Firelight

Kenta's Free Time

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 02:16:00 +0000

The Pig(Log)

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 00:03:00 +0000

I have few reasons to like Twitter, especially given how disjointed its Ruby On Rails underpinnings seem to be. With that said, it conceptually works for the terse musings that makeup The Pig's day.

Hopefully he can build a legion of followers and rise up as the benevolent dictator we all envision him to be, or showered with offerings of cold-cuts.

Snow Leopard Pre-Order

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 15:06:00 +0000

If you're planning on pre-ordering Snow Leopard from Amazon, then use this little banner so we make some referral money.

Thanks.

Recent Apple Store Layoff?

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 23:22:00 +0000

Early last week (June, 6th) I was trying to make a Genius Bar appointment at the 5th Ave. Apple Store. Normally I cannot make one any sooner then a day away, but this time I couldn't make an appointment at all, for any day. Instead I was prompted to check availability at other Apple Stores. The only available slot was at West 14th St. for some time Friday night, which I was not ready to sacrifice. This implied virtually no availability at any of the Manhattan Apple Stores for the next three days, aside from that one inconvenient slot. Only a few weeks prior I was able to make an appointment with selection of times to choose from, without even having to consider other stores.

While I found this odd, I assumed it must be related to the 4th of July weekend that had just passed. I tried again on Tuesday morning and didn't find any open slots. It prompted me to check stores outside of the city. A second attempt was made that evening with the similar results. Not until Wednesday was I able to make an appointment in one of only two available times-slots, across all 3 Manhattan stores.

When I went in for my appointment I offhandedly asked if this was an issue of staff on vacation. I was instead told this was the result of a significant reduction in the number of Geniuses. This came as a surprise given the recent release of the iPhone 3G S and the large queue of people downstairs waiting to buy one. I speculate that this is recent and the stores have done their best to keep things quiet, though this could be a continuation or result of announced layoffs a few months back.

While I don't suspect this will impact the overall quality of service, it does make it more difficult to get it in a timely manner and throws out any possibility of walk-ins. The whole concept of the Apple Genius as a manner for accepting repairs and troubleshooting is nothing short of a luxury when compared to the mail-in alternative. Hopefully this is just a short term cost saving tactic for the summer and not a sign for things to come.

AIM Push Notification and Multiple Sessions, Who Wins?

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 18:41:00 +0000

A question was recently posed by a friend. He noticed that as long as his AIM client was signed in on the iPhone, actively or just for Push Notification, that messages would no longer be sent to his desktop client anymore. This sort of behavior could render the "always signed in" Push Notification useless if the desktop client can no longer receive messages while the iPhone application is considered to be signed in.

It turns out that AOL uses a precedence order in deciding which client should get the message, or in some cases both. Here is the precedence order:

Available (1)
Away (0)
Idle (-1)
Invisible (*)

AIM clients with the same precedence "score," the number in parenthesis, will get the same message. If one client has a higher score, no other clients will get the message. Idle time will subtract one from the score. Available + Idle is the same thing as Away + Active.

For example if both clients are Available and not Idle, both will get the message. If one is Available and the other Away, the Available client will only get the message. Here is where things get interesting, if a client is Available and Idle, and the other is Away but Active both get the message.

The most effective way to use both the iPhone AIM client and a desktop client like Adium, iChat, or AIM, you need to have the desktop client set to Available and the iPhone client set to Away. The desktop client shouldn't be set to artificially Idle, or both will get the message.

This is a little annoying because I tend to set Adium to Away all the time. Going forward to utilize AIM for the iPhone I'll have to keep available and not idle, otherwise messages are going to start appearing on my phone. I guess this promotes some additional honesty about my actual status.

I hope this solves the mystery for someone. I couldn't find anything too definitive elsewhere on the web.

*Note: Setting Invisible in one client changes your status in all logged in clients. It's not possible to be Away in one, and invisible in another. I was hoping I could leverage this somehow by setting the iPhone to invisible so that it would only get messages if the desktop client went offline.

