freemode.net

Moving to new blog site    [ Site Info ]

So I'm getting tired of wrestling with MovableType, and don't really feel like walking the upgrade-patch-patch-patch-upgrade path again with a newer release. Therefore I'm posting all new blog entries to http://freemode.blogspot.com via blogger.

I'll keep the old site here for the benefit of google searches and historical interest, but no new content will be posted here.

Calendar links    [ Site Info ]

Thanks to a snippet of code over at Scotticus Blogicus and turning on daily archives, the per-day links in the calendar now take you to an archive of all that day's posts, instead of the last post in that day.

All you have to do is replace this snippet in the calendar-invocation code

<MTEntries lastn="1"><a href="<$MTEntryPermalink$>"><$MTCalendarDay$></a></MTEntries>

with this:

<MTEntries lastn="1"><a href="<$MTEntryLink archive_type="Daily">"><$MTCalendarDay$></a></MTEntries>

Rebuild and hey presto, it works.

New photo gallery URL    [ Site Info ]

Moved the photo gallery from the webserver at home over to an external hosting provider so that pictures should download faster - you can go to http://s93502202.onlinehome.us/gallery/ for the most up-to-date photos.   I'm still futzing with the DNS delegation for 'gallery.freemode.net' and the hosting provider, so I'll update links once that's finished.

"Pending" queue for comments    [ Site Info ]

I've added some code to my MT install to create a submission queue for comments.   This isn't something that I wanted to do, since it creates a delay between submission of a comment and the comment becoming visible on the site, but the volume of comment-spam I've received (over 100 spams today, took me half an hour to go through and delete them) forces me to do this.

See below for quick download & install instructions.

Updates and news    [ Site Info ]

It's been over a month since I've posted last - Jessica & I are now the proud parents of a beautiful baby girl, Katherine Eva Dobbs (see the pictures if you're interested).   She was born at 7:34am on Tuesday December 23rd, after only 5 1/2 hours of labor, and we all got to go home on Christmas Day.   It's been tiring and fun so far, but she's starting to sleep for 6 hours at a stretch now, so we're getting a bit more rest now.

We've had lots of people visit and bring food and baby clothes, which is great - less cooking and shopping that we have to go out and do.   Since Katherine's definitely pro-clothing right now, this helps quite a bit.   Although now that we're parents, even going to Costco can be considered a date.

Not much on the techie front recently, I've just started to catch back on up on mail lists and current news.   Most of the *nix boxen are sitting quiet and dark on the basement, and probably will for a little bit yet.

Photo Gallery Moved    [ Site Info ]

Moved the photo gallery section off of this site and onto a box at home that can handle the space requirements better.   I've gone through the site and updated links, but now I'll be able to add more pictures, even if they'll come up a bit slower.

Baby Shower    [ Site Info ]

Jessica just had her baby shower, so the pictures are now available in our photo gallery.

Upgrade time    [ Site Info ]

Time to go through and upgrade bits, so the site's now running MovableType 2.64 and Gallery 1.3.4   Gallery forced an upgrade of each of the individual photo galleries, and now the comment text is showing up in the per-gallery views of the images, which means that there's much more space eaten up by the 20-character-wide comments that go on for 8 or 13 lines.   Yuck, I'll have to figure out how to tweak that.   Overall, the process is fairly painless; both pieces of software do a good job of walking you through the upgrade procedure.

Holiday pictures    [ Site Info ]

Posted our new holiday pictures at http://www.freemode.net/gallery/xmas_2002 - finally got around to uploading the shots from the digital camera to the website.

New, improved site    [ Site Info ]

Moved site over to Movable Type 2.51 after finding multiple reports of security holes in GreyMatter.   The author of GreyMatter isn't maintaining the software, so the chances of these or future holes getting fixed is rather slim, despite volunteer efforts.   So I switched, and the site looks a little different now.

Who am I?    [ Site Info ]

Who is this Eric Dobbs person anyway?

New site config    [ Site Info ]

Moved the site over to Greymatter 1.21b.   Seems like a pretty neat piece of software, way more features than I'll probably use, but it's up and working after about 4 hours worth of downloading/installing/configuring/tweaking.   Still need to move over the bits of content I'd written up long ago for the site, and update the navigation menu, but it's mostly functional.