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A Movable Type Experiment

Blogs are becoming an easy way to have a presence on the web. Most personal sites these days are blogs. TypePad and Blogger are getting into the mainstream. They had normally been called the ICQ of websites.

The former is fee-based, while the latter is free. What sets them apart from the old days of free (or paid) websites? The richness of content and ease of use. Most of the blog content is syndicated (RSS), and links are, most of the time, ads. With blogs, you type away, add your images or photos, click a button, and, ergo, instant but professional-looking website – uh, er – blog!

Blogs are great if you love to write and put your ideas on the web. Unlike regular websites, blogs lack the snazzy extra features that give one total control of what to put on the site.

However, what it lacked in features was its ease of use, which casual web users loved the most and lured them to sign up for its services.

Since I host this site on my own web server, I decided to give the most popular one – Movable Type from SixApart – a peek.

From what I had read before, I needed the latest versions of Movable Type, MySQL, and the database hooks—these were quickly downloaded and installed on the server (Perl is also required, but this is already included in OS X).

After doing a lot of web searches, it took me some time to set it up and get it running, using instructions from maczealots.com. My plan was to incorporate the ‘blogger’ into this website but I backed out on the last-minute.

It was a hardware hog—well, at least for my current setup and use. Rebuilding was quite slow. Since the Mac G4 is also my FTP server and webcam host, I didn’t like the extra strain Movable Type put on the server. Maybe I can incorporate it on this site later on—when I get my hands on a G5!

—notes:

A few months later, after acquiring an Apple iMac G5 and testing other blogging software, I integrated the same blogger—Movable Type—into my website on Oct. 01, 2004.

My other blog: kupitero.blogspot.com

Download the XML FeedReader here

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A Short Trip to Lake Tahoe

I was feeling bored that I decided to make the four hours plus drive to Lake Tahoe, to take a breather.

English: The Gondola ride at Lake Tahoe, South...
English: The Gondola ride at Lake Tahoe, South Lake Tahoe, CA (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

After three days of revamping this site, the occasional tweaking of all the computers in the house, and my fix-your-PC moonlighting,

I had it for a while. After all, it had just been quite a while since I updated/revised my (this) site. That third revision was easier, since most of the images were already done – from the previous two versions.

My initial website and its subsequent revision were both hosted on Philippine-based servers.

After I set up my own server, I thought that making any major revisions to one’s site would be all too easy—I was wrong!

I noticed less traffic going to Lake Tahoe in Nevada, especially on weekends. Usually, the traffic is a little tighter—especially on a Friday—since the folks with RVs normally start their weekend jaunts early.

Not so these days. Maybe the Indian reservation casinos have taken a deep bite into the business of the usual casino haunts, such as Reno, Tahoe, and even Las Vegas.

We arrived with a little bit of sunlight to spare and immediately grabbed a quick bite at our favorite 24-hour cafe inside the Horizon—the spicy buffalo wings are always on our to-order list.

Afterward, it was back to Harvey’s, where we played our favorite nickel and penny slots until the early hours of Saturday.

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Waiting for the Netpliance iOpener hack parts

The thing had been sitting on a makeshift shelf in the garage—very close to the roof. I had only tested it briefly after I acquired it from an estate auction in December 2002 (too bad I missed getting the compatible Canon printer in the same auction!!!  Grrr).

Back then, hacking this piece was still a popular hobby for hardware guys. But maybe I had too much to attend to and forgot the iOpener altogether.

Last month, suddenly, after I set up yet another PC/TV for my parents in our living room using the assortment of PC hardware strewn in all parts of the garage, the final product didn’t seem to appeal to me aesthetically. Ding! Ding! Why not use a hacked iOpener instead?

Maybe it’s fortuitous. Had I done the hack earlier, the prices for the parts would have been considerably steeper! Now, I’m simply waiting for the UPS truck to arrive!

—notes:

You can see the ‘blow by blow’ account’ of the iOpener transformation (hack??) here.

