This wouldn't have happened with Gainsborough or one of those proper painters.
Friday, March 09
Off The Record
One of the shortcomings of the editor I'm using for Minx - a shortcoming that is mirrored in every open-source and commercial editor I've looked at - is that there is no support for blockquotes. This sucks, rather, because blockquotes are very commonly used in both blogs and forums, exactly Minx's target market.
Now, I have source code to the editor, and it has hooks for adding custom buttons and tags, but it doesn't look trivial to make it work properly.
Meanwhile, you have three options:
- The least attractive: Use the Edit HTML option in the editor and stick the blockquote tags in manually. The editor will preserve them; it just doesn't have a feature to put them in for you.
Like so.
- Use the indent button in the editor to mark your quotes. This will work fine, but doesn't pick up your CSS style settings for blockquotes.
- That will look like this. At least, it does if you do it in the middle of an ordered list.
- Use the [ quote ] bbtag.
That looks like this.
It also has the helpful feature that you can so So and so wrote: and it comes out as
So and so wrote:Blah blah blah.
Using bbtags means you have to enable bbtag processing for your post... And right now, you can't do that. (Yes, that will be fixed very soon.)
I wonder what would happen to performance if I made it the default. Well, I can soon find out.
Before:
Hello Pixy Misa, you are logged in to Minx.
Processing 0.09, elapsed 0.0975 seconds.
36 queries taking 0.018 seconds, 127 records returned.
Page size 92 kb.
Powered by Minx 0.93.05b.
After:
Hello Pixy Misa, you are logged in to Minx.
Processing 0.1, elapsed 0.101 seconds.
36 queries taking 0.0178 seconds, 127 records returned.
Page size 92 kb.
Powered by Minx 0.93.05b.
2.6 milliseconds? I think we'll survive.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
10:03 PM
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Testing BBTags
Let's see how this goes.
This should be italic.This should be bold.This should be underlined.This should be strikethroughed.This should be a link.And this should be a blockquote.
Oookay, I think I need to work on the blockquotes...
Oh, yeah, I did change that. I think I'll change it back... Done. Good.
This should be subscript. And some normal text.
This should be superscript. And some normal text.
This should be the Ambient Irony logo:

Now, what else do we have?
This is a citation, which will probably just look like italics.Churchill wrote:History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
Oh good, that one works. I hadn't tested it before. I wonder:
Winston Churchill wrote:I always avoid prophesying beforehand, because it is a much better policy to prophesy after the event has already taken place.
Excellent. Onward!
A line in the sand?
This should be small.But this should be big.Hmm. The spoiler and nsfw tags don't work yet, I know that.
Oh, what the heck, let's make a table!
One | Two | Three | Four |
Ant | Bee | Cat | Dog |
Yep, that works too.
See extended entry for the markup.
more...
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
09:25 PM
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1
Everything looks spiffy, but to be pedantic, you called the
superscript a
subscript.
Posted by: Will at Saturday, March 10 2007 01:04 PM (SOx9v)
2
Oops. Darn cut and paste!
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, March 10 2007 04:40 PM (PiXy!)
3
Pixy, will trackbacks be allowed? Inline or otherwise? how about decided only by the blog owner? If allowed, will they be able to be shut off after say 30 days or so, or perhaps after 15 days?
Beautiful work my friend, absolutely beautiful. Much better than MT or Wordpress and for sure much better than blogger...
Posted by: GM Roper at Sunday, March 11 2007 06:45 PM (CglRh)
4
Trackbacks are evil, one of the stupidest things ever created by the mind of blog-tools programmers, and ripe for abuse from the very beginning.
Not needed, and not wanted. Leave 'em out!
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Sunday, March 11 2007 08:00 PM (+rSRq)
5
I agree with Steven; the last time I checked, 99.8% of trackbacks were spam, and the problem was growing rapidly.
Having said that, there will be trackbacks, or something like them. Snark® was a fairly efficient filter until I blew it up last June, and it will only get better as I get a larger user base to work with.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, March 11 2007 08:25 PM (uj4NK)
6
Beautiful work my friend, absolutely beautiful. Much better than MT or Wordpress and for sure much better than blogger.
Thanks!
