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My top 10 Firefox extensions

2005/01/30 filed under /software

I still see people using -and "enjoying"- the Microsoft Internet Explorer, but after last weeks WINE experiment to get MSIE running on my Debian machine, I can't really understand why.

The biggest thing I miss in other browsers (used to love Opera) are the Firefox extensions. So I decided to list my favorite ones here:

  1. Web Developer
  2. Diggler
  3. mozex
  4. AdBlock
  5. StumbleUpon
  6. LiveHTTPHeaders
  7. Linkification
  8. ColorZilla
  9. Bloglines Toolkit
  10. Add Bookmark Here

The winner of my all time favorites is, of course, the Web Developer extension. This one includes so many handy tools that I would highly recommend this even to non-web developers! A good runner up would be Diggler I use this so often that I sometimes think it's a default button in Firefox!

I wasn't sure to make mozex nr. 2 or 3, but here ya go, the poor bastard ended after Diggler. Mozex allows you to use Vim in <textarea>'s. Note: you will need to install Show Old Extensions for mozex to work in newer versions of Firefox.

AdBlock! What a gem. Sites with too much advertising beware, AdBlock will filter it all. Very handy in case you're going to use my next featured extension: StumbleUpon. Great fun for lost hours of true boredom.

LiveHTTPHeaders will show you the headers that are sent and received by your browser. Handy, especially when debugging forms and/or cookies.

I needed some time to really appreciate Linkification. It's useful for websites that show you URLs without linking them. Linkify them and you can click on them. Pretty neat!

ColorZilla is probably only useful for web developers. It let's you copy the color code of any pixel in your browser.

Bloglines Toolkit. A must for bloglines users. Includes a notifier to let you know you've got unread feeds.

Add Bookmark Here will help you to prevent a mess of bookmarks. Order them in folders easily with this extension.

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (0)

Cloudy (x)planet

2005/01/30 filed under /web

The great xplanet gets even better with some enhancements. Joffie makes it really simple to add a cloud map (and other things) in his xplanet tutorial. Easy to follow, great results, can't wait for more ;)

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (1)

Multi-Luser OS

2005/01/30 filed under /random_thoughts

After a recent crash of one of the old Win98 machines that are still around at work, the user in question (let's call him Mike) was pushed to install WinXP. After the installation, usage of "LanTalk" (yeah, it's horrible, but at least it works with LinPopUp ;) seemed "different". Instead of the regular username as sender, now it said "Administrator".

I don't know much about WinXP, but I was fairly sure this behaviour was caused by ... duh ... loging in as "Administrator". Luckilly the "experienced WinXP user" (let's call him John) explained those hard-to-understand-words to Mike.

John: "Ah yes, of course! You are logged in as Administrator. You will have to rename that user to 'Mike'."

Mike: "Uh ok, how do I do that?"

At this moment I just had to jump in

Me: "Ermm, guys. What about creating a new user, called 'mike'?"

John: "Oh yeah, and when you want to install anything, get the annoying 'You lack permissions to do such and such', right? No way!"

Me: *sigh*

Mike: "Oh no, don't need that!"

Me: "AARRGHHH! Ok, ok. I bet you love to delegate some of those powers to cute worms too..."

Then I wondered. Why-oh-why is it so hard to understand that using a simple user account is (close to always) better? Is it a scriptkiddy feeling, that more admin powers is more 1337? Bill, good luck educating your l-users. Thanks to them (and your team of highly educated programmers) virii and worms annoy my mailbox.

Anyways, I wonder how long it will take before this virgin WinXP system is gonna crash.

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (3)

My top 10 Firefox extensions

2005/01/30 filed under /random_thoughts

I still see people using -and "enjoying"- the Microsoft Internet Explorer, but after last weeks WINE experiment to get MSIE running on my Debian machine, I can't really understand why.

The biggest thing I miss in other browsers (used to love Opera) are the Firefox extensions. So I decided to list my favorite ones here:

  1. Web Developer
  2. Diggler
  3. mozex
  4. AdBlock
  5. StumbleUpon
  6. LiveHTTPHeaders
  7. Linkification
  8. ColorZilla
  9. Bloglines Toolkit
  10. Add Bookmark Here

The winner of my all time favorites is, of course, the Web Developer extension. This one includes so many handy tools that I would highly recommend this even to non-web developers! A good runner up would be Diggler I use this so often that I sometimes think it's a default button in Firefox!

