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Some links
I originally started this site as a notepad for things I wanted to note, but not clog my bookmarks with. In the spirit of that quest, here's a list of things clogging my bookmarks.
podSites.com Knowledge you can download into your iPod, complete with instructions on how to make podSites yourself. I know this directory must be missing many more, but all I can come up with is this NY pizza info.
181 manually selected CSS resources
6009 (and counting) Photoshop tutorials
Mighty Mouse comes out of retirement to comment on the whole Sponge Bob thing. "Mouse reminisces in his Jersey accent fondly, 'It was during the war and Mousellini sounding a little too much like Il Duce. Too ethnic. They called me Mickey at home, but Izzy said he didn't want any trouble with the Disney people. The 'toon world was pretty rough back in those days. So we came up with Mighty Mouse and it stuck.' "
Blog-like journal from the Mt. Washington Obsevatory, NH. Just the place to go if you think it's cold and windy where you are. Some cool photos too.
The Infinite Cat Project If you haven't been amazed at the internet by now, you should take a look at how many people have taken a picture of their cat looking at a picture of a cat, looking at a cat... etc.
Chicago Skyline
Gapers Block has a nice gallery of Chicago Skyline shots. I got the chance to take some myself this week.
Google fights back against comment spam
Brian has alerted our little local Weblogger group to a comment spam fix Google has suggested. It's about time Google did this, for their own sake. It's an easy fix, and Movable Type has a plug-in already and probably every other web publishing system with a comment feature will have an upgrade with this fix included soon. Basically, an attribute tells Google that any link posted by a visitor should not be followed, therefore the spam can't perform it's function - building rank in Google.
It will improve Google's accuracy and reliability when we go to search for gambling or erectile dysfunction devices. But will it stop spam? Probably not. Back when I used to get comment spam, I noticed many spam-comments would still flood in, even if I turned off the ability to add hyperlinks. Spammers simply added the URL, without a link. Whether this did anything for them, I'm not sure, but they did it. Google's suggestion only stops links from being followed by the Google spider, will it stop spammers from posting in a vain attempt to get their URLs indexed? I really don't know.
"Wait", you say, "'back when you used to get comment spam?' You mean you don't anymore?"
Nope. Not a one in about three weeks.
And then you say, "You do realize your comments are busted on KIPlog's archive pages, don't you? Does that have something to do with it?"
No, and I'll get around to that sometime. Most of my spam was on the Food blog anyway, up to 30 a day, and that isn't counting floods.
"So how did you do it"
I was afraid to say, since if we all did it, spammers would be forced to find a solution, and if nothing else, spammers are excellent at keeping ahead of us.
See the next post for a how-to.
Anti-comment spam tactic
I haven't got a comment spam in several weeks. All I did was change the filename of my comment script. That's it. This may not work for some heavy bloggers, since spammers will target them, and easily figure a way around it, but it works great for us little guys. The spammers can't comment everyone automatically if they can't automatically find the comment script. I hear some spammers have an automatic way to find out the new name, but I have been lucky enough not to encounter them yet. There's too many blogs out there to comment spam effectively by hand, although it does happen.
Here's how I did it. Your instructions may vary, see your blog publishing system's manual for details.
In the older versions of Movable Type, you'll need to hunt down the name of your comment script in all the templates.
In Movable Type 3, you can just change the file name in the configuration file (mt.cfg) and then just change the actual file name of mt-comments.cgi. I suggest upgrading anyway, for a few added benefits including a little better code that is easier on server loads.
I'm not sure how old this ability is - in the old 2.661 it looks like all you need to do is the config file and the mt-comments file. The newer version of MT has the added benefit of using indirection to point to the cgi file through the config file, thus making it slightly more difficult for spammer to find it.
Here's what to do
Open your mt.cfg file and look towards the bottom and see if it includes these lines:
# By default, the script that Movable Type uses for comments is called
# mt-comments.cgi, the TrackBack script is called mt-tb.cgi, the
# search engine script is called mt-search.cgi, the XML-RPC server
# script is called mt-xmlrpc.cgi, and the dynamic blog view script is
# called F
# some situations--for example, if you are running MT under mod_perl, or if
# your server requires that your Perl scripts have the extension .pl--you
# may need different names for these scripts. You can set the names that will
# be used throughout the default templates and Movable Type code by changing
# these values.
#
# CommentScript mt-comments.pl
# TrackbackScript mt-tb.pl
# SearchScript mt-search.pl
# XMLRPCScript mt-xmlrpc.pl
# ViewScript mt-view.pl
If it doesn't have those lines, it's a bit more complicated, you have to search and replace on all the templates, modifying code, if you can do that, then you don't need me, if you can't, you might as well wait til you upgrade.
