Finally

I'm finally working on getting this blog ported over to WP. It's pretty much ready to go, although I have a bunch of stuff to clean up yet. I'm also toying with a redesign of the Bitters blog. That thing is so cluttered it's not funny. A three-column format seems the way to go, and I found a great WP theme. I just need to adjust it a bit.

March 26, 2007 07:54 AM
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Jeeeeezussss

Wow.

I had to downgrade back to MT 3.2 to get this thing going again. And good luck finding it anywhere. I had to Google mt-3.2.zip and download it off some random person's web directory.

I mean, really. I first installed MT3.3 over the top of my 3.2 install. Okay, it's no surprise that didn't work. But even a fresh install didn't work. Believe me, I tried everything I could.

It's frustrating. I can usually get a new version of MT to work. It's NEVER easy, for fuck's sake, but I can usually work it out. But 3.3 completely stymied me, and I no longer have the time or patience to fuck with it. Why spend hours and hours on every new version? Seriously? Yay for the MT nerds who live for this or have nothing better to do, and BIGGER YAY for me that I'm not among them.

I know that 6A is aiming MT at the enterprise crowd, and pointing the nontechies at LiveJournal, TypePad, and Vox. But they still don't have a solution I like for hosting something in my own space. But, Christ, with 6A, you're either a novice or a programmer. There's no room for someone like me in their plan.

Sigh.

Next step is exporting my archives and installing WordPress to run this blog. I'm finished with Movable Type.

I still like LJ and Vox, so as much as I'd love to tell 6A to piss off, I can't quite. But. Fuck MT.

On the plus side, I have some ideas how to integrate this site's design with that of adashofbitters.com, if they're both on WP, so that's cool anyway.

October 24, 2006 10:30 PM
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MT3.3????

Wow. I totally fucked up the MT3.3 install. I guess I didn't really fuck it up. After all, my archives weren't nuked and I can still post. But lots and lots and lots of shit are really broken, and I don't think I can fix them. Sigh. Fuck off, Movable Type.
September 2, 2006 10:49 PM
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Testing the 3.2 Beta

Hey, those of you who give a damn about these things, please go over here and help me test the beta version of MT 3.2. I'll probably upgrade on the main blogs as soon as 3.2 leaves beta.

It'll be especially helpful if you leave comments since I want to play around with the Community features in 3.2. If you have a TypeKey ID, try posting comments both with and without it. If you don't know what I mean, don't sweat it.

Don't worry about the design on the test blog. I'm just using the default MT templates (which, admittedly, are much, much nicer than the old defaults), and I'll be using my own design after I upgrade this blog.

Okay, thanks.

August 18, 2005 11:54 AM
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This is for you, JoSH

Also, I'm trying something new here. Since JoSH reads my blog in straight text format on his iPod, of all things (as webby as I am, I still can't believe how cool that is), he finds that HTML tags for links and images and so forth get in his way. I don't post images often, and I can't do much to help him when I do, but I can separate links out to the end of my post, as I've done in the previous two entries. Lemme know how this works for you. Aside: If LoSH means Legion of Super Heroes, what do you think JoSH means? Jugs of Super Heroines? Jumbled, or Short Handed? Gimme yer thoughts. [links: Laugh Stupid]
June 10, 2005 12:43 PM
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I think I'm back

Well, it appears I'm back, on the new server and all that crap. I'm sure something's going to be broken, though....
April 26, 2005 10:41 PM
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No worky

My mike@michaeldietsch.com email isn't working for the moment. It's probably because I fell behind on paying my web host. (Which also means my site might temporarily go offline soon.) Tomorrow, after I get paid, I'll start the process of switching hosts. If things go weird here for a while, that's why.
April 14, 2005 12:43 PM
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Invisible site changes

I made a couple more tweaks today. At JOSH's behest, I changed my RSS feeds so that they'll provide the full text of my entries, rather than just small summaries. I changed not only this blog, but my book blog as well. I've also added geographic metadata to the main page of this site. It looks like this: I used the information for Bushwick provided by the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names. As far as I can tell, those coordinates actually put you in Bed-Stuy rather than Bushwick, but to most of the world, it's all the same anyway. Finally, I cleaned up a few in-site navigation links that were broken.
February 17, 2005 03:52 PM
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Annoyance of the day

