My blog was bombarded with comment spam an hour ago, and I could not log in to update anything because all the database connections were used up. My web host has since blocked all IP addresses that were attempting to connect to my database.
Contact me in case your IP was blocked and you cannot post a comment.
Subscribers to my feed will now have a little extra somethin’ - my most recent Ma.gnolia bookmarks. Ma.gnolia is a product of Zeldman’s Happy Cog Studios, and is similar in nature to Del.icio.us, except that it looks prettier.
Of course, more people probably use Del.icio.us, but I wanted to be different :P And Zeldman himself just decided to remove his Ma.gnolia bookmarks from his feed, but I’m thinking that my blog is less well-known than his, so people are less likely to post comments in irrelevant places.
We’ll see how it goes, and if you have any issues with this new addition… post a comment here.
After upgrading to Movable Type 4 templates, I’m still sorting out some kinks that pop up every now and then.
The most recent kink was spotted by Jimmy Liew who noticed that my Feedburner feed hadn’t been updated in a while. Thanks, Jimmy!
Turns out that the ampersands in some of my category names were to blame. As there was a parsing error, Feedburner refused to process my feed. At least, I think that’s what happened.
This problem didn’t occur with my previous Movable Type templates, as far as I know.
I have redesigned this blog!
OK, I didn’t do most of the designing. All I did was tweak the CSS and move some template code about. The amazing thing about Movable Type 4 (MT) is that it allows me to backup my old templates, purge them from the live system and replace them with the latest MT templates and stylesheets.
The even more amazing thing was that I didn’t notice such a button until I surfed around by accident. Doh!
There were some minor hiccups and a few big belches as the system transited from old to new. The biggest problem was getting the server to overwrite the old template code. After several re-publishing attempts in vain, I FTP’d into the server and realised that the supposedly new Home page template was actually the old one, which explained the broken link to the stylesheet.
After some forcible file replacements and flushing of the bowel system, all the gas seems to have left. My blog is now sitting up without much indigestion, though there are still some pellets I need to wash out.
Eventually all my static pages will be moved to MT4 which also publishes web pages (not just blog posts), like Wordpress does. So this will become a general Content Management System, controlling a few thousand blog posts and several pages.
If only major corporate website revamps could be done this quickly!
ps. The Cityscape you are currently viewing on my new masthead is that of Austin, Texas… the city I just returned from! (SXSW)
Just testing. I discovered a magic button in Movable Type 4 that can wipe out all my old templates (which have accumulated over the years like tartar on teeth).
Please bear with any strange, inconsistent visuals because I have a few thousand web pages to re-publish.
After a series of errors, I have finally upgraded my blog to Movable Type 4.1! *fanfare*
It appeared that the main culprit was a corrupt database. Thank God that I didn't lose my data and instead, the database was repairable. Phew!
The other cause was improperly uploaded files. As my FTP program kept timing out, I'd quit and re-open the program many times. As a result, the files weren't necessarily uploaded properly and in the right mode. Even now, if I encounter a new error that's linked to some MT file, I'll re-upload it. So far that strategy has worked twice.
I've re-pointed my feed back to vantan.org, so my dear subscribers, you don't have to touch that dial.
The other good news is, since I was using CPanel to sort out my technical problems, I decided to take a look at my AWStats (as opposed to Google Analytics which I normally use). It seems there is a great discrepancy in the number of pageviews and visits from both programs. I would assume AWStats is more accurate as there are some areas of my website that don't have Google tracking code installed.
According to AWStats, in Jan 2008 I had over 79,000 pageviews. My peak last year was during the SXSW period where I surged past 470,000 pageviews and over 11,500 unique visitors. This was much, much greater than I thought. Eventually, the numbers went back down to normal but now of course I am hoping for a repeat of last year's response.
The last piece of news is that I've been accepted into the Forbes Business Blogging network. I have felt the need to re-focus my angle of writing and my own personal outlook back towards business, and I'm honoured to be part of this community.
My web host, A Small Orange, has been pretty reliable. They give value for money, and have been able to fix my problems. However, the server hosting my blog went down a few days ago. While my web pages were restored, my CGI scripts were not, thus I couldn't log in to update this blog. I wrote a note and within a few hours they restored that too. I am so glad it has been fixed... because I can blog again!
[Update: It seems they only fixed the main MT script. When people try to post comments, they get an error message. I'm wondering why can't they simply restore all my MT scripts? Please bear with us...]
After breaking the 100 mark earlier this year, I thought I could maybe break the 200 mark at the end of the year. But Christmas comes early sometimes. Thank you to those who've subscribed to this blog!
Spurred on by what happened, as described in my previous post, I revisited older versions of my site and read old blog posts, set in old design templates.
While looking for help on the Movable Type website on how to properly install my side navigation in the form of customisable widgets, I realised that SixApart is also in the midst of updating their documentation. This link on widget sets, at the time of writing, is broken. It is linked from this page for designers. I’ll wait a bit longer and see if they tidy things up.
Major improvements have been made to Movable Type. If it was a house renovation, it definitely went beyond changing the interior decor. They’ve torn down major parts of the house, re-piled the foundation and installed new utility fittings.
The problem is that because it is a very new building, not many contractors have figured out how to develop new ‘furniture’ (plugins) to spruce it up, and some existing contractors have yet to adjust their existing furniture for the new house. In contrast, the big mansion next door, called Wordpress, seems to be having a party with its contractors all day long. The owners of the grand old Movable Type house could not rest on their laurels and recall the glory days. They had to keep up with the Joneses. Where they once turned away strangers who wanted to collaborate with them, they too started an open-door policy. But could it be too late?
Also, because changes to Movable Type 4 were made up to the last moment, the architects’ plans haven’t been comprehensively documented yet. In some templates, the styles specified were called ‘beta’.
