Notice of Probable Downtime.

This site (and Optimalbrowser.com) will be likely be intermittently available starting this evening (U.S. Eastern time) and lasting for a day or so while I move servers.

Server Move Done.

The server move is done. I'm sure there will be problems, but so far so good. The new server is actually a home server -- very adequate machine, but I anticipate connection and traffic delays, as well as disruptions due to power outages (which are pretty frequent here). Eventually, I'll probably hook up a UPS, but in the meantime I'm willing to live with the issues because it's saving me the cost of renting a dedicated server.

Video: Snow Miser - Heat Miser.

XM Podcasts.

Cool! XM satellite radio is making some of its programming available as free podcasts. Beginning December 11, you can download XM content hosted by Bob Edwards, James Carville, Mike Krzyzewski, Barry Switzer and Opie & Anthony. But what really excites me is XM Unmasked, hosted by the extraordinarily funny Ron Bennington.

[ Expand All | Collapse All ]

• XM Artist Confidential: Green Room
  • Loading....
• XM Weekly Music
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• Bob Edwards Weekend
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• Opie and Anthony Shorts
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• XM Unmasked
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• Basketball And Beyond with Coach K
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• XM Sports Nation This Morning: Barry Switzer
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• 60/20 Sports test feed
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Hmmm... looks like I really need to work on the OPML browser.

Missing blog posts recovered.

Part of the nightmare I went through while experimenting with WP-o-matic (no link) was that I accidentally deleted about 12 posts from my blog. Nothing earth-shattering, of course, but I just found an old database backup and recovered those posts. It was a real PITA, though, because the backup was from when I was running WordPress 2.2, and now under 2.3, the database has been changed. So, I had to actually install a dummy blog and "upgrade" it to 2.3.

Unfortunate Coplacement of the Day.

Nick's Zappa Playlist.

I twittered about an amazing playlist (or iMix, if you will) of Frank Zappa tunes that Nick Bradbury published, but it appears that iTunes has deleted the iMix because Zappa is no longer on iTunes. But it's an amazing playlist, so here it is:

1. Peaches In Regalia, Hot Rats (1969)
2. Camarillo Brillo, Over-Nite Sensation (1973)
3. My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mama, Weasels Ripped My Flesh (1970)
4. Maggio, The Man From Utopia (1983)
5. St. Alfonzo's Pancake Breakfast, Apostrophe' (1974)
6. Echidna's Arf (Of You), Roxy And Elsewhere (1974)
7. Mother People, We're Only In It For The Money (1968)
8. Cocaine Decisions, The Man From Utopia (1983)
9. Five-Five-Five, Shut Up N' Play Yer Guitar (Disc 1) (1981)
10. Can't Afford No Shoes, One Size Fits All (1975)
11. G - Spot Tornado, Jazz From Hell (1986)
12. Dumb All Over, You Are What You Is (1981)
13. Teen-Age Prostitute, Ship Arriving Too Late To Save A Drowning Witch (1982)
14. Sleep Dirt, Sleep Dirt (1979)
15. Tell Me You Love Me, Chunga's Revenge (1970)
16. Pygmy Twylyte, Roxy And Elsewhere (1974)
17. Baby Snakes, Baby Snakes (1983)
18. Electric Aunt Jemima, Uncle Meat (1969)
19. Po-Jama People, One Size Fits All (1975)

Enjoy!

Jaiku Planet Venus Filter.

Just started exploring Jaiku and, coincidentally, Planet Venus. One of the cool things about Jaiku is that it aggregates your other web presences (like your blog, twitter, del.icio.us, and flickr posts) and integrates them into Jaiku presence stream. The down side of this is that it's not as good at that as Planet Venus, and then if you use Planet Venus to create a aggregation of your web presences and you include Jaiku, then you've got annoying duplication.

So, I'm not much of a Python programmer, but I wrote this Planet Venus filter that looks at each entry, and if it detects that it's a Jaiku presence update, it only includes it if it originated via Jaiku. In other words, it filters out all the duplicates.