There are some odd bumps here and there that still need filing off, but I'm at the point now where all the previous hard work is coming together. For example, yesterday I was able to get RSS and Atom feeds working in a couple of hours, even though they needed lots of custom formatting and had to be produced as XML, neither of which had been tested until then.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, March 11 2007 08:30 PM (uj4NK)
7
Okay, bbcode not enabled in comments. Add another one to the buglist!
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, March 11 2007 08:30 PM (uj4NK)
8
Here's another one for your "fix it in your copious spare time" list:
I have gotten into the habit of using the tab key to move from field to field. Since you don't store the name/mail/web fields, I have to enter them each time, and I use tab to move from field to field. But from the "web" field, tab takes me to the "post" button, not to the comment entry frame.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Monday, March 12 2007 12:30 AM (+rSRq)
9
I'll take a look at the cookie code - it
should remember you. Once you register, it will definitely remember you. I hope.
As for tabbing into the editor - yes, that's a problem. At worst, I can fix it with a bit of Javascript.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, March 12 2007 02:28 AM (PiXy!)
10
I just looked, and I do have a cookie from "minx.cc" which contains the information that should be in those three fields. There's also a cookie from "mee.nu" which does not have that information. Could you be writing it to one cookie and trying to read it from the other?
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Monday, March 12 2007 02:41 AM (+rSRq)
11
Hmm.
The old version was running from minx.cc; the new one is mee.nu. Clearly it's not setting the cookie properly.
Thanks for the info. I'll get that fixed.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, March 12 2007 07:09 AM (uj4NK)
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Reboot, Reinstall... CentOS?
I've been having some strange issues with Shampoo, one of the two main servers for mee.nu. I decided that I'd better get Softlayer (our hosting company) to do a reinstall, because these issues now include not being able to start Apache.
So I opened a support ticket, saying that the server was screwed up, and could they do a memory test and if that doesn't show anything, reinstall Linux.
And they responded saying that this will cost $3, and I said, well, fine, and they said, hey, your server is screwed up, you'll need to reinstall Linux.
And I said,
huh?And they said, there's a button in our management site. Choose the server, and you can repartition your drives and reinstall the operating system.
And I said,
cooool.
And did just that.
Update: It still doesn't work, but hey, I got to reinstall the operating system from the other side of the planet.
Update: The network ports weren't autonegotiating properly, which was causing collisions and errors, which was causing problems with automatic RPM downloads, which was screwing up the install process. Fixed.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
11:52 AM
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1
GM Roper mentioned your comment system so I had to be nosey and check it out! I remember Pixy Misa - I wanted to blog .nu a couple of years ago and got lost in the system some how! Looks good here!
Posted by: chrys at Saturday, March 10 2007 05:25 AM (nazPp)
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There Really Is A (Thunder) God
Back in 2005, you may recall, I was forced to move house twice. I rent, and in June the Pixy Central of the past seven years was sold. I'd been thinking of moving, so this didn't upset me overly, but moving after being in one place for that long was something of a disaster.
For New Pixy Central I was offered the usual twelve-month initial lease, but a few days later - after I'd started arranging things for the move - the real estate agent called back and said that the initial lease was only six months. I assumed that this was because the units were brand new, but it turned out to be because the unit I'd selected (one of five available at the time) was on the market to be sold, something the agent neglected to tell me. And three months after I moved in - just after the last remaining rental unit in the complex was occupied - it was indeed sold, and I had to move out by Christmas.
Not a happy Pixy.
Fortunately, another new complex had just been built immediately behind New Pixy Central and the first two units were available for lease right at that time. One of them suited me just fine, so in November I put in an application for it, and was approved.
And then I waited for the lease to be ready for me to sign.
And waited.
And waited.
And waited.
For
five weeks, until, in mid-December, the agent admitted that they had no idea when that unit would actually be ready to occupy, but the other unit - the one that I didn't like - was ready now.
Which became New New Pixy Central. The one advantage of which is that the main bedroom is on the ground floor where the air-conditioning is. (Admittedly, given the weather in the two summers since then, this has been a major advantage; but Old New Pixy Central had a balcony off the main bedroom where I could set up my portable air conditioner.)
Aaaaanyway.
Along comes Christmas '06, and I receive a letter advising me that my lease had run out, and that the owner was happy with my tenancy and wanted to offer me another twelve-month lease. Given that this was when I was starting to work full-time on Minx and mee.nu, moving house was the last thing I wanted to do, so I accepted.
And then I waited.