OK enough blogging… time to sleep. In the meantime, if you want to see my new navigation menu, please scroll all the way down. Sorry about that. At least it was easy figuring out how to convert stuff like MyBlogLog, Twitter and Google Reader into separate widgets, which can then be shifted about using a mouse. That is one really neat feature. Now if I can only just figure out where in the mass of MT tags the widget code should go…
[Update: I decided to just switch back to my old templates until I figure out how to make the new template work properly.]
This seems to be turning into a running commentary of my MT4 upgrade. Anyway, the template upgrade worked, beyond my expectations. I resorted to creating a new blog, and copying and pasting all the new templates' code into my existing blog.
Now I just have to figure out how to get my navigation back... in the new form of widgets.
Stay tuned for more (mundane?) updates in between other things I'm doing, like going to the toilet (yes!), drinking lots of water, going out, watching TV, eating, etc.
I’m going to do something reckless. I’m going to change my existing design templates to MT4’s pre-fabricated ones, and cross my fingers.
Then I’m going for a holiday.
Vantan.org has been upgraded to Movable Type 4. I've deleted some old plugins, so there are bound to be some bugs somewhere. Am not sure if comments work. Will do some more tweaking over the weekend.
After several weeks of testing, I've decided to upgrade this blog to the latest version of Movable Type. Knowing my recklessness, weird things may happen.
I suspect some plugins may not work after the upgrade, like S-code (captcha code you have to type in before posting a comment). Please bear with me...
[Update: Confirmed that I have to remove that plugin... until then, commenting may not work.]
Clear your browser cache or hit CTRL F5 to see my site in national colours :)
Happy National Day!
I am pleased to announce that my "PHP Includes" problem has been resolved. Thank you to my readers who did suggest the right things. Just that it was a combination of many suggestions and not just changing just one component, which in itself did not work.
I had to remove the "@" sign (which I recall was necessary for my templates to work, as my previous web host was using the latest version of PHP, which I'd assume is version 5). I also had to use absolute server paths.
Strangely, my PHP5 code worked on this current server until my current web host upgraded to version 4.4.6.
Oh well. I learnt something new from this.
Dear readers,
Yesterday my blog went blank. I thought I had again exceeded my file storage space, but on checking, there was plenty of space left.
I thought I had exceeded my bandwidth, seeing how my account went over 5GB so far, this month. But the web host assured me that was not the problem.
My blog did receive over 1,500 cases of trackback spam, which took a very long time to delete, but it made no difference. (I didn't expect it to, but it was a wild hope)
My web host said it was a problem with my S-Code capcha plugin for Movable Type, but I realised it wasn't just my blog pages but any PHP pages using @include files. I tried using another version of 'include' code but that made no difference. Any text appearing after the very first line of @include code, would simply not display.
I then got suspicious as I had not touched my Movable Type plugins or templates recently. I asked my web host if they had recently upgraded their version of PHP. The answer was yes. I read up on the latest documentation involving the 'include' command but haven't quite put my finger on what the problem is. Do you have any idea?
This is how I encase my include files:
<?php @include("<MTBlogURL>includes/header.php"); ?>
It worked fine until, presumably, the upgrade to PHP 4.4.6.
At least, I managed to narrow it down and sure enough, as I substituted the @include links with the original lines of code, things started appearing again. This home page, which some of you might be viewing right now, is working simply because of this.
But this is only a quick fix. I need to figure out the PHP problem as I still want to use 'include' files for better control of my code. If you guys know a workaround, please let me know! Thanks.
[Of course, for you guys to reply, I have to 'quick-fix' my individual blog post template as well, so it no longer calls on 'include' files. Sigh. I'm only going to re-publish recent posts for now, so at least you don't see blank pages.]
Just experimenting with Digg tools on this blog. Things may prove embarrassing 50 posts later if nothing actually gets dugg. Big, fat zeroes... we don't like seeing that in Singapore schools, unless it's preceded by the number '1'.
I read about how Google Reader has changed its reporting methods so that many Feedburner users have seen a spike in their number of subscribers. Before that happened, though, I had already noticed a gradual increase in subscribers over the past few months. Reading Technosailor's post prompted me to check on my own feed subscription rates. Previously I was bordering on the 90+ mark. On Saturday I had 111 subscribers. On Thursday I hit a high of 129.
According to the breakdown, there are now 27 people subscribing to my feed using Google Reader. That probably contributed to the jump from double to triple digits. Hurrah!
Incidentally, someone came up to me and commented, "Your blog has improved!". The person had not seen my blog for probably a few months.
I was thinking that perhaps the quality of my content had improved. Or perhaps it was the increased frequency of posts. Or maybe the use of more photos on my home page. On a more obscure line of thought, I wondered if it was due to the displaying of photographs of my visitors using MyBlogLog, which could give a sense of 'community' on my blog.
Apparently, what impressed the person was the Snap preview effect when you hover over a link. It's a feature that I installed on my blog in 2 minutes flat (from signing up to inserting the code in my template and republishing my blog).
Which shows there are different ways to hook readers. We just need to know what type of readers we want to attract.
A few weeks ago, another friend commented that she doesn't read my blog sometimes because it's too technical. A few years ago, yet another friend said I should have conversely been more 'esoteric'. I did not change then, and I'm not going to change now. This is how I think, and this is how I will write. You can't please everyone but you can be true to yourself.
Thank you to my 100+ subscribers. That means a lot to me.
[Update 26/2/07: 137 today!]
Dear readers, my domain name transfer problems have been resolved. Thanks for your concern and feedback on domain registration services.
Part of the delay was due to Gmail marking every automated email from my new registrar, Namecheap, as spam. Even after unmarking one email and moving it to my Inbox, a second email was still blocked when I re-requested for the transfer. It's quite a dangerous thing to happen especially as my domain was about to expire and I had to respond to each email to confirm I did want the transfer. Boy am I glad everything's been settled.
As promised, my new registrar did a manual transfer. I quite like the domain name control panel and they've also thrown in extra services, more than what I had with my previous registrar.
