to Fonny makes sense: one would sound pretty stupid if they dismissed concerts altogether because they didn’t like a particular band that’s playing. Fine, you don’t like the band, but that doesn’t invalidate the idea of public performance. It’s the same thing with blogs. Fine, maybe you don’t like the way Heather Armstrong writes about her life, but that doesn’t mean blogs are worthless - it means you shouldn’t bother reading dooce. There’s a ton of really good stuff being put out there everyday, and I hate to see people dismiss it all because they’ve only managed to find the crappy parts. The same thing goes for Twitter: there’s a lot of crap, but that doesn’t make the service or the concept inherently worthless.

Anyway, Fonny and I had a nice chat about it, and I don’t mean to imply that he’s one of the people doing this. He just got me thinking about it, and I wanted to include him because really, and how can you not love that face!

My favorite plugin in MT3 was UpdateAuthoredOn. It didn’t do much: you got a button next to the entry date input, and clicking on it would update it to the current time and date. Simple, but very handy - especially if you’re the kind of person who writes an entry over the course of a couple days and want to post it with the current time.

The new version is called UpdateEntryDate, but it’s not working for me in MT4. So, I ripped out the part I needed and changed the MT template. If you want to try it out, you’ll need to modify tmpl/cms/edit_entry.tmpl in your MT directory. Go to line 1057 (give or take), or search for entry-time to find the date and time inputs.

First, the time input needs an ID. You can replace the whole entry-time input with this:

<input id="entry-time" class="entry-time" name="authored_on_time" tabindex="11" value="<$mt:var name="authored_on_time" escape="html"$>" />

Then insert this two lines down, after the closing span tag:

<input type="button" class="primary-button"
onclick="update_authored_on();" value="Update" />
<script type="text/javascript">
function zeropad(num) {
return (num < 10) ? '0' + num : num;
}
function update_authored_on() {
var now = new Date();
var y = now.getFullYear();
var m = zeropad(now.getMonth() + 1);
var d = zeropad(now.getDate());
var h = zeropad(now.getHours());
var min = zeropad(now.getMinutes());
var s = zeropad(now.getSeconds());
document.getElementById("created-on").value = y + '-' + m + '-' + d;
document.getElementById("entry-time").value = h + ':' + min + ':' + s;
}
</script>

I still haven’t finished putting the site back together after upgrading Movable Type, but I really like the new version. The admin interface is a lot cleaner and easier to use, and everything feels…sturdier, I guess.

I’m not sure if QuickPost was a feature in 3.2, but I didn’t know about it if it was. And really, calling it a “feature” is an overstatement. It’s just a bookmarklet that you drop in the bookmarks toolbar of your browser, and it allows you to quickly start a post about the web page you’re looking at. For those of you who ARE using Movable Type (and this post won’t be of much interest to anyone else), there’s a QuickPost link in the Write Entry page, down below the Save and Cancel buttons.

It’s a handy little bookmarklet, but by default, it doesn’t work the way I would like. It pops up a new window with a new blog post that contains the URL of the page you were looking at, two <br>’s, and then any text you had selected on the page.

That’s a good start, but clunkier than I would like, so I changed mine a fair bit. Here’s what I’m using - it’s one long line that won’t fit in your browser, so copying it might be a pain.

javascript:d=document;w=window;t='';if(d.selection)t=d.selection.createRange().text;else{if(d.getSelection)t=d.getSelection();else{if(w.getSelection)t=w.getSelection()}}entryTitle=encodeURIComponent(d.title);if(t=='')entryBody='';else entryBody=encodeURIComponent('<blockquote>') + encodeURIComponent(t) + encodeURIComponent('</blockquote>\n\n');entryBody+=encodeURIComponent('<a href="') + encodeURIComponent(d.location.href) + encodeURIComponent('">Link</a>');url='http://site.com/cgi-bin/mt.cgi?__mode=view&qp=1&_type=entry&blog_id=1&title=' + entryTitle + '&text=' + entryBody;void(w.open(url))

