Exactly twenty one years ago today, I wrote my very first entry for this future famous blog of mine. Since then, much has happened over the years and as of today no less than 2500 entries have arisen from my chaotic thoughts.
Category: Blogs etc.
Today marks the 15th anniversary of this fine and admirable blog of which I am so very proud. Fifteen long years of writing on a regular basis, collecting a grand total of no less than 2245 entries so far. That's on average about 150 entries per year, or almost three entries every week. Not a bad batting average, considering the many ups and downs that have passed me by. Back then when I created my very first blog, little did I realize the tangled mess I was getting myself into. But it was worth it.
For some time now I've been wanting to display the logos of those fantastic open source tools I've been using so much, giving them the deserved credit in an unobtrusive manner. Those websites that plaster logos on every page bug me, as if they are trying to prove that they are better. I chose a more appropriate manner by giving them tribute on their own dedicated spot. I couldn't have created this blog of mine without the help of the following fantastic technologies. Have a look for yourself at the powered by page and get inspired.
Here's a list of the top twenty latest searches on my blog, which gives one a good impression of how many people get here in the first place.
kiffingishdotcom disadvantages of beard intitle resume ... frankfurt kiffin.gish.com sabien gish kyffin elijah was reputed ... http //www.kiffingish.com/2004/06/fish-tycoon.html lennart gish site www.kiffingish.com tekst sacrum disadvantages of having a beard aneurysm of elbow asus u36sd eth0 problems cuffin surnamewrexham how to make fish pregnant on fish tycoon .ice-unix why do i feel the constant urge to crack my big toe dsc-wx80 album
I now keep an updated statistics page which tracks these kinds of statistics for those folks who are interested.
After more than a year of struggling and searching around, I have finally found why the comments on my blog were not working any more.
So the good news for all my readers is this: You can finally comment again!
Since the time I upgraded from MT 4.x to 5.x, the following error message started appearing whenever one attempted to submit comments:
Your comment submission failed for the following reasons: Invalid request.
As it turns out the problem was trivial but extremely difficult to pinpoint. Here's how I figured it out.
I loaded an entry page, activated Firebug, entered some text in the comments field, and hit the submit button. In the Firebug console, there was a javascript error, namely the following:
mtCommentOnSubmit is not defined.
This must mean that mt.js wasn't being loaded in that page. Indeed, upon inspecting the source code, this file was not present. At the same time, another anomaly caught my eye, namely that the file utils.js was being loaded twice.
In addition to the standard "JavaScript" template which outputs the mt.js file, I had created my own user-defined template called "JavaScript Utils" which outputs the utils.js file.
So far so good you might think. Well, it turns out that the following template tag, which I have defined in the "Header" template, doesn't always render the same output:
<script type="text/javascript" src="<$mt:Link template="javascript"$>"></script>
For some strange reason it normally renders mt.js, but in the entry page it incorrectly renders utils.js instead. That's why it was appearing twice, once because of <$mt:Link template="javascript"$> and then again because of <$mt:Link template="JavaScript Utils"$>.
The solution is to rename the template="JavaScript Utils" to template="Javascript-Utils" and the problem is solved.
Now I expect many new comments to appear as the droves of my visitors are unleashed to share their many ideas with me.
Try it out yourself and see if it works.
Exactly eleven years ago to this day I sat down and created this future famous blog by penning my first entry.
The clock ticks, the days and years pass by, and 1911 blog entries later here I am today.
Eleven is my favorite number so this must be a symbolic as well as historic event.
Here's the best way to get a random blog entry from the movable type database:
SELECT entry_basename, entry_week_number
FROM `mt_entry`
WHERE entry_id >= (
SELECT FLOOR( MAX( entry_id ) * RAND( ) )
FROM `mt_entry` )
ORDER BY entry_id
LIMIT 1 ;
As you can see I finally found time in the weekend to upgrade my blog to the latest version of Movable Type. I also decided to enable comments again, so feel free to click on the link and leave a message.