I tried to transfer my domain name a couple weeks ago, from Enom (via my old web host Addaction), to Namecheap.
After putting in my request, Namecheap sent the usual notification emails and told me to get an 'EPP' code. Addaction sent the code to me without making things too difficult, which I must give them credit for. I entered the code and was told that things were in progress. I thought all was well and decided to give it a few more days for the transfer to be completed.
Until I came back from my holiday, checked my Gmail an hour ago and discovered that Namecheap had sent me an email just 2 hours before, telling me that my transfer request had been cancelled!!!
This was apparently because I had not responded to a 'verification email'. Thinking that my Gmail spam blocker had filtered that email out, I did a search but couldn't find any recent emails from 'Namecheap'. I logged into the Namecheap website to view my message inbox, but there were no new messages - apart from the same email telling me that my transfer request had been cancelled. The previous message was one requesting for my EPP code, 1-2 weeks ago. There was nothing else, in between.
What's alarming is that my domain name's going to expire in a few days' time. I just tried to re-request for the domain name transfer to Namecheap, but was told that as my domain was going to expire in less than 7 days, it cannot be transferred anymore. WTF! I did request to transfer my domain name with weeks to spare. I sent them all the info they required, and now my request has been cancelled because I didn't respond to a nonexistent verification email??
I sent Namecheap an email explaining my situation. I hope they do something about it. If not, I have no choice but to renew my domain at a higher price, back with Enom.
If you aren't able to access this blog from Feb 26, you can safely assume it's a problem with my domain renewal. As far as I can help it, I'm going to post updates about this boo-boo on my blog, so you know what to be careful of if you ever want to transfer your domain name.
[Update 1: Namecheap has replied very promptly to my email, assuring me that while I can no longer request for a transfer via their website, they can still attempt a manual transfer. I have thanked them for their quick response and confirmed that I still want to attempt this transfer before my domain expires.
As for the missing verification email, it was apparently sent to an 'Admin contact'. I'm trying to find out what this mysterious email address is. I definitely asked my old/current registrar to update my email address records a long time ago, so am wondering why it wasn't done thoroughly. ]
Vantan.org has been added to the links list of a new Second Life blog which happens to be in Italian!* Thanks!
This blog has also been linked on Honeyfly, which is another geek-music-Mac blog. I feel like we're relatives.
The first Singapore Second Life meetup was blogged about in Global Voices last month. Thanks Preetam!
* - at least, I think it's in Italian, based on my recognition of words I learnt years ago in music theory class. My dear namesake who's learnt proper Italian is welcome to verify my assessment :)
Someone wrote in just now to tell me he found my blog while Googling for "That CD Shop". Sure enough, two of my blog posts rank #2 and #3 when you Google for that phrase - be it using Singapore or international settings.
Aside #1: The last time someone found my blog while searching for 'that' shop, we ended up emailing each other, then he came to my house to fix my PC. We've met up for meals (once, meeting outside That CD Shop at Great World City) and have been friends for the last few years.
Aside #2: The reason why other websites and blogs such as mine turn up higher on the rankings, is probably because That CD Shop doesn't have its own website. So when people Google for the shop, they end up clicking on one of our links instead. Someone at the shop told me that a while back that it wasn't part of their strategy to move their sales online. However they could still set up a simple website, listing their contact details, locations and latest titles.
This blog also turns up #1 on Google searches for "HP iPaq 6828" which is the phone I purchased earlier this year which was then lost/stolen in a ladies' toilet. Ahem, anyone from HP reading this? ;-)
Aside: Between the iPaq and the Dopod 818 Pro which I purchased 2nd-hand after losing my iPaq, the iPaq is still better overall. The Dopod is slimmer and has more buttons (which is good if you like accessing your wireless settings often, but bad if you find yourself activating your camera while trying to turn off your phone). Also, the pre-installed HP software gave more control over phone settings. The Dopod required a ROM upgrade which wiped out all previous data. If I didn't upgrade the ROM, the Dopod would turn itself off on its own, even when data was being keyed in at the time. However, I felt downloading pages over the net was faster on a Dopod which has 802.11g compared to the iPaq which only has 'b'. See also my earlier comparison between the two models.
Finally, this blog has reached its 2000th comment (not counting spam). The honour goes to my ex-colleague Yun who commented on my new red iPod nano. Congratulations! You win ... er, a hug! Claim it from me when you see me next time :-P
Technorati Tags: HP, iPaq, Dopod, That CD Shop
Because we can.
Because you deserve it.
Because I'm getting older, and you are, too.
Because I squint when I read my own blog on other people's screens.
Because I want to play my own small part in bringing the national myopia rate down. (Hmm, right)
(Thank you, CSS)
I'm having trouble accessing my website sporadically. Two days ago, my site was suddenly inaccessible. At the same time, my sister in Australia was also unable to access my website. After writing in to tech support, the site came back up again. Then tech support told me that when they accessed my URL, the site was already able to load. All systems seemed normal. I wasn't getting an abnormally high number of visitors or anything.
Just 15 minutes ago today, the same problem occurred. Soon after writing to tech support, the site went back up again. I'm wondering - have you readers have encountered similar problems accessing my site?
Update 5/11/06: OK, my web host asks if those who have problems accessing my site, could run a traceroute. If you don't mind, here are the instructions:
For Windows users:
For Mac users:
1. Click Start, then Run, type cmd and click OK.
2. Type tracert vantan.org and hit enter.
1. Open Finder, go to the Applications folder, than the Utilities Folder.
2. In the Utilities folder, launch the Terminal application.
3. Type traceroute vantan.org and hit enter.
When I ran my Traceroute, there was a long time lag between Starhub and Sprint.net. When I tried to access Sprint.net, the website was inaccessible. Let me know if you notice a bit lag in any of the servers when it's being pinged.