If it does, all you need to do is change the line that says "# CommentScript mt-comments.pl"
1st - remove the pound sign (this sign hides the line from all the scripting, so removing it makes it active,
2nd - change the line to "CommentScript mt-hidecomments.cgi"
I just added the 'hide' but you could add whatever short word you want. The idea is just to change the name from the default, which all the spamming bots look for. Perhaps it's even wiser to change the whole filename to something like "mt-purplemonkey.cgi" just in case the spammers get wise and search for anything with the string "comments.cgi" in it.
Save the mt.cfg file back up to your server.
Next, change the actual file name on your server from mt-comments.cgi to mt-hidecomments.cgi or whatever you changed it to.
You should be able to do this with any FTP program. Look for a command that says something like 'rename file or directory' and highlight the file name, and change it. If you can't do it that way, change the name on your machine, upload it to the server in ascii mode, and delete the original mt-comments.cgi file.
That should be it. The permission on the file shouldn't change, so you don't have to worry about it. If the comments dont work after the change, it's cause the permission changed, it should be chmod 755. Permissions set to 755 means that all users on the system have Read and Execute permissions; only the owner should have Write permissions. Just do a google search on chmod, or look in the MT manual, it's not as complex as it sounds.
When you're all done, rebuild your site.
Welcome back to being able to enjoy hearing from your audience again.
For more help see Six Apart Guide to Comment Spam for this and other anti-spam tactics.
If any one has any resources for doing this fix in other weblog publishing systems, pass it along.
Good luck!
MOMA
I love how this model only has one car on the street.
There's been quite a few reviews of the new MOMA recently, so I thought I'd post mine. I was lucky enough to have someone on the street give me a corporate ticket, otherwise I would have had to pay the 20 bucks and stand on a long line in the rain. They have an entire parking lot mazed with police sawhorses and ropes for when the line gets really bad. The day I was there wasn't that bad, but apparently there was an hour wait for the coat check. The line for the registers in the 'design' shop was scary, but this was just before Christmas.
Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk in the large
contemporary room
It is a very cool space, and most of the art has room to 'breathe', but often the visitors don't. While the newness will wear off, I doubt the number of visitors will drop by much. Perhaps living in Chicago has made me uncomfortable around ridiculously large NY-sized crowds, but being stuck on a glass bannistered, newly built bridge, three stories up, with so many people that you can't raise your arms, makes me a little nervous. The entire museum wasn't crowded, only a few critical traffic flow areas.
Some Brancusi
In the design exhibit.
An iBook in the design exhibit.
In the design exhibit.
Warhol's soup cans
Don't get me wrong, the art, and the space co-exist in a very cool way, but something about the flow was distracting. Everyone seemed lost and aimlessly doubling back and forth. I repeatedly overheard "we've been through this room already" and "did we miss something?". Even worse, I couldn't figure out what it was that caused it, but something appeared to be messing with everyone's sense of direction. Perhaps Yoshio Taniguchi's brilliant intent was to have the visitor wander, rather than be herded through a prescribed path.
The helicopter over the main staircase.
Fortunately, there were only a few jam-packed spaces and in most cases there are no distractions from the art. As for their placements and grouping, I'll leave that to the art historians and critics, but the subtle connections between pieces mingling in the same room can teach you more about movements, influences and trends than any, thankfully absent, oversized, sans-serifed, narrative signs. Also thankfully absent, are 'interactive media interfaces', so common in some other museums. If you want to read about art, there's a bookstore disguised as a library on one of the floors. Don't ask me how to get there though.
Knowledge on the Web
Just some random knowledge found on the web:
The Non-Expert: When in Manhattan... Lots of stuff you need to know NY, from how to tell if a taxi is taken, to where the bars are. "East Village and the Lower East Side are the best areas for pub crawls, unless you like faux-Irish Bars (in which case try Murray Hill around third avenue), or frat parties (the upper east and west sides). Wild generalizations that are mostly true about popular destinations: the Union Square area is a wasteland when it comes to drinking; SoHo is a dead zone; TriBeCa is hard to navigate; the Meatpacking District should be destroyed; Canal street is blowing up; NoLiTa is pretentious; the West Village has few places worth pursuing after sunset; and Chelsea is fun for boys unlike ourselves."