I also now automatically redirect the visitor from the old-fashioned blog to this one, so if you try and go to www.kiffinsblog.com you will end up here at www.kiffingish.com/blog. In the meantime I'll gradually migrate the fancy design stuff from the old site over to here in order to make it more personal and Kiffin-like.
Now I have to do my other more important chores for the day: repair the patio sliding door, oil the kitchen faucet, and fix the shower (after two minutes there is no more hot water).
On Friday, October 19, 2007 at 14:33:01 (CEST)
the hit-count for Kiffin's Blog is: 300000.
For many many months now, the random link at the top of this page just below the banner hasn't been working. I decided to fix it once and for all.
First of all I redefined the link to refer to a new CGI script mt_random.pl which I wrote myself using good old Perl. Here is how the new link is defined:
<a href="/cgi-bin/mt_random.pl?blog_id=1" title="Jump to a completely random place on this blog...">Random</a>
Of course the whole random magic of the situation is the Perl script mt_random.pl itself, which looks like this:
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use DBI;
use CGI;
use strict;
my $q = new CGI;
my $format_url = "/%d/%0.2d/%s.html";
my $hostname = 'localhost';
my $database_name = 'db_name';
my $user = 'db_usr';
my $password = 'db_password';
my $dsn = "dbi:mysql:database=$database_name;host=$hostname";
my $blog_id = $q->param('blog_id') || 1;
my $dbh = DBI->connect($dsn, $user, $password) or die "Can't connect to $dsn: $DBI::errstr";
my $sql = <<EOF;
SELECT
entry_basename,
entry_title,
date_format( entry_created_on, '%Y' ) AS entry_year,
date_format( entry_created_on, '%m' ) AS entry_month
FROM
mt_entry,
mt_author
WHERE
entry_blog_id = $blog_id
AND
entry_status = 2
AND
author_id = entry_author_id
ORDER BY rand( )
LIMIT 1
EOF
my $sth = $dbh->prepare($sql);
$sth->execute();
my $ref = $sth->fetchrow_hashref;
print $q->redirect(sprintf($format_url, $ref->{entry_year}, $ref->{entry_month}, $ref->{entry_basename}));
You can now try it out yourself by clicking on the link above, and if you cannot find it then clicking here.
Pretty amazingly magical don't you think?
Decided to get rid of that boring Les Pays Bas windmill picture on the left margin and replace it with a more appropriate photograph of the wonderful Dutch landscape within a ten minute walk from my house. I feel confident that this is a definite improvement, don't you think?
In order to encourage better people leaving comments on my blog, I figured I should try to enable this blog's option to allow mail from anyone.
Unfortunately within a day I received no less than thirty-five spam comments. Now it's back to the original setting where only so-called registered users can leave comments, sorry.
This should not be a problem for those really keen on adding comments now and then, as all you have to do is click on the sign-in link.
I never believed it would ever be possible until much to my pleasant surprise I received the following email notification from my blog server:
On Monday, October 16, 2006 at 13:09:30 (CEST)
the hit-count for Kiffin's Blog is: 100000.
Please note that this value only includes 'unique' visitors to my blog, thus not including repeat offenders he keep on coming back for more.
Not bad after all these years of blogging, I would say.
On Monday, August 28, 2006 at 02:20:22 (CEST)
the hit-count for Kiffin's Blog is: 90000.
Only ten thousand to go.
Successfully upgraded my blog to Movable Type 3.31 without a single hitch.
Was a little worried and postponed it several weeks just in case, but now I am glad I installed the newest version.
While waiting for the train to arrive, I was gazing off into the nothingness in front of me and all of a sudden a great idea for a blog entry popped into my mind. Oh I cannot wait to write that in my blog.
Since it was such a really compelling concept, I figured that there would be no reason to write it down since I would not could not forget it no way.
Unfortunately, that was yesterday and now I cannot remember what it was anymore, kind of like a recent dream which just after you awake slowly but surely fades away forever, particles of sand rushing between your fingers.
Oh well, better luck next time.