I'm in the process of upgrading to MT3.33. If time and energy permits, I'll also be trying out a new plugin that makes MT more extensible. Bear with me...
Just added Digg to my posts. Not that I expect to be dug very often but every now and then the site ought to be tweaked. You dig?
What Kind of Food Are You?
I finally took the quiz after seeing it on other blogs for a while. Yes, I try not to hit most people too hard now.
[Stripped out the annoying table code and font tags.]
After months of de-activation I've restored my contact form with AJAX, courtesy of Wufoo. Check it out!
Update: Oh shite, I didn't realise the password-protect feature was kicking in here until I tried viewing the form on another computer. Have disabled it so you guys can view it.
It was a nightmare two days when trackback spam got the better of the server, and our old web host shut us down indefinitely. They wanted us to remove all MT scripts. But the fact is, it was a particular trackback file that was being attacked. If we removed all our MT scripts, we wouldn't be able to blog. (duh)
I contemplated moving some of us to Wordpress but didn't want to learn a whole new system. Wordpress is intensely easy to install, but I wasn't prepared to help anyone (let alone myself) redesign web pages and grapple with unfamiliar-looking templates. I also didn't want to cause linkrot with a new file naming system for our web pages.
I'm writing this while our DNS is being updated. Feels kinda strange, like I'm incognito.
[Note: This is not intended to be a complaint rant. Just wanted to get my thought process down. ]
I spent the last few hours figuring out how to configure my Textdrive account. After years of using Cpanel and recently enjoying the ease of Fantastico installations, I felt handicapped using a text-only interface containing terms I didn't understand. I did wonder how come there were no screen shots of Textdrive's admin panel before I signed up for their Mixed Grill deal, but then thought 'Nah, it can't be that bad.' Caveat emptor, my bad.
From something beautiful like this:
To this (Webmin):
Why do exciting things happen when my server is unstable?
According to my Mint stats, this site made it onto the home page of Tailrank for my previous post on CSS support in email programs. There was also a referral from the Alpha version of Measuremap (bought over by Google), which is still off-limits to the public. Now that's got me curious.
Lastly but definitely not least, here's three cheers to the talented folks at Manic, where vantan.org is currently listed as a 'random fave'.
[Update: Zeldman.com has brought over 2,000 referrals my way. ]
My web host has informed me that the server CPU load hit 99.9% because of trackback spam sent to this website.
If it continues tomorrow (which is likely), my account will be suspended indefinitely. I have to do a lot of things to fix it and back up all my data. And that of everyone else hosted on my account.
See you around - hopefully when I'm next back online.
This site (and other domains hosted on my account) went down a couple hours ago, due to our mt-tb.cgi file(s) being pummelled, presumably by spam. We're investigating the source of the problem. The web host has warned that they won't allow us to down the whole shared server again.
So just in case you see a 'Suspension' notice again, no, I didn't put any nude photos of myself on this website.
And no, this post won't be accepting any trackbacks. In the spirit of things.
Pah. I tried re-installing Brandon Fuller's MTValidator plugin and kept on wondering why it no longer worked on my site. It would say my pages were invalid when most of them were in fact, valid.
Then I looked at the requirements list and discovered that I had an older version of Perl. Not assuming that's the only problem but I find it strange that it used to work a couple years ago and now it doesn't.
Anyway, I managed to successfully install Formatlist, a MT plugin that adds bullet and number formatting. Let's see how it works and if it produces valid code:
Wow! it works. I typed three lines of code, selected them all, then hit the button and it immediately encased each line with the necessary tags. Nifty. (Seal of approval)
Next, I installed SmartyPants. Can you 'see' the difference in my quotation marks?
Glad to see that Gmail has finally added a 'Delete' button next to the 'Report spam' button. I tend to delete as many mails (if not more) than mark them as spam, and that dropdown menu wasn't very convenient. I also like the 'View as HTML' feature which saves me from downloading documents I only want to preview.
Which leads to my theory that this is only a precursor of more things to come, seeing how Google has acquired Writely. Wouldn't it be cool if you could not only preview a Word document as HTML, but also make amendments and email it back?
I'm now looking at some old attempts at redesigning this site, and laughing at most of them.
To non-techies who don't know what I'm talking about, this is with relation to a previous post about a special lifetime web hosting offer (Textdrive), combined with an enterprise-level sharing service (Joyent) and secure file storage (Strongspace).
I haven't really done much with my 2GB Textdrive hosting account. I've yet to receive a Strongspace login id, but at least they wrote us an email to explain why - because they're upgrading to new servers earlier than planned. Which is good.
That leaves me with Joyent to play around with, and it's fairly nifty, although at this point in my life I don't find it essential. I like the fact that I can tag my emails and files with keywords, and create smart groups comprising specific tags.
If you wonder why Textdrive doesn't show many screen shots, that's because there isn't much to show of their self-made control panel, which is pretty plain and iconless - nothing like Cpanel. And because it doesn't have Cpanel, it doesn't have Fantastico, which is an auto-installer (meaning that you can create Content Management Systems, blogs, forums and other whatnots in an instant). Textdrive is obviously targetted at people who don't need help installing things ;-)
I've realised that we shouldn't get so caught up doing tedious little technical things - which most people won't notice in the end. But oh well, my money's in, and I'll make the most of the generous gigabytes of space I've acquired.
Interestingly, another friend's web host is also making a lifetime web hosting offer. With Cpanel. This could be a new trend in web hosting. Good for people with money to spare, provided they're also confident that the companies involved are trustworthy and creditworthy as well.
Of all the things I forgot to do ... I forgot to renew my domain name. Things started looking funny this morning, and people got redirected to some commercial portal selling sun tan lotion. At least it didn't point to a certain nudist club.
Fortunately my web host managed to rectify things. Thanks to ML for alerting me first about my site ;-) muah!
