April 13, 2004

Blog

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 (10) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Cool

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 Pixy

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:18 PM | Comments (11) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Cool

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 (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

April 12, 2004

Blog

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 (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Blog

New Faces


closet.jpg combatarms.jpg frinklin.jpg shoes.jpg

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:06 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

April 11, 2004

World

Support John Kelly!

(Thanks to Wizbang Kevin)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:06 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

April 10, 2004

Blog

I'll Drink to That!

martini.jpg

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:37 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

April 09, 2004

Cool

Fortunately, Marshmallow Is Resilient

As you can see here.

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 (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Cool

Jedi Schmedi


:: how jedi are you? ::

(Thanks to scribble on JREF)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:50 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Blog

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 (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Blog

Easter Bunnies

citymap.jpg
soup.jpg
whinger.jpgeaster2.jpg

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:37 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Life

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.

That's a bad sign, right?

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:29 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

April 08, 2004

Cool

I'd Sooner Be Kinky


Thomas L. Friedman
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 (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

World

American Flag

moonflag.jpg

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:30 AM | Comments (16) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

April 07, 2004

Rant

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 (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Geek

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 (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

April 06, 2004

World

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

Geek

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:


<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>
Save the new template.
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>.i

Now, 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:

<?php

$timeparts = explode(' ',microtime());
$starttime = $timeparts[1].substr($timeparts[0],1); ?>
And in a suitable place near the end, add this:
<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>

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.

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.

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 read

$app->rebuild_indexes( Blog => $blog )
    or return $app->error($app->translate(
        "Rebuild failed: [_1]", $app->errstr));
Comment 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:

if ($comment->blog_id != 1) {
    $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.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:12 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Blog

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 (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

April 03, 2004

Blog

Sign Of The Times

ledsign.jpg

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:29 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Anime

How AnimeSuki Got Its Groove Back

AnimeSuki has been a bit quiet lately, listing only a couple of gig of new anime each day.

Thursday they managed to boost that up to thirteen gig.
Friday they raised it to thirty.

Good thing I have unlimited downloads. Good thing too that these DVD-Rs are so cheap...

Update: And pfft! Just like that, they were gone. I wonder if AnimeSuki got bit by an April Fools prank?

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:39 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

April 02, 2004

Blog

Three Blogmigos

Glenn Reynolds, James Lileks and Roger L. Simon together on Hugh Hewitt.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:06 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

April 01, 2004

Cool

Quick Update

eggcard.jpg

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:40 AM | Comments (17) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Cool

If I Was, Which I'm Not

If I was going to spend the rest of my existence as a ten-inch-high plastic figurine, I expect I would indeed want to bust a cap in someone's ass. (Did I say that right? Sounds dirty.)

Gangsta Bitch!
You're Gangsta Bitch Barbie. You're tough and you
like it rough, and of course you like to pop a
cap in any wiggers ass.
If You Were A Barbie, Which Messed Up Version Would You Be?
brought to you by Quizilla


(Thanks to the Cheesemistress of Chaos)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:24 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Cool

Bible Stories

I mentioned some time past that I was a member of the Invisible Pink Hello Cthulhu Church of Last Thursday.

Well, I've found some nifty bible stories for you all.

(via The School of Comparative Irrelevance)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:15 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

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