Us.ef.ul A beginner's guide to The Next Big Thing A how-to for del.icio.us
50 Strategies For Making Yourself Work Mainly for writers, but most of the concepts are worthwhile. Of course you can look at it the other way at whywork.org.
Britney Spear's Guide to Semiconductor Physics "It is a little known fact, that Ms Spears is an expert in semiconductor physics. Not content with just singing and acting, in the following pages, she will guide you in the fundamentals of the vital laser components that have made it possible to hear her super music in a digital format."
Color to Black and White photo conversion
A great color to black and white conversion technique.
Here's an example of this technique:
The original RGB image:
The image converted using only Image > Mode > Grayscale. With out color, the image is flat. It needs tone:
The image using the above technique.
It should be noted that there are many other techniques to convert from color to black and white. You could simply desaturate, you could channel mix (Photoshop uses a standard calculation to mix the red, green and blue channels to make one gray channel, but you can favor one channel or another to suit the image) you could channel mix with more control by converting the channels to separate layers, and restack, and mess with each layer's opacity, you could do this mixing with a combination of masks or you could use any number of techniques to create a duotone, tritone or even a quadtone.
Keep in mind duotones and the technique exampled above do not actually create grayscale images. If your image is going to be printed on a one color press, you'll need to do your conversion with channel mixing, contrast control and maybe some burning and dodging or a mask. I won't even go into dot-gain and other one color printing issues.
But if you're creating an image for the web, or to be printed on an ink-jet or dye-sub printer, the image can still be an RGB file and the technique exampled above is the fastest, and most consistent one I've tried. If the image is going to a high end press you could try any of the duotone/tritone, etc. presets in Photoshop. There's high end multitone art printing too, but if you're paying for that, you might as well pay someone to do the multitone as well. With 2 color or process color printing you could try the above technique with a PMS color or even a process color. As always, talk to your separation expert in the prepress room before using these techniques or taking any medication.
An explanation of another technique - the dodge and soft light blend - Digital Black and White. Includes downloadable actions.
UPDATE: I thought I'd give DesignByFire and the Imaging Revue site credit for the technique before I republished it here. But when I needed to look it up, the link was down. So here it is, para-phrased.
Convert the image to LAB color. In the Channel palette, select the Lightness channel, then convert the image to Grayscale. Cmd+Click (MacOS) or Ctrl+Click (Windows) the thumbnail in the Channels palette to load a selection, then choose Inverse from the Select menu.
With the selection still active, convert the image to RGB color. With the selection still active, create a Solid Color Adjustment layer, and fill it with a rich, dark color.
Adjust the opacity of the Solid Color adjustment layer and add a Levels or Curves adjustment layer to bump the contrast as needed. Tweak the color of the Solid Color adjustment layer to control various tones.
Design and work links
Web Design in 2005 "After taking a long, hard look at the past year in web design, we've decided to try our hand at predicting what's in store for next year." Personally I predict many more centered-content-area, drop-shadow-bordered and image-banner-on-top type pages in the coming year.
Float layouts "When we make an element floating, we ask the browser to shift it sideways, either to the left or to the right, as far as it will go. Those who really understand the previous sentence already know half of what you need to know to use floats. "
Print out HREFs on Links for Print StyleSheet and to go along with it - Generate Footnotes from Links
The most useful free thing from last year: Style Master CSS podGuide. Download a CSS reference guide for your iPod. Don't tell everybody though, and you'll be able to impress all the other designers by rattling off selector syntax and default values of properties while pretending to adjust your volume.
Mac OS X safe update tips What the all-powerful Zeldman advises when updating your machine. "Apple's 10.3.6 update to OS X Panther worked wonderfully well for many users. But it created problems for many others, including slow startups, bizarre internet connection delays, and the sudden failure of networked drives. Apple has just solved that problem by introducing version 10.3.7, which unfortunately creates problems for some users including slow startups, bizarre internet connection delays, and the sudden failure of networked drives. Oops."