Things are getting busier at work (like it wasn't already busy enough), with a few projects that need to be completed by next month. At the same time, I will be at SXSW Interactive. Watch out for new developments in this area.
Yet more problems with this site - this time, there are Internal Server Errors for my most recent posts' individual pages (where you can post comments). Please bear with me while my web host fixes this. Thanks.
My website (and some other people's, hosted on my account) was down this morning.
Our web host suspended my account because trackback spammers pinged my trackback file too many times, causing the server's CPU to nearly overload.
Since its installation, Movable Type 3 has blocked 841 cases of trackback spam. In the last couple of days I received around 80 cases of such spam.
An analogy came to mind. Blog spam is annoying but inevitable (like mosquitoes in Singapore during the rainy season). I decided to let them be as long as most of it would be automatically blocked (using 'repellent') or deleted (relieving itches by applying balm).
However, when they start to affect the main system (spreading serious diseases like malaria or dengue fever), I am NOT happy.
My colleagues were at a presentation by a big ad agency today.
One of their proposals was blogging. They apparently listed some women bloggers' sites as examples. Including mine.
They had no idea I worked for the very company they were pitching to.
A couple of my colleagues, however, pointed out that it was my blog.
All in all, it was a very interesting story. I guess I should be honoured (assuming the blogs they cited were supposed to be good examples).
I am not sure if these same ad people stayed over after their presentation, because they came in to meet another colleague and stood very near my cubicle ... in fact, one guy wandered into my cubicle while I was away, reading the geek comics I had stuck on my wall :-P
Anyway, by that time it was very late and I just wanted to finish my work and grab my dinner. So I didn't stick around to chat or introduce myself (what if they were from another agency - how malu).
After a hiccup or two with Google Analytics, I left the system to run on its own, and decided to check on the stats (to give Mint a run for its money). Might I say Google's stats are nice to look at, and much more detailed?
Let's take the regional information, for starters:
A slice of the pie. And here's what you get when you view, say, Singapore:
Like, how scary is that? Actually, I do want to know if any of you readers are really from these areas. Leave a comment, if you are!
[ps. I clicked on United States and saw a breakdown of states. Then I clicked on California and saw 20 different areas. This is cool. Incidentally, hello to San Diego, whoever you are :) ]
[Update 20/1/06: A detailed comparison of web stat services. ]
Bonjour and ¡Hola! It appears that my recent post on a certain Arsenal midfielder's misadventures in a recent match, has attracted attention from Google searches all over the world. This is what my Mint stats say:
On further investigation, it appears that those favourite search keywords, combined with a keyword from another post (to do with Apple's latest iPod) became a winning combination.
Sorry guys, but you have to look elsewhere. Maybe this wallpaper of Monsieur taking the first kick the right way, will appease some of you.
Yikes. I noticed that new posts using MT3.2, didn't get published as individual archive pages, but only as news feeds and on the home page.
So please excuse the broken links while I try to fix this - or get my web host to help.
[Update: Web host says it's a problem with the .htaccess. Still, problem's not fixed.]
[UPdate 2: I think everything's gone back to normal. Not sure what the web host did but hopefully the errors won't happen again! ]
This is my first post using Movable Type 3.2! Woo-hoo.
Most obvious changes are further tweaks to the user interface, and nifty way of upgrading. All you need to do (after carefully uploading lots of files and folders in the right transfer modes, is log in and they'll do the rest for you.
Early this morning, my web hosting account was suspended because some idiot trackback-spammed me, maxing out the database server. I was even more annoyed because my other friends' sites, also hosted on this account, were suspended. A quick note to the web hosts resolved this issue, although I am loathe for such a situation to happen again.
Also, the plugin which used to accurately indicate whether my web pages were XHTML valid (at the bottom of this page), no longer works. I didn't modify anything. I have no idea what's going on. But you know I'd never let my pages get away with poor coding.
I'll look for a fix / hack later. I'm busy with other things at the moment - more in my Korg Blog.
The server exceeded its 500MB capacity, my home page went blank, and I believe some emails bounced.
I'm in a trash-and-burn mood now. I just deleted my entire photo gallery - whether I have backups or not. However I might have to stop hosting other people's sites on my account, because I might do some more reckless things to the server and that would impact their sites too.
Actually I feel like just hitting the 'delete' button, and rebuilding only my blog. Can't believe so much junk accumulated on my site in a few years. Trash it! Just trash it all!!!
While reading Lawrence Lessig's excellent book, Free Culture, I was reminded of an invaluable website, archive.org, which keeps records of websites past.
They even have records of what my old website (version 2, designer-style) looked like. They even archived my old 404 error message. That's a real walk down memory lane.
[Additional comment: If you support the Creative Commons, and have new insights to add to Lessig's book, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, why not help out here. All royalties go to the Creative Commons.]
Stephen P. Williams, author of 'How To Be President', just wrote in to me after reading my review of his book. I'm glad to hear that he was glad to hear that I liked his book. Thanks!
Somehow, I've got myself honorary listing as a Canadian website.
Loosely following the practices of Kottke.org, I shall follow up on previous blog posts with updates and amendments.
I take back everything I said about how cool the Belkin Cassette Adapter is. Of course, most of these CNet reviews came in a while after I had purchased them. But they confirmed my suspicions that, perhaps, I was not the only one suffering from 'rattle and spit'. I hear Griffin has a better model, anyone tried it before?
The iMac is doing very well. And so is the PowerMac G5. Its dual processors process music files rapidly.
MT-Blacklist is doing fine, though I was hit by another load of comment and trackback spam, and a few genuine commentors were locked out. Sorry about that, your words have now been posted.
I face the same religious and societal dilemma every Chinese New Year. It's happening again this morning...
I've finally re-installed MT Blacklist properly. And closed comments and trackbacks for recent posts.
I hope that lets in legitimate posts and pings while keeping most of the bad guys away. Here goes...
[Update: What the heck. Thanks to this tip, I've also modified my referrals log to get rid of the referrer spam!]