I wasn't sure to make mozex nr. 2 or 3, but here ya go, the poor bastard ended after Diggler. Mozex allows you to use Vim in <textarea>'s. Note: you will need to install Show Old Extensions for mozex to work in newer versions of Firefox.

AdBlock! What a gem. Sites with too much advertising beware, AdBlock will filter it all. Very handy in case you're going to use my next featured extension: StumbleUpon. Great fun for lost hours of true boredom.

LiveHTTPHeaders will show you the headers that are sent and received by your browser. Handy, especially when debugging forms and/or cookies.

I needed some time to really appreciate Linkification. It's useful for websites that show you URLs without linking them. Linkify them and you can click on them. Pretty neat!

ColorZilla is probably only useful for web developers. It let's you copy the color code of any pixel in your browser.

Bloglines Toolkit. A must for bloglines users. Includes a notifier to let you know you've got unread feeds.

Add Bookmark Here will help you to prevent a mess of bookmarks. Order them in folders easily with this extension.

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (0)

OpenPostcode

2005/01/29 filed under /random_thoughts

The Netherlands has -like every other half civilized country- postcodes, and these can be really useful to a lot of applications. The small downside to this is that a list of all postcodes will cost you € 2650. Too much for the average joe (or small business). That's why I'm pondering the thought to compile my own postcode database. If a lot of people donate their knowledge, a nice list should be able to evolve.

To be continued...

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (0)

Belphegor - Goatreich Fleshcult

2005/01/26 filed under /metal

Wow, what a nice album this is. Belphegor from Austria returns with a massive album called "Goatreich - Fleshcult". Fans of Dark Funeral should most definately check this album out. Good production, great songs. What more can one ask of?

Label: Napalm Records

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (0)

Simple Perl documentation lookup

2005/01/26 filed under /perl

One thing that's good about PHP is the fast documentation lookup utillity on their website. That's about the only thing ;) Wouldn't it be cool to have easy access to Perl documentation too? You can!

Good monk, Juerd has donated his domain for this purpose. Need info on split? Just type this URL in your browser: http://tnx.nl/split. Or what about the DBI doc? http://tnx.nl/DBI. Perfect, handy and fast!

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (0)

Simple Perl documentation lookup

2005/01/26 filed under /web

One thing that's good about PHP is the fast documentation lookup utillity on their website. That's about the only thing ;) Wouldn't it be cool to have easy access to Perl documentation too? You can!

Good monk, Juerd has donated his domain for this purpose. Need info on split? Just type this URL in your browser: http://tnx.nl/split. Or what about the DBI doc? http://tnx.nl/DBI. Perfect, handy and fast!

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (0)

Alt + .

2005/01/26 filed under /linux

I'll just drop this little info here, so I don't have to figure it out everytime I'm on a new machine again.

Joffie put this little snippet of info on his hints page. To use "alt + ." in a xterm, add this to .Xdefaults

xterm*eightBitInput: false

And / or put the following in /etc/inputrc:

set convert-meta on
Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (2)

In Aeternum - Forever Blasphemy

2005/01/24 filed under /metal

Finally! After quite some searching, I found this little gem and now it's mine! This CD just blows your head off. Great vocals, great recording, just pure metal as metal should be!

I know, it's an "old" album (1999), but I just didn't get it up until now. I also know the band has released more albums, but they just can't top this killer album again, although maybe the new one that is scheduled to be released on March 21st (Agonia Records)

Label: Necropolis Records

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (0)

SSH Tunneling

2005/01/24 filed under /linux

Today I was faced with a minor problem at work. I was installing a fresh Gentoo system, when I realized it'd be nice to be able to login from home to install it further (compiling everything can take a long, long time).

Unfortunately, the company's firewall wouldn't allow me to login on the desktop from the evil World Wide Wreckage, so I had to use something else. Joffie opted for a (reverse) SSH tunnel and gave me a nice link that showed me how to use this.

Shamelessly copied from: http://www.brandonhutchinson.com/ssh_tunnelling.html

It is possible to create a "reverse" ssh tunnel. The reverse tunnel will allow you to create an ssh tunnel from your work computer to your home computer, for example, and then login to your work machine from your home machine even if your work firewall does not permit ssh traffic initiated from your home machine!