And wondered if something was up.
And was going to contact them again to see if everything was going okay, just as soon as I finished doing some on-site tech support work (have to pay the bills somehow).
And the day that I finished doing said work, the agent called me and said that the unit was being sold, and that he knew I had a lease and they'd make sure the sale complied with the lease, and so on. Except that of course I
didn't have a lease, as they would have found out once they looked at the paperwork.
So. I could wait it out, or I could move to the unit that had just opened up next door (there are a lot of fairly new townhouses in my immediate area). I chose to wait it out, through four weeks of having people wandering in and out every Saturday afternoon.
And last Saturday I was discussing with the agent showing the property about how I'd already had to move twice recently, and he sympathised, and told me that the owner didn't really want to sell, but business had been slow recently and he needed the money. So I asked what business he was in, and it turns out he owns a company that specialises in repairing hail damage to cars.
And business would be slow for him, because Australia has been in the grip of drought for several years now, and there hasn't been a decent storm in Sydney for ages.
And I joked that given his occupation, I should really hope for bad weather.
And in the past week, the area has been hit by three major thunderstorms. The owner has at least six months worth of new contracts, the property has been taken off the market, and the agent is preparing a new lease for me to sign.
So, sometimes, things really do work out.
Oh, and if you happen to meet Thor, tell him Pixy says hi.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
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1
A silver lining in every dark cloud, eh?
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Friday, March 09 2007 10:24 PM (+rSRq)
2
Well, a crunchy white lining, in any case.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, March 09 2007 10:35 PM (PiXy!)
3
NO PROBLEM. HAVE A NICE DAY.
Posted by: THOR at Friday, March 09 2007 11:50 PM (aIFaX)
4
Given we have had drought for quite a few years. That doesn't mean we haven't had major hail storms.
Major storms were a huge money spinner for the glass and windshield company that I use to work for.
So big storms were always accompanied by a spike in business. I can remember at least four or five storms of note during the last two or three years.
Posted by: Andrew at Monday, March 12 2007 07:17 PM (/uGTr)
5
That's true. There are even photos of the aftermath of one here on the blog. Somewhere. Somewhere, as it turns out, that I can't reach due to a bug in the way individual entry paths are generated. Oops.
But not recently. Until recently. You know what I mean.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, March 12 2007 09:30 PM (uj4NK)
6
Pixy, you must have the patience of a Saint... the only thing I can think of that could possibly be worse is moving out of your apartment because the house you have been building is supposed to be ready in two weeks which drags on to 5 months and you are "camping" in a home that is owned by the bank financing your home and they took pity on you but the builder who agreed to build the house for a price has significantly underbid and is looking at losing a lot of money so he thinks by delaying he can get you to back out of the deal ...
pant, pant, ... but you persevere and force the bastard's hand, sign at closing move in and find out that there are about $500.00 worth of stuff undone but being a friend of the saw and hammer and paintbrush you do them yourself and enjoy your new house for years and years.
Whew!!
Posted by: GM Roper at Tuesday, March 13 2007 12:05 AM (S60yG)
Posted by: GM Roper at Tuesday, March 13 2007 12:06 AM (S60yG)
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Wednesday, March 07
And There Was Much Rejoicing
James Burke's
Connections and
The Day the Universe Changed - available for download.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
09:39 PM
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1
I loved watching Connections. It's great to know it's comimg out on video (not that I could afford a whole series).
P.S. My email to you didn't go through...what's up?
Posted by: Susie at Tuesday, March 13 2007 11:20 AM (R7iws)
2
Um... Don't know. Which of my many email addresses did you use?
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, March 13 2007 12:16 PM (PiXy!)
3
Well, mine went to andrew=at=pixymisa.com; the first address I found which I'd gotten mail from you via.
Posted by: triticale at Thursday, March 15 2007 01:04 AM (et9pU)
4
I'll test that. Hang on a tick.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, March 15 2007 02:47 AM (uj4NK)
5
Hmm. That doesn't seem to be working so good.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, March 15 2007 05:13 AM (uj4NK)
6
Just got a permenant bounce. default=at=piximisa full
What should we be using?
