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Panther Server, DBD Hair-Pulling

Spent the better part of last week at work wrestling with an upgrade of Jaguar Server to Panther Server. There were a lot of things we wanted out of Panther — the honed Active Directory integration and overhauled mail server chiefly among them. The upgrade seemingly went fine, and we were back online in an hour. Then I hear from one of our Movable Type users that they’re getting errors trying to post stories. Hmm… the installation can’t seem to find the DBD::mysql module. It’s still there, I can see it. Reinstall the DBD package to be sure. Installs successfully, but problem persists. Compile Bundle::DBI and DBD::mysql from CPAN — the latter fails. Start doing research — I’m not the only one with this problem — some wonky interaction between multi-CPU threading, the version of perl installed with Panther Server, and the module in question.

Over the next few days, tried every possible trick I could think of or find reference to, but no joy. Editing bugs out of perl’s Config.pm, tweaking the makefile, changing environment variables. What tanned my hide was the fact that all of this worked perfectly before the upgrade. Some small bug buried somewhere in the bowels of perl or the OS wasting days of my time.

Finally ran out of options and decided to do a clean install rather than the upgrade, which meant recreating users and shares, updating databases, etc. Everything I had hoped to avoid. But after the clean install, three tweaks to the makefile and one to Config.pm convinced DBD::mysql to compile cleanly, and MT came back online.

Nothing is as simple as it seems. Nothing.

Music: Gong :: Est-ce que je suis
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Power, Corruption, and Lies

Why am I suddenly starting to receive funding solicitations and other propaganda from the RNC? I take a certain perverse pleasure in scrawling “Power, Corruption and Lies — Bush Must Go” across the pledge sheet and sending it back in the postage-paid envelope that is inevitably provided. I’ve done this about half a dozen times now, but it so far has not gotten me removed from their mailing lists. That’s OK — I’m patient. And I’ve got lots of Sharpies.

Music: Burning Spear :: It’s a Long Way Around
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On Off On

Mission of Burma tonight at the Fillmore with Roger. Their first new record in 22 years, “On Off On,” and touring again. Expected the show to mostly showcase the new album, but heard tons from “Vs.” and “Signals, Calls, and Marches.” First set didn’t seem to cohere as well as last time we saw them, but something happened in the margins, and the second set soared. Stratmospheric. Check out the MTV trailer for a sip. Something sounded strangely familiar. A cover. Was it Cream? No, wait. Early Pink Floyd — something from Umma Gumma, or Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Have to figure this out. Never heard Floyd sound like this. The only other cover I know of Burma doing is a version of The Stooges’ “1970” on “The Horrible Truth About Burma.”

Sudden strange impulse to know how Burma would sound unplugged. Maybe with Conley on Mariachi bass, Miller on Spanish guitar, Prescott with Tito Puente’s drums. Or even tablas.

Disproportionate number of Moby scalps and Drew Carey glasses in the audience. First encore Penelope Houston jumped onstage. Second encore finished with a totally plugged-in “Max Ernst.” Just electrified.

Caught the last few pieces by Kinski, one of the openers. Some blend of Hawkwind, Spacemen 3, and Can. Psychedelic jam bands still exist (Kinski, not Burma), with modern electronics. And flute! Should have heard more.

Music: Pink Floyd :: Interstellar Overdrive
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AirTunes

Intrigued by Apple’s Airport Express / AirTunes announcement. Finally, an Apple-centric (but not Mac-centric!) way to get the iTunes library across the house and into the stereo. The solution is pretty unique — not at all what I (or almost anyone) expected, which was more like a wireless iPod-like home stereo component, maybe with video capabilities bolted on. AE plugs into a power outlet and into your stereo’s audio-in (analog or digital). Your Wi-Fi capable Mac then auto-discovers the device, and music flows like water. Cake. And it doubles as an AirPort Extreme base station and print server.

The good people at Slim Devices must be hating this. I personally sold our sliMP3 a while ago; had finally come to see our home stereo as the final refuge, a fortress from which I could escape the ubiquity of MP3 in my life. But AirTunes is a tantalizing prospect…

Music: Can :: Cutaway
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Matthew Sperry Remembered, One Year Later

Yesterday was the first anniversary of the death of our friend, musician Matthew Sperry. Matthew was run over by a pickup while on a bicycle on his way to work, leaving behind his wife and two-year-old daughter. His premature death sent waves of shock and sadness through our circle of friends, which resonate with us still. His daughter Lila is three now, and is beginning to better understand and articulate her daddy’s absence in sweet but chilling ways. His wife Stacia is coping as best as could be hoped, but is still suffering from his loss.

A large circle of Matthew’s friends gathered yesterday in the beautiful columbarium where his ashes lie. The bow from his bass was passed around as a “talking stick,” and people took turns memorializing him in words — so many different angles on his passing. It was truly touching. Matthew’s musician friends performed mournful pieces in the resonant, sun-filled chambers of the Chapel of the Chimes. Afterwards we gathered at Stacia and Lila’s house to eat, talk, and remember.