For this to work, an ssh server must be installed on your work and home computer, and ssh (TCP port 22) must be allowed outbound from your work computer to your home computer.

ssh -R remote_port:localhost:22 your_home_computer

ex. ssh -R 2048:localhost:22 home.computer.com

At home, you would then run ssh -p 2048 localhost to log into your work computer via ssh.

Exactly what I needed!

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (0)

Vidsyn - On Frostbitten Path Beneath

2005/01/24 filed under /metal

Vidsyn is great for Immortal fans. This MCD has a solid production, proving that black metal doesn't need to have a squeeking, falling-apart sound... (I know, I'm not "true") With a little help of Mayhem and Darkthrone members (and others), this album is just great to listen to.

Label: Agonia Records

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (0)

Samael - Reign of Light

2005/01/22 filed under /metal

After numerous times of listening to this album, I finally start to like this album. It's a little like Rammstein, but then with Samael (Passage) influences (duh, it is Samael!).

Just get this album and listen to it a couple of times!

Label: Regain Records

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (0)

Inflatable pub

2005/01/21 filed under /web

After yesterday's cancer battle, Joffie showed me the inflatable pub. I knew about the inflatable church but the pub is of course a more pleasant thing to spend a day/night in.

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (0)

Beer fights cancer

2005/01/20 filed under /news

Finally some good news from The Register:

Scientists at Okayama University in Japan have rather agreeably discovered that unidentified compounds in lager and stout may help to prevent DNA damage leading to cancer.

Now that's the news everyone was waiting for. Guess there will be no more blog entries today, I'm off to fight cancer.

$ cd /pub/; more beer;

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (1)

Hearse - Cambodia

2005/01/19 filed under /metal

Another Hearse album! This death-n-roll trio rocks on like on "Armageddon, mon amour", but with "old" material. This time with some kind of Yeti on the cover ;)

I'm not sure why exactly this album was released, but I ask myself that question with a lot of Karmageddon releases lately... Although you by now know the cover of Kim Wilde's Cambodia (see "Armageddon, mon amour"), and possibly other songs, the album is still awesome to listen too!

Hope to see these guys perform anywhere close again soon! Cheers!

Label: Karmageddon Media

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (0)

Tsunami scammer caught

2005/01/19 filed under /news

Silicon reports about a US man getting caught for sending out around 800,000 s[p|c]am emails which "attempted to scam money from individuals who believed them to be genuine fundraising messages supporting the Tsunami appeal."

The man from Pittsburgh lived right around the corner of the FBI office, and was easily arrested.

I wonder how people can be so cruel trying to make money out of a tragic event like the tsunami hitting Asia.i Unfortunately, this guy wasn't the only idiot.

May the punishment for such actions be severe.

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (0)

What stands up, must come down

2005/01/18 filed under /web

Sometimes you shouldn't laugh at other people's misfortunes, but this little video made me chuckle. It's so predictable, yet so fun to see it really happen ...

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (0)

1TB email

2005/01/17 filed under /web

Google's gmail really started something when offering 1GB of email storage. Quickly Yahoo followed (MS' Hotmail too ?) and bumped the limit up a little.

After a while, services as omnilect came popping up with 2GB storage.

Today, I stumbled upon hriders.com, who claim free 1TB email for anyone... where is this going to end? More important; why do people still use webmail services that result in 'over quota' bounces?

... time to hack a script to mount the 'mail drive' like gmailfs ;)


Update: after signing up, it took several hours before I could succesfully login, but now it seems like I'm "in". The service is rather slow (both HTTP and POP3), but oh well, it's free, it's too much, and not too useful to me (yet).

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (0)

Panoramsterdam

2005/01/16 filed under /web

Although I dislike the city for more than one unclear reasons, I do find www.panoramsterdam.nl quite interesting. It shows you a lot of 360° panoramic views of the city (Java required!).

I've seen such images before, but never so many on one site on the same topic: Amsterdam(ned).

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (0)

Data::TreeDumper

2005/01/14 filed under /perl

Sometimes I wonder why I have never looked into certain Perl modules before. That was the case with, for example, Class::DBI and Template (Toolkit). Today I "discovered" another one of those: Data::TreeDumper by Khemir Nadim ibn Hamouda.

