April 14, 2004
This Is Still My Blog
There aren't any quite like it, and this one is mine all mine.
Happy 1th birthday Ambient Irony!Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:14 PM | Comments (24) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
RaeApril 13, 2004
Bonfire!
Gonna be a bonfire tonight, a bonfire tonight, I know, I know...
Gooood evening ladies and germs, and welcome one and all to the Bonfire of the Vanities!
I'm your host, The Extremely Reverend Pixy Misa, and tonight we will be sacrificing our most worthless, our most inane, our most incoherent babblings to the flames! And if things get a little carried away, possibly a blogger or two as well!
Right, who's up first?
...
Shy crowd, eh? Well, I'll just draw a name out of the hat. Oh, look! It's
Susie of
Practical Penumbra, who takes great pride in
connecting the dots with... the other dots. Burn for me, Susie!
And now we have John Moore of
Useful Fools who tries to contribute by
throwing a couple of Democrats into the fire! Don't
be silly, John! We all know that politicians are too wet to burn!
Competing in our Inane Remark category is Sean Hackbarth of
The American Mind who informs us that
the head of the NBA is an InstaPundit
reader. Or that someone who isn't the head of the NBA is an IsntaPundit
reader. Or something.
In our Put not thy faith in weathermen category we have Kiril Kundurazieff of
Sneakeasy's Joint complaining that
sometimes it will rain even if the guy on TV
said it wouldn't!! We all hate that, right? Right! Into the flames with it, Kiril!
Michael Friedman of
Fried Man regretfully informs us that Kevin Drum has
SOLD OUT! and is now pimping for the Global Sorority
Conspiracy! Hey, Michael, how come we never get invited to those parties?
Oh, never mind. Burn, baby, burn!
Can't keep up with what's going on in the sports world any more? Don't worry! Beth Donovan of
She Who Will Be Obeyed Or Else Dammit is here to fill us all in on the
latest news from, um,
Augusta, maybe? I dunno. One of
those places.
Andrew Ian Dodge of
Dodgeblogium has -
Aah! My eyes! Ze goggles, they do nothing!
And while you're recovering from that, we have a competitor in the Non-Sequitur category. Meet Jim
from
Snoozebutton Dreams who tells us about
a show that he cannot describe and therefore,
doesn't.
Into the fire with him! Oops, no, just the post... Oh well.
The inimitable Harvey of
Bad Money looks for blogging inspiration to
Bad Dog Jake - who is, alas, an actual dog and
so inspires only more fodder for the bonfire...
Not that that is a bad thing.
Photon Courier, apparently mistaking the Bonfire for the Carnival,
sends us a fine post noting the similarities between
idiots now and
sixty years ago. Let's toss it in the flames anyway!
Alex of
Hypocrisy and Hypotheses explains to us the difference between
a buffalo's fingers and a buddy... Or
possibly not. Burn it anyway! Bwahahahahahahaah - cough!
Ah... Has anyone been putting any, mmm, substances, in the fire? If so, see me after the show stop
it right now!
Goldie the
Drama Queen has let herself grow addicted to
frogs balls. But she tells us she's doing just
fine in therapy and will be out in no time!
Meanwhile, Comrade Dave of
Blogo Slovo makes it known that he
does not want to turn into
a giant Iguana. At least, not a small-town giant Iguana. A big city giant Iguana, that's different.
Burn it! Burn it!
Bryan of
Spare Change
watches The Bachelor. But he tells us he's doing
just fine in therapy and will be out in no time!
Is it hot in here, or is it just me? Why did we build the Bonfire indoors, by the way?
Nathan of
The Argus manages to link Turkmenistan (which he claims is a real
country) and the Cavity Creeps (who we know are real)
together in a single post, endangering
the very existence of Reality unless we take swift action by throwing it into the fire!
Always works, that. Reality endangered? Into the fire!
...
The
Gleeful Extremist recommends that
we all see Cheaper by the
Dozen. Uh, and that's about it. Sure burns well, though. Flames, so pretty...
Brian takes time out from his musings to tell us
that he is outraged!
Absolutely outraged! And if you act now, he'll throw in a free set of steak knives!
