MT 3.32

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I have now upgraded this site to Movable Type 3.32. The upgrade process was not without problems — but these could have been avoided with a little more attentiveness to similar issues during past upgrades.

Kiss my ASCII

First off, you must upload ASCII files explicitly as ASCII. Don’t trust whatever FTP app you use to know the difference in AUTO mode; when uploading those CGI, PL, PM, TMPL, PHP, and HTML files, specify ASCII — most especially for the main CGI files in the MT root and the lib and extlib directories. Running the upgraded MT install the first time got me a cryptic Bad ObjectDriver config error in mysql.pm, and I worried at first that my host had changed something in DBD::mysql just as I was in the process of upgrading. It turned out that Filezilla had simply uploaded the PM files as binary, and a re-upload in ASCII got everything running just fine.

And I Would Walk 500 More

Also note that if you are publishing static PHP files in archive directories, permissions are important. MovableType CHMODs archive files and directories to 777, and a lot of web hosts won’t let you display world-writable files and directories. Result: 500 Internal Server Errors on new entries (and also old ones on Rebuild). This wouldn’t have been an issue if I hadn’t decided to start with a fresh mt-config.cgi, quite forgetting to copy the pertinent suexec/cgiwrap directives from the old one. If you’re publishing PHP or CGI files from your MT templates, don’t forget to add these important lines to your mt-config.cgi:

DBUmask 0022

HTMLUmask 0022

UploadUmask 0022

DirUmask 0022

Back to the Trackback

Because I’m a sucker for punishment, I’ve re-enabled trackbacks. Despite having been burned before, (1,2) I can’t help but want this awesome exotic cross-linkage technology to work. Sure enough, the trackback spam has already started rolling in, though the filters have performed admirably so far; not one spam ping has gotten through to an entry page yet. If the filters continue to work, without overworking the server, I might just keep trackback on.

NMAH Parting Shots: Doll and Hansen

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Just a couple more photos I liked from the NMAH before I stop talking about it: a closeup from a room in the Faith Bradford Dollhouse, and a 1.6 second exposure of Stephen Hansen’s “Life in the Information Age” carousel. (I was trying for 6 seconds but this camera doesn’t give much manual control.) Click on the thumbs above to see them larger on Flickr.

National Museum of American History Closes

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Hope you all had a good Labor Day long weekend. Today was the last day to visit the Smithsonian National Museum of American History before it closed for renovations till 2008. Many exhibits and displays had already been shuttered or emptied.

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I spent most of the weekend hanging around there, snapping photos of whatever was still open, trying to soak it all in before the place as we know it today disappears for the next two or more years.

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In a way, I’m glad it’s being renovated. The Behring Center (named for philanthropist Kenneth E. Behring) was originally built to house what was called “The Museum of History and Technology,” and only later refocused on American History in 1980. Much of the museum, especially the ground floor, is still oriented towards science, technology, and industry — topics like computers, transportation, materials, maritime enterprise, and the industrial revolution. Great stuff for my geeky interests, but the museum still fails to offer a real overview of American History in general, and that needs to be fixed if it is to live up to its current name.

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So farewell for now to the NMAH. Here’s hoping it reopens on time in 2008. (Yeah right.) For the time being, a large exhibition hall in the National Air and Space Museum will be devoted to “Treasures of American History”, featuring various items from the NMAH collection while it renovates. Read more on the history of the NMAH, and see my full “NMAH Farewell” photoset here.

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Oh, by the way, I’m sad to report that Foucault’s Pendulum will not be returning to the renovated museum. :(

Pandora’s Day: A Timelapse

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An average Sunday for the cat, taken with my webcam hooked up to my iBook, with Evocam grabbing frames at 30 second intervals all through the day:

Ernesto Fells Tree on 18th Street NW

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Ernesto is here, and with it, wind and rain and cold: a much needed respite from the heat and drought. As I headed in to work, wearing a jacket for the first time since April, I noticed some commotion around the 1700 block of 18th St NW: fire engines, police cars, and lots of leaves and branches where there shouldn’t be leaves and branches. Ernesto’s winds had knocked over one of the block’s older denizens.

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The tree took out a window, scratched up the front of the building, and came to rest blocking the front door. No one was hurt, thankfully, and city services were already attacking the fallen leviathan with mighty chainsaws. By workday’s end, a truck was carting off pieces of the old tree’s trunk, though signs of the chaos remained in shattered glass and a bent fence.

I was thinking of checking out the new Trader Joe’s, but it was just too crazy windy out to walk, and the Orange Line was packed and delayed, so I just went home and got me some cream puffs.

IE6: Where 0 = 14

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Dear Internet Explorer 6:

When I specify padding-bottom: 0; for an <li> selector nested two lists deep, I do not mean padding-bottom: 14px. Just so we’re clear, 0 is not the same as 14. And if I say !important, I bloody well mean it.

Your cousins Firefox and Opera get it right; why can’t you? This is why Uncle Z won’t give you candy.

Man, I can’t wait for IE7 to be distributed as an automatic critical security update. Assuming it really is as compliant as they say.

Recent Reading: Pride and Prejudice

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My second try at Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice, her second novel, and definitely a better read than the first, Sense and Sensibility. Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy together present a contrasting double-edged critique of 19th Century English courtship culture, Elizabeth acting as Austen’s proxy moving through the spheres of the middle to upper class, while the stereotypes of the day surround her to illustrate. Single-mindedly marriage-obsessed Mrs. Bennett exemplifies the attitude of the era, with witty and cynical Mr. Bennett as the foil, Lady Catherine de Bourgh and her beneficiary Mr. Collins act as the status-inclined and money-oriented aspects of the equation, wild and vapid Lydia and sinister Mr. Wickham provide the tension which defines the boundaries of acceptability within that culture, and Mr. Bingley and Jane serve as the “control” subjects, I suppose.

The treatment of Mr. Darcy’s gradual sweetening of disposition relative to Elizabeth’s change in perception of him is handled far better than the comparative two-dimensionality of other characters’ depictions in the story. Their personalities evolve against a flat cultural backdrop, in service to the storyline’s ultimate lesson that true love can grow to reach across uneven social standings, family issues, and bad first impressions.

Next book on the list was Memoirs of a Geisha. More on that some other time.

Billy Goat Trail

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On Saturday, Amy and I joined the Summer Hiking Smallgroup at church to trek up to the Billy Goat Trail (section A), just off the C&O Canal Towpath near Great Falls. The trail is a definite challenge for the beginning hiker: very rough, with lots of clambering over fissured rocks and even a bit of wall climbing at certain points. (If you can call a 45° slope of rock a “wall.”) The challenge of the trail is worth the great views you get of the Potomac River. (I’m proud to say that my fiancée handled the hike perfectly, and managed the rocks almost like a pro.) There was lots of life, too: we found a tiny little baby toad, a newt, several freaky gypsy moth nests, dragonflies, a few turtles, a deer near the C&O, and even a couple of turkey vultures in a tree. And after the hike, we went over to Olmsted Island to see Great Falls from the Overlook.

A selection of photos follows, and you can see the full Billy Goat Trail and Great Falls photoset here.

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Panorama: Great Falls seen from Olmsted Island Overlook

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