Posted by: triticale at Friday, March 16 2007 12:59 AM (JVUUP)
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andrew -at- pixymisa -dot- net is my main address these days. But I will fix pixymisa -dot- com.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, March 16 2007 04:15 AM (uj4NK)
8
Fixed.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, March 16 2007 05:00 AM (uj4NK)
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Monday, March 05
More Dragon Drops
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
10:33 AM
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1
Well, that was easy. Relative path issues fixed. Future cross-site blogging issues fixed too.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, March 05 2007 09:34 PM (PiXy!)
2
I love it.......................well done
Posted by: Mark Silbermann at Tuesday, March 06 2007 12:43 AM (cWtKp)
3
Thanks Mark. Working on the main site now. Work work work.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, March 06 2007 02:38 AM (uj4NK)
4
keep up the good work. i will see you at 2 tomorrow.
Posted by: Mark at Tuesday, March 06 2007 06:24 AM (9lzBF)
5
YAY! We love it when things work. *grin*
Posted by: Teresa at Tuesday, March 06 2007 08:34 PM (gsbs5)
6
Looks swell from here, Pixy! Is The Pond going to move, or is that up to me?
Posted by: Wonderduck at Wednesday, March 07 2007 07:19 PM (OS+Cr)
7
When you move is up to you, but it will be strongly encouraged - once we're past beta anyway.
I do have a nice program to suck all your posts and comments out of Movable Type and put them into Minx - took about six seconds for my blog - but the templates still require a bit of manual hackery.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, March 08 2007 04:13 AM (uj4NK)
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Sunday, March 04
Testing File Upload Thingy
Let's see if this works.
Upload...
Drag...
Drop...

Boobies.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
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Mostly works. Drag-and-drop seems to generate relative paths for the images, which don't work when you switch folders. I can either fix this in the editor, or patch it in Minx itself.
I vote patch.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, March 05 2007 10:56 AM (PiXy!)
2
And I thought I'd set the word count to include the title. Hmm.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, March 05 2007 10:59 AM (PiXy!)
3
Huh. It does include the title. It can't count.
Okay, let's see what it thinks the text is...
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, March 05 2007 11:18 AM (PiXy!)
4
Oh, right. It's breaking on whitespace after the HTML tags have been stripped, but when the tags are stripped they don't leave any whitespace (which even ignoring the wordcount problem makes the text pretty unreadable). Let's see if I can fix that...
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, March 05 2007 11:21 AM (PiXy!)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, March 05 2007 11:39 AM (PiXy!)
6
Also, the quick-and-dirty regex HTML stripperer saves me a second trip through the SGML parser, which speeds up Minx by a good 10%. So it's a win all 'round.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, March 05 2007 11:40 AM (PiXy!)
7
That's what makes America great!
Is it too soon for me to change my bookmarks yet?
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Monday, March 05 2007 01:10 PM (+rSRq)
8
I'll be merging the two sites back together soon, so that either URL will work. So you can change the bookmark or not, as you like.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, March 05 2007 01:19 PM (PiXy!)
Posted by: Will at Tuesday, March 06 2007 11:57 AM (olS40)
10
That is, shall we say, a very nice image.
Posted by: BeckoningChasm at Wednesday, March 07 2007 07:48 PM (kLWtB)
11
...and throw in the duck in the widget, and you have nigh on the perfect blogpost.
Posted by: Wonderduck at Friday, March 09 2007 12:11 AM (fgJCh)
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Welcome to Minxville, Population 1
Here we are, up and running on the almost-beta version of Minx (instead
of the old alpha version). The limited beta test will start on Tuesday
(March 6th) for existing mu.nu users, with a larger-scale test
following on the 13th, weather permitting.
Have a look around,
let me know if you run into any hiccups. The title box looks a bit
funny under Internet Explorer; I'll be hacking on the CSS tonight to
see if I can fix that.
Most of the rest should be mostly working. I think.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
05:31 PM
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1
I like how it looks so far.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Monday, March 05 2007 06:04 AM (3R0bS)
2
In Firefox, the top title box needs some padding along the bottom because the letter's descenders are chopped off.
Other than that nitpick it looks good so far...
Oops, there's a "bracket-body-bracket" html tag at the bottom of this comment section, just above the "Post" button.
Hmmmmm... looks like maybe you were displaying tags for debugging, because a "bracket-br-bracket" tag appears after I hit Enter and disappears after I begin typing the next line.
The CoolIris Firefox add-on seems to work just dandy with Minx.