After a month of on-off-on work, the hack was completed on 6/01/04. You can see the finished product here.

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Started the Revamp of this Web Site

The graphics and overall design were aging. The more I looked at them, the more I remembered my carefree days in Manila in the 1980s and 90s.

I created the original Kupitero’s Keep website in 1998 but launched it in 1999 when I finally got a decent web hosting site—Surfshop.net. Before them, I had tried many freebie hosting sites like GeoCities, Angelfire, etc., and other local ISPs like Epic.net and Tri-Isys.

The tools of the trade were the same ones I used back then: an HTML editor, Adobe Photoshop, an image animator and mapper, and a file transfer program (FTP).

I ported the site to Netscape‘s free hosting—simply called WebSites—after we terminated our contract with Surfshop.net in 2001. The nice thing was that they only put down the site in 2003. Unfortunately, Netscape’s free hosting didn’t last long as well—they stopped most of their free services after they merged with AOL (America Online).

I decided to put up my own web server only after I got broadband access — with download speeds of about 7 Mbps. I learned from the past that hosting your own site via dial-up is like torturing your viewers.

It doesn’t make a lot of sense if you only have a single phone line in the house – all your relatives will give you the ‘look’ for hogging the phone line to make your webserver/website available.

Also, imagine using a dial-up to dial-up link while streaming a large video file. Dial-up was king during the glory days of electronic bulletin board service (EBBS) before the Internet browser. 

In short, forget web serving and hosting if all you’ve got is dial-up.

The makeover I had in mind will make the overall site smaller but retain most of the features of the original site. Faster page loading—for those accessing the site via dial-up—will be my priority, and I have decided that bulky graphic files will have to go.

The components are set: the server, the gateway, and the website. For me, it looks like 1984 again.

I’m just trying to keep in step with the times.

notes:

After drinking countless pots of coffee, I launched this site’s fourth revision on May 10, 2004.

Click here if you would like to view this site’s old home page (some links there are gone, while others will lead you to the new pages within this revamped site).

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Manila’s favorite novelist, Nick Joaquin died

Manila mourns the death of one of its favorite sons, Nick Joaquin, who died April 29, 2004, in his San Juan, Metro-Manila

Gravesite of Filipino writer and National Arti...
Gravesite of Filipino writer and National Artist Nick Joaquin at the Libingan ng mga Bayani (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

home. It was via the Philippine Daily Inquirer’s web site, that I learned of the news.

I had read quite a few of his novels way back in my high school and college days, and one of my sisters, Lolet, actually knew him personally. She was a staff member at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) for quite some time before migrating to the US in 1997.

A known beer lover, Nick Joaquin will surely be missed by Manila’s intelligentsia and sensible beer house habitués– especially in the Malate and Ermita areas.

—links:

www.inq7.net
Kupitero’s 1999 review of Nick Joaquin’s Manila, My Manila

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Installed Apple’s revamped iTunes (v2.5)

Gotta love iTunes new version 2.5. Apple is pushing the envelope for more and more sassy features in their industry-leading

iTunes Dec 13
iTunes Dec 13 (Photo credit: Hanna Iris Tolonen)

music software. I basically got it for the “free downloads” (just one song – and spoon-fed by Apple and, only for one week…but, well…free is free and no matter what genre of songs they give for free, I can still gladly pack them into my barely filled iPod), to commemorate last year’s launch of the iTunes Music Store.

Notable new features were: Shuffle Play and Lossless Encoding. But, what I liked best was the new “Publish-Your-Own-Playlist” feature.

iTunes enabled me to hook up once again to most of the songs I basically grew up listening to. Since most of my music collection were in LPs and cassettes (a sure giveaway of the era I grew up in), and most of them I had either long lost or given away, iTunes enabled me to ‘rediscover’ those songs and now, have a fairly decent ‘reconstruction’ of those music that I had come to love listening to!

—link:

www.apple.com