On Saturday, June 17, 2006 at 06:26:25 (CEST)
the hit-count for Kiffin's Blog is: 80000.
Sorry about shutting down this blog, but it took me a little more than a week to find out what was happening.
You see, some idiot out there decided to use my webserver to send spam all over the place.
Before I realized it, my service provider cut me off with an angry warning that thousands of email spams were being shot off from my host address.
This took me much time and alot of soul-searching to figure things out, but I believe this aggravating problem has been rectified once and for all.
How? Well, if I told you that, then I would be welcoming the next hacker to drop by and hack away again.
In order to find out which blog entries of mine have the most comments so far, this is the SQL query that can be used:
SELECT mt_comment.comment_entry_id, COUNT(*) AS cnt FROM mt_comment WHERE mt_comment.comment_visible=1 GROUP BY mt_comment.comment_entry_id ORDER BY cnt DESC LIMIT 25;
As you can see over there on the righthand margin under the 'Most comments' section, I have enumerated the top twenty five.
Have a look and tell me what you think.
The official hit-count for this blog has passed the sixty thousand mark (see for yourself over there to the left down at the bottom).
Maybe that does not sound like alot, but I only count the unique visitors per complete visit.
My definition of a visit being stretches of time where all activity takes place within a thirty-minute period, e.g. a following visit taking place thirty minutes later counts for another visit.
Keep on coming all you kind visitors. Maybe someday we can reach the hundred thousand mark together.
Timbl's Blog, from the man himself who started it all.
In the last two days this blog has welcomed more than a thousand visitors. To me that is truly mind-boggling. Where is everyone coming from? What brings them here? What entries are they reading? Why on earth would they want to drop by my blog of all places?
After struggling for some time now, I finally got that [email me] link working (see the horizontal navigation toolbar above, just below the title banner).
And just to prove that it really works, I received within the first day an email message from someone who calls himself ventilator.
This is what he wrote:
Just thought you might be interested in a fresh dream blog. There's not as many of these out there as I'd expected, and maybe I should try and bring them all together. Enjoyed yours very much - thanks!
http://nightly-wander.blogspot.com/
Thanks alot ventilator, and be sure to come back soon.
My poor blog has been bombarded the last week or so with comments spam from some online poker site, those jerks.
There's not much I can do about it except turn off comments altogether. Not that my blog gets that many comments from honest down-to-earth goodies, but it is more the idea of having to give in to misbehaved baddies that gets to me.
No way I'm going to give in to them.
Hopefully there will be a solution to this problem in the not so distant future, but I am afraid it will not be easy.
Somehow I managed to upgrade my blog this evening to the latest version of Movable Type 3.2 and it went fairly smoothly.
I am pretty pleased with the results, so I can go to bed now and watch television.
Since the very beginning I have been an avid fan of this fine publishing platform for personal blogs, and I have followed its development closely up to and including the fine product it has become today.
Notice any changes and/or improvements to this blog?
True geeks (like me) spend their weekend evenings trying to redesign one's weblog over and over again. Getting down to the nitty-gritty cascaded style sheets and perfecting the presentation with more challenging tweaks. Just one more, and then another. Always trying to make things better.
Continue reading Another facelift.
Once in awhile Marlies reads my blog. I know this because this evening I happened to spot it displayed on the computer monitor where she had just been sitting.
So the next time I see her I say (kind of excitedly): "So you like to read my blog once in awhile do you?"
She answers (quite honestly): "Yes I do, but ninety-nine percent of the time it is pretty boring."
At least she is honest.
According to the recent web statistics, the term 'anus' was the top search item in my blog last week, followed by the word 'drunk' and then 'f--k boy' believe it or not.
Is this indicative of the average visitor to my web log? I certainly hope not, but it could be true.
I was getting way too many junk-like spam comments lately, so I decided to enable the so-called unregistered comment moderation.
Sorry, but this means that while unregistered folks can freely add comments, these will not be displayed until I have approved them.
If you want your comments to be accepted and displayed immediately, you will first have to register.
Recent Comments
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