cygweb

I was cleaning up my templates today and screwed a few things up. Thought I'd post about it to both document it and serve as a warning for other MT'ers out there.

I usually link my templates to files for safekeeping. In this case, I was removing my old templates and renaming some of the new ones to the old names (for example, the "Banner" module was deleted and "New Banner" was renamed "Banner"). After that, I'd put an appropriate template file path in. What I didn't realize immediately (it took two screw-ups for me to realize what I did) was that if the specified file already exists, MT takes its content and populates the template with it the first time the template is saved. This happened with my banner template first, and I fixed it by viewing source on a cached version of one of my pages. Before I realized what had happened (I thought it was some obscure bug), I removed my old stylesheet and updated the current one with the same template path and filename as the old. The subsequent reversion to the old style was particularly bad, since I'd customized the new stylesheet with a little layout and colors, and I couldn't find a cached version of the stylesheet to roll back to.

Luckily, I didn't do too much customization, so a little bit of work and now I'm back close to where I was. But I did things a little bit differently this time. Instead of customizing the stock MT 3.2 stylesheet, I added an MTInclude to the bottom of the template. It references a new "Custom-CSS" template module I created, where I added my own style additions (img.gravatar, img.left, and googlead) and re-stated the stock classes and IDs whose parameters (mainly colors) I'm altering. This is slightly wasteful from a CSS perspective since some rules are stated twice, but compared to the amount of overstatement already in the stock stylesheet it's no big deal. This means in the future all I have to do to customize the stock stylesheet (which will inevitably become more streamlined in future releases) is to add a single line; the MTInclude to my Custom-CSS template.

We bunted our way to the league title in Pixel's All Pro League and achieved second place in the Brutal Deluxe Baseball League. Thanks to all the participants for a fun time this year.

Yes, I know those links don't work for non-league members. It's because they're private leagues. It'd be nice if they made a public "trophy page" for each league.

33.3MB 64kbps Stereo MP3 1h 12m 45s (Courtesy of Nitevilla.net.)

This is the tenth Brutal Deluxe football podcast of the 2005 season. Scott, Don, and I review the week that was in both the BDFL and the NFL, and look ahead to week 5. We also review the fantasy leaders and surprises through a quarter-season of play.

Links:

• My Odeo Channel (odeo/7d2ff8e710040137)
• SportPodcasts.com

Credits:

• Mixed, recorded, edited and mastered by me.
• Music: "One Big Holiday" by My Morning Jacket from the Wired CD.

I've finally jettisoned the old templates from before my MT3.2 upgrade and today I moved over from Tim Appnel's MT-RSSFeed plugin and MT-Rebuild script (which stopped working with MT3.2) over to his award-winning Feeds.App and its agent. I'm only processing my Del.icio.us RSS feed at this time; my blogroll is powered by MT-Outliner querying the "Blogs" group of my Bloglines public subscription list. But it's nice to have the auto-rebuild functionality back and to have the potential to publish more feed data.

I also upgraded to the MTAmazon32 plugin and installed Media Manager, which should be powering the "Recommended" box soon. Looks like a nice plugin so far.

Update (10/8): The Media Manager plugin is now in use and I really like it. A lot better than hand-coding a link queue. Once I get more data in, I may re-launch a new "Recommended" page.

I thought I might be able to check out Invasion or Threshold, but they really haven't worked their way into my/our viewing schedule, even TiVo'd. Melissa and I are together watching Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy, House (when it's on), Lost, Alias, and The O.C. (when it's on). She's checking out The Amazing Race, America's Next Top Model, and Reunion on her own, although I'm sometimes present. I'm watching Boston Legal, which Melissa might check out as well.

We watched CSI last night, which we'd neglected to watch for a while now. It was still quite good.

The TiVo I purchased is still activated, so I've continued to get schedule updates and use it with full functionality in the bedroom. It's really cool.

I heard SNL was in HD this season and saw that the first show was letterboxed in SD. I'll have to try and check it out in HD next weekend, at least until the fake news.

Between these shows and football, that's enough TV for me. And until the baseball playoffs are over I'll be watching even less because of the pre-empted Fox shows. More time for reading, coding, playing bass, and listening to new music. I may even seek out some hockey, though I don't have OLN. The pickings are quite slim here.

Melissa and Kim decided to hit the Lancaster outlet centers (Tanger and Rockvale, in that order) yesterday and us guys (Jim, Ryan, and me) and Kim's friend Katerina went as well. Yes, it was rainy. Very rainy. Very wet. We did buy some good clothes (especially for Ryan), and I picked up some cheap refurbished Sony headphones. I also picked up the 2002 reprint of the first Dream Theater album, number 7166 of 10000, for $10. Think I'll leave it sealed up for now.

Unfortunately, being out on the coldest and wettest day of the season so far may not have been so great for Ryan. He was up coughing earlier this morning, with a fever, and Melissa and I have both tended to him. I stayed up after a 5:20am assist because there's always some reading for me to do after having been offline for a day (thanks a lot, Bloglines ;) ) and I usually can't get back to sleep after having already had my REM sleep.