Heather, perhaps you could have a quiet word with your husband?
Eric of
Classical Values is
decapitating chocolate bunnies for peace!
And something about Ishtar and Indymedia, but it's already burnt, so we won't worry about that.
The
Interested Participant attempts to convince us that
snakes evolved from lawyers, when we all know that snakes
really evolved from insurance salesmen. Nice try, IP, but it's into the flames you go!
Crackle crackle burn burn...
The Princess of Fools, from the
Kingdom of Fools has
some very insightful commentary for us, so daddy decides
to offer it up for the Bonfire. Just you wait, your Kingness!
In the It seemed amusing at the time category we have contestent Kevin of
Wizbang who tells us that Arnold
rescued a struggling swimmer. And, well, that's basically
it. Arnold rescued a struggling swimmer.
Bill Bulldog, posting from
Beyond the Black Hole,
explains the Olympics to us. At least, I think he
explained the Olympics to us. Not always easy to tell.
And, finally, we have
Chapomatic who tells us that he has, indeed,
seen everything.
Oh look! The nice gentlemen in the shiny red trucks have arrived! If anyone wants me, I'll be 'round the back!
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:49 PM | Comments (15) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
That's Reverend Pixy To You, Buster
As of this morning, I am a duly ordained minister of the Universal Life Church of Modesto, California.
No, really. Since the tenets of the ULC are human rights, personal responsibility, and religious freedom - including freedom from religious dogma - this is something I take with a certain degree of seriousness. Yes, it's partly in fun, but it's not to make fun of the ULC, more the humour in me (me!) being a priest. So... Anyone want to get married? (Not necessarily to me.) Or baptised? Just so people know, I'm not licensed to perform circumcisions, but apart from that, I'm ready for anything! Bless you, kiddies! Reverend PixyPosted by: Pixy Misa at 12:18 PM | Comments (15) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Holy Flame
The Bonfire entries are still rolling in, and I'm heading off to work now, so expect the Bonfire to appear in this space about ten hours from... Now.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:05 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
April 12, 2004
Bonfires R Us
I'm still splitting wood and gathering tinder, so you have time yet to put your entry in for this week's Bonfire of the Vanities.
So gather up your most inane, nonsensical blather and email it to bonfire at wizbangblog.com, along with any explanation you may have for its wretched existence. (Your post, that is, not Wizbang.) Sacrifice your offerings to the Burning Blog!Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:44 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
New Faces
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:06 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
April 11, 2004
Support John Kelly!
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:06 AM | Comments (12) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
April 10, 2004
I'll Drink to That!
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:37 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
April 09, 2004
Fortunately, Marshmallow Is Resilient
Lord of the Peeps. Many, many thanks to new Munuvian 2Flower for pointing me to this wonderful site.Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:54 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Jedi Schmedi
(Thanks to scribble on JREF)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:50 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Addressing the Issues
Between my very high-res monitor (I'm running it at 1792 x 1344) and the small fonts on Ambient Irony, I can still see the entire Munuvian blogroll on screen at once.
Rest assured that we are working tirelessly to address this issue.Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:38 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Easter Bunnies
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:37 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
My Washing Machine
My washing machine goes clunk clunk clunk,
Clunk clunk clunk,
Clunk clunk clunk.
My washing machine goes clunk clunk clunk,
Clunk clunk clunk clunk SPLOOSH.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:29 AM | Comments (16) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
April 08, 2004
I'd Sooner Be Kinky
You are Thomas L. Friedman! You're the foreign
affairs expert. You're liberal on most issues,
except you're a leading voice in the pro-war
movement. You're probably the most popular
columnist at the Times, but probably because
you play both sides of the Iraq issue and
relish your devotion to what you call
"fanatical moderatism." You sure can
write, but you could work on your sense of
humor.
Which New York Times Op-Ed Columnist Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
(via Cam Edwards)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:39 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
American Flag
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:30 AM | Comments (13) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
April 07, 2004
World Ends, Film At 11
They're making Starship Troopers 2.
