Friday September 03, 2004

toString() is a dangerous weapon

I just spend a couple hours trying to figure out why I couldn't get something out of a Map after I'd put it in. I added all sorts of debug output which showed that the URL I was using for a key went in, but somehow it wasn't there milliseconds later.

After chasing my tail for god-knows-how-long it finally dawned on me that I was putting a URL instance in but requesting a url String?! The confusing was that printing out the URL object and the URL string looked exactly the same. URL.toString(): dangerous.

Doh!
( Sep 03 2004, 10:49:40 AM ) Technology Permalink Comments [3]
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/tostring_is_a_dangerous_weapon

Tuesday August 17, 2004

Re: This is about Atom

Beautiful. I hope the more vocal members of the Atom mailing list read it. I think Matt makes some important points that these members need to keep in mind, not that some of them aren't already.

But what Atom says is: If you want to play the weblog game, this is the metadata you need. That, and some other stuff (it's all in the Atom spec).

. . .

What Atom says is: If you want to afford these behaviours, then you have to be weblog-like in this respect and editor-like in this respect, and it doesn't matter what else you do, but those are the shapes we require.

( Aug 17 2004, 08:32:33 AM ) Atom Permalink
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/re_this_is_about_atom

Friday August 13, 2004

Thanks Rusty

While trying to make Roller more friendly to non-ascii users we ran into the issue of non-ascii characters used in entry titles. These munged the permalinks we generated, until someone (Jaap, was it you?) was clever enough to escape these characters. Today Rusty announced the posting of the Internationalized Resource Identifiers draft, a standard which could really help to alleviate the current problems with non-ascii text in URLs.
( Aug 13 2004, 01:03:51 PM ) Technology Permalink
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/thanks_rusty

Monday August 09, 2004

Another "Perfect Weblog System" post

This post is an interesting mix of subjective and objective requirements.

I find it interesting that so many people (who already use MoveableType) assert that /YYYY/MM/DD/ is the best (most un-crufty) URL structure. I started with Blogger, took a look at Radio, and now use Roller. They all do things a bit different, and I think it is all on preferences. Of course, one of my "dream features" for Roller is that you could use any one of the 'popular' URL formats to get to the same place.

In any case, it is a good rundown and does highlight several important bits on how to present good (semantic) content. Make sure to follow his link to Henri Sivonen: Outlining the 'Ultimate' Blogging Server which in turn links to Matthew "mpt" Thomas' outline of "The ultimate Weblogging system", on which I've commented before. ( Aug 09 2004, 10:33:35 AM ) Technology Permalink Comments [2]
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/another_perfect_weblog_system_post

For further reading on today's posts:

Blogging Roller : Lance on the perfect weblog system and gender issues | Comments [0]

Thursday August 05, 2004

Tech '54, Where Are You?

I read this article in a chiropractor's waiting room while visiting my folks down in Arkansas. I liked it.

( Aug 05 2004, 02:12:29 PM ) Technology Permalink
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/tech_54_where_are_you

Referer Spammer Management in Roller

As it stands now, each user is responsible for maintaining their own Referer Spam blocking list. I do this fairly religiously, but my wife does not. Her blog doesn't seem to attract as much spam as mine, but why shouldn't she benefit from my list? I think I'll add a Roller-wide blocking list to my To-Do list.
( Aug 05 2004, 11:00:25 AM ) Roller Permalink Comments [2]
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/referer_spammer_management_in_roller

Block By IP

I still haven't been able to build a new machine to host Brainopolis, so it's been running off of my personal/development machine. At times I notice Roller's JVM taking 99% of my CPU. Last night I jumped right into my access logs and noticed a particular IP has been pounding my box (with no referer). I tried accessing the IP directly, and did a reverse DNS lookup on it. Both failed to deliver me a website. So I googled it. The top entry was someone's /baniplist page (sorry, this was last night and I don't have the info handy).

Looking further down the google results I saw that the IP had been used to post several Comments on other sites, each referring to a site I recognized from my Referer Spam list. I'd like to ban this IP myself, but I don't use Apache. I use Resin directly and am unaware of any IP banning built in.

So I'll likely revive an old project, HoneyPot, which was an experiment of mine in detecting 'email harvesting' bots and banning them through a Java Servlet Filter. The question is, should I then bundle this ability into Roller, or is this better left out? I'm leaning toward the latter, your comments are welcome.
( Aug 05 2004, 10:53:58 AM ) Technology Permalink Comments [1]
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/block_by_ip

Re: PC EZ-Bake Oven looks cool, but I see no evidence of a crumb-tray. Lack of such convenience would make this a dangerous, or at least odorous, device to insert into a computer.
( Aug 05 2004, 10:49:38 AM ) Technology Permalink
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/re_pc_ez_bake_oven