Paolo Valdemarin Weblog

New servers coming to town

Hey, Dave is placing the order for our new servers. Since they will not only host Scripting.com but also weblogs.com, one of the pillars of the blogosphere, we will all benefit from these new monsters.

Actually I find this move quite interesting. Since its very beginning (and even now) weblogs.com has been hosted by a company, UserLand Software. Since UserLand is working in the blogging business many have perceived weblogs.com as nothing more than a way to promote their brand or have simply given it for granted.

As I understand the server will soon be hosted (and payd for) at Berkman. It seems almost logical that such a no profit service should be controlled by a third no profit party, but we should all be aware that it has always been no profit also for UserLand.

So, whatever will happen of weblogs.com, thank you UserLand.

PS: It looks like I misanderstood the post on scripting.com. Dave will be paying our new servers.

3:45:35 PM

comments: trackback:

MT/K-collector betatesters wanted

K-Collector for MovableType. I've spent a fair bit of time today working on the K-Collector client for MovableType.

We tried implementing a client about 6 months ago but it was very brittle and, ultimately, even I couldn't write instructions for how to install it on a new server. This didn't seem like a good way forward with MT Pro and Typepad around the cornern.

Our new approach we're much happier with. It only requires 1 change (adding 1 line) to an existing MT template, 1 perl module (HTML::HeadParser) and the installation of a handful of new files. It does not depend upon the MT database or other plugins. It's pretty lightweight.

There is about half a days worth of clean-up required I think and then it should be ready to beta test. I'm hoping to start that on Friday afternoon, interested parties should look out for an announcement with a link to instructions.

I'm grateful to Timothy Appnel for his guide on writing MovableType plugins. It was really helpful when things just weren't working.
[Curiouser and curiouser!]

11:20:43 AM

comments: trackback:

Panther upgrade problem

I've been using Panther on my PowerBook since the early developers distributions. Everything I needed was working fine so today I decided to upgrade my other Macs. Bad idea.

There is one application which I had not tested with Panther and is quite important for my job: Vicomsoft InterGate. I use it to share my adsl connection with all computers on my small LAN. It's a good application and I had checked on Vicomsoft site a few days ago: not noticing any significant alert I installed the cool new OS...

...only to find out upon restart that InterGate is not compatible with MacOS X 10.3: all computers can connect except for the one running the routing application (which, btw, is my main computer).

Checking Vicomsoft FAQ I found a note (written yesterday) that warns of this problem.

So, if you are using Vicom InterGate, you'd better wait for an update before upgrading to Panther. I don't know exactly what I will do... reverting to Jaguar is probably going to be a pain. Any idea is welcome.

Update: turns out that the new and improved internet sharing feature of Panther works just fine to share my Internet connection. So everything is back on-line and I don't need InterGate anymore, (InterGate does offer some features not implemented in the basic Internet sharing feature of the OS, but I don't need them much :-)

12:41:06 AM

comments: trackback:

Giovedì, 30 ottobre 2003