I seem to have licked the comment spam problem, at least temporarily, but now TrackBack spam has started appearing. I don't really use TrackBack much here. The times I have turned on TrackBack for posts, no one's tracked back to me, so I realized it was a waste of time. So now I've gone back through my blog and switched it off on the few entries that had it.
February 1, 2005 10:25 AM
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Testing

Affordable Host "upgraded" the server on which this site resides, and I've noticed that some stuff has broken. (Not to mention, they removed the only webmail program with a decent interface.) I'm probably following Pirate Merry's hordes over to Liquid Web soon.... But that requires migrating all these Movable Type files over to a different hosting company. Pain. In. The. Ass. Anyway, this entry is here in part to bitch about AH and in part to make sure I can still post to this website.
January 13, 2005 08:46 AM
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Troll!

Hey, look! A troll. And an anonymous one, to boot!
January 11, 2005 01:19 PM
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G'wan

Kick the tires. Lemme know what you think. I've already figured out that certain actions (like clicking the Archives link) cause IE (for Windows 2000, at least) to crash. This is bad since, like, 195% of web surfers use IE. UPDATE: I appear to have fixed the Archive problem. When I ran the code through the HTML validator, I realized that I forgot to close off an H1. I had <h1>dietsch<h1>, where I should have had <h1>dietsch</h1>. And, that simple error, friends, caused IE to crash. Why do so many people still use that browser? I guess the same reason so many people think the sun revolves around the earth.
January 10, 2005 07:31 PM
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Spam, TypeKey, etc.

Bloggers Ben Hammersley and Reid Stott discuss another side to the comment-spam problem: that of the web providers that host blogs. It seems many web-hosting companies are facing such a server load, as spammers bomb weblogs with comment spam, that they are opting to stop supporting and hosting MT sites altogether. Reid Stott makes another observation that echoes many of my complaints, but let me back up for a minute before I address Stott's observation. One potential solution to the comment-spam problem is to set up TypeKey authentication for commenting. This basically forces a potential commenter to register on your site before they can comment there. Stott points out how hard it is to find Six Apart's TypeKey documentation. You've heard me blag on about how frustrating it is to install or fix MT problems when the documentation is so hard to find and understand, and I'm happy to see someone echo this frustration. It is encouraging to hear from Anil Dash that 6A is working on the problem, but I suspect that whatever fix 6A implements will just get "broken" again by spammers as the war escalates. Sigh. I can't decide who's worse--the jackass spammers or the dumbasses who buy from them, thus encouraging them to spam all the more.
December 14, 2004 01:07 PM
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Comment spam, part whatever

I've taken a couple of steps that I hope will cut down on comment spam. Only one is actually noticeable--when you click the Comments link, you'll no longer see a popup window for the comment. Let's hope these steps help.
December 5, 2004 02:19 PM
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New form of spam

Ben Hammersley discusses a new form of comment spam, in which a commenter leaves a generic comment like "Nice site!" or "I agree!" The URL in the comments points to the person's personal website (something like www.stephjones.com), but the URL doesn't resolve to an actual domain, so when you follow the link, the page comes up blank. Since the commenter isn't saying anything of substance, and since the URLs don't work, I've assumed these were spam and deleted all of them accordingly. I'm glad to see a reasonable explanation for why this is happening.
November 9, 2004 12:17 PM
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Enough of this shit

So I finally decided to upgrade to MT3, but first I wanted to switch the database over from Berkeley to MySQL. I went to Elise's Learning MT site, I googled up other instructions, and I followed the instructions on the MT site. However, switching databases seems to have somehow switched off MT-Blacklist, which is a side effect that none of the instructions mentioned. Had I known it would fuck with my plugins, I might not have bothered. So to my delight, then, I came in this morning to find hundreds of new spam comments on this blog. There's nothing fun about coming in every morning and having to sweep out piles of shit from my Mail inbox (in the new-comment notification) and my blog comments. Continue reading "Enough of this shit"
October 29, 2004 09:54 AM
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More on comment spam