I received over 90 trackback spams from you just today. I wonder why you're wasting precious hours of your life every day doing this to bloggers. For one, no matter how many times you try to spam my comments and trackbacks, there's no way any of your messages will get posted on any of my blogs.
You see, none of the comments posted on my blog will be published unless and until I approve them. Interestingly, it seems to work for trackbacks too. You've wasted your time.
Looking at my email notifications, you started spamming my weblog's trackback as of 2.15pm and have kept on going until now (9.25pm). I am amazed at the amount of effort you are wasting on this site. Even as I type, new trackbacks are trickling in.
And now I am about to delete all your efforts in one fell swoop. How does it feel, having worked for nearly a day on this, only to find that nothing's going to happen?
If you think I or my readers are fool enough to click blindly on any of your senseless, random posts, you are grossly mistaken.
Go and focus on marketing your own website properly, instead of free-riding on other people's servers!
[Note: No comments or trackbacks allowed in this post]
See also
Six Apart's guide to fighting spam
Upgrading to MT3.15 now, for security improvements. Hope there won't be any hiccups.
[Phew, it's upgraded. Had trouble with Fetch FTP for OS X. It hung/timed out in mid-transfer quite a few times, causing me to abort transmission and then go through each MT sub-folder to see where I last left off. Then I tried posting a new entry, only to find there was a missing file - one of those I missed out during the aborted transfers.
Can anyone recommend a better FTP program for Mac? Should I switch back to Transmit? ]
Our web server is being upgraded. Please refrain from posting any comments between Jan 22-23, Eastern Standard Time, as they may not get logged. Thank you.
I seem to be having Internal Server Error problems every time I post something on any of my blogs. Please bear this in mind the next time you see something funny happening. I'm down but I'm not suicidal, and neither is my blog.
What's strange is I haven't even done anything to my server in months. My web host says it might have something to do with upgrading Movable Type. But I haven't had time to do any upgrades. This error occurs on other people's websites hosted on my server as well.
[Update: It has something to do with some PHP executable script. This has not happened before. It is driving me crazy.]
Not only am I receiving more spam than valid emails every day - someone's gone and reset my MT password.
Whoever you are, sod off!
I'm making changes to this blog. A lot of broken links will occur. Please ignore the rest of the site for now. Thanks.
I tried to move everything to dynamic publishing but it didn't work. That htaccess file killed access to my entire site. I'm frustrated and I don't have time, ability nor a strong enough interest to pursue this any further at the moment.
What's more, by switching to dynamic mode for my archives, my original archive pages' file names were prepended with a '.static'. After restoring everything back to static mode and rebuilding the whole site, the size of my archives has doubled because I now have two of everything (something like 'pagename.php' and 'pagename.php.static').
Oh, incidentally, yesterday afternoon my iPod somehow refused to display any of my songs, albums, playlists etc at all. This was bad timing because it happened during my jazz lesson, and so my jazz teacher couldn't hear any of the music I produced, which was meant to be part of my homework. I reformatted VanPod, and loaded all the songs back into it. Thank God for Firewire.
Around the same time that VanPod misbehaved, my Nokia 6600 phone malfunctioned. After a few restarts and a re-insertion of the SIM card it seems to have gone back to normal.
My camera will apparently cost over S$200 to repair, and I will proceed with it, seeing how I paid several times that amount for it originally.
Bah.
[Update: I successfully ran a script which closed all comments posted a month earlier. However my pages still gave the wrong impression that you could post comments. I did something with MTElse that was obviously wrong because the comment fields still show, and now all my pages are not XHTML compliant. I will fix it another time.]
I have been most remiss in updating this blog. That's because I've been busy with something and you can find out more in my separate music blog.
Update: Logic Pro 6 has arrived. Thanks to Lulu of Brooklyn Media - great service, great price (cheaper than the Apple Store, and at least they have it in stock in Singapore).
I will have to continue playing with Logic tomorrow because I spent a good part of the evening at an online WSSG meeting. I'm also working on a friend's photo gallery system. I won't even be watching Champions League tonight. Sniff.
Hmm. They've given me a new Template called the Dynamic Site Bootstrapper. Sounds like a cross between a cowboy and a mad scientist.
Oooh! Subcategories! I liiike :)
When I get home tonight, I am *so* going to upgrade this system to Movable Type 3.1. Yeah.
[I'm back. Upgrading commencing shortly. Many weird things may happen to this site, which you will completely ignore. It may take a few days, even a week, for all changes to be implemented because I really don't have the time!]
Mac users may notice I'm no longer using Verdana as the default font on this site ;-) Hope it looks a little smoother now.
The other thing is, this slight modification to my stylesheet has drawn to my attention the difference between how Safari and Mozilla Firefox (running on my Mac OS 10.3.5) renders text.
I noticed this a while ago but thought I might as well note it here: Safari capitalises the 'O' in Vantan.org, presumably in response to my stylesheet's .sidetitle { text-transform: capitalize; } command. The text in Safari appears to be smaller.
Also, Firefox is a little tight on my line height. Either that or my stylesheet's tight. Hmm. Anyway I'm still working on a redesign and waiting for MT3.1, so that'll be all I'm changing for now.
You can now read vantan.org in its full, naked glory by subscribing to this feed. Thanks to this simple RSS Customisation tutorial.
For the last couple of days, my server was subjugated to a bad case of Murphy's Law.
My web hosts had associated the links in my admin panel with an old domain of mine which expired a while ago (which I wasn't planning to renew). That is to say, there were quite a few broken links about. So I asked them to fix it.
But it wasn't as simple as updating the url, site wide. They told me that all email addresses going to vantan.org would have to be re-created.
Fine, I thought. Just do it quickly and get it over with, so I can generate the email accounts again. In the meantime, I set up a catch-all email address so I wouldn't lose incoming mail.