If you understood any of that, you may find this helpful. If not, nevermind.


"""
For jaiku presence entries, only retain entries that originate from jaiku
(as opposed to grabbed via web feeds)
"""
import sys, xml.dom.minidom
entry = xml.dom.minidom.parse(sys.stdin).documentElement
entry_id = entry.getElementsByTagName('id')[0].firstChild.data
for node in entry.getElementsByTagName('link'):
if node.getAttribute('rel') == 'alternate':
entry_link = node.getAttribute('href')
break
if entry_id.find('jaiku.com/presence') > 0 and (entry_id != entry_link):
sys.exit(1)
print entry.toxml('utf-8')


(Updated to fix a bug on line 11.)

Firefox 3 Display Bugs?.

I've installed Firefox 3, and it looks like they may have rushed it out the door a bit. I'm seeing some sloppy display bugs that are kind of annoying. I'm running Windows XP Pro SP3. See for yourself:

Note the clipping along the bottom of the statusbar, as underscores and descenders are cut off.

But check this out. Same theme, but with XP Styles enabled (not my personal preference), and the clipping is gone.

Now, look at the noise in this shot. Where is that coming from?!

Finally, check out the left-side alignment, as "Work offline" is not aligned with the other menu items.

That last one is only present when I use the Azerty III theme, but the other bugs appear in the Default theme, as well.

Seen any others?

Update: Surprise, surprise! Went through the tedious process of disabling all add-ons then re-enabling each of them one by one, and it turns out that those statusbar display bugs were caused by Forecastfox and Foxclocks (not in combination, either one alone causes the display issues).

XMPP and Google Apps for Domains.

Jesus, my head hurts.

I setup xmpppy on my box, thinking I could quickly set up a bot to run as one of my Google Apps for Domains users. I've spent about six or seven hours (off and on) getting this to work, though, because the documentation from Google about setting up my DNS configuration is incomplete. Thanks a lot!!! Like DNS isn't difficult enough for amateurs.

After many searches, I finally found the magic incantation, so here it is for posterity, in case that link disappears:

_xmpp-server._tcp.YOURDOMAIN.TLD. 3600 IN SRV 5 0 5269 xmpp-server.l.google.com.
_xmpp-server._tcp.YOURDOMAIN.TLD. 3600 IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server1.l.google.com.
_xmpp-server._tcp.YOURDOMAIN.TLD. 3600 IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server2.l.google.com.
_xmpp-server._tcp.YOURDOMAIN.TLD. 3600 IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server3.l.google.com.
_xmpp-server._tcp.YOURDOMAIN.TLD. 3600 IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server4.l.google.com.
_jabber._tcp.YOURDOMAIN.TLD. 3600 IN SRV 5 0 5269 xmpp-server.l.google.com.
_jabber._tcp.YOURDOMAIN.TLD. 3600 IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server1.l.google.com.
_jabber._tcp.YOURDOMAIN.TLD. 3600 IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server2.l.google.com.
_jabber._tcp.YOURDOMAIN.TLD. 3600 IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server3.l.google.com.
_jabber._tcp.YOURDOMAIN.TLD. 3600 IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server4.l.google.com.
_xmpp-client._tcp.YOURDOMAIN.TLD. 3600 IN SRV 20 0 5222 talk.l.google.com.
_xmpp-client._tcp.YOURDOMAIN.TLD. 3600 IN SRV 20 0 5222 talk1.l.google.com.
_xmpp-client._tcp.YOURDOMAIN.TLD. 3600 IN SRV 20 0 5222 talk2.l.google.com.
_xmpp-client._tcp.YOURDOMAIN.TLD. 3600 IN SRV 20 0 5222 talk3.l.google.com.
_xmpp-client._tcp.YOURDOMAIN.TLD. 3600 IN SRV 20 0 5222 talk4.l.google.com.


N.B. Those trailing periods at the end of the domain names may or may not be necessary, depending on how you update your DNS records. For example, GoDaddy inserted them for me. YMMV.