And here’s a more verbose version, so it’s easier to see what’s going on:

d = document;
w = window;
t = '';
if(d.selection) {
t = d.selection.createRange().text;
}
else {
if(d.getSelection) {
t = d.getSelection();
}
else {
if(w.getSelection) {
t = w.getSelection();
}
}
}
entryTitle = encodeURIComponent(d.title);
if(t == '') {
entryBody = '';
}
else {
entryBody = encodeURIComponent('<blockquote>') + encodeURIComponent(t) + encodeURIComponent('</blockquote>\n\n');
}
entryBody += encodeURIComponent('<a href="') + encodeURIComponent(d.location.href) + encodeURIComponent('">Link</a>');
url = 'http://site.com/cgi-bin/mt.cgi?__mode=view&qp=1&_type=entry&blog_id=1&title=';
url += entryTitle + '&text=' + entryBody;
void(w.open(url));

I changed a few things. For one, “_blank” is no longer included in the window open. Under my Firefox configuration, this means that it comes up in a new tab instead of a new window. I also changed the entry body; now, it turns the URL of the page into a link (with the text “Link”), and any selected text goes above that in a <blockquote>. Basically, you get a new post that’s in the format Boing Boing typically uses.

If you want to try it out, do the following:

1. Drag the QuickPost link from the Write Entry screen into your bookmarks toolbar.
2. Open your favorite text editor - Notepad will do - and copy that first block of code above into it.
3. Right-click on the bookmark and select Properties. Copy the Location field into your text editor too.
4. You need to pull the URL out of your QuickPost code and put it into mine. Obviously, the domain part won’t be site.com, and the blog_id might be different if you’re running more than one blog in your MT installation.
5. Copy the new code with the correct URL into the Location field for the bookmarklet. Make sure there aren’t any line breaks in it.
6. That’s it. Test it out by going to any web page, select some text, and click the QuickPost bookmark. You should get a new post that contains the text you had selected.

Drop me a note if you’ve got any questions or suggestions for improvements, or just post a comment here.

Two articles came to my attention this evening and (ironically) set me back about an hour, productivity-wise.

The first comes by way of Liz. Paul Ford offers Followup/Distraction, a great piece on the distractive powers of the Internet. I can’t even imagine how much time I’ve wasted in the four years since I moved away from dial-up. There always seems to be something new and interesting to read somewhere. I don’t even spend much time instant messaging anymore, and almost none at all gaming - I seem to waste most of my time on various blogs.

So, I finished the article, agreed with Ford, considered the option of leaving my computer to get some work done, and then (obviously) went back to my news reader and sweet sweet Internet bliss.

Over at the Six Apart ProNet blog, Anil Dash commented on Jakob Nielsen’s latest, Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes. They were all sort of, “Well, of course,” points, but they’re easy to forget when one is actually designing a site. For example, I’m guilty of the nondescript posting titles (#3) all the time, because I think I’m being clever (I’m not). I also hadn’t considered the option of highlighting my favorite entries (#5), but I think I’ll dig through and come up with a list of good ones someday. I do remember that a future boss could read this at any time (#9). When I was using LiveJournal, there were a lot of times that I’d think, “I hope so-and-so doesn’t read this,” but the friends-only option sort of protected that. Here, I’m trying to be less offensive, without pretending to be something I’m not. I mean, I’m anything but politically correct, but I don’t have to go out of my way to be a jackass, either.

Sure, I waste a lot of time on blogs…but at least I’m learning how to make them more usable.

Earlier tonight, Ryan commented on literacy in this day and age. I’ve been meaning to address the overreaching “hot damn the Internet’s cool” issue for some time now - particularly how the current state of the Net has affected my every day life - but parts of it keep coming up and demanding their own consideration (see: Flickr, blog-friends, information collection, more Flickr, productivity, high class culture, etc).