I've been a fan of the Data::Dumper module for a while, but Data::TreeDumper can be so much nicer in certain situations. Compare the output of these two data structures and see why I like it:

Data::Dumper

$VAR1 = {
          'etag' => 'b',
          '__RULE__' => 'test',
          'part(s)' => [
                         [
                           'part',
                           '1'
                         ],
                         [
                           'part',
                           [
                             'content',
                             'data '
                           ]
                         ]
                       ],
          'stag' => 'b'
        };

Data::TreeDumper

|- __RULE__ = test  [S1]
|- etag = b  [S2]
|- part(s)  [A3]
|  |- 0  [A4]
|  |  |- 0 = part  [S5]
|  |  `- 1 = 1  [S6]
|  `- 1  [A7]
|     |- 0 = part  [S8]
|     `- 1  [A9]
|        |- 0 = content  [S10]
|        `- 1 = data   [S11]
`- stag = b  [S12]

Now isn't that layout easier on the eyes, or what? Good job, Nadim!

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (0)

Google's Keyhole

2005/01/14 filed under /web

Joffie pointed keyhole out to me yesterday and after looking at it, I must say I'm impressed.

Keyhole offers "The Ultimate Interface to the Planet", or to put it in other words: pretty pictures ;) The software (free trial version) allows you to fly through space towards your home (maybe) and visit nice spots on the face of the earth.

The website claims to be "powered by Google" (might as well be the next evil empire ;) but I don't really see any use for Google in it yet... Anyways, this is just fun and interesting :)

(The software is MS Windows only ...)

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (0)

Credit Card Signature

2005/01/12 filed under /web
How crazy would I have to make my signature before someone would actually notice?

That's the opening of The Credit Card Prank, a great website on credit card signatures. The author used hieroglyphics, fake names like Porky Pig and even "I Stole This Card" to sign his credit card receipts. Nobody checks, nobody cares. The scans of receipts make this site hilarious!

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (0)

Kaamos - Lucifer Rising

2005/01/12 filed under /metal

When I heard this music, I thought one thing: "Into the grave"! According to metal-archives.com it's not a wrong thought, for the drummer (Cristofer Barkensjö) used to play in Grave (not on the "Into the Grave" album though)

Good old crunching death metal!

Label: Candlelight

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (0)

The Bereaved - Darkened Silhouette

2005/01/11 filed under /metal

This album is a must have for At the Gates, Detonation and Sins of Omission fans. Melodic Swedish Death Metal, lovely!

Label: Black Lotus

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (3)

New layout

2005/01/10 filed under /news

As you can see (hopefully), I've added some backgrounds to my blog to make it look less default-NanoBlogger :) These pictures were taken in Egypt (duh) last December. And yes, that's me standing on the rock facing the pyramid.

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (1)

Don't Panic!

2005/01/10 filed under /news

Today I came across a movie trailer for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy! (Release date: May 6 2005). Hopefully it'll be as funny as Doug Adam's book.

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (0)

HTML::BBCode v0.04

2005/01/09 filed under /perl

By email I received a request for some more functionality in HTML::BBCode. Yep, I know writing this module conflicts with my earlier statement on phpBB, but hey, someone has to write Perl modules ;)

Two new options in the module:

  • no_html
  • linebreaks

It's not a major change in the module. The first new option just translates '<' with '&lt;' and '>' with '&gt;'. The second just puts '<br />' at each linebreak.

So there you go, HTML::BBCode version 0.04!

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (0)

Metal Top 10 of 2004

2005/01/08 filed under /metal

Everyone does 'em each year: top 10 lists! So here's my "put-together-way-too-fast-and-missing-so-many-good-albums" top 10 of 2004

  1. Helltrain - Route 666
  2. Vreid - Kraft
  3. Thunderbolt - Inhuman Ritual Massmurder
  4. Ribspreader - Bolted To The Cross
  5. Martyr - Malicious odyssey
  6. InThyFlesh - Crawl Beneath Our Shadow
  7. Hypocrisy - The Arrival
  8. Internal Suffering - Choronzonic Force Domination
  9. Finntroll - Nattfödd
  10. Hatesphere - Ballet of the Brute
Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (0)

Newspaper for free!