Jay Allen, in discussing why he hasn't updated the master blacklist since the 9th, explains why Blacklist 2.0 is a better option for fighting spam--to wit, it allows you to moderate the addition of comments to older blog entries, thus freeing you to leave comments open on those entries and still not worry about spammers getting in. So that's another option. However, Blacklist 2.0 runs only with Movable Type 3.0 and up, to which I've not yet upgraded. I've closed off comments now on about half this blog's entries, and I've already noticed a marked difference in how much spam I receive. MT3 does offer other attractive new features, such as entry scheduling (which would allow me to write up an entry now and schedule it to be posted to my blog, say, tomorrow or next week) and subcategories (which I want; I'd love to have an overreaching New York City category and several subcats under it). So I have a couple good reasons to upgrade, and I can get in on the unsupported free upgrade, which probably works for me for now, since I've never used MT support, and I'm the only author on this blog. It's really just a matter of making the time.
October 27, 2004 08:45 AM
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Fighting comment spam

Comment spam is getting to be a big problem around here, although I'm probably still on the low-to-moderate end of the scale in terms of how much spam I get on the site. I already use MT-Blacklist, which works very well, but spammers stay a couple steps ahead of it, so it can't catch everything. I need futher protection. I'm going to slowly roll out a few changes around here, in an effort to keep it down. Most of these changes are borrowed from an entry on Elise Bauer's excellent Learning Movable Type blog. In no particular order, here are the changes I'm planning (these are adapted from Elise's entry, so visit the link above to read more): Continue reading "Fighting comment spam"
October 20, 2004 09:26 AM
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Archive templates

I finally tweaked the archive templates for this blog, something I've meant to do for months. I still don't know why, when you click some permalinks, the entry's text completely whites out, but I've noticed that on other MovableType blogs, so it's not just me. I have a couple other fixes to make to the archive templates, but those will have to wait.
May 13, 2004 01:16 PM
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Kinja

For those of you who pay attention to such things, I've created a Kinja digest and added the appropriate links to my page (under Syndication). I'm not certain how much I'll use Kinja myself; as one of its principals, Nick Denton, himself notes, "Kinja is an RSS reader for those who don't know what RSS is", and since I do know what it is, it's probably not really meant for me. However, I've been wanting to check it out. I've long thought that blogging and Web publishing in general are needlessly complex for the casual user, who doesn't care to know what trackback pings, RSS, XML, readers, or permalinks are, but who would nonetheless happily use those features if they were de-geeked, simple to understand, and simple to use. Kinja seems like a step in that direction. The other reason I wanted to try Kinja is simpler: all the cool kids are doing it, and I'm nothing if not a crowd-following, slack-jawing, tech-geeking, sushi-eating, latte-sipping bandwagon jumper. I checked out A9 the day it went public, and hell, I'd try Gmail if they'd let me.
April 22, 2004 01:26 PM
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My other blog

I have a new blog! It's in addition to this one, not a replacement for this one. The new one's so easy to manage, it's like sitting back and letting it write itself! W00t!
December 11, 2003 10:56 AM
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Jumble jumble

It's a bit of a mess around here, as I'm trying to add stuff to this page. Gimme some time and I'll work it all out.
November 10, 2003 10:41 AM
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What I'm reading

You'll note a new Media option in the list of links. There I have a running list of what I'm reading and listening. My eventual goal is to have all that on the main page, but that's still down the road a bit.
November 2, 2003 11:05 PM
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Blog comment spam

I got my first blog comment spam today, in the form of strings of URLs shotgunned at several of my blog entries. From what I've been able to figure out, here's what blog-comment spam is all about: Google uses a feature called PageRank to rate sites. The more links there are to a certain site, the higher up that site appears in Google's search results. Spammers are flooding the comments pages of blogs in an effort to raise up their sites' PageRank ratings. Four of my entries were hit, and I deleted all four spam comments. I'm going to have to keep more-careful watch on my comments, I guess. Luckily, I get an email message whenever a new comment is posted. Jay Allen has released the MT-blacklist plugin, which enables quick-delete of comment spam, and I'll have to look into installing that. More on spam comments: Blog Comment Spam on the Rise, Comment Spam, Blog Comment Spam. Also, since this has hit bloggers pretty hard, many more have commented. Do this Google search for more info: blog+comment+spam. Addition: Also see Bill Thompson's article on the BBC News site.
October 28, 2003 11:37 AM
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License