When even Slashdotters can point out that the first film is a failed attempt at satire based on a complete lack of understanding of the original book, you know you're in for some Z-grade celluloid. Can we bring Mike and the robots out of retirement for the premiere? Or Joel, I always liked Joel.Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:42 PM | Comments (11) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Open Sourceme
If you're looking for an open-source CMS - that's content management system, which means a program to manage your web site - you could do a lot worse than to browse around opensourceCMS. They have (counts) 33 portals, 7 blogging systems, 3 e-commerce packages, 7 groupware systems, 5 forums, 3 "e-learning" packages and 4 other thingies all set up ready for you to test drive.
Unfortunately, they only have packages written in PHP, which is not my favourite langauge (and far from my favourite programming paradigm), but if you're looking for something useful rather than something elegant, it's a darn good place to do a bit of tyre-kicking. I'm looking for a package that integrates blogging, forum, and portal functions and doesn't suck. So far I haven't found one, which is why I'm writing Minx. Although to be honest recently it's been more of a case of not writing Minx. Sigh. Update: A number of the packages seem to have had their tyres kicked rather too thoroughly and aren't working right now. They get refreshed (says the site) every hour, so maybe they'll come back soon.Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:52 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
April 06, 2004
Blood Type C
A few months ago, Arnold Kling wrote this article at Tech Central Station discussing the difference between what he calls Type C and Type M arguments.
Briefly put, Type C arguments discuss the consequences of an action: X is a bad idea, because if you do that, Y will happen. Type M arguments, on the other hand, relate to the motives behind the action: X is a bad thing because you're only doing it to get Z. It's a very useful categorisation. It's a good article, too. Go read. There's a further discussion here. The Lefties in the comments just don't get it. To them, it's just the Right beating them up again. And it's that sort of nonsense from the Left that has pushed me hard into the center, and it's why I treasure more than ever any rational voice from that sector of Polispace. Roger Simon, Michael Totten, Jennifer and other such luminaries. Their voices are sadly few.Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:52 AM | Comments (25) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
April 05, 2004
MT Zoom
I spent a couple of hours today seeing if I could take one of the tricks I've used in the blogging system I'm developing, Minx, and apply it to MT. It does work, but it's not the solution to all life's problems.
MT is robust and has lots of good features, but it's as slow as a dead dog. For example, on an Athlon XP 2800+, with both the code and the database stored in a ram disk, it takes around 28 seconds of CPU time to add a three-word post to Ambient Irony. I haven't yet had time to profile MT to work out what the hell it's doing with all that time. Part of the problem is MT's insistence on static files and its brute-force approach: Whenever you update a post or add a comment, MT will rebuild not only the individual entry, but also the main index, the archive for whatever categories that post is in, and the archives for that day, week and month, and the archives for the previous day, week and month, and, if they exist, the archives for the following day, week and month. And MT is slow at just rebuilding a single entry, so when it has to run around rebuilding everything in sight, it's really slow. Without fixing the code, the only way I can see to cure this is to give it less work to do. One way to do this is to disable any archives you don't use. If you don't use categories, make sure that category archives are turned off. The next thing you can do is to make the templates simpler. And here's where my little trick comes in. If you have your blog set up like me, the appearance of the posts in the main index is exactly the same as in the monthly archives and the category archives. You could use a sub-template to keep the common data, but there's an even sneakier thing you can do:Step 1. Create a new template. Call it something like "Individual Include Template". Copy the section of your main template that deals with the individual entries into this new template. If you are using the default MT template, the result will be this:Save the new template.