At any rate, the ongoing blogsplosion (of course it’s a word) has contributed to the articulation of countless thousands that would have otherwise wasted four years of quality high school English by placing apostrophes before the ’s’ in plural words on fliers (this is one of my prime pet peeves). Were it not for the introduction of LiveJournal into my life three and a half years (and 1,907 posts) ago, my reasons for writing anything longer than a thank-you note would have ended with my last college essay. LiveJournal especially has opened the proverbial floodgate for the proverbial flood of proverbial idiots to spread their proverbial drivel.

Because, let’s face it. Most of the people writing in some kind of online journal are doing it to make their voice louder, to reach a wider audience, and to make themselves feel more important than they are (I know I am, anyway). For every legitimate, decent writer producing new content every day, there are 300 angst-ridden high school kids spouting illegible word-vomit on LiveJournal, and another twenty on the smaller (but notably angsty-er) DeadJournal. The unfortunate truth surrounding both of these sites is that they are largely populated by people whose concept of grammar is heavily influenced by shorthand AOL speak.

I couldn’t be happier that more people have a reason to write on a regular basis, myself included. I enjoy having a reason to write, and there are a lot of blogs out there that I enjoy reading. However, I can’t help but think we may have taken a step backward when we took monkeys off the Shakespeare project and replaced their typewriters with computers.

Also, thanks to Ryan for pointing out that I’m interesting.

I don’t know what the hell I was thinking - that totally works. For some reason, I kept thinking that MT template tags wouldn’t work in a PHP file because they wouldn’t get updated. I created two categories just for the side bar: Recently Viewed and Reading. Then I made a new index template that contains everything in the side bar - since index templates are rebuilt when a new post is made (as far as I know, anyway), my side bar file is updated. The CatEntries plugin allows me to filter what categories are displayed. In the side bar, the last 5 posts from Recently Viewed are shown, and the most recent post from Reading. The index page excludes these two categories, but they still appear in monthly, daily, and category archives. It’s a neat way to use MT as a database management system.

Originally, I wanted to avoid a PHP include; I was so hell-bent on performance that I wanted to eliminate any PHP and make all pages static (because, you know, thousands of people are checking to see what I write EACH AND EVERY DAY). Realistically, a single file include isn’t going to affect performance in the slightest. I may add a couple while(1) loops just to be sure, though.

While reading an old article about MT, I thought of a way to maintain dynamic content in the sidebar without having to use PHP or service-side file includes.

Take the Recent Movies section, for example. Right now, it’s just a list in a PHP file that I update when I watch a movie - remove the oldest one, add the new. Alternatively, I could create a “Recent Movies” category, and make a post to it each time I see a movie - maybe I use the movie name as the title, short synopsis as the body, and the IMDB link as the keyword, or something like that. I could exclude this category from the main and archive pages (using the CatEntries plugin) so that they would never appear between actual posts. Similarly, I could use the same plugin to show only the “Recent Movies” category in the sidebar, and just display the title of the last five posts. It would be easy to use standard MT template tags to make it a list of links using <MTEntryTitle> and <MTEntryKeywords>.

The problem with this approach is rebuilding. If every page in my site has the same sidebar, which includes those MT tags, they would all have to be rebuilt when I added a new movie. Granted, it’s WAY faster on the new host than it ever was before, but I’ve only got a few dozen posts right now; it will become an issue when I start getting into hundreds of pages that will need rebuilding.

It’s too bad that an entire template can’t be included in another one, but that would basically be a server-side include. I haven’t got it solved yet, but at least I’ve got some ideas.

Live and learn, right? Well, I’ve learned a few things about web hosting.

GoDaddy sucks, straight up. I don’t like their admin pages, the server was slow, and half the things I wanted in MT didn’t work (TypeKey and e-mailing comments, for example).