I've added an explicit disclaimer to my Colophon today, which explains the rights to anything you might find on this website. Most of my weblog pages already have a Creative Commons license, but I hadn't yet applied that license to my longer writings or to my photographs. Today, however, I got an e-mail from someone in Brazil, saying they'd found a couple of my pictures in a Google search, and asking whether they could use one of those pictures in a photo montage. I granted permission so long as the person credits me for the work and doesn't sell the photo. I think it's so cool that someone in Brazil likes my photos enough to reuse one.
October 6, 2003 06:18 PM
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I'm back

Here I am, settling comfortably into new digs. Poke around a bit, tell me whether you like or hate it. Over in Changes is a list of what's changed on the site and with the weblog, in case you're wondering.
September 24, 2003 03:52 PM
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Transferring servers

If all went well, I should have started the process tonight of moving this site onto a different server, hosted by a different hosting company.

What this means is that, for technical reasons, my pages might go offline--but it should be for no longer than a day or two.

This assumes that all goes well. We'll see.

Also, my mike@michaeldietsch.com mail might also be temporarily unavailable during this switch, but again I hope it's for only a short period.

September 10, 2003 09:41 PM
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I'm not dead

The last couple of weeks have been busy, stressful, and tiring, and instead of spending time on this site, I've been starting to redesign and overhaul my entire site. My plan for September is to transfer this site to a different hosting company and to transfer my blog over from Radio UserLand to Movable Type; but all of that will take some time, and so if you don't see me much around here, that's what's going on.

August 30, 2003 12:04 PM
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Damn blank page

I assume some of you have seen a blank white page when you visited today. I think it's some kind of glitch in the software I use to post to my weblog, because it happens at random and I've never been able to isolate anything that I'm doing wrong.
So, this is kind of a test post, to make sure everything's groovy again. Sorry for the delay, but when I'm at work, I can't access the console for my weblog to fix the blank pages.

July 14, 2003 08:01 PM
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I am alive...

...it's just been a crazy-ass couple of weeks....

July 2, 2003 08:01 PM
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Sidebar changes

You'll notice some changes to the sidebars here. First, I've added a "Currently Reading" sidebar, courtesy the folks at All Consuming. The interface is nice; now that I've added the proper code to my Web log and tweaked the appearance to match my design, I only need to update my info on All Consuming when I start or finish a book (I say "only," but I'm a horrible procrastinator, so it's not really simple where I'm concerned.)
Also, I've tweaked the appearance of the links sidebar, and I think it's now much easier to read.
My next tasks are to continue categorizing my archived blog posts, straighten out the links system so that archived posts actually link correctly (many links are currently broken), and then create links to the categories pages.

May 10, 2003 01:40 PM
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Semantic Blog


the fight for semantics. Jon Udell's got a nice piece about the emergingly Semantic Blog. One part he missed was the emergence of CC licenses as part of the semantic blog space. Movabletype and Userland now both incorporate CC license options. The technique we've used with html has been questioned, but we are pushing hard to get RDF out there.... [Lessig Blog]

I haven't read these documents yet, but I did some Semantic Web work in my master's program, and it fascinates me. Once the Radio implementation of the CC license rolls out (if it hasn't already), I'll look into putting it in my site. Cool stuff.

April 21, 2003 10:51 PM
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More Fugue State trivia

Not only am I linked at the blog LibraryStuff, but the owner Steven M. Cohen, has me in his RSS feed as well. Thanks, Steven! I appreciate that.
Also, I found out, by accident, where my posts when I put them in categories. This means I'll start going through my Web log, categorizing everything, and eventually linking to the categories pages, so it's easy to click a link and find all posts in a certain category. As I mentioned earlier, this'll make it easy to find, say, New York stories.

April 20, 2003 09:58 AM
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RoommateFinders.net seeks to clears up confusion

Back in January, I posted a link to a New York Times article about an online roommate-locater service and its owner. The owner of the roommate site--RoommateFinders.com--also owned, at the time (he might still, I don't know), a Holocaust-revisionist site that is critical of Jews. It appears that somehow wires between the two sites were crossed; email messages also critical of Jews and Israel were mailed out to people who had registered for the roommate site.
Oops.
I posted in this space back in January, linking to the Times article and commenting as follows:


This seems pretty vile; you can bet when it comes time to move from here, I won't be using RoommateFinders.

