Vanity Foul
Dedicated to the wanderings of an egotistical mind.


20030129
Wednesday January 29, 2003

Your Password Must Be at Least 18770 Characters ...

This is too funny, courtesy of Javva the Hutt. And from Microsoft's Knowledge Base:

If you log on to an MIT realm, press CTRL+ALT+DELETE, click Change Password, type your existing MIT password, and then type a new, simple password that does not pass the dictionary check in Kadmind, you may receive the following error message:
Your password must be at least 18770 characters and cannot repeat any of your previous 30689 passwords. Please type a different password. Type a password that meets these requirements in both text boxes.
Note that the number of required characters changes from 17,145 to 18,770 with the installation of SP1.

NOTE: This is not a common case; it occurs only when you configure Windows 2000 to authenticate against an MIT Kerberos domain.
[MSKB #276304]

( Jan 29 2003, 04:11:50 PM ) Technology Permalink Comments [1]
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Velocity Tools

I'd heard mention of this, but there wasn't much to go on, and I haven't had time to dig around in the CVS, but Gabriel Sidler keeps the latest documentation and examples online. Of particular interest to me is the VelocityLibrary which may be of use in Roller (though it may be overkill as well). One more thing to investigate. ( Jan 29 2003, 10:22:59 AM ) Roller Permalink [Link]
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/velocity_tools



20030126
Sunday January 26, 2003

The Foul Truth

Epesh has realized the foul truth: saying Something Sucks will get you far more attention than a reasonable title. That was the whole reason behind my "Velocity Sucks"; I know it doesn't suck, I don't think it sucks, I was just frustrated with it and a lack of help/attention in solving my problem. I knew my problem couldn't be unique and that someone must have solved it, but damn if I could find the solution. Lo and behold, eventually I did find that others had solved it (without documenting it), and my post (indirectly) contributed to my finding it.
( Jan 26 2003, 05:26:41 PM ) Humor? Permalink Comments [3] [Link]
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20030125
Saturday January 25, 2003

Re: Entry permalinks in Roller Andy is complaining that Roller won't generate permalinks for his entries (well, actually it is, but the link isn't going to the right place). The problem is that he has left out the anchor macro: <a name="\$entry.anchor" id="\$entry.id"></a>

Next, he has a problem with Velocity tags: this is a tricky one, as the view of the entry in the "edit" page doesn't pass through Velocity but the actual display does, so he calls this one right. I think this is a spot where we'll need to look at fixing Roller's behaviour (make the edit page use the macros). I've been working on "fixing" Roller's use of Velocity, so I'll look at straightening this out as well: basically I need to make EditWeblogEntriesTag.java use Velocity in its presentation (that last is mostly a note to myself). ( Jan 25 2003, 04:15:58 PM ) Roller Permalink Comments [3] [Link]
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20030123
Thursday January 23, 2003

Re: American Idle

Well, it finally happened. My former employer has decided to make like a protein and fold. So I'm unemployed, on the dole, no longer a productive member of society, an American Idle.

This blog is part of my attempt to demonstrate that, while I am rather content spending many boring hours doing nothing, I'd rather be spending many hours writing boring content about doing something. Exactly what that something will be has yet to be determined...[demitasse]

Do what I did (if you're not already) and pick up a piece of OpenSource software that interests you, and get to work on it. That's how I got started working on Roller, something to keep me busy and to keep my skills up. Hell, I learned a lot (mostly about MySQL and Velocity) from the experience. And I met Dave & Matt, and a bunch of other fine folks.

Followup: just read Andy saying much the same thing. ( Jan 23 2003, 01:41:37 PM ) Technology Permalink [Link]
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20030121
Tuesday January 21, 2003

Of Forests and Fields

While Mark is always a good read, some days are just better than others. I read this one as a foreshadowing of what I have to look forward to:

Our home (built circa 1955) stands just more than a block from old National Guard Reserve land. Since we are relatively new to the area (going on 3 years) I'm not sure of the history, but this land covers enough acreage to hold a medium-sized town and surrounding neighborhoods. The land has been "decomissioned", but the ground contains contaminates and is 5 years into a cleaning process. All the surroundnig communities, several big businesses, and local Native Americans are all fighting for possesion of this land.

Currently about 98% of the land is given over to hills, big and small, and forest with some swamp thrown in here and there. Beautiful. And some day in the not too distant future, it's going to be "developed". What that looks like, I shudder to think. Every day as I drive along this stretch, I yearn to go for a walk in those woods, to climb those hills, to spend a little nature time. But it is still National Guard Reserve land, protected by chain-link, razor-wire, and armed patrols.

I hope I get to stroll those fields at least once before they are plowed and paved.
( Jan 21 2003, 01:40:29 PM ) Entertainment Permalink
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Free Pippa!

Pippa is being repressed by her husband's employer. As she says, she has been very careful never to name herself, her husband, nor his employer. Just because some of us know who they are, the employer wants to gag her? I wonder if Grendel's boss (who I once knew) can bring any sanity to the upper management. Probabaly not without putting himself at risk. ( Jan 21 2003, 09:53:58 AM ) News Permalink
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20030120
Monday January 20, 2003

Velocity Rocks

It's the greatest thing since sliced cheese. Or sliced bread (mmmmm, toasted cheese sandwiches...). Okay, maybe that'll balance out my Velocity Sucks post. Jon's subtle prod to keep looking inspired me to checkout the Velocity-tools project, where I found the VelocityViewServlet, which gave me the hint to my solution: the WebappResourceLoader. Additionally this requires the "Velocity Servlet" to set the ServletContext during it's init() or initVelocity(). You can see the PageServlet to see an example of this and other fun manipulating the init parameters. ( Jan 20 2003, 06:25:27 PM ) Technology Permalink [Link]
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