I was only with them for a week and a half before I got fed up and switched to 1&1. I signed up for 3 months at $10/month and got a free domain name, so I got RBoland.com too (it points to this site). After playing with their admin panel for about an hour, I canceled my GoDaddy account and made the DNS changes to point BrockLi.com to their servers. I had no trouble getting MT working perfectly, it’s noticeably faster (even on static page loads), and the admin interface looks a lot better and is more intuitive. I can’t tell you how pleased I am with these guys right now.

Once I got everything up here, I set about importing my old entries. MT exports one long file with all the entries in it, so I went through it and made a lot of changes at one time - updating URLs to the new domain, fixing the way I do images in posts, moving all pictures to Flickr, and adding keywords to all the posts. Importing it went smoothly, so I’m pretty happy with MT.

I did a little tweaking to the design. I still want to make it look a lot better, but I like it a little better now. One thing I really like was a small script I found on John’s Jottings to make Technorati tag links out of entry keywords using Brad Choate’s MTPerlScript plugin. I haven’t found a good way to tag posts instead of categorizing them, but that can wait for now; for the time being, I’ve just removed the category list.

I also whipped up a blogroll real quick. I want to make the sidebar more flexible without using PHP to include another file or pull info from MySQL. I found out how to make custom template tags, but I haven’t got it to do what I want. I’d like to be able to make a tag like <MTSidebar> that will cover everything in the sidebar. Problem is, you can’t use other template tags (like <MTDate>) within the custom tag definition. After looking for half an hour, I finally found that the default MT tags are defined in MT::Template::Context. It’s not hard to figure out what functions there go with what template tags, but I’m not good enough with Perl to figure out what the arguments need to be. If I could figure out what they need, I could do things like call _hdlr_sys_date where <MTDate> would normally appear.

For the time being, I’m walking away from it. I may decided to play around with it some more later, but I’m pretty happy with how well everything has gone so far.

With the recent acquisition of BrockLi.com, this site is now being hosted on 1&1. The new links to all old entries are on the old home page - everything has been moved over successfully. Please update your bookmarks as necessary.

If you’re using a news reader, you can subscribe to the new Atom feed or the RSS 2.0 feed. I’ve redirected them both though, so the old ones should continue to work (you folks subscribing to brock_blog in LiveJournal should continue seeing my posts).

Thanks for reading, and please drop me a note if you find something that’s broken.

This afternoon, I spent like 20 minutes looking for a post that I remembered reading on Mark Pilgrim’s blog a while ago (it was during a SQL Server install, I had some time to kill). I couldn’t find it anywhere, and Google was no help.

Through an incredible twist of fate, Liz Lawley posted a link to THAT VERY POST on de.icio.us this evening*. I was so happy I nearly wept. That very post inspired me to try shaving with a straight blade not too long ago.

You see, Dive Into Mark was the first blog I ever read. I found it by accident in late 2002 when I was looking for some info on CSS. A Google search led me there, and I read it daily until Mark stopped writing there back in October. I felt that loss as much as any other important person who has faded out of my life. Over the course of two years, I got to know him well though his writing - I knew about his family, his friends, projects he was working on, things he was interested in, and so on. For a long time, Dive Into Mark was my only window into the world of blogging, because it was a much smaller world back then (”back then” meaning a year and a half ago). He’s an outstanding writer, and I’ve missed reading his posts ever since he quit.

One reason Mark’s writing really hit me was because of the few essays on addictionis.org. The account of addiction right there on the front page details my cigarrette habit better than I could ever hope to. I remember quoting it some time ago on LiveJournal, during a brief attempt to quit. Through sheer luck, I had found someone with similar interests and stuggles as myself, but he could articulate it better than I could ever hope to.

I intend to include Mark in an upcoming “The Internet Is Great” post that I’ve been poring over for weeks, but I felt he deserved mentioning today.

• Upon further investigation, I found that both diveintomark.org and addictionis.org are registered to the same address. It may not appear in the Dive Into Mark archives, but it WAS Mark that wrote it and I’m not crazy.