However, there were more problems with my domain. After they had reconfigured the admin panel, they wrongly assigned vantan.org to point to the wrong folder, an old website of mine.
I wrote in to tell them to please point vantan.org to the correct folder on their server.
They happily wrote back, saying that vantan.org had been redirected.
I took a look. My website was redirected, all right - to http://vantan.org/vantan!
First of all, that changed the URL of my blog. Secondly, as Movable Type uses absolute links by default, my web page was chock full of broken links. I couldn't even log in to my MT panel to change the url, because after logging in, it directed itself to the wrong page.
They did fix the link, and I heaved a sigh of relief. Too soon.
Then my CGI-BIN folder couldn't be located via my browser, although it was still there when I logged in to the server via FTP. Somehow, they fixed that, too.
Next, Serdar kindly informed me that 'www.vantan.org' didn't quite point to my website, although 'vantan.org' was fine (!!!!).
So now I'm waiting to hear from technical support again, praying that this is the LAST time I need to bug them about this.
And in the meantime, please key in 'vantan.org' without the 'www'. Thanks.
[Update: Everything should be fixed and you can go back to using the 'www' if you're used to it. I hope this is the last time I am writing about it!]
My web host is making some changes to my configuration and I won't be able to use my usual email account for a while. I'm told the emails may bounce. So please don't send me anything confidential.
If you really need to reach me and you already know my old email address, use the same format: [my username] [at] gmail.com. Cheers.
[Update: All should be well now.]
I decided to update some parts of my site today. Nothing major - my reading list and blogroll. I'm also creating a new section about my own music but that will take some more time.
I finally learnt that Movable Type 3 alpha testing is available. 'Shows how often I have time to surf the web these days. As excited as I was over this new version, honestly I don't have the time to play around with alphas, so I'll pass on this opportunity and see what Lucian has to say about it.
I nearly forgot about the Asia Weblog Awards 2003 largely because it took a while to count the votes and I have a pretty short memory. Well, we didn't make it to the top 3 best designed weblogs, but then again I didn't quite put winning in any blog competition on my priority list. Thanks for the nomination and votes. My code stands validated.
Overzealous preoccupation with work has taken a lot of my attention away from this weblog. I mean, I've only done like, three possible mockups for the new look, and it is nowhere near completion date. Like I said, I'll probably wait until MT 3.0 is out before I do anything drastic. Until then, if it ain't broke, I won't fix it.
In the light of recent (and not so recent) events I decided to re-think my Creative Commons licence. The changes will be effective as of this post.
You may now use or modify my work, provided you attribute me as the original author or creator. Previously on this site, no derivative works were allowed. But this is the age of the Internet - many of us are influenced by things which happen around us, and it is natural to build on existing ideas to create new ones. I respect that.
After some thought, I also realised I don't mind anything happening to my work, as long as I get credit for my initial efforts. I don't wish to seethe over the fact that people have blatantly copied my stylesheets or images wholesale, saving my pages onto their server or hard drive (and foolishly clicking on a link, thereby allowing me to see their directory path). Naturally I'd like my site to remain as unique as possible, failing which, I'd like to be known as the Person From Whom the Idea First Sprung. Dig?
I would also like to thank the two (2) people who have asked for permission to copy or modify my writings, graphics and code, since 2000. There are more who haven't. Please respect the effort other people have put into their own works. Good night.
This is really a surprise. vantan.org has been kindly nominated in the Asia Weblog Awards for best designed blog. Currently we are at the bottom of the list with one (1) vote. Now, I don't need to win, but ... please don't leave me at the bottom of the heap either, will ya?
I'm just wondering what I have to show for 'design'. My photo gallery has been taken offline for privacy and technical reasons (when is MT Pro coming out???), so there's really nothing much in here visually - except a lot of text. And W3-compliant code. Like that matters to 99.9% of visitors. Other nominees have put lots of effort into their design; so all the best to them!
Publicity has its pros and cons. Last December, after getting featured in the papers, I received a few job offers and many queries. Then people started asking me to link to them even though they had weird sites. They still are.
Of course I have also met many nice people along the way (MT Meetup again, anyone?). I don't wish to create expectations I cannot meet; I simply hope that this blog is a good reflection of my own personality. I hope you've enjoyed the reads so far.
Amazon has done the unfathomable and changed its wishlist link; as far as we know, nobody was informed, and if you don't have a cookie you might see items that aren't supposed to be there. [Thanks to Kristen and Kottke remainders for the news]
And Blogshares has been closed down. So I've removed the link to the site. The ailing database had lost my ownership records months ago, so I'm not too surprised this has happened.
Update: Google has also overhauled its search engine. This has apparently affected many online businesses who no longer show up tops in the results pages.
We had a server problem for a couple of days. I guess our web host had 'itchy fingers' once again, and either upgraded some server software without re-installing some necessary modules, or simply uninstalled modules which they didn't think were necessary.
Because Movable Type required these modules to function, nobody on my server was able to log in, and readers were unable to post comments. The problem has just been fixed, so we are back in action!
The PHP problem, as you have probably noticed, has been fixed. Tech support confirmed that because of the PHP 'upgrade', include files with absolute links produce error messages, although the files in question still load. This could cause some CSS site designs to bust (as it did mine in IE).
For the benefit of others who may be affected by this problem, here is the full solution as provided by my web host:
Example of a problem file:
<?php
include(' http://somewhere.com/header.htm');
?>
Suggested workarounds:(1) Use relative paths rather than absolute URLs when including files stored locally on your account
Example:
Use this:
<?php
include('/home/hruserid/public_html/stuff/file.htm');
?>...instead of this:
<?php
include(' http://yourdomain.com/stuff/file.htm');
?>(2) When including remote files located outside of your domain try using @include rather than include
Example:
<?php
@include(' http://otherdomain.com/file.htm');
?>For more information, please see following PHP bug tracker page: http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=24053
I also discovered a new MT plugin which should be able to satisfy even the most rabid standards-crazed designer. Checks are made by the W3C Validator in real time, and the status (a customisable message) is reflected on your newly published page. Thanks to its creator, Brandon Fuller. You can find out if this document is compliant by scrolling down to the very bottom of the page.
