September 2005 Archives
When I first heard about Nickel Creek a few years ago, I bought their first, self-titled album and gave it to Danny. This was an example of three young kids who were created excellent music through what was obviously years and years of practice and hard work. Their bluegrass sound and vocal harmonies deliver a lot of punch for three kids using no electrical instruments or drums. I thoroughly enjoyed their instrumentals including Ode To A Butterfly and the House of Tom Bombadil.
I so also bought their second album, This Side, and gave it to Danny. Danny is now off to college and has left both CDs at home, although I'm pretty sure he has them stored on his iBook. I'm not sure how much he likes their music. Maybe he can leave a comment here.
Nickel Creek recently came out with their third album, Why Should The Fire Die? I heard about it on XM Radio's The Loft. The band planned on playing their entire new album straight through live in the XM studios. I marked my calendar and made sure to record it using my XM MyPal (which can record up to 5 hours at a time.) The session was a lot of fun to listen to because of the small audience and the banter that occured between each song. The band members took turns giving background on each song.
I decided to try to make my own "LIVE CD". I discovered that the newly installed Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) included Sound Studio. I was able to record the entire session, then break up the songs into tracks and create a CD. If you are interested in Nickel Creek, I would be glad to let you listen to this CD. Just send me an e-mail. If you know about the mac17 library, you can visit that, too.
Through this whole process, I've listened to the session four or five times. I really like the new album, and I think my favorite song is Anthony, which is a short, funny "old school" sounding song.
I'm inclined to choose the Prius, Jetta, or Mini Cooper. Perhaps a Civic to be like Ted and Nicole.
Smartmoney.com: Consumer Reports: The most fuel-efficient cars that CR has tested
Before digital edit:
After digital edit:
Scot describes a way to use .htaccess to block spam robots based on the referrer to the comment script, making sure it is coming from a blog visitor.
The highest gasoline charge (for a car) I've ever purchased:
The fact it was at High Point Citco is either an example of irony, mockery, or just coincidence. Not sure which.
This anti-spam measure stops the posting of SPAM by robots without real people having to do anything special.
alogblog's MTy plugins: CCode and TCode for blocking comment/trackback spam for MT 3.2
Update:
Installed as instructed, although I wasn't sure where to put the tag in the referenced comment templates. At first I put it above the closing /MTIfCommentsActive tag, but this generated an error because I was defining a field outside of the form tags. I then moved as shown below, and that worked. I went ahead and added to the default templates for Individual Archive (individual_entry_archive.tmpl) and Comment Preview (comment_preview_template.tmpl) making it easier to refresh each blog's templates. Not sure why this was not in instructions, but it matches the recommendation for the site java script (site_javascript.tmpl.)
</div>
<input type="hidden" name="entry_id" value="<$MTEntryID$>" />
<$MTEntryCCode$>
</form>
</MTEntryIfCommentsOpen>
</div>
</MTIfCommentsActive>
MovableType 3.2 wants to make outbound calls for displaying MovableType News and for going out to get styles with StyleCatcher. Neither work because, according to Brad Choate, the server needs to be able to make outbound http calls. I'm guessing the firewall is preventing it. Need to figure out how to open up outbound calls. Everything in the Mac OS X Sharing system preferences seems to be about in bound.
Since I put in the spam password on comments a while back, MovableType has developed some sophisticated anti-spam features. Upgrading to version 3.2 basically wiped out the spam password technique, which I thought I would have to figure out how to put back in. But in looking at the new features, I'm not sure we need the password.
MovableType is rating comments as junk or not. And it is learning what we all think is junk. So it may be that we do not need a password. For example, Mom just posted a comment that got rated +1 (plus is good minus is bad. I don't know how or low the numbers go.) It decided +1 because of this:
Final Feedback Rating: +1
Test Score Results
SpamLookup Link Filter +1.0 No links are present in feedback
SpamLookup Email Memory +1.0 E-mail was previously published (comment id 18).