Now with Fancy

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:54:00 +0000

A quick post just to point out the obvious, the blog has a new look. More on this later, but Kenta is to thank for the design.

Enjoy.

When BS is so bad it hurts

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:31:00 +0000

It appears that Movable Type has been forked into a new project called "Melody." Now this is why I love Open Source software, if something isn't working right fracture the code, take some of the developers, and subdivide the user base. I understand that one piece of software can't do everything. By all means it shouldn't, but there doesn't seem to be any driving goals of this project that aim to make it vastly different the Movable Type.

A quick read of the sparse About page and FAQ, seems to indicate that this fork is driven by the need to work with the community more. In other words they don't have any unique design principles yet, but invoking the term "community" implies that we soon will have all that we've been missing from Movable Type. They suggest trying to be more like WordPress. Maybe that means documentation that isn't habitually wrong. I'm not sure.

On face value it looks like some sort of internal fallout happened. When you drop all of the idealistic bullshit, thats the most common reason for a fork. Two people couldn't agree and they go their own way but try to make it look all happy and mutual, as if this will somehow be "better for everyone."

The way I see it, Movable Type has been trying to become a CMS and failing miserably. It's once rapid rate of progress during the 3.x builds has become a snails pace under 4.x., and this fork may finally kill it or get SixApart off their asses and take a look at what their actually trying to accomplish.

Internet Explorer 6 Duplicate Characters Bug

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Mon, 11 May 2009 20:26:00 +0000

Just for reference if you come across the old issue with IE 6 duplicating characters at the end of a block of text, check out this article at Position Is Everything.

Opening a Link in a New Window, and How Not To

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Fri, 08 May 2009 21:46:00 +0000

I often tell everyone here to avoid examples of JavaScript on the Internet, because more often then not it’s incorrect. The same goes for most of the popular examples of how to cause a link, an A tag more specfically, to open in a new window.

The most popular and incorrect way is using the target attribute:

<a href="http://www.example.com/" target="_blank">Using Target</a>

The target attribute was meant to direct content to load in a specific frame. In this case the keyword directs the browser to load the page in a new window, but with frames long dead and gone this little gem lives on as a reason people “can’t use HTML Strict.”:

The most common solution that people came up with this was to use JavaScript, but in some strange ways. Instead of opening the link directly, the page would go to an anchor and JavaScript would open the URL in a new window:

<a href="#" onclick="window.open('http://www.example.com/');">Using Onclick</a>

The HTML will validate, but if JavaScript is disabled the link won’t go anywhere, and it can’t be copied via a contextual menu. On top of that clicking on the link will cause the page to jump to the top, unless you add “return false;”:

<a href="#" onclick="window.open('http://www.example.com/'); return false;">Using Onclick</a>

Another approach to avoding the jump was to place JavaScript within the href attribute:

<a href="javascript:window.open('http://www.example.com');">Using inline JavaScript</a>

While inline JavaScript has its novel uses, this isn’t one of them. This method doesn’t offer much over the previous one and can be complicated even further when a wrapper function is called instead:

<a href="javascript:wrapperfunction();">Using inline abstracted JavaScript</a>

The only way to fix the issue of JavaScript being disabled was to put the link back in the href attribute:

<a href="http://www.example.com/" onclick="window.open('http://www.example.com/'); return false;">Improved use of onclick</a>

Using "return false;" stops the link from executing, allowing the URL to be put back in the href. This is the farthest I’ve seen any site go. it’s technically complete, but redundant. One last bit of JavaScript fixes that:

<a href="http://www.example.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;">Ideal use of onclick</a>

The redundancy is elimanted by using this.href. “this” refers to the current object in context, being the A tag. The “href” references the A tags href property and the value (URL) contained within.

