Wednesday, March 20, 2002

Dag nab it!: Now Radio is redrawing this page in whimsical ways again, scrunching formerly legible lines together (tight line spacing or leading) and bringing up a blank page or "Cannot find server" message when I try reloading.  Yeah, I'm a fan and today UserLand was awarded news feeds from the New York Times, but Radio's being buggy today and I don't care who hears me say it. Update 6:00 PM: I should've guessed — today's patches and Radio.root upgrades and who knows what all trickled out before an actual engine update (to 8.0.7).  I think I've upated everything now and will see how it goes.  As Dave might say, Sigh. 5:22:22 PM    commentplace ()

Yeah, yeah, thou shalt have no other word processor than Microsoft Word.  There is no word processor besides Microsoft Word.  But I'm going to keep linking to tiny shareware vendor Rising Sun Solutions, whose RTF editor may have a funky name (Atlantis Ocean Mind) and features (cutesy sound effects, which you can fortunately disable), but is fast, compact (just a 2.6MB download), and puts WordPad to shame — no headers or footers, but everything from Word-habit shortcuts like Ctrl-Bksp or clicking-the-margin text selection to "smart" or curly quotes, auto-correct substitutions, and on-the-fly spell checking.  Today, after stutter-step releases from 1.0.3.66 through 1.0.5.90, the company uncharacteristically posted a version with only one decimal point (1.1), adding multiple columns.  Price?  All of $27. 1:36:19 PM    commentplace ()

Consarn it!: OK, an hour and a half after writing "No time to try debugging and repairing right now," most of your humble Weblog seems to have regained its earlier appearance and e-mail and comment links.  I still love Radio 8, but I admit I took considerable pleasure in re-editing templates and re-removing the top-of-page UserLand cactus ad and that damned coffee mug they're so in love with.  Everybody knows a coffee mug is the universal intuitive symbol for "subscribe to news feed," but I rarely drink coffee.  Gotta insert a little GIF of a Diet Pepsi can. 9:50:25 AM    commentplace ()

What in tarnation?: Oh, goody, all of a sudden my Radio default template has changed, with a different color bar at top and a big fat instead of formerly slim calendar and links sidebar to the right, not to mention a bold "Macro error: The file "C:\Program Files\Radio\www\#itemTemplate.txt" wasn't found" message, although that file exists in that folder as far as I can see.  No time to try debugging and repairing right now; I was thinking of moving to my new computer and reinstalling Radio today or tomorrow anyway.  Will the whole historical record of E.G. for Example be lost?  The laughs!  The tears!  The flames!  Or is this a sign from above to finally learn enough HTML to design my own theme and/or switch to Movable Type? Half an hour later: OK, it seems to have been caused by this morning's most recent "Update Radio.root" (4 new parts added) ... which overwrote my modified Home Page Template, Desktop Website Template, etc., resetting color schemes, erasing my modified copyright notice, making the sidebar fat, and apparently zapping both the no-spam "E-mail me" icon link and the comments code.  Whee!  Is this the surprise bomblet Dave promised for today? 8:20:09 AM    commentplace ()