Now, to further complicate this story, RoommateFinders.com shares a similar name with an entirely unrelated roommate site--RoommateFinders.net. (Note the difference--dot-com versus dot-net; it's important.)
The woman who owns RoommateFinders.net has suffered harm to her business and to her personal reputation as a result of being unfairly associated with the owner of RoommateFinders.com. What makes it worse for her is that she is, in her own words, "a nice Jewish girl".
People googling the name RoommateFinders were finding my comments--and not just mine, but also the original Times article and comments from many others protesting the perceived anti-Semitism of the owner of RoommateFinders.com. Unfortunately, people weren't recognizing that RoommateFinders.net never had anything to do with either RoommateFinders.com or the Holocaust-revision site.
I hear it was once common practice--and may still be--for people to write into newspapers and make the following statement:

I am not the Michael F. Dietsch who, as your newspaper reported, was recently arrested for drunken driving.
Sincerely,
Michael T. Dietsch

Consider this a nearly identical letter: RoommateFinders.net does not equal RoommateFinders.com.

I apologize for any confusion my comments might have caused and I have edited my original entry to remove any reference to RoommateFinders. Anyone searching on RoommateFinders should find only this retraction and not the original entry.

April 7, 2003 06:39 PM
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More Fugue State trivia

Wow. Suddenly a lot's going on. Privacy Digest points out links to several privacy and information-policy organizations, which I've added to my sidebar, and also provides information about new RSS feeds out of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which I think might have redesigned its Web site.

April 6, 2003 07:18 PM
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Categories testing

I've decided to enable Categories routing on this Web log. Ideally, this should make it easier for those who are interested in my New York stories to filter out intellectual freedom geekery, and vice versa.
But I'm not really sure how it works yet, so I'm just tinkering around with it. Patience.

April 6, 2003 11:07 AM
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Some testing notes

I get this weird behavior with UserLand sometimes where it either fails to publish an update, leaving only previous updates on the page, or it provides only a blank white page where my blog should be. It usually self-corrects, but not always quickly enough for my impatience. I can sometimes force it to update by pushing through a couple of test messages, so if you ever see that, now you'll know why. Sorry for the annoyance or inconvenience.
March 30, 2003 10:17 PM
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What's Fugue State worth?

Take Stock in Weblogs. Take Stock in Weblogs - Blogshares is a web-based simulation of stock market where the commodity is weblog linkage. Currently, Metafilter is worth $27774.44. What's your weblog worth? [MetaFilter]

Probably nothing, but I'm working through the registration process to find out.
March 30, 2003 05:03 PM
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Lasica on RSS and News Aggregation

J. D. Lasica, from Online Journalism Review, writes on the growing popularity of RSS feeds and news aggregators. You've seen me talk a little about implementing an aggregator to help keep this Web log updated, but I never really explained it. Lasica sets it all straight.
January 25, 2003 10:35 AM
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Site revamp!

Done and done. New design is loaded to the site, new logging tool seems to be working well, after some annoying glitches. Look around. Have a gander. Tell me what you think. That's what the comments are for, dammit.
November 28, 2002 04:41 PM
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Redesigns, libraries, etc.

So, the site redesign and update are almost done. I need to cull dead links, tidy up the resume, and make sure all's smooth, but it should be up very soon. Perhaps surprisingly soon. Meanwhile. Saturday was a nice New York day for the Dietsch. I went on a tour, finally, of the NYPL in midtown. The big one with the lions, y'know. Anyway, with all the time I'd spent there, editing and stuff, it was nice to finally have a look around at the place. See things I didn't take the time to look at when I was making it my place of employment, y'know. I hung around after the tour and saw the NYC Eats exhibit, up on the third floor. Cool stuff. Lots of paper ephemera like menus and napkins from restaurants, diners, street vendors, and other food purveyors from New York's history. All of this is in the Library's collection. People don't think of libraries collecting menus and photographs and postcards, but you'd be amazed. I then headed down the Bowery, to CBGB's 313 Gallery, next door to the famous rock venue. 313 had a showing of Illegal Art. The idea is to represent artists who use corporate icons, slogans, or familiar characters in ways of which their owners might not approve. So Disney-character porno cartoons, for example, or Kieron Dwyer's riff on the Starbucks logo. If you read this blog--yeah, both of you--you can understand why this would attract me. Creative expression depends entirely on allowing people to take ideas and concepts from other sources, filtering those ideas through their own mindware, and creating something new. This ties in perfectly with the IP and copyright and cyberlaw stuff I've been following. I could go on, but I've been drinking, and I'm not sure I'd make much sense. Also, I'm not sure either of you want to hear it.
November 28, 2002 12:51 AM
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Radio silence