The end result is a small generic addition to any A tag to make it open in a new window. The tag will pass HTML strict validation, “SEO” is preserved and if JavaScript is disabled everything keeps working.

Basecamp Writeboard & Message Erratic Formatting

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Fri, 08 May 2009 16:49:00 +0000

If you rely heavily on Basecamp, a project management service by 37signals, then you've probably run into issues with erratic formatting in Writeboards and Messages. The contextual documentation is sparse at best and doesn't explain how to stop the unintended formatting caused by the inadvertent use of reserved sequences.

Through a little experimentation, it seems that most HTML tags are left unencoded. While unexpected and also potentially problematic this behavior has it benefits. The <code> and <pre> tags - and possibly more - turn off the Basecamp formatting engine and make it possible to preserve text that would otherwise be mis-formatted.

So next time you notice strange formatting, try surrounding your text in either <code> and <pre> tags. Remember that while these tags won't show up in the message itself, they will appear in any notification e-mail, but the same is true for standard Basecamp formatting.

Craig's List E-Mail Scam

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 16:56:00 +0000

Thanks to Google I learned of this scam in response to a printer we're selling on Craig's List.

The e-mail I got:

From: bukkybrigth@gmail.com
Subject: Re: New Canon PIXMA MX700 Office All-In-One Printer - $120 (Chelsea)
Date: April 24, 2009 11:27:16 AM EDT
To: --@firefallpro.com

Good to read from you and i believe we can continue on this
transaction because i don't like to beat around the bush and am not
here for games, I am buying this Item for my Spouse located Oversea
and i will be responsible for the shipping and handling cost, let me
know how much it will cost you to ship and All you have to do now is
to send me a money request for the total amount via paypal for me to
confirm if your account is still active or not or you get back to me
with your paypal registered email account as for me to remit the
payment. Please get back to me as soon as possible if you are still
interested to further with this transaction.and i will like if you can
ship the item through Unites State Poster Service International
Express Mail (EMS).... I will be looking forward to read from you.

Regards.

I should have e-mailed back something creative, but I sent them a link to the article I found. Maybe they'll have to vary the copy a little now.

Xserve G5 Remote Diagnostics and Bootable CD

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 21:57:00 +0000

The Xserve G5 has a remote diagnostics tool that runs in Open Firmware, similar to the Apple Hardware Test (AHT) found on most OS X installation disks that ship with Macs, or now baked into the EFI on most new Intel based Macs. The depths of testing and detailed results of the Xserve Remote Diagnostics far exceed AHT, but so does the complexity of setting it up.

Normally, this very comprehensive testing suite can require up to 2 additional machines; the first machine to administer the test and the second OS X Server running Netboot. Both administration and Netboot serving can be performed from the same Mac. The fact that I can't run these tests without additional machines bothers me, but setting up another server just for Netboot is wholly impractical.

Thankfully a set of instructions showing how to create a bootable CD in lieu of Netbooting are available. The process involves creating a disk image from parts of the Xserve Remote Diagnostics software. The resulting image is small and generic to any Xserve G5, so much so that I couldn't figure out what the point was of telling people how to do it instead of just letting them download the completed image.

To that effect I've compiled all the necessary parts here, including the bootable disk, so that it?s easier to perform these tests:

- Apple Supplied Documentation (alt)
- Xserve Remote Diagnostics 1.0.4 (alt)
- Xserve Remote Diagnostics 1.0.4 Boot Disk

The following basic steps should help:

Download and read the Apple documentation.

Download and install the diagnostics software on a Mac that is within the same subnet as the Xserve to be tested.

Download and burn the boot disk image to CD.

Put the burned CD into the Xserve and restart it while holding down the C key. The CD will not appear in the list of bootable devices while holding down the option key, or as an option in Startup Disk. Once booted from the disk you'll see a gray screen with some text at the top.

Make sure the administrative computer with xrdiags is on the same subnet as the Xserve, you might have to directly connect to its first (lower) Ethernet port and set your subnet to 0.0.0.0 if the Xserve is not detected when running xrdiags -d.

