i’m being urged to open this site up, finished or not. that’s a pretty good reason, for me, to get it together (or throw it together, as perhaps is more the case) and let this go as a rough draft, at least, in the nearer future than i might have planned for. planned? eh.. not so much. no plans, really. just an inclination and intention to work on this site and to open it up, and to keep working on it. no deadlines necessary for any of that. so it’ll open up, very incomplete.. i prolly won’t have implemented the heavy css into it, but i swear i’ll replace the tables someday… i just don’t yet really know how, and despite the innumerable tutorials online on the subject, i am definitely currently more comfortable with my trusty tables. right now, must repair some of the more obvious spots that scream, “Caution: Construction in Progress. Please remain calm, and have patience with me.”
Why must The Practice be on so very late? so past my bedtime.
A final post to Ask Brad for the night:
It’s me again. Yes, I figured out the straightforward answer. Good for me not knowing what I’m doing and not being familiar with all the MT tags to begin with—such as MTCategoryLabel. *chagrined* I apologize for taking up your time. My Archive File Template now reads and works properly as
<MTIfEmpty var=“CategoryLabel”>unslated.html</MTIfEmpty><MTCategoryLabel dirify=“1”>.html
Now I’ll just be trying to figure out ways to also tackle this whole overly-long-MT-rebuild-time issue that everyone’s been up in arms about long before I ever knew what Movable Type was…
*phew!!!* and goodnight.
~1:06am
goodnight
UGH. i broke my site. (accidentally deleted all my archive file templates. disgusting.) <strong>aggravatedly trying to fix it</strong>
okay. in the process of trying to fix it, i’ve implemented Brad Choate’s MTIfEmpty plugin, and also the Regex plugin on which the aforementioned is dependent. so that’s nice for my empty categories issue.
but i’m still suffering a very nasty:
Renaming tempfile
’.../archives/.new’ failed: Renaming ’.../archives/.new’ to ’.../archives/’ failed: Not a directory
horrors.
... why the $#&*( isn’t a) it okay to have entries with unassigned categories?, b) there a way to assign all entries an “unassigned” category?
this is painful.
so… i posted this matter to ‘Ask Brad’:
Okay. My question/issue/consternation is with Movable Type categories. What if I’d like to assign all unassigned categories a particular name anyway? Or, even better perhaps, what if I could assign all unassigned entries a category like “unfiled”? So I could make a new category named “unfiled” and either a) default all new entries to be categorized under “unfiled” unless a different category is specified, or b) have Movable Type figure out to assign all unassigned entries to the “unfiled” category.
Did that make sense?
How would I do some/any of these things?
I would think this would be floating out there somewhere on the web, but I seem to be using the wrong search terms, then, as I have been unsuccessful in this matter. Your advice would be very much appreciated.
now, back to trying to fix the stupid ’.new’ category template error. i know i’ll get this eventually…
...well, i’ve gone ahead and sent another post to Brad…
This question is sort of related to the other one I just posted, I think.. but is actually a problem I am having rather than a technique or feature that I’m interested in. First off, I’ll just go ahead and admit that I accidentally deleted my archive pages, thereby breaking my entire site. i was able to put them back, but I had never really understood the Archive File Template configuration to begin with… so I had to try to recreate that properly. I think i have it, for all but the Category Archive, which is not working whatsoever. Here’s the best I can figure it, for what I want:
.html.html
Regardless of whether or not I’ve done it correctly, does that make sense to you? Can you tell what I’m trying to do? Anyway, whether that way would work or not, my big problem is that my site is now quite broken still, in regard specifically to category archives. It also is impeding my ability to post a new entry. This is the error:
Renaming tempfile
’.../archives/.new’ failed: Renaming ’.../archives/.new’ to ’.../archives/’ failed: Not a directory
I have run a fairly extensive search online and the suggestions I have found are basically:
- underscoring my category titles (boo. dirify should take care of that, shouldn’t it? i did try this though.. it didn’t fix it.),
- halting MT’s traditional practice of creating temp files in the rebuilding process (I hesitate to do this.. besides not being sure how to do it, I’m pretty sure there was a good reason this feature was there in the first place)
What do I have to do? sad and frustrated :-/
<strong>here's hoping</strong>
:cont’d at ‘Now I can sleep.’...
well, here’s a subject of popular discussion about Movable Type: slow, lagging, unhappy rebuild times. okay, so… i’ve looked into the matter a little bit (ie searched google for other people’s blog entries referring to this problem. by the way.. i don’t think i really noticed it as a problem until i read everyone’s unhappinesses with it. and now that i notice it, and have timed it, it does seem pretty bad, with potential to get pretty worse…)
the time of writing this comes right after i (yesterday) learned of the magic that is MTInclude. it’s happy. so i implemented it quickly in a few spots on this site… and the truth is i don’t know if that suddenly jacked up my rebuild time. all i know is that i finally timed it today, and the final stopwatch count for rebuilding all my MT files comes to anywhere between (i timed it 6 or 7 times..): 1 minute and 05 seconds to 1 minute and 40 seconds. and i understand it will only get worse with each new entry added to the archive. okay, so there are a couple solutions i’ve read about, that i will, right now, implement:
i came across a striking entry that suggested the symptoms of “MovableType-itis” might be eased by killing the ’$’ signs in one’s MT tags. well. first of all, to show you how dedicated i am to reading instructions, i’d been wondering for a while now why sometimes MT tags were written and sometimes <$MTEntryBody$>. it turns out, as noted in the Movable Type Manual (would you like at that—it’s right there, first thing, at the very top. heh)—turns out that those $ characters are totally optional. humph. well then, away they go. and let’s check the rebuild time now…
...i broke my site.