Of course, being a Sunday morning, I'm thinking about the upcoming NFL games today and tweaking my picks and fantasy starters. The Baltimore-Detroit game doesn't interest me much, but Bucs-Jets (how will Vinny do?) and Eagles-Cowboys do. And I can't wait to see the Steelers take on the Chargers tomorrow night. I predict a great game from the black and gold.

OK, I'm watching the MNF game and when I saw Jeff Triplette was officiating a knew we were going to be in for some interesting calls. The worst one so far is the "fair catch interference" call that took the ball away from a Pittsburgh recovery of a muffed fair catch. Sproles' attempted fair catch bounced off his helmet and began going up and forward. Steeler Chidi Iwuoma went for the ball and recovered it. When I saw the replays, I thought Iwuoma's possession of the ball might have been challenged, but Triplette called fair catch interference. That's just bad refereeing.

I thought they really grasped to take that TD run-after-catch from Hines Ward, but I had to publicly complain after seeing one too many bad calls. Hopefully Pittsburgh hangs in there and wins; they're currently up 14-10.

I passed verification yesterday and was able to order my free iPod. I chose the white 4GB Nano. Of course, it figures Apple would announce the video iPod today and freeipods.com would offer the 30GB model. I don't know that I would've selected it, but it would have been a better choice than the 20GB Color iPod they previously had. Doh!

30.4MB 64kbps Stereo MP3 1h 06m 32s (Courtesy of Nitevilla.net.)

This is the eleventh Brutal Deluxe football podcast of the 2005 season. Scott and I review the week that was in both the BDFL and the NFL, and look ahead to Week 6. We focus on some flag-happy refs and talk about the major injuries that occurred in Week 5..

Links:

• My Odeo Channel (odeo/7d2ff8e710040137)
• Want a free iPod? Help Scott out!
• SportPodcasts.com

Credits:

• Mixed, recorded, edited and mastered by me.
• Music: "One Big Holiday" by My Morning Jacket from the Wired CD.

DHL tried to deliver my free iPod Nano today. Guess the 4-6 week warning I saw when ordering doesn't apply to the white ones! I'm considering this an early birthday present from my referrals. ;) Looking forward to receiving it tomorrow.

The iPod Nano arrived today. It's working as advertised. My only hands-on experience with an iPod was a few minutes fiddling with Don's in the car the last time I was out. It's got a great interface and is very easy to use. Now I'm finally setting up iTunes for real use, as opposed to just being installed for podcast and stream testing!

Thanks again to the people who used my link and completed an offer: Keith, Scott, Ray, and two other people I'm not sure that I know personally. The site isn't showing me the list of people who arrived through my link, so if I missed you, sorry!

I posted a few other photos out to Flickr if you want to see the packaging and swag that arrived with the Nano.

33.1MB 64kbps Stereo MP3 1h 12m 27s (Courtesy of Nitevilla.net.)

This is the 12th Brutal Deluxe football podcast of the 2005 season. Scott and I review the week that was in both the BDFL and the NFL, and look ahead to Week 7. We answer a listener's email, talk about INXS, discuss San Antonio's wooing of the Saints, reflect on the reported Vikings' cruise ship follies, and lament about the Steelers' loss. We also talk about some of the pre-trade-deadline moves.

Links:

• My Odeo Channel (odeo/7d2ff8e710040137)
• Want a free iPod? Help Scott out!
• SportPodcasts.com
• Email us text or audio comments!: BrutalDeluxe at gmail.com.
• Sponsored in part by Manolas Handmade Soaps: Check out our holiday gift items!

Credits:

• Mixed, recorded, edited and mastered by me.
• Music: "One Big Holiday" by My Morning Jacket from the Wired CD.

My birthday was this week. I got some cool CDs and DVDs off my wishlist (thanks, Mom, Dad, and Don) and Melissa gave me a nice new sweater. We're going to the local Benihana tonight for my delayed birthday meal. Our weeknights have been busy with yoga and swim classes and all (not mine, although I am swimming occasionally at the Community Center).

I think this is going to be the weekend where I finally dig out the sweaters and long-sleeve shirts in force. It's getting cold.

The iPod Nano is extremely cool. Looking forward to getting a case for it so I can take the plastic off the front! I've just started playing with its podcast, photo, and contacts capabilities. Very nice. The Sony headphones I got a few weekends ago sound great with both it and my Hi-MD. But they look better with the Nano. ;)

iTunes' ease of use is seductive compared to Foobar2000, but I like the power of Foobar that I've grown into over the past few years. I did rip a few of my newer CDs using a number of iTunes' AAC and MP3 options, staying in the 192kbps range, and everything sounds pretty cool. The fact that iTunes doesn't natively support Vorbis really bugs me. I love that format for both streaming and everyday listening, and want to support it because of its openness. Since I don't plan on doing the majority of my music management for the Nano, I really don't have to go "whole hog" into iTunes now. But it would be nice to know the option was there. I'm continuing to experiment with parsing AAC files in the hopes that I can integrate support for them on ICYG.

34.4MB 64kbps Stereo MP3 1h 15m 13s (Courtesy of Nitevilla.net.)