Once the tests are running prepare for a long wait. The documentation says 5 minutes for the Quick test and 15-20 for an Extended one. A Quick test on an Xserve G5 with 8 GB of RAM took 45 minutes; an Extended test took over 3 hours. This was a terrible discovery late at night.

Hopefully this will help someone

Movable Type mt:IfCategory Broken

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 21:39:00 +0000

In what is becoming a common theme, we've discovered that the mt:IfCategory tag that is supposed to replace the deprecated mt:EntryIfCategory cannot function in the same way as revealed to us by support:


Ticket Transcript:

On February 20, 2009 05:56 PM, you () said:

I'm unable to get mt:IfCategory to match either the name or label of a category assigned to an entry when it is within the context of the mt:Entries tag:

<mt:Entries category="NOT Events" lastn="7">
...
<mt:IfCategory label="Syndications">
...
</mt:IfCategory>
...
</mt:Entries>

Any article assigned to the subcategory "syndications" does not enter the IfCategory. The documentation seem to indicate that this should work. http://www.movabletype.org/documentation/appendices/tags/ifcategory.html


On February 20, 2009 07:11 PM, Movable Type Customer Support said:

Hi -

If you change the <mt:IfCategory label="Syndications"> tag to <mt:EntryIfCategory label="Syndications">, then republish your weblog, does this issue still occur?

Regards,

David Phillips
Technical Services


On February 20, 2009 07:30 PM, you () said:

Changing the tag to the deprecated mt:EntryIfCategory causes it to work as expected.

We are currently employing a much longer workaround using supported tags. I'm not sure if we are missing something as far as the mt:IfCategory, or if its just broken.


On February 20, 2009 08:43 PM, Movable Type Customer Support said:

Hi -

It may be that the MTEntryIfCategory is indeed intended to be deprecated in favor of the MTIfCategory tag (as indicated in our documentation), but I have examined both the static publishing (perl) and dynamic publishing (PHP) code for these template tags, and these tags currently do not behave identically in a template.

Regards,

David Phillips
Technical Services


On February 20, 2009 08:50 PM, you () said:

I can only assume that you tried diligently to not answer my question. I had asked if we missed something in our implementation or if the new tag is broken. The documentation does not state explicitly how to make it work.

How do I make the mt:IfCategory tag function like the superseded mt:EntryIfCategory, and why is this absent from the documentation?


On February 20, 2009 09:35 PM, Movable Type Customer Support said:

Hi -

Unfortunately, the <mt:IfCategory> tag currently cannot be made to behave the same as the <mt:EntryIfCategory> tag.

Regards,

David Phillips
Technical Services


On February 20, 2009 09:39 PM, you () said:

So in short, it's broken, the documentation is incorrect, and we should have thought more carefully before paying for a license.

Thanks.

Line breaks After Movable Type Tags

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 20:43:00 +0000

Incase you were curious about suppressing the line breaks output after Movable Type Tags, causing them to behave like PHP tags. According to a response from support there isn't any way to change this. Though an option may exist in the future.

The heavy reliance on evaluating data with "mt:If" tags (due to the limited capabilities of block tag attributes) only serves to make the occurrence of line breaks even more apparent. The end result is a lot of extra white space in the HTML source, or virtually illegible template code. Chalk up another disappointment to Movable Type.

Why Movable Type's Documentation Sucks

noreply@blogger.com (dan) — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 16:46:00 +0000

All we wanted to do was spit out a list of authors and sort by a custom field instead of by name. Should be simple, right? Let's check the documentation. Seems to state that this is possible... but no dice.

Oh well, that's why we bought the commercial version, so we could have support monkeys answer these annoying questions for us, right? Let's fire off an email to see if we are perhaps... missing something obvious.

