Hello (and Goodbye!)

If anyone still reads this blog (or just forgot to delete it from their RSS reader):

Hello. Nice to see that you're still here.

Now,

Goodbye!

Seriously, I'm shutting this blog down. I haven't blogged here in years (literally) and over time, my interests have shifted somewhat - I'm still as obsessed with technology as I ever was, but I'm also interested in other things as well now, and I found the scope of this blog a little limiting. I also became disenchanted with Blogger and the limitations of its blogging platform.

So, I'm leaving. But wait! Not actually! I've started a NEW blog that still discusses technology, but also branches out into a bunch of other areas of my life as well. It's more of a personal narrative than once-removed (slightly crazy) tech opinion, so you won't find as many reviews or blatant comments about social networking (in fact, it's a part of what some people consider to be a social network - go figure.) You can find it at:

http://wintermorning.tumblr.com/

There, you'll be able to follow me in ernest (none of this mushy, fake, Google-following stuff!) and like my posts (at least I'm still not on Facebook.) You'll also be able to see my web design portfolio (eventually) and a bunch of other fun stuff.

As for this blog, it will remain here. All the articles are still available, although some are of questionable relevancy. This blog was an important chapter in my life, and I'll always have fond memories of it. It was time to move on, though.

See you there. I've missed you!

Christopher

Trojan Horse ATTACK - Wait- what?

I know this news is a bit dated (is 2004 a long time ago?), but I was on the IconFactory's website today and I found the "DownloadCheck" application that claimed to protect from the "MP3Concept Trojan Horse".  Here's a link to the page about it on Daring Fireball: http://daringfireball.net/2004/04/crying_wolf

Trojan Horse, my foot!  Intego, the Mac "security experts", put out a fear-mongering press release, talking about how this was the first time ever somebody had come up with a Trojan Horse for the Mac.  Daring Fireball responds with polite criticism, but I chose to respond differently.  Here's how easy it is to write a Trojan Horse... I'm writing an innocuous one.  It will be called cat1.jpg with a secret .app.  It will be proof-of-concept ONLY!  Stay tuned...

EXTREME!!!! Makeover (Channel TV is stupid)

Let's face it:  This blog looks ugly.  The title wraps onto the next line, which is confusing, and ugly.  The sidebar overflows with useless content and looks ugly.  The "Squeeze This Page For Mobile" link sits in between the content and the title, but messes up the CSS stylesheet, and looks ugly.  Did I mention that this blog looked ugly?  Oh...

It also looks out of style.  I couldn't care less, but a number of other people could. Nobody uses this theme on their blogs anymore- everybody goes for something else.

That means that this blog will be receiving a makeover over the next few days.  Don't be surprised if you can't find anything for a day or two- you should be able to see a noticeable difference in usability and ascetics.

Oh, and to tide yourself over, look at my brand spankin' new (okay, several months old) software company thing at HeatherSoft.com

Am I missing something here?

EDIT: I take some of this back now- especially the part about the HTML editing.  I discovered that there's a option on the new page menu to add content to the theme entirely in HTML.  Not what I would have liked, but still...

Am I missing something here? Or is RapidWeaver the total waste of $50 that I think it is?

No, seriously, I'm really curious... is there some magic token that I'm missing about it that will make it all work for me? Somehow I don't think I am. So far, I haven't found much good with it.  For instance...

• There's no in-line editing (c'mon, even iWeb has that!)
• Pages have to re-export every time you preview them (please! just do in-line WISIWIG editing!)
• The editing that IS provided is EXTREMELY lacking (no drag and drop align? Give me a break!)
• Things aren't in consistent locations (what? where'd it go?)
• You are restricted to a single column (even Weebly is better than that!)

But the thing that gets me most of all is that there's no way to edit your raw code without changing the entire template.  The back of the box was very misleading:

Customizable Code
If you're a power user and want to throw in some HTML code or modify a template, no problem. RapidWeaver gives you the power to switch seamlessly from using styled text and images to raw HTML code. This allows you to effortlessly insert custom code such as Google ads or hit counters.

I'm confused!  Why would RapidWeaver NOT want you to edit your code?  It's just ridiculous.  I bought it to be a content management system, not a content RESTRICTION system!