rebuild times and other attempted efficiencies will have to wait. right now it’s just improvement that i’m able to post new entries again.
!! i just remembered!
i had a dream last night or the night before.. about WORK.. wherein someone found a big, happy project for us to bid on.. and i felt chagrined because i felt i should have found it but i’d not been (i’ve not been) looking the past few days for procurement opportunities. whoa. of all the things to dream of. i can’t possibly be feeling that guilty about it… ‘better do a search now…
my dream involved motorcycle-type cars.. (i think) and some sort of warehouse/gathering place of them… and i temporarily borrowed/stole this a car/motorbike that was sitting there (i think i was waiting for my group to do whatever they were doing, so i was bored and this car/motorbike was sitting there and looked cute or something..) .. and it turned out to be really small and difficult to drive as a result.. and there were guys and a girl with long hair and all sorts of… something to do with making out.. people watching… ‘probably would’ve been good scenes for/from a movie. i dun remember the rest.
happy friday!
‘finally got my movable type calendar running the way i want.. thanks to these instructions and code at blogstyles, it looks the same as before, exept now has much better ‘hover’ styling (the way i wanted it to begin with) and of course has the necessary ‘today’ reognition, to highlight today’s date. so that’s my first bout with php… and i still have never written any php code yet. but i see that’s going to have to change. now i’ve just got to make it work on the archive and other entries pages… my first go at it last night was unsuccessful (it looked alright, but showed only the current month, no matter how i tried to navigate). i’m sure it should be 5-10 minutes of figuring out later. but later.
imported from email conversations:
From: alicson
Sent: Wednesday, May 05, 2004 1:48 PM
Subject: Re: RE: washpost (sent to me from another friend)
this article talked about how what they’re doing is terrible.. and i get the gist of what’s going on. but i haven’t actually seen much of these photographs (not really any) and i only really know what’s going on beause of the big scandal that was discussed on the radio one morning on my way to work… and about military action on this militaryguy who had probably suffered a cruel doctored photo prank… i know the sexual stuff is extra bad to them.. i don’t actually know what’s being done to them of a sexual nature, tho.. besides photos with them naked… honestly? i’m not really surprised about any of it. what outlets are really offered to these soldiers over there? the behavior is unacceptable, but who’s responsible for educating them/ curbing them, anyway?
From: Alberto
Subject: Fwd: washpost
Sent: May 05 2004 12:34:24
It’s really rather terrible. The worst part is that in the Islamic religion, modesty is highly revered. It’s a sin and a shame to be naked in front of another man.
It’s wrong to be a homosexual or to be involved in homosexual acts. So the military people are having them do these grotesque things to them and it’s doubly bad for them.
I’ll send you the new yorker article about it that goes into a lot more detail.
really well written too.
-me
From: Alberto
Sent: Wednesday, May 05, 2004 2:09 PM
Subject: RE: RE: washpost
http://www.newyorker.com/online/covers/?040510onco_covers_gallery
Pictures.
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040510fa_fact
The Article.
The now infamous Taguma Report was drafted in February, so this has been going on a while. What doctored photograph are you talking about? Re: The not being surprised part…first of all, you pride yourself in not really being surprised by anything, so I guess that isn’t new. And what else is being done besides these pictures?
“Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.”
It’s a systematic process of breaking them down, humiliating them, and sodomizing them. And in terms of regulation and oversight…that’s the question, isn’t it? How high up does this go? Who encourages/discourages this? Why was the report issued in February…3 months ago, and why is nothing being done until now?
But the political repercussions are serious. In the Arab world where the Bush Administration has been trying to state time and time again that we’re here for their own good…to liberate them, to give them freedom, to make their lives better…and then something like this gets out…as if there weren’t enough people to view the Americans as being hypocritical. We’re here as liberators…and then we make the Iraqis simulate sex acts on one another. We say that we are sensitive to their religion, and then hit mosques and do this to the people.