To their credit, we got back a response relatively quickly. The only problem is, it's a useless one:

From: Movable Type Support <support@sixapart.com>
Date: February 17, 2009 7:38:34 PM EST
To: *****@firefallpro.com
Subject: Response to Movable Type support ticket 'Sorting by Custom Fields'

Movable Type Customer Support has responded to your ticket
'Sorting by Custom Fields'. This email notification has been
automatically sent by Movable Type Customer Support.

DO NOT REPLY TO THIS EMAIL. Instead, please click the link below
to view and respond to your ticket.

  Hi -

  Unfortunately, the <mt:author> template tag currently does
  not support sorting by a custom user field.

  Regards

  David Phillips
  Technical Services

Movable Type Periodic Tasks (cron job) and cPanel

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 22:11:00 +0000

If you're having issues getting cPanel to run the Movable Type periodic tasks tool through cron, try adding quotes:

Most documentation uses this example:
cd /home/username/public_html/mt/; ./tools/run-periodic-tasks

We had problems getting the script to execute till quotes were added:
cd ’/home/username/public_html/mt/’; ./tools/run-periodic-tasks

Why won't anyone buy me?

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 00:18:00 +0000

I periodically stop in at the 5th Ave. Apple Store to check on their static supply of ADC power adapters at the off chance they'll be reasonably priced.

Still $99, just $50 less then a new Dell monitor. Sad.

Interns are Awesome - Part III

noreply@blogger.com (Katie) — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 16:06:00 +0000

A note from our former intern Dylan on his experience at Firefall Pro.

Katie,

I'm sorry I didn't get back to you sooner. The email got buried in my inbox and I forgot about it.

Firefall really was a fun place to work. It had a laid back environment where you can do/learn as much as you're willing to take on. I personally got to try my hand at several new programming languages for both front and backend development. I also got to work on various projects from core PHP libraries to corporate webpages. The pace did seem a little fast at times but Scott was always willing to answer my questions or give an impromptu lesson. I learned more about web development over that summer than I did the previous four years getting my CS degree.

Again, I'm sorry this is so late. Hope you guys find it useful and that everything is going well.

And in a subsequent email for the sake of self-aggrandizement and because I'm uber awesome:

On a side note, I think you are easily the best HR (please don't be insulted if that's not actually your position) person I've ever dealt with. I've had to wait weeks if not months to hear from every company I've dealt with since this summer. It's really refreshing to have conversations in real time.

Thanks,
Dylan

Interns are Awesome - Part II

noreply@blogger.com (Katie) — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 16:02:00 +0000

Another letter regarding our internship program has arrived!!! Let us bask in the glory.

My experience at Firefall Pro surpassed all my expectations and probably redefined them altogether. I came in with that fresh-intern-meat readiness to learn and eagerness to work, but I didn't stop to think about what kind of experience I was looking for until I had already started at Firefall Pro. Everyone was friendly but honest, positive but realistic, and as likely to make fun of themselves as they were of me. Ok fine, a little more likely to make fun of me, but the point is I could have been stuck with a floor full of dead beat baby boomers and I wasn't. They welcomed me not only to the world of web development but also to the great city of New York with a rough sense of sarcasm on a foundation of good will... oh and they converted me to Mac. I feel enlightened.

voila.

-GIO

Interns are Awesome - Part I

noreply@blogger.com (Katie) — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 15:59:00 +0000

So I asked interns past and present to write us a little blurb about their experiences here. They so kindly did! I'd like to share their words of wisdom with you all....

Hello Katie,

Greetings from Cornell! I hope you are all doing well. Sorry I'm sending this so late... Scott was right about me procrastinating on this.