Sorry for the lack of updates. I've been busy working on a redesign for this place. I have the basic look worked out, although there's some bugs to fix. I still need to overhaul this damn Web log, and go through all my content pages, culling out dead links, adding and subtracting content, and so on. That's taking up time I might otherwise spend blogging. Trust me. I think you'll appreciate the time I've spent on all this.
November 16, 2002 11:19 AM
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Comments: The Returned

Comments have returned. I noticed that now that I'm posting more often, stuff is moving from the main page onto the archive pages more quickly. Posts shouldn't stay on this main page forever, but I think they should be available for longer than a week! I've adjusted my settings to fix that, and I'll tinker with it a bit until I get it right.
July 2, 2002 01:36 PM
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More on comments

You might have noticed that comments have disappeared from my blog today. Enetation, the company that powers my commenting feature, appears to be having server problems. Avoiding problems like this was one reason I wanted to try to employ a script on my own server to enable comments, but I tried several scripts and could never make them work. I must use a third-party solution of some sort because Blogger doesn't (yet) provide a built-in comments feature. I could migrate to Movable Type or another solution that does provide comments, but those packages require PHP, which my server provider doesn't support. Sigh.
July 2, 2002 12:29 PM
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Comments enabled

Okay, I have comments enabled now. Let's see whether I'm just pissing in a river....
June 23, 2002 08:47 PM
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Renaming

It's time to rename my blog, but I'm low on ideas.
May 30, 2002 12:36 AM
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Twaddlin'

I've updated my writings page again. I'm sure it's self-indulgent twaddle, but humor me.
May 7, 2002 10:55 PM
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Cool.

Cool. It's working. Okay, Web site is now completely updated. I've gone through and updated my resume, my bio pages, the colophon (previously About this site), and my photo pages. I've added a page for short writings and so forth. I've finally hit on a design I really like, but I'll still probably change it again in a couple months. We'll see. I've been working all day on this. I think I've had the sum of a 4 ounces of roasted chicken and some cereal to eat. Just one of those days when you're so involved in what you're doing that time whooshes by and you don't even think to eat or take a break or anything. But a pizza's now on its way.
January 1, 2002 07:43 PM
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Down and Out

I've been reading George Orwell's first novel Down and Out in Paris and London in preparation for my trip. I've intended to read this book for quite a while, and this seemed like the perfect time. Orwell writes about a young writer living in poverty in the two cities. The book is based in part on his own experience as a young writer living in poverty in the two cities, and that comes across in rich character detail and his descriptions of living for days without food. It's quite a brilliant book, really, and although I'll be actually be rather up and in while in Paris and London, it seemed a perfect title to borrow for my log.
December 10, 2001 07:13 PM
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Newer new design

Oh boy. Yes, boys and girls, it's time for a new design for this site. Hope you didn't like the old one too much, because it's history.
November 21, 2001 09:59 PM
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Redesigns, etc.

I just finished a relatively major update and overhaul to my site. I changed some of the headline fonts, replaced the background image, tweaked the colors, and added a bunch of new photos. There's new text on virtually every page, or at least changes to existing text, so if you're reading this and you're interested enough, go read through my site. My resume looks okay, but I still need to make some changes to my Course Information page. Just minor stuff, really, but it needs done. Otherwise, Japanese is still a challenge. I've memorized most of the hatagana syllabary now, but only in one direction. That is, I can look at most of the characters and tell you what sound is associated with it. I can't yet really go the other way, and unfortunately, I was quizzed on that this morning. I bombed it. Well, it's only five points and at least I know my weaknesses. I'll study up on that starting today. I'd love to go to the IU Swing Club this evening--learn a few moves, meet some ladies, get more exercise--but I'm not sure I have the time right now.
September 3, 2001 04:38 PM
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Ha!