2005/01/08 filed under /personal

Yesterday I received a newspaper in my mailbox, while I never subscribed for it, so probably the mail guy mixed up some numbers. Thanks mail guy!

But today I've gotten another "free" newspaper! Thanks again mail guy! Keep up the good work of delivering me these newspapers :)

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (1)

How to use SWISH-E with NanoBlogger?

2005/01/08 filed under /nanoblogger

I was asked to explain into more detail how to get the search function (search.cgi) into the blog, so here we go.

First, you will have to install SWISH-E. Since I'm using FreeBSD, that's a breeze:

# cd /usr/ports/www/swish-e/
# make 
# make install

For some reason, it didn't install the perl API, so I had to do that manually:

# cd work/swish-e-2.4.2/perl/
# perl Makefile.PL
# make 
# make test
# make install

After that, I copied /usr/local/lib/swish-e/search.cgi to my cgi-bin and created the swish-e.config

$ cat swish-e.config
IndexOnly .htm .html
DefaultContents HTML*
StoreDescription HTML* <body>
metanames swishtitle swishdocpath

So far, still following the documentation of http://swish-e.org/current/docs/search.html

Time to create an index! And while I'm at it, I'd might as well make it a NanoBlogger plugin, for I want it to create a new index every time I update my blog. For that I altered the holy /usr/local/bin/nb a little.

--- /usr/local/bin/nb.orig	Fri Jan  7 23:56:21 2005
+++ /usr/local/bin/nb	Fri Jan  7 23:57:55 2005
@@ -611,6 +611,9 @@
 nb_msg "generating main index page(s) ..."
 ARCHIVES_PATH="${BASE_URL}$ARCHIVES_DIR/"
 paginate "$QUERY_MODE" nocat "$MAX_ENTRIES" "$MAIN_TEMPLATE" "$BLOG_DIR" index."$NB_FILETYPE"
+
+# load postblog plugins
+load_plugins postblog
 }
 
 # add a new entry

This way, nb will run the plugins in $PLUGINS_DIR/postblog. So why not create that plugin?

$ cd /usr/local/share/nanoblogger/plugins/
$ mkdir postblog
$ vim postblog/swish-e.sh
$ cat postblog/swish-e.sh
echo "Updating SWISH-E..."
cd /path/to/cgi-bin/
swish-e -e -c /path/to/swish.config -i ../blog/articles/ ../blog/archives/
cd -

Please note that all paths are for my machine and you most likely have to alter them!

Now for the final part, slightly alter the output of search.cgi. Once again, you will have to change this to your blog's settings

--- /usr/local/lib/swish-e/search.cgi	Fri Jan  7 21:42:55 2005
+++ /home/menno/html/cgi-bin/search.cgi	Fri Jan  7 23:32:54 2005
@@ -207,13 +207,17 @@
 <head>
     <title>Search Documents</title>
 
-    <style type="text/css">
-        a:hover { background: #CCC; }
-        body { font-family : verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; }
+    <link rel="stylesheet" href="/blog/styles/nb_default.css" type="text/css" />
+
+   <style type="text/css">
         .header { background-color: #EEEEEE; padding-left: 5px; }
-        .title { font-size: 1.2em; margin-top: 1em; }
-        .rank  { color: red; font-size: 0.8em; }
-        .description { 
+        .result_title { 
+            color: #921d00;
+            margin-top: 7px;
+        }
+        .result_description { 
+            font-size:small;
+            font-weight:normal;
             margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 2em; 
             max-width: 700px; /* not supported by IE */
             width:expression(document.body.clientWidth > 600? "600px": "auto" );
@@ -221,11 +225,17 @@
         .metadata { margin-left: 2em; font-size: 0.8em; color: green; }
         .metadata a { text-decoration: none; color: green; }
         .highlight { background : #FFFF99; font-weight: bold; }
+        #logo { text-align: center }
     </style>
 </head>
 <body>
 
+<div id="banner">
+<h1><a href="/" accesskey="1">B10[m|g]</a></h1>
+<span class="description">Yet another non-informative, useless blog</span>
+</div>
 
