Monthly Archives: October 2005

Phil Ringnalda switches to WordPress

Oct312005

Phil Ringnalda’s site is now powered by WordPress. But, I’m never again going to see my weblog software returning Perl’s infuriatingly common response to any problem, ‘Internal Server Error. Check the error log for a message that’s no more help than this.’ And I don’t think you can imagine just how happy that makes me. Freedom 0? I’m down with that. A vibrant, independent and free community? Cool. But I just wanted out from under … Continue reading →

Happy Halloween

Oct282005

Goblin Dougal Halloween has snuck up on the Campbell household. It’s not like we’re unprepared — we have bags of candy and the kids have costumes. But I just can’t believe that it’s the end of October already. I spent the last couple of weeks under some tight deadlines at work, and lost track of time. I had hoped to dress my site up as I’ve done a couple of times in the past, but … Continue reading →

CSS: The One True Layout

Oct272005

I had recently been using Alex Robinson’s 3-column CSS technique called “ordered columns, float-margin/float-margin” for some website designs. But he has superceded that with the One True Layout. OTL combines methods for source-ordered columns, techniques for equal-height columns, and “vertical grids” to provide a flexible method of creating complex page layouts, while maintaining a minimum of markup clutter. Plus you get to keep your content sections in a logical sequence. Check out the examples for … Continue reading →

Sorry for the downtime

Oct272005

Whoops! I made a change to my template code yesterday and broke the site without realizing it. I thought I had verified that the code was working, but I must have pulled the page from my cache. It’s back now (duh, as you can see)…

Snoopy PHP Webclient Security

Oct262005

There is a security advisory out regarding a Snoopy PHP Webclient vulnerability. Since WordPress uses Snoopy internally, we immediately double-checked to be sure that WP isn’t affected. It’s not. WordPress uses Snoopy internally to fetch RSS feeds for display in the Dashboard. But by default, all the URLs are hardcoded, and thus not vulnerable to the bug mentioned above. The only way that a WordPress site could be affected is if it had some sort … Continue reading →

Finally joined the Tivolution

Oct212005

We finally got a Tivo. I bought an 80hr model off of eBay for $150. It arrived about two weeks ago, and I finally installed it last weekend. We set up some of our favorite shows as Season Passes and put Bruce Campbell in my actor wishlist (hey, I forgot that he was an extra in Darkman!). We’re just starting to get used to it. One of Susan’s favorite features is the Guide (“You mean … Continue reading →

IE7 and the demise of CSS hacks

Oct132005

As mentioned previously here and elsewhere, Microsoft is working on Internet Explorer 7, which will have greatly improved CSS support. The IE7 team has posted an article about the demise of CSS hacks and broken pages, warning that the hacks often used to target CSS specifically to work around old IE bugs may be unnecessary under IE7 when in strict mode. So, IE will finally have improved support for standards, but all of our old … Continue reading →

My tug boat

Oct062005

I bet you never knew that I had a tug boat in Alaska, did you? Thanks to my friend Akash, who spotted this when he was on an Alaskan cruise this summer. Oh, and for those of you who haven’t read my About page, my first name is “Ernest”. “Dougal” is my nickname.