Posted by: Ted at Monday, March 05 2007 09:42 AM (3R0bS)
3
The title box looked fine to me, then I bumped my font sizes up a notch and it went to pieces. (Like what you describe, but worse.) I'll fix that - using fixed font sizes should do the trick.
That <BR> thingy is supposed to be there.

It's showing you the HTML markup as you type, and you can actually click on it and remove unwanted tags.
Posted by: Also Pixy at Monday, March 05 2007 09:49 AM (3R0bS)
4
And if you click in the middle of marked-up text, you can see exactly what the markup is. Also, if you click on the <> thingy in the toolbar you can see the raw HTML.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, March 05 2007 11:49 AM (PiXy!)
5
Uh...
Methinks the IP tracker is borked. We can't
all be 3R0bs!
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, March 05 2007 11:50 AM (PiXy!)
6
Ah. That'll be the reverse proxy. Blast.
I'm pretty sure I can still get the original IP another way...
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, March 05 2007 11:53 AM (PiXy!)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, March 05 2007 11:59 AM (PiXy!)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, March 05 2007 11:59 AM (PiXy!)
9
Now, why did I end up using the reverse proxy instead of iptables dnat? I don't remember. But it works, so what the heck.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, March 05 2007 12:37 PM (PiXy!)
10
Test, juan, too, tree.
<BR> tags?
Posted by: Old Grouch at Monday, March 05 2007 11:35 PM (oHrKR)
11
Indeed, <BR> tags. Are you using the fancy editor (which should show up for IE and Firefox) or the boring editor (Opera/Safari/other)?
I'm testing Safari/Opera-compliant HTML editors, so we should have fancy editors for everyone shortly.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, March 06 2007 12:29 AM (uj4NK)
12
Testy... Testy... Testy...
It's looking good to me. I'm on Firefox. :-)
Posted by: Teresa at Tuesday, March 06 2007 01:19 AM (gsbs5)
Posted by: Old Grouch at Tuesday, March 06 2007 08:37 PM (8HHla)
14
...and no "preview" at all, which provides an excuse for borking the link in the previous post!
Posted by: Old Grouch at Tuesday, March 06 2007 08:40 PM (8HHla)
15
Ah, okay. The fancy editor provides its own preview; the boring editor gives you nothing at all.
I'll be enabling comment editing in the next couple of days, so at least you'll be able to go back and fix borked links.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, March 06 2007 10:28 PM (uj4NK)
16
I've always had very mixed feelings about comment editing. Sometimes when I foul up I want it, but it also bothers me that it permits people to "change the past".
I know that you need to enable it here so it can be tested, but for political blogs (e.g. the Jawas) presumably it will be possible for them to turn it off if they want to. The blog owner should have the ability to edit anything, but it ought to be possible to prevent their commentors from doing so.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Wednesday, March 07 2007 05:07 AM (+rSRq)
17
I'm setting it up with time limit, which can be chose by the site
owner. So if you spot a mistake you can fix it, but you can't come
back the next day and change things.
Also, I'm not allowing blog owners to edit comments. They can remove
comments, of course, and they can add a reply within the comment, but
they don't have access to edit comments arbitrarily.
If you're not allowed to change your own words, you certainly don't want
other people changing your words!
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, March 07 2007 05:44 AM (PiXy!)
18
You broke the site feed. And it took me... only 5 days to notice? I'm good :-)
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Sunday, March 11 2007 03:58 AM (9imyF)
19
Yeah, I'm working on that. There are a couple of bugs in Minx that are preventing the RSS from validating at the moment. I should have a feed working again tomorrow or the next day.
Meanwhile, welcome to the new site!
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, March 11 2007 04:58 AM (uj4NK)
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Saturday, March 03
No Joy In Screenville
I just acquired a compact, quiet, elegantly-styled home-theatre PC.
Yesterday it was a notebook.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
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Ah, evolution.
Or was that intelligent design?
Posted by: TallDave at Saturday, March 03 2007 05:08 PM (oyQH2)
Posted by: Also Pixy at Sunday, March 04 2007 03:24 PM (3R0bS)
Posted by: Also Pixy at Sunday, March 04 2007 03:25 PM (3R0bS)
Posted by: Also Pixy at Monday, March 05 2007 02:33 AM (3R0bS)
5
Booyah! Timezones are go!
Posted by: Also Pixy at Monday, March 05 2007 02:33 AM (3R0bS)
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