+<div class="blog">
     [% PROCESS form %]
     <p>
     [% IF search %]
@@ -236,6 +246,12 @@
             [% PROCESS display_results %]
         [% END %]
     [% END %]
+<div id="logo">
+<a href="http://swish-e.org/">
+<img alt="powered by SWISH-E" src="/blog/images/swishe.png" style="border: 0;" />
+</a>
+</div>
+</div>
 </body>
 
 
@@ -268,14 +284,14 @@
 [% BLOCK display_results %]
     [% USE date %]
     [% FOREACH item = search.results %]
-        <div class="title">
+        <div class="result_title">
             <a href="[% item.Property('swishdocpath') | uri | html %]">
                 [%  item.Property('swishtitle') || item.Property('swishdocpath') | html %]</a>
 
-            <span class="rank"> -- rank: <b>[% item.Property('swishrank') %]</b></span>
+            <!-- <span class="rank"> -- rank: <b>[% item.Property('swishrank') %]</b></span> -->
         </div>
 
-        <div class="description">
+        <div class="result_description">
             [% item.Property('swishdescription') || "No description" | highlight('swishdefault') %]
         </div>
 

Yes, I downloaded (and converted to PNG format) an image from http://swish-e.org/graphics.html

Finally you can set it up in your templates (main_index.html)

<div class="sidetitle">Search</div>
<div class="side">
<form action="/cgi-bin/search.cgi" method="get"><input type="text"
name="query" class="input" /> <input type="submit" value="Search"
class="input" /></form>
</div>
Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (0)

Search the B10[m|g] !

2005/01/07 filed under /nanoblogger

Google offers you to search your site through their interface, but I just don't like Google (too much) and would like to host the search stuff on my own server, so I came up with installing SWISH-E.

The install came with search.cgi, which only needed minor tweaking to fit it into my B10[m|g]. I highly recommend this search option!

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (0)

CGIComment cookie patch

2005/01/06 filed under /nanoblogger

A lot of blogs have the abillity to add comments. My blog uses CGIComment for that. Unfortunately, that script doesn't support cookies to store the user's info. This patch will "fix" that. Please note that it's a nasty hack, so make sure you keep a backup of your original cgicomment.pl around!

--- CGIComment-1.1/cgicomment.pl	Tue Feb 10 12:29:32 2004
+++ cgicomment.pl	Fri Jan  6 22:01:56 2005
@@ -253,6 +253,18 @@
 {
 	# differs from LoadCommentInfo in that the information is fetched
 	# from the web input form
+        ($CommentInfo{'cookieauthor'},
+         $CommentInfo{'cookieemail'},
+         $CommentInfo{'cookiesite'}) =  split(';;', $cgi->cookie('blog'))
+       		if($cgi->cookie('blog'));
+
+        $CommentInfo{'cookieauthor'} = $cgi->param('author') 
+   	   if($cgi->param('author'));
+        $CommentInfo{'cookieemail'}  = $cgi->param('email')
+   	   if($cgi->param('email'));
+        $CommentInfo{'cookiesite'}   = $cgi->param('site')  
+   	   if($cgi->param('site'));
+
 	$CommentInfo{'article'}  = filterUserInput($cgi->param('article'));
 
 	$CommentInfo{'email'} = filterUserInput($cgi->param('email')) || '';
@@ -736,7 +748,15 @@
 }
 
 
-print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
+FetchCommentInfo();
+
+my $cookie = $cgi->cookie(-name  => 'blog',
+                          -value => ($CommentInfo{'cookieauthor'}||'').";;".
+                                    ($CommentInfo{'cookieemail'}||'') .";;".
+				     ($CommentInfo{'cookiesite'}||''),
+                          -expires=>'+1y');
+
+print $cgi->header(-cookie=>$cookie);
 
 $CommentInfo{'basedir'} = $basedir;
 
Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (0)

Pop, Soda, Coke, or ...

2005/01/06 filed under /web

Some people really have too much time on their hands, really. Today I came across The Pop vs. Soda Page, a page about "The Great Pop vs. Soda Controversy".

The page takes data from a survey of USA-citizens about how they call a "carbonated soft drink" and the location of these people. The results are plotted, resulting in a nice map of the USA, which colorfully shows the individual states and what the most used word is: pop, soda, coke, or other.

