Author: Jake

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Neat* blog tools

I’ve come across some blog tools that I thought were kinda neat recently and figured I’d tell about them here in case anybody else agrees with me. Interestingly enough, they all seem to index my blog. I think I submitted it to BlogDigger once and MovableType pings weblogs.com, but I don’t recall submitting it to any of the others.

  • Weblogs.com – Just a list of recently updated blogs; MovableType can be configured to automatically ping it.
  • BlogDigger – A search engine for blog entries. There’s a link on the front page to add your blog to the index.
  • Feedster – Another search engine for blog entries. This one is highly recommended by Asa.
  • Technorati – This service appears to have a few features but the one that came to my attention was the ability to enter a URL and see who’s linked to it. I actually found this one by looking at my referrer logs.
  • Mozilla Related Blogs – Even though I have a link to this one already I may as well mention it. It’s a really cool listing of people’s blogs who are related to the Mozilla project (because of my Bugzilla work, mine is there) and even includes information on when said blog was last updated (it’s really handy :).

What’s mentioned here probably doesn’t even scratch the surface of what’s available out there, but I thought they were kinda neat.

* I don’t know why I used the word “neat” (and so many times).
 
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Developers Profiles Page online

Just got the OK from Dave to check-in the developers profiles page (one of my stated goals for this week off work). Once all the CVS stuff cycles, which might happen before I get this entry done, the page should be available on bugzilla.org‘s web page. Looking at my other stated goals for this week, I don’t think I made it. I did get some doc updates checked in (though I haven’t compiled yet), but I didn’t get any other bugs even worked on nor did I get all the cleaning I wanted to get done even close to completed. Tomorrow isn’t really going to get anything accomplished either, as I plan to go see the Air Fair.

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Is an increase in SPAM/Junk Mail in my future?

Today must be annoyance day. I saw an article on slashdot about the direct marketing companies (read, telemarketers) planning to increase the amount of SPAM and Junk Snail Mail they send once the national do not call list goes active. In preparation for this onslaught, I updated my Mozilla install to version 1.4 using the RPM’s from Red Hat’s rawhide in order to get the built in Junk Mail Controls. For the other side of the coin (snail mail), I think I’ll start ripping up the applications I get sent and then putting them in those nifty postage due business reply envelopes and sending them back to the company. With any luck, they’ll get the hint that I really don’t care.

As long as I’m on the topic of annoying advertisements, does anybody else’s movie theater insist on giving you a small ad for their concession stand when they hand you the tickets? Mine does, and it really doesn’t seem to make sense. I mean, I can see the concession stand from where I buy the tickets and I have to walk past it in order to get to the actual movie theater. Do they really think that little piece of paper is going to make me decide that I really do want popcorn if the smell can’t?

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Coordinated hacker attack?

According to ISS there’s a massive hacker (or should that be cracker?) attack brewing for Sunday, July 6. This event was apparently dubbed the Defacers Challenge [NOTE: That web site was taken down yesterday]. The story has made it’s way to ComputerWorld, slashdot, many other news sites, and a few blogs. Even though I’m sure my everything on my system is properly patched (my Red Hat Network Alert tool has a blue check), I shut down any service I can live without for the next few days. Whether or not this started as a prank, I’m sure some script kiddies will take it seriously.

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Bugzilla Documentation updates

I think I got the sections of the docs that were outdated updated (mainly the LDAP Auth and charset sections). I haven’t recompiled the docs yet so what you see on the website is still the old information. I’ll probably do that (recompile) toward the end of the week in case I find time to do some more updates (and there are plenty to go around).

Higher priority right now is to get some cleaning and laundry done. Both my bedroom and computer room are disaster areas right now… my bedroom because of my two recent “vacations” has all kinds of cloths laying around. My computer room is mainly messy because of the slight rearranging I did yesterday. I moved my computer so it’s power supply exhaust fan is more or less pointing out the window. Hopefully that will help with the heat problem back here (there’s too much of it).

Shifting gears a little, have you noticed any improvements in spelling for this blog? I installed MTSpeling on Monday so now when I click the “Preview” button I get red letters for words that ispell doesn’t think are words. I actually had quite of few of them in this post; mostly typos, though.

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Slowing down telemarking calls

Saw a link on Mike Pinkerton’s blog about the National Do Not Call registry accepting registrations. For some reason they require a valid e-mail address, but if it will stop most telemarketing calls for 5 years I guess I can live with that.

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Plant shutdown – 1 week

Good thing I decided to try calling work before showing up today; I would have been pretty disappointed if I drove 30 minutes to get to work and then realized that the plant was shutdown for the week. I normally don’t call before going in, but I figured with all the time I took off work in the past couple weeks and knowing that it was the season for shutdowns it might be a good idea to phone ahead.

Hopefully this extra time will mean that I can get some things in Bugzilla Documentation caught up. I’d also like to get the Bugzilla Developer profiles page online this week. And if I still have time after all that, I’d like perhaps work on some of those other bugs I’ve started on but never driven to completion. Sounds like this week w/nothing to get paid for is going to yield me plenty to do… and that’s not even attempting to account for any kind of personal life.

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I got my laptop back

I got my laptop back from Circuit City yesterday. According to the form I got with it they repaired (or replaced), of all things, the touchpad. Not really the device that would have lept to my mind, but it seems to be working better. It does still do that message about restoring the registry from backup every now and then, but it’s done that almost since the day I bought it… and I’m still not sure why (probably something retarted w/WinXP).

Now that my laptop is back online I was also able to get my Quicken information updated. I’m actually not as far in debt as I thought I would still be. In fact, had I not just had my vehical in the shop for a bunch of little repairs, I’d be in the black. A big helper in getting me closer to out of debt was the fact that MCC finally sent me my check from tuition assistance.

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MALUG June 2003 Meeting

Our monthly MALUG meeting was today. Tim Gray once again had some really neat information to distribute about animation on linux. Even though I’ll probably never figure it out, I did find it fascinating. He talked about a couple of applications. One that can be used to render images: POV-Ray, and one that can be used to aid in creating animations: Blender. I’d like to find the time to fiddle with these applications as they look extremely powerful, but I’m not sure when that’s going to happen. At least when it does I’ll have the links here to remind me about them :).

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I’m baaack (again)

Once again I have returned to my home, this time after a trip to South Carolina. I got a lot of bugmail while I was gone; it appears that Generic Charting went in. I ‘spose that’s another thing I’ve gotta get added to the docs sometime before 2.18 comes out :).