This is the (lucky!) 13th Brutal Deluxe football podcast of the 2005 season. Scott and I review the week that was in both the BDFL and the NFL, and look ahead to Week 8. I complain about the bye-week blues and make excuses for the Outlets' 2-5 record. Scott continues to talk about "cream". ;) There were a lot of close games this week, so we have plenty to talk about.

Made some sonic improvements to the podcast, and have added the BDFL logo and ReplayGain tags. Enjoy!

Links:

• My Odeo Channel (odeo/7d2ff8e710040137)
• Want a free iPod? Help Scott out!
• SportPodcasts.com
• Email us text or audio comments!: BrutalDeluxe at gmail.com.
• Sponsored in part by Manolas Handmade Soaps: Check out our holiday gift items!

Credits:

• Mixed, recorded, edited and mastered by me.
• Music: "One Big Holiday" by My Morning Jacket from the Wired CD.

I've mentioned here before that I play bass guitar. I'm a self-taught musician and have been playing as a hobbyist since my teens. My dad has played acoustic guitar for as long as I can remember, but I started on a portable Yamaha keyboard. Once I borrowed a friend's bass back in my college days I was hooked. At the time I was totally into Rush and Geddy Lee inspired me to make the bass my instrument.

I built up a collection of gear through college and played along with my favorite CDs to learn. Eventually I hooked up with two other guys at UB (Chris and Daryl) who played guitar and drums and wanted to play Rush, too. We called the band "Desert Ice", jammed nearly every Friday for a few years, and played the occasional party. We were driven to be good enough to entertain, but never had any illusions about making music full-time. I was the only one who sang, for the most part, so that part of our act was never high-quality. ;)

Fast forward to now. My guitars (Ibanez SR1205, Hamer Slammer Chaparral 5, Ovation Celebrity 12-string, and Fender Gemini 6-string) and bass stack (ADA MB-1 & B500B, custom-made 2x10" and 1x18" cabs) are played occasionally, but now they're seeing a bit more use. There's a new muse in town. For the last two months I've been playing bass in the contemporary choir at our church, St. Catherine Laboure.

We had occasionally attended the 7PM Sunday mass, and I'd always admired the group that played then. Mrs. Kelly, the regular organist and music teacher at the school, whom Melissa and I met before she played at our wedding, was on piano. She was joined by a guitarist, bassist, and vocalist, and everyone sang and harmonized. It reminded me of the "folk groups" at the churches I'd belonged to (both called "Church Of The Resurrection") in Memphis and Fairport. I always wondered if I was good enough to play in a group like that.

At the end of August, we attended a 7PM mass and the group was down to just Mrs. Kelly and the guitarist/vocalist I mentioned before (who happens to be Mr. Kelly). Melissa showed me an ad in the bulletin that said they were looking for a bassist, among other musicians, and that they practiced before the mass. After thinking about it during that mass and asking Melissa if it was alright to regularly attend the evening mass, I spoke to the Kellys and was welcomed to join the group.

We've played on and off these last two months; I believe it's been five times now. It's fun. I learned to read music in grade school but have never applied the discipline to sight-reading (I've relied on tablature to this point). However, I can learn the hymns pretty quickly and I "cheat" by using the chord charts and key. I'm working to develop my eye and wake up my musical ear. It's the first time I've played with people I consider "real" musicians and it's been very validating. It's also given me a reason to invest more time in my playing.

I'm also going to invest a little time in my equipment. My ADA equipment is still doing fine, but my 2x10 cab needs to be sanded, painted, and have corners & grilles put on. And my 18" cab has developed a buzz. As opposed to going out and getting "professional" cabs (and spending a few hundred bucks), I'm going to see if I can make the ones I have work for me. Luckily, there's a bass amp at the church, so I've only had to bring my bass with me. But if I start playing out at all, I want my equipment to be ready.

Working with the Kellys (John and Joreen; go check out their band) and the other new member, Lily (who sings), has been challenging fun and I look forward to continuing to play with them.

Ryan and I are visiting my parents today; they live west of DC, in Virginia. Since I'm in the market for a new case for the Nano, and our local Best Buy insured me they won't carry any until Christmastime, I suggested we hit the Apple Store in Tysons Corner. It was quite a sight. My favorite part was playing around with iTunes and GarageBand on one of the new dual-core G5's with a 30" Cinema Display and a kickin' Klipsch audio system. Ryan liked playing with some of the games on the iMac G5's at the kids' table. Quite a mecca for all things Apple.

Unfortunately, the case I want wasn't in stock. It looked like the only non-Apple Nano cases that were there were the Belkins. I'll order the case through the web store.

I had heard from Mark and from Rush.com (which has info about the sets) that the R30 concert DVD was coming, but wanted to wait and post about once I could share some linkage. I'll probably get the deluxe edition since it includes CDs and other extras that won't be with the standard edition. There is certainly the possibility that another live DVD release just two years after Rush In Rio is an attempt to milk fans like me. Oh what the heck, it's a new Rush release and I'm buying it. I sincerely hope the video is anamorphic widescreen and that the audio (both DVD and CD) isn't mastered too terribly loud. Once I get my copy, I'll review.