Yes, I do use Windows. XP and 7, depending on the hardware.

So what software and services do I bring along for the ride?

• Notepad++
• IrfanView
• Firefox
• Thunderbird
• FileZilla
• Dropbox
• Avast! Free Antivirus
• Google Chrome
• Pidgin
• GIMP
• Inkscape
• Audacity

I'll write more about each of these applications in the future. They're sort of in order of most valuable to least. The Notepad++ text editor and IrfanView image viewer/editor are definitely my top 2 applications in Windows.

I had some trouble with the domain under which this still-emerging Ode blog began its life.

Long story short, I moved the blog from a subdomain to the main stevenrosenberg.net domain on my hosted space.

Making the move was easy. All I had to do was move the files from one part of the web server to another, after which I edited the paths in ode.cgi and ode_config to point to the new location.

Unfortunately all my files got new date stamps, and the original entry, which you might see below this one, also has a June 10, 2011 date, since Ode (and Blosxom before it) uses the text file's creation date as the post date.

In my test Blosxom site (not online at present), I managed to install the addin that preserves the original file date. I'm planning to install the Indexette addin in Ode to do the same thing. At that point I'll correct the original date. I'm in the habit of putting the numerical date into the filename of just about everything I do, so it won't be hard to remember that original file date when I finally do have Indexette installed and working.

I also added a favicon.ico. I lifted the one from the main Ode site. I'll replace it eventually when I dig deeper into the design.

(Note: This post refers to the Debian site I had at the time and not this Ode-running Debian site.)

Sorry it took so long.

I had a couple of issues with my web host. They're not exactly related but became so once the whole ball got rolling.

My attempt to renew the domain name for this site failed, so the domain expired. Once I learned of the expiration (hint for the future: make the e-mail contact for your domain an e-mail account you actually check), I re-did the renewal, this time successfully.

Being honest, I think the "fail" was on my part. I renewed a few domains and probably renewed one that didn't "need" it while skipping one of those that did need it.

Read the rest of this post

Now that the transition to the new Alioth server is complete, The Debian Mozilla Team's http://mozilla.debian.net site is back, as is the repository. I know because I got an Icedove update this morning.

Added to the choices of newer Mozilla appsat http://mozilla.debian.net are versions 5.0, Aurora and Beta of Iceweasel (aka Firefox). So you can get even closer to the bleeding edge of Firefox development on your Squeeze, Wheezy or Sid system.

Those Debian users (including myself) who use the Debian Mozilla Team APT archive at http://mozilla.debian.net for newer versions of Iceweasel and Icedove (aka Firefox and Thunderbird) may have noticed that the archive has been down for at least three (if not more) days.

While this is not exactly comforting to users, the reason, via Mike Hommey’s site (originally from the Debian User Forum) and according to the Debian Infrastructure Announce mailing list is a comprehensive upgrade to the Alioth server:

Dear Debian developers, contributors and visitors,
This is a reminder that some of the Alioth admins are gathered this week-end to work on alioth.debian.org. One of the goals of the sprint is to upgrade Alioth in every way we can find: kernel, Debian release, FusionForge software, hardware, and so on. This will very probably result in temporary downtime of the service, especially during the move. We should be done by late afternoon (UK time) on Sunday, May 22nd. We apologize for the inconvenience, which we hope will be compensated by a noticeable increase in performance. Roland.
–
Roland Mas

The wait is over. There are now new kernels in squeeze-backports. There’s also Liquorix, which is what I’m using now.

Welcome to my new blog. It looks a lot like the Ode home page because I'm using Ode to run the site.

And I happen to like the default theme, called Logic.

There's a bit of work to do when it comes to adopting a new platform and customizing it, so this Ode blog should look less like http://ode-is-simple.com in time.

I hope to have many different kinds of content here, and possibly different styles/themes for each category, all without a fancy blogging CMS, reams of PHP code, a database and all that goes with that.

Let's see how it goes.

I finally took my own advice and installed Iceweasel/Firefox 4 on my Debian Squeeze machine.

So far I don’t notice any performance improvements or regressions, but I’ve been running the browser all of an hour.

I just found out that the search function built into FlatPress does not look at the text of the entries but only at the titles (and possibly the tags; I’ll have to check on that one).

I know this because I was searching for an entry, and it wouldn’t come up when searching for a word I knew was in the body of the entry but not necessarily the title.

It’s not a FlatPress deal-breaker, but bloggers might want to explore the alternatives. I’ve been using the Google Custom Search box on some of my other blogs, and that works very well.

If you're running a FlatPress blog, keeping an eye on the main site and the forums lets you know about any potential problems with the software as well as available solutions.

That's especially the case right now as forum member pierovdfn has released a patch to one of the PHP files in FlatPress that eliminates a potential exploit in the authentication code.

FlatPress creator NowhereMan has already updated the FlatPress code and released it as 0.1010.1.

For existing FlatPress installations, applying the patch is as easy as swapping in 21 lines of PHP code. I did it this morning, and everything is working fine.