Since I've allowed comments with her e-mail before, that is considered positive. I can turn on auto-publish for comments that have a positive rating.
More testing needed, but it would be good to not have to have passwords. Then well-intended acquaintances can add comments. What do you think? Leave a comment. :-)
I've run into several songs from the album Badlands - A Tribute To Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska and as a collection I've enjoyed the songs as much as I've always enjoyed the original album. So I bought it. Finishing the first listen, I can tell it will be one of my favorites. Much like the Elton John / Bernie Taupin tribute album Two Rooms, the variety of artists makes for a great listen.
I don't know why Nebraska has always been one of my favorite albums. It is as much a demo record in that Springsteen recorded the songs in 4 track for what he intended to be a full band album, but he liked the raw sound enough that he published the songs mostly recorded in his home.
The Badlands tribute, at Springsteen's request, were also recorded in 4 track. I particularly like Crooked Fingers' Mansion On The Hill, Dar Williams' Highway Patrolman, Deana Carter's State Trooper, Ani DiFranco's Used Cars, and Aimee Mann & Michael Penn's Reason To Believe. Ben Harper's My Father's House is probably my favorite.
There's not a bad song or artist rendition on the album.
Just testing a button-builder on our new sister company's website.
I was surprised to see Danny on line early one morning when I was at work. I floated the mouse over his name and the information shown here (click to zoom in) showed up. Anyone care to do the math and take into account Central vs. Eastern time and figure out when he got in and when he went to bed?
Certainly he was snoozing when I took this snapshot.
(A chain e-mail worth posting.)
Dear Dad,
$chool i$ really great. I am making lot$ of friend$ and
$tudying very hard. With all my $tuff, I $imply can't think of
anything I need, $o if you would like, you can ju$t $end me a card,
a$ I would love to hear from you.
Love,
Your $on.
Reply from dad...
Dear Son,
I kNOw that astroNOmy, ecoNOmics, and oceaNOgraphy are
eNOugh to keep even an hoNOr student busy. Do NOt forget
that the pursuit of kNOwledge is a NOble task, and you can
never study eNOugh.
Love,
Dad
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Support the victims of Hurricane Katrina
www.redcross.org/donate
After upgrading to 3.2, some key system templates were missing from several of the older blogs that caused errors, specifically 'Site Javascript' and 'Comment Pending Template'. These older blogs never had these templates, and choosing to refresh them at the individual blog level did not add them. And now you can't add System templates manually as you once could.
Found the answer here. Refreshing templates in the System Overview will create new templates as needed.
Refreshing all templates on a weblogGo to the Weblog listing screen in the System Overview. Select a weblog and choose "Refresh Template(s)" from the action bar dropdown. All of the templates in that weblog that match default templates will be copied to backups and refreshed with the new code and settings.
This is the preferred way to execute the plugin because it is the only way currently to refresh System plugins and will add crucial templates which did NOT exist in previous versions (e.g. the Site Javascript templates).
This log from refreshing Ted's Blog shows the templates being created:
Processing templates for weblog 'Ted's Blog'
Refreshing template 'Main Index'.
Refreshing template 'Dynamic Site Bootstrapper'.
Refreshing template 'RSD'.
Created template 'Atom Index'. <--------
Created template 'RSS 2.0 Index'. <---------
Refreshing template 'Master Archive Index'.
Refreshing template 'Comment Preview Template'.
Created template 'Comment Pending Template'. <-------
Refreshing template 'Comment Error Template'.
Refreshing template 'Uploaded Image Popup Template'.
Refreshing template 'Comment Listing Template'.
Refreshing template 'Dynamic Pages Error Template'.
Refreshing template 'Stylesheet'.
Refreshing template 'Date-Based Archive'.
Refreshing template 'Category Archive'.
Refreshing (with backup) template 'Individual Entry Archive'.
Refreshing template 'TrackBack Listing Template'.
Created template 'Site JavaScript'. <---------