On an international level, Americans pride themselves on being a beacon of democracy. “But Americans are still as capable of torture as anyone else. Rumsfeld said yesterday that it was “un-American” to abuse prisoners—as if Americans were still somehow exempt from the passions that grip the rest of the human race. But we aren’t, and because we aren’t, we shouldn’t dispense with rules that have been designed to contain them.” (washingtonpost/A2328-2004May4)
It’s also about the mentality that rules shouldn’t apply to us because we’re better. On an international level, that’s what pisses everyone off…
it’s a big deal, and though it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that people are capable of doing this to prisoners…a lot of people believe that American’s aren’t actually capable of this. The Administration is also really trying hard to point out the fact that it’s a limited variation of the norm when the truth of the matter is that it doesn’t look so limited. Several of the prison systems in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo are under investigation for this very same thing.
It’s one thing to strive for a higher ideal that is beyond one’s reach, it’s another to deny the facts and issues and to keep the world as black and white as one thought of before. That’s Bush and his Administration’s tragic flaw. Regardless of all of this, we’re still liberators and anyone that doesn’t see that is on the opposing side. We’re good people, and therefore we shouldn’t follow any rules.
-Alberto
From: alicson
Sent: Wednesday, May 05, 2004 5:05 PM
Subject: Re: RE: washpost
so what do we do?
war is bad.
torture is bad.
revelling in other’s suffering is bad.
and we’re not gods and are without God’s powers.
so what do we do as a nation; government; species?—short of what is currently being done.
do you attack the motivations, or stengthen damage-control, or enforce strict policing?
we’re fans of the ‘every angle’ approach, neh?
and why isn’t it being done already, if the answers are reasonable, if not basically interpretable (i started to say ‘obvious’.. but i suppose i can’t) ?
right and wrong. good and bad. circumstances beget motivations beget circumstances…
they hate us. we hate them. why do they hate us? because we didn’t like them enough to treat them accordingly. now we don’t like them because they didn’t like us and treated us accordingly.
and of course it’s not even that simple, but if you’ll step back for a bit… well, it is.
“why should i care?” i know you understand that sentiment.
that can be accordioned short, or long so many times in so many different directions that it doesn’t matter how many things you manage to fix now.
some people.. some things… ..some ideologies.. they just cannot coexist.
human beings become more and more complicated all the time. we ‘evolve’. and we become more complicated. we learn more; we’re aware of more; we’re capable of more.. and that simply translates to bigger, badder bads….—which also allows for greater, gooder goods… (i wanted to say ‘greater, gooder God(s)’.. but offhandedly i’d venture that God has not become much gooder in the past fifty/hundred+ years.. and i wonder whether the desperation for Him is greater now than before,..or not…. a lot of terrible terrible terrible things have occurred in our (human) history. how horrified and indignant and despairing and frustrated and confused and hurt people must have been then—just the outsiders looking in at atrocity—not even the tortured and murdered and mutilated and the innocents so terribly trespassed upon and those from who all grains of decency and human kindness were stolen from… ‘human kindness’.. it’s a whole idea… it’s one word by itself… there simply must be stake in it. and there is. but that’s not what we’re talking about here, is it? now where did this parentheses start..?...) ...yes… greater gooder goods… balance and day and night and all of that… more complicated… bigger… our crimes become farther-reaching, and potentially deeper.. and we have the increasing capacity to be aware of the crimes on a larger social scale, rather than just an individual one. when are you people going to read Grapes of Wrath?
humanity.
constant struggle for good triumph above evil—however we find it/interpret it/label it/create it.
we take very personally the things that we know. our country. our people. our species.
you take personally your news articles.. your knowledge: composed/collected and delivered en masse. of course there’s beauty in that. that with which you are unfamiliar, though, you grimace at.
and that’s prejudice.
and you know that your way of thinking/doing/being is better than others.
and that’s bigotry.
that, my dear, is missing only means, for exercising ‘good’old-fashioned oppression.
and how far away is torture from there?
but you know all of that.
so what do we do?
well here’s a fun idea: othertimelines.com. just what it says.. i’m not sure this particular site has done a great job of it.. and i don’t have quite the time right now to explore it/others, but i think it’s a fun idea and i’d like to see some really intelligent, elaborate versions of it, that would explain the cause and effect (to at least some degree…certainly can’t cover terribly much that all goes into one broken butterfly wing) of the events of note. i’m pleased with the idea. ‘came across it because i am having a heck of a time remembering the word for those… alternate/parallel realities and such.. there was that show, Sliders... hm.. maybe there isn’t a word for it. ‘alternate universe theory’ it is, then. or something. k then.
slated in
as so at 9:37 am
I learned the best new trick in Microsoft Word today. I’ve always been frustrated with the limits of MSWord formatting, because of the very specific grid it lays out (invisibly, usually) to which everything—text, table lines, graphics—tightly snap to. Recently I figured out how to turn on gridlines and also change the intervals (to .02, for example, rather than .05 or whatever the default is). But that is a still a bit of a hassle, though definitely improvement. But today, I accidentally (oh happiness) discovered that, when dragging a table line/border by holding down the left mouse button, if you also hold down the right button, then the object you are moving is free from all gridlines. Free! Free from all gridlines! Hurrah! :) :)
![iching: Fêng - Abundance [Fullness]](https://ferrydust.com/images/21.gif){kind=small}