For me, a lot of the internship was a new experience for me. The interview was my first job interview, and I wasn't really sure what to expect but both you and Scott made me feel at ease and kept the interview going. It was very helpful of Scott to point out different parts of my resume that were weak or lacking. I found Scott's Learning Time to be pretty fun and informative, but everything stuck in my head much better when I applied what I learned to mocking up an actual site. I would've liked to see more of how Javascript and PHP were implemented into HTML designs, but I guess the designs didn't really call for that so I can't complain. I didn't really have the Javascript or PHP background to do anything other than styling, but, overall, I really enjoyed the laid-back work environment. The only things I think the workplace needed were: 1) more Pig, and 2) better ramen.

So, that was pretty short because I can't think of anything else I can evaluate. I really did have a fun time and I thank you guys for that!

Sincerely,
Ada

Removing automatic quotes from the q (quote) tag

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 00:38:00 +0000

Just a quick note, if you're ever looking to remove the automatically generated quotes from a <q> (quote) tag, all you need to do is use a little CSS to unstyle it.

q:before,
q:after {
 content: "";
}

IE doesn't understand this, but it doesn't automatically make the quotes anyway. For more information see this article.

Fantastic

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 03:44:00 +0000

... the LiveCD is on a DVD, the DVD drive won't show, burn to CD-R twice (the first blank fails), boot from CD, USB devices don't show, reboot, add PS2 devices, only the PS2 keyboard and USB mouse want work, SATA drives don't show, in some universe the RAID controller lets you clone a drive (not this one, or if it does it doesn't want you to know), subsequently determine source drive has little point to exist and really doesn't need to be copied, leave client hours later, greeted by crowd of people in lobby all wondering what its like to have dependable elevators, take 12 flights of stairs, return to no internet and a board intern, send intern home, call Verizon, determine internal router decided to forget how it was configured, re-educate router, Vonage adapter decides it too should stop normal functions, statically assign adapter so the phones work.

Net Gain from 3 PM to 11:30 PM: Zero.

Updated : Full Window Flash (With Minimum Dimensions)

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 17:09:00 +0000

I updated the Full Window Flash (With Minimum Dimensions), Done Right post. It now properly supports Firefox 3 and has been retested against Safari and IE 5 through 7. I also fixed a few more broken links and tried to spruce other things up as well. Feedback is encouraged.

Free Amazon Prime for a Month

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 19:44:00 +0000

Just letting everyone know that you can get Amazon Prime free for one month (free 2 day shipping) if you haven't already participated in a Prime trial. If don't want to be billed the yearly fee at the end of the month go into your settings and disabled the automatic renewal.

The iPhone and HTTP Auth - How to save your password

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 00:49:00 +0000

So you have an iPhone, but by now you've realized it doesn't have a Keychain or any other sort of password management for web sites. While I can't help with form based logins, there is hope when it comes to HTTP Authentication.

On the iPhone HTTP Auth login screens look like this:

The easiest way to get past those login prompts and store your password is to add it to the URL. I recognize this isn't a new concept, but applying it to the iPhone might be to some. The format goes like this:

http(s)://username:password@www.example.com

If your username or password contains any non alphanumeric characters, in other words anything that isn't A-Z and 0-9, then you must URL encode those characters. A common place this may occur is with cPanel based webmail where you have to use your full e-mail address as your login. In those cases enter in a + instead of an @. For example user@example.com becomes user+example.com as your login.

Once you've assembled the URL, bookmark it. I've found it to be the easiest to do this on the computer, then syncing it the iPhone. When on the iPhone you can go to the page and even add it to your home screen if you desire. While this doesn't make up for true password storage, it does make it much easier to access sites protected by HTTP Auth.

In some instances this is the only way I can access some sites without being endlessly prompted for my login and password on the iPhone, no matter how accurate. This phenomenon has been observed by others as well.

The Disclaimer
Please recognize that you are storing your password in plain text, fully unencrypted. Your password is now as only safe as your bookmarks, and your iPhone. Normally in OS X your passwords are kept in a heavily encrypted database if you save them.

I can only hope that a full fledged Keychain will come to the iPhone, but for now this isn't that bad of an alternative for sites that use HTTP auth.