We love you, Matthew. You are missed. So missed. Blessings.

Music: Kahil El’Zabars The Ritual :: Another Kind Of Groove
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Green Ink

So guess who’ll be keeping his tattoo for the rest of his life? When I was 19, I had a 2″ question mark tattooed on my right ankle. I still stand behind the question mark as a symbol; no regrets there. But it was done in a kind of balloon-y, cartoonish style. It’s not terrible, but in recent years I’ve gotten tired of it, finally decided I wanted it gone.

Waited three months for a consultation, only to learn today that the fact that it’s comprised of mixed blue and green inks (the lasers are targeted at specific pigments) and is 20 years old means I would need 12-15 laser treatments at $650 each!!! In other words, $40 to have it installed, nearly $10,000 to have it uninstalled. So it’s staying put. Unless I can convince Amy we need to sell the Subaru…

Music: Tom Ze :: Tangolomango
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Cha-Ya

Last time I had an all-vegan meal (NO products derived from animals whatsoever, not even dairy, not even honey) I was living in Santa Cruz, in college. I hated it. Everything tasted flat and boring. I’ve never been into self-discipline where food is concerned. I don’t overeat, but I like to eat delicious food. Meals are meant to be enjoyed. So when rinchen suggested we go to Cha-Ya for dinner tonight, I balked; not so much because I need the meat as because I thought it would be a disappointment. And now I eat my words, so to speak. One of the best meals I’ve ever had, totally changed my opinion of the possibilities in vegan cooking. Not only not lacking in flavor, but fresh and delicious and creative and totally satisfying. Great idea to combine a Japanese restaurant with a vegan restaurant; the two styles complement one another perfectly. If you live in the Bay Area, don’t miss Cha-Ya on Shattuck — this has to be one of the more unique and delightful eating experiences you’ll find anywhere.

Music: Abbey Lincoln :: Long As You’re Living
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Celebrating Ten Years of BeOS

It’s 2004, a decade since the earliest versions of BeOS started shipping to developers. Over at OSNews.com, Eugenia Loli-Queru has a nice memorial piece commemorating the anniversary.

I haven’t run BeOS for a couple of years now, though it was certainly the core of my technical life for half a decade. Recently dusted off my old laptop (an early generation dell pentium, 64MBs) and booted Win2K. It was so slow I simply could not use it. All I really needed was a shell and a text editor for the day, so I booted its BeOS partition for the first time in a long time and was amazed all over again. The exact same hardware, but the OS was easily 10x faster. Such a treat. I’m committed to OS X these days, and mostly love it, but will always consider BeOS my only OS “tru luv”. Thanks for the memory walk, Eugenia. And thanks to everyone who ever worked at Be for creating such an outstanding monument to technical possibility.

Music: Billy Bragg & Wilco :: Another Man’s Done Gone
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MovableType 3 Sting

Completely sick of the comment spammers. MT-Blacklist is great at what it does, but only works after a string has been blacklisted, so every morning brings a heap of new garbage, “flies buzzing around my eyes, blood on my saddle.” Is the only viable long-term solution comment registration? To get that, you have to move to MovableType 3.0.

The J-School has been looking forward to MT3 for a long time, hoping for new features that would make it easier to manage the 17 blogs and 260 authors (with ~50 new authors added per semester) we currently support. What we didn’t anticipate was the new licensing scheme that could not only become prohibitively expensive, but a logistical nightmare as we try to track and pay for licenses for each new author, semester to semester. diveintomark has an excellent piece on why the “free enough” approach MT takes isn’t enough. Even if there’s a free version, tie yourself to a corporation and you’re subject to all their whims, prat falls, and unfortunate licensing decisions. Unless SixApart responds soon to my query on custom licensing, we’ll either be moving on to WordPress, a homebrew PHP/MySQL solution, or all of our blogs will be integrated into whatever CMS I choose for the rest of the J-School site this summer.

The licensing issue doesn’t apply to birdhouse — SixApart still offers a free version for non-commercial purposes. Disappointingly, MT3 offers almost no new features beyond comment registration. That’s okay – I’ve seen software revved to major numbers for minor changes plenty of times, and I wanted some real solution to the comment spam problem. So I ran the upgrade tonight. A few technical misfires (apparently not uncommon) — finally succeeded by installing the full version rather than the upgrade and then running the database upgrade script. Signed up for TypeKey, and received a token to drop into the new and improved back-end. Added the new DynamicComments directive to mt.cfg. But wait — after integrating the new comment registration tag into my templates, things fell apart. Not only were existing comments hidden from view, but when users clicked on the “Sign up to comment” link, they were told that birdhouse was not registered with TypeKey (it was). Screw it. Backpedal. Restore the original MT directory; fortunately it still worked, even though the upgrade script had modified some database structures.

MT3 is almost certainly a no-go for the J-School, and I’m increasingly skeptical about using it for birdhouse. There seems to be an MT –> WordPress exodus afoot, and I’ll probably join it. Lots of content out there on migration strategies.

Music: The Mekons :: Funeral