I've had experiences with editors like this before- each time you export your code, you have to make edits.  iWeb does do this, I admit, but you would ex

pect somebody to try and fix this with a third-party program!  On the other hand, DreamWeaver doesn't offer any pre-made themes, and I happen to like RapidWeaver's an awful darn lot.

The worst part is when it gets the code wrong.  It's already done that to me- added too many
s to one of my pages.  I can't fix it without killing the whole thing, but if I could edit the source I could!  I'm sure this will come up again, as I was planning to use it to create the website for HeatherSoft, as well as some other sites.  I'm debating that seriously now.

The thing that I still don't get is why people love it so much!  I found 1 (read: one) article that talked about issues with RapidWeaver.  1! Only 1!  You woul

d think that someone else would notice it's extreme shortcomings, but no.  RealMac must pay people a lot of money to keep saying great things about their software.  Well, I'm not being paid.  I had to pay! $52.95 (with tax).  Good thing I used my Apple Store gift card.

My advice? At this point, don't waste your money on RapidWeaver.  If you have iWeb, stick with it.  If you have $79, go with Sandvox Pro.  Trust me, I've tried it.

Figure 1: Basking in the awesomeness and HTML EDITINGness of Sandvox.

And also, PLEASE tell me what I'm missing!  I want to love RapidWeaver!  If there's a plugin that you know of that fixes any of the issues (I already know of Blocks, but that doesn't work with my version- 3.6 - I don't have Leopard), please leave a link to it in a comment!  Especially one that lets you edit HTML and that is free.

Google doesn't like me (or Safari) anymore!

This morning, Google decided that my network was sending out automated requests to it's servers, and that I should be blocked from using it's services.

Um... Why? was my first response.  What could I have done to cause this?  It worked last night!  This was particularly frustrating because I had just settled down to do some research.  I did my normal query through the Google box in Safari, but received the scary message above instead.

After that, I started panicking.  I read articles on Google's Groups, and I did a quick search on it- I could still get into Google by going to http://google.com directly.  I ran the "free" scanner that actually cost money that Google suggested.  I cleared my cookies more times than I probably should have, but to no avail.  Every time I went to use the Safari search box, it dumped me with the ugly error message.

Now I was mad.  I went to my laptop, opened Safari and the same thing happened!  I started up Ethereal over VNC, but got a bunch of garbage where my laptop and my server were communicating the window locations.  ERG!  Since I couldn't run Ethereal over VNC, I had to run up and down my stairs to check on the data it was throwing off.  It didn't see a thing related to Google!

I've calmed down enough to write this post, but it wasted a whole hour of my time.  At this point, I think Google may just be having an issue that it doesn't usually have.  But why?  When I Google through Citrix, nothing happens!  Why me?

Oh well.  I guess I'll have to read actual books instead of using the internet.  That's actually OK.

Apology...

Oh dear... what has this blog become?  Reading back over my past entries, I have noticed how absolutely and utterly wrong I was about certain things- about what the "i" in "iPod" means and about Google not being an evil empire.  I increasingly find that I'm letting my frustration get to my head, and it shows in my writing.  Seriously.  When I really get going, I never read over what I've just written- I just click "Publish Post" and off it goes.  I also need to do a little more research before I go off and rant about something that I don't know enough about- such as Classic no longer being a part of Mac OS X.  I've let this blog languish since March (way to long, especially since I've had plenty of time to work on it.)  But after Xcode wouldn't compile my AppleScript and Ubuntu wouldn't install on my server, I decided to apologize about how awful my previous posts were.  I must thank several anonymous readers and "Nora" (whose full identity I will not disclose for privacy reasons) for keeping me "real" (is that what you call it?) with their comments.  I do appreciate the harsh criticism.

Please do accept my humble apology.  I know you were hoping for a post related in some way to technology.  I do need to apologize for that too.

Now I'll go off and get myself a demotavator.

ActiveDirectory Issues

For anybody who has been sent here hoping to find an article on how to repair ActiveDirectory on Leopard, it was posted on DIYMac (I know, right? It's the first time in a year that I've done anything with that little page!), and is available here.  If you plan on bookmarking it, use that link, not this one, since it will soon be removed.