I also decided to follow one of his suggestions, and let loose Nathaniel Irons' Amputator on my weblog as well, so all evil ampersands (&) will be reconstituted accordingly, never again posing a threat to my kingdom. Bwahahahahar.
Obviously, I know something is wrong with all my web pages.
I suspect the administrators installed or upgraded something on the server side without informing yours truly, because all my include file links seem to be generating errors - although they do load. [My earlier suspicions seem to be well-grounded, as checks reveal that the server was modified just today/yesterday and might be running a newer version of PHP.]
We'll see how quickly they can fix this bug.
In the meantime, please excuse my silence. I promised to complete updating my church's website weeks ago. Now we've settled into the new premises, it is time I fulfilled my duties.
[Update: Yes, tech support has confirmed they upgraded the server. They will install a fix soon - I hope! I suspect that the server no longer understands/supports full URL links in PHP include files. Once I change the path from absolute to relative, the error messages disappear. However, the error still occurs where I include links hosted on other people's servers (e.g. Blogrolling).]
I'm pleased to announce the arrival of The Daily Weblog's new category newsfeeds, for those who only want to read about a certain topic in their newsfeed readers. Cheers to the girlie matters for this very useful tip (among many others).
I have just realised that people have been sending me emails via my old Contact page, which haven't been received. This was because the email address in my form got overloaded with spam and strange business correspondences from people who seem to have got my domain(s) mixed up with other people's. So I terminated that account and redirected/replaced my old address with a new one.
At least, I thought I did. Seems the messages sent subsequently by some of you didn't get through - and soon after that I closed down the site for a revamp.
Now, I am terribly paranoid about getting emails from Nigerian generals and the like, which is why I don't like displaying my email address publicly (and why I've just removed recent comments displaying the old email address in this post).
Fortunately I have a catch-all email account, which I've just checked. It tells me that I have eighty bounced emails (most of which look like spam). However there are also technical queries from some of you which I have to answer.
So to Kok Hong, Alvin and Serdar, I will respond to your emails which you sent me, before the revamp. A thousand apologies!
My Currently Reading list has returned - in a more graphical format. Curiously enough, Amazon.com indicated that I gave them a fair number of clickthroughs over the past few months. So to better track which titles my readers are interested in, I've decided to make the online bookshop a permanent fixture in my listings. Like anyone's gonna buy anything >;-P
You can view the new list (in experimental mode) here, on the home page, complete with my personal ratings. I'm reading way too many heavy books at the same time - this isn't even the complete list!
Another incredible Blogshares jump in share price - this time to $495.77 with a valuation of $26,585.61, at last count. Good news to those who believe in hedge funds, as there are lots of 'trimmings' for the taking. Personally I don't try to blog in such a way as to increase my share price. I sold off the shares to my own blog, because it's too unstable, and I really can't be bothered to play the game. I'm just amused at how the system works. Obviously there are still some kinks that need to be ironed out.
Is anyone having trouble logging in, BTW? I can't change my settings as the site doesn't recognise my username anymore. Hmm.
I've added a new category, About This Site, as well as a new MT plugin which inserts acronym tags into my MT body content. So the next time I ramble off in XHTML, CSS, XML, XSLT, PHP, ASP, SVG and DOM, you'll know what I'm talking about. Cheers.
Update: Okay, it works, but it has a really limited vocabulary (PHP, ASP, XSLT were no-shows initially). So I have to update the list manually. The good news is, this means you can create your own acronyms too. Don't be naughty.
Update 2: Hmm. The dotted lines beneath each acronym/abbreviation don't seem to be appearing in IE6. But if you hover over each term, you will see its name in full.
New feature added with thanks to Textism: Google search terms will now be highlighted, for those who find this site via the search engine.
More upgrades to come in the next few weeks. Hope nothing screws up again :-P
There must be something inherently wrong with a web host which never fails to down my website and email every other week or so.
Excuse me, I'm feeling a little caustic today.
I'm writing an entry which nobody will see for a couple more days. Friends have been emailing / SMSing / calling me to tell me my site is down (thank you).
You see, my then-web host forgot to renew my domain, when I specifically asked them to do so a couple weeks before it expired. They replied, telling me all my requests were completed, lulling me into a false sense of security reinforced by the fact that, after Feb 25 (the due date), nothing happened.
That was what we would probably call a 'Grace period', which terminated suddenly this morning.
To cut a long story short, this is a new server, and the site will be redesigned on an ad hoc basis, so please excuse the blatant use of MT default stylesheets while I tweak things about.
Some of you have noticed that this site was (once again) down, over the weekend.
This was because my web host screwed up big time.
You see, I own two domain names. One is vantan.org, the other is a dormant account which hasn't been used for anything yet. I asked them to RENEW vantan.org and switch the dormant account to a new host called AddAction. They wrote back saying, OK, tell us what the new nameservers are. I sent the details to them, specifying that it was for my OTHER domain name.
Instead, they switched vantan.org's nameservers and left the other domain alone. I found this out when I checked INTERNIC's registry over the weekend. I wrote back saying, hey, vantan.org is down. You got my requests mixed up. Please switch them back ASAP.
It took them another day to reply to me, and even more time for this site to get back online. My email was down as well, and what's worse, nothing bounced back to the senders so they won't know that I didn't get their emails.
My web host didn't even apologise for the two-day outage after fixing the problem. All they said in their final email to me was, they've 'made the changes as requested'. They used to be able to apologise. So much for their legendary service. If I had an e-commerce site hosted by them, I'd sue for two days of lost business.
So anyway, please resend me any emails I might have missed over the weekend. Sorry and thanks.