Well done! Now go do something useful!? ;)

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (0)

Why phpBB sucks

2005/01/05 filed under /php

Sometimes I just don't see why products, websites are getting big. A good example is of course Microsoft's Windows, and Internet Explorer but others I don't get are http://www.marktplaats.nl and last but certainly not least: phpBB.

Why is phpBB so bad? Well, to start off, there are these security issues, but that's not all. There are two more things I really dislike about it:

  • No threaded structure
  • Bad privacy protection

No threaded structure

The problem usually isn't too big if there are only a handful of people posting and they keep checking the forum every hour or more often. The problem does arise though, when some people don't check in too often and do want to post replies. Consider the following discussion:

John: "Does anyone know a good restaurant in Cairo?"
Dave: "Oh, sure, there's a boat on the Nile, close to the museum.  Great!"
Alex: "There is a pizza joint in Giza, not too far away by cab."
Dave: "Oh yeah, that one is good too."
Alex: "I love the food there."
Sean: "I didn't like the food on that Nile ship..."

Now Sean is talking about the Nile ship, mentioned by Dave before. Wouldn't it be easier to read if Sean's post was located underneath Dave's post, like this?

John: "Does anyone know a good restaurant in Cairo?"
 |-Dave: "Oh, sure, there's a boat on the Nile, close to the museum.  Great!"
 |----Sean: "I didn't like the food on that Nile ship..."
 |-Alex: "There is a pizza joint in Giza, not too far away by cab."
 |----Dave: "Oh yeah, that one is good too."
 \-------Alex: "I love the food there."

In this little discussion, you might not see the benefit of such a system, but what if the discussion went on for weeks and you'd have to get 10+ pages back to see the comment the reply was for?

Bad privacy protection

Now let's take a look at for example http://forum.nedlinux.nl/memberlist.php. I don't know this site, I merely googled and found this forum. As you can see, you are allowed to view a list of all members of that forum and you are even allowed to have their email addresses!

First of all, I don't see the need for a memberlist at all, but if you do want to have one, at least protect the email addresses (I believe this is optional in phpBB (now), but far too few sites do so). Secondly, if you're going to have a memberlist, allow it to be viewed by the members only. Non-members have no need to know who's a member and not.

So, to conclude: stop using it! ;)

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (6)

Count the comments!

2005/01/04 filed under /nanoblogger

I'm very new to NanoBlogger, yet impressed by it's power and coolness.

After installing CGIComment I realized there's no counter of comments per post. There's of course comment_cnt.sh by dams, but I didn't really fancy the idea of using wget for this task. The .db files didn't look that hard to parse, so here's the overkill-oneliner-that-should-have-been-shorter.

First you will have to edit the blog.conf and add CGICOMMENT_DIR="" with the path to your CGIComment directory:

# CGIComment directory
CGICOMMENT_DIR="$BLOG_DIR/cgicomment"

After that, create the file comment_count.sh in your $BASE_URL/plugins/entry/ directory:

# NanoBlogger plugin to get number of (cgicomment) comments without wget
# by B10m, 2005 (http://menno.b10m.net/)

NB_EntryCommentCount=$(grep -c "^$(sed -ne \
  "s/^\([0-9]*\)|archives\/$permalink_entry$/\\1/p" \
  $CGICOMMENT_DIR/comments/articles.db 2>/dev/null)|" \
  $CGICOMMENT_DIR/comments/comments.db 2>/dev/null) 

if [[ -z $NB_EntryCommentCount ]]; then NB_EntryCommentCount=0; fi

(UPDATE: Removed the `echo` calls to prevent unwanted output in archives/index.html)

To be compatible with comment_cnt.sh, I used the same variable $NB_EntryCommentCount,so (if not already done) alter your templates (entry.html, permalink_entry.html) accordingly:

<a href="$BLOG_URL_ACTION$ARCHIVES_DIR/$permalink_entry#comments">Comments</a>
 ($NB_EntryCommentCount)

Final note: as with comment_cnt.sh, the counter will only be updated each time you rebuild your blog!

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (3)

First Post!

2005/01/04 filed under /news

Welcome to the B10[m|g]!

After a few years, I've decided to mess with a blog (again), basically just because nanoblogger seems to be really cool :)

I'll try to edit the CSS soon, so this blog doesn't look like a default blog, although I must say the default settings look pretty good to begin with :)

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (1)
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