<div class="blogbody">
<a name="<$MTEntryID pad="1"$>"></a>
<h3 class="title"><$MTEntryTitle$></h3>
<$MTEntryBody$>
<MTEntryIfExtended>
<span class="extended"><a href="<$MTEntryPermalink$>#more">Continue reading "<$MTEntryTitle$>"</a></span><br />
</MTEntryIfExtended>
<div class="posted">Posted by <$MTEntryAuthor$> at <a href="<$MTEntryPermalink$>"><$MTEntryDate format="%X"$></a>
<MTEntryIfAllowComments>
| <a href="<$MTCGIPath$><$MTCommentScript$>?entry_id=<$MTEntryID$>" onclick="OpenComments(this.href); return false">Comments (<$MTEntryCommentCount$>)</a>
</MTEntryIfAllowComments>
<MTEntryIfAllowPings>
| <a href="<$MTCGIPath$><$MTTrackbackScript$>?__mode=view&entry_id=<$MTEntryID$>" onclick="OpenTrackback(this.href); return false">TrackBack (<$MTEntryTrackbackCount$>)</a>
</MTEntryIfAllowPings>
</div>
</div>
Step 2. Now go into the Archiving page in Weblog Config. Click on the Add New button at the bottom, and create a new Individual Entry archive using the template you just created. You will need to give the files created by this template a new and unique name. This is what the Archive File Template field is for. You will need to use MT tags here to generate the name. A good, simple name might be<$MTEntryID>.iNow, save your archive settings and do a full rebuild of your blog to generate all those little .i files, because in the next step you're going to need them.
Step 3. Go into your Main Index template and (after making a backup copy), cut out all the code you put into your new "Individual Include Template" and replace it with this:
<?php include 'archives/<$MTEntryID>.i'; ?>(Assuming that your archive directory is called "archives", which it probably is.) Save your changes, but don't rebuild yet. Go into the Preferences page in Weblog Config, and scroll down to where it says File extension for archive files This is probably set to html. You will need to change it to php. And in the Templates page, select your Main Index template and change the output file to index.php. Save the changes, and now go and rebuild your main index. If you got it right, it will now rebuild without having to process the details of the individual entries. The entries will instead be read automatically from their individual .i files whenever someone visits your blog. Repeat step 3 for your daily, weekly, monthly and category archives, whichever ones you may be using, except that for these you will not need to specify the "archives" directory as it will look there automatically.
Step 4. (Optional) Somewhere near the top of your main index, add the following code:Having done all of that, is MT now zoomily fast? Alas, no. It will probably halve the time required to add a post or leave a comment, but it's still dog slow compared to what it should be capable of. ExpressionEngine is quite a bit faster at processing posts and comments - at least ten times faster - but it's between thirty and a hundred times slower at delivering the pages. That's the main reason I decided not to go down that route. This is basically how Minx works, except that the Minx template engine is about a hundred times faster than Movable Type's. It's just a pity that it's not finished yet.
And in a suitable place near the end, add this:<?php
$timeparts = explode(' ',microtime());
$starttime = $timeparts[1].substr($timeparts[0],1); ?>This will show you how long PHP takes to put all the individual entries together to build your page. A fairly typical result for Ambient Irony, which has 25 entries on the main page, is 0.005888 seconds. Which I must say is satisfyingly quick.<div class="sidetitle">
Render Time
</div>
<div class="side">
<?php
$timeparts = explode(' ',microtime());
$endtime = $timeparts[1].substr($timeparts[0],1);
echo bcsub($endtime,$starttime,6)?> seconds<br>
</div>
Update: Here's how to turn off the rebuilding of the index and archive files when someone leaves a comment. The program that processes comments is called Comments.pm, and it lives in the lib/MT/App directory under whatever directory you have installed MT in. Before making any changes, copy Comments.pm to Comments.bak. In Comments.pm, look for the line
sub post {
This is the start of the posting routing that we will need to modify. Now scroll down from there until you reach three line that readComment out these three lines by putting a # at the start of each line. That's it. If you are running MT-Blacklist, you will need to modify the code there instead. The file you want in this case is extlib/jayallen/Blacklist.pm. The code change required is identical. If you only want to disable this rebuilding function on one blog, you can do it like this:$app->rebuild_indexes( Blog => $blog )
or return $app->error($app->translate(
"Rebuild failed: [_1]", $app->errstr));This will cause comments to rebuild indexes and archives on all blogs except for blog number 1.if ($comment->blog_id != 1) {
$app->rebuild_indexes( Blog => $blog )
or return $app->error($app->translate(
"Rebuild failed: [_1]", $app->errstr));
}
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:12 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Trickery
Just testing something tricky. Don't mind me...
And waddya know, it worked. Hehehehehehe. This could be fun!Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:24 PM | Comments (25) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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