Ha! I think I finally got this Web log looking the way I want. The archives and the archive index finally match the rest of my site in terms of layout and so on. Of course, I still suspect I'm the only one spending much time here. Feh.
July 13, 2001 01:41 AM
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This Web log is working out

This Web log is working out pretty well. I obviously need to update the archive templates to look more like the rest of my site. Pretty ugly right now, but I think I can fix that when I have some spare time. Now I just need people to come visit!
June 27, 2001 12:41 AM
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Name servers and me

Wheee! IU's name server finally points to my Web page when you type in michaeldietsch.com, so in a couple days, it should be ready for the whole world to see. Holy cow.

Okay, so what am I talking about with propagation and name servers and DNS entries? In a nutshell, here's how the Web works. You type a domain name, like--oh--www.michaeldietsch.com, into your browser. The browser sends off a request to your Internet service provider's name server, which is a machine that changes domain names into numeric IP addresses. The name server translates www.michaeldietsch.com into the IP address 168.144.201.250. (Try it. Type 168.144.201.250 into your browser--or copy and paste it--and you should arrive straightaway at my Web site.) Your request for a Web page actually goes to a number, not to a name.

So, why do computers bother with the number and not with the names themselves? Look at my example again. The address 168.144.201.250 "belongs" to SoftCom, the company that's hosting my pages. They're only loaning it to me for the time I have my pages on their servers. If I move to another Web host, that company will assign my site a new IP number, but my name, www.michaeldietsch.com, will stay the same. SoftCom can then reuse 168.144.201.250 for another customer.

Here's an analogy that might make more sense: Say you want to call a friend on the telephone but you don't know his number. You pick up the phone, call information, and say, "I'd like the number for David Lichty in Indianapolis, please." The operator offers to connect your call and you're done. If David moves to a new number, all you have to do is call information again and they'll connect you to his new number. The phone company can then reuse David's old number for another customer.

In my case, I registered www.michaeldietsch.com with a company called Dotster back in November. All this time, it has resided on a server at Dotster. But it had no content. Dotster was simply holding it for me until I was ready to use it. In fact, type www.michaeldietsch.net into your browser. You should see a page that says "Future Home of a Dotster Registered Domain" with ad content for Dotster. I own both domain names and simply haven't decided yet what to do with michaeldietsch.net.

But imagine this. I register at Dotster and park my domain there for seven months. Anywhere in the world, if anyone were so inclined to type www.michaeldietsch.com into a browser, they'd see that Dotster page. Now, I've shifted the domain name over to SoftCom's servers. This was like David Lichty moving to a new address and needing a new telephone number. In the case of Web addresses, however, they have to be registered with name servers all over the world whenever they move house. This takes time--anywhere up to 72 hours.

June 18, 2001 08:17 PM
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Bugs

Well, I finally got most of the bugs worked out of the blog, and I was able to fit it pretty snugly within my own design, which wasn't easy. Still a couple things not working quite right, but I won't bitch too much about that. I'm checking to make sure that the DNS entry has propagated for my URL and it's getting there. @Home's DNS server recognizes my pages, but IU's still points to the Dotster site. They did tell me it might take 72 hours. Sigh, I'm too impatient.
June 18, 2001 06:09 PM
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Template

I've been playing around with the template on this thing. I think I can eventually get something that comes close to matching the design of my other pages, but I'm not sure yet. It should be interesting to see.
June 17, 2001 05:44 PM
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First log entry

First log entry. Interesting couple of days. I finally finished my site design, which I'm pretty happy with. I contacted a Web hosting company (SoftCom, which Mike Tomasulo from the Warren Ellis Forum recommended to me.) I've tested my new pages in a variety of browsers, in both Mac and Windows, and at several screen resolutions, so I think everything's covered. My pages are uploaded to the server and so now I just need to wait for my new DNS entry connecting my URL to SoftCom's servers to propagate so people can actually reach my pages when they type my URL. This is pretty exciting. I can't wait to announce this to the world. Once everything looks copacetic, I'll change my "blogspace" to my own site.
June 17, 2001 05:25 PM
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