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Tuesday, April 16, 2002
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Looking to Implement Security for Your Radio App?
Take a look at what Rogers Cadenhead just thought up. Not true security but a good workaround for now. He's smart.
9:51:52 PM 
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What a Bad Day!
Man oh man. Today started out wonderfully and then went right down hill. And it was all Microsoft's fault (this time it really was). It started great -- got up, saw that I got a nice mention from Dave (Thanks Dave!) and then said to myself "You know ... I should fix some things I didn't finish in my Radio UserLand docs that Dave mentioned. This will only take a sec..." Well, 7 hours later, I am finally out from under the morass of FrontPage or as I call it "When Bill Gates stole $700 from me". I'm a consultant and for short term engagements, that's my billing rate (yes, it gets a lot cheaper for longer engagements). I spent 7 hours fixing things that FrontPage broke and coding around things that worked fine just yesterday. This included include pages that magically double (nothing like your logo twice for emphasis), a Fix Broken Links that doesn't (and scares the bejesus out of me) and so on. According to FrontPage, my web is now 139 megs in size with over 4,000 files. Maybe I broke it or something. I don't know and I really don't care. I just want a check for $700. Oh and it took FrontPage over 70 minutes to even come up with those stats.
NOTE: Like all flames that I write, this is categorized as "Rant". To see all Rants, click here.
Anyway, I am up and running, my home page no longer relies on FrontPage stuff at all and gives an appropriate sneer to Microsoft before the user moves onto the PHP page that has replaced it.
4:28:22 PM
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Radio Exposed is Done!
I think my Radio Exposed document is done. It probably needs an edit pass or two but the content is all there, pictures and all. Good information if you ever have to debug Radio problems or hack into it.
9:46:41 AM
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And, So, I Appreciate Radio Even More and Move Away from FrontPage to PHP
My personal home page this morning took a big step. It is no longer a .htm file, it is now a .php file. Here's why. I got up this morning at 5:30ish, hit the shower, saw that Dave mentioned me again and I was totally pumped! Very cool. So, I thought, lets just tweak these files a little bit. GAH! FrontPage has no honor! Ever since 5:45 or so, I've been locked in a bloody maze of FrontPage glitches and hell. It turns out that it has slowly been mucking up for a while -- for example, one of my Radio screen shots was replaced with a lovely picture of a duck. Good god! The broken links view doesn't work. When I put in include pages, it DOUBLES them (nothing like two copies of the same thing on your home page). Bah. A pox upon it. Here's my solution:
- Rename index.htm to indexold.htm. Here's what FrontPage did to my homepage.
- Copy that file to index.php. Use FTP and a good editor to open the file and then remove the doubled include page.
- Add this 1 live of php code: <? include "writing/index_pagebody.htm" ?>
- Save
- Create an index.htm page at my root directory that links to index.php and criticizes FrontPage.
Isn't that a lot easier than mucking about with FrontPage's crap? You'll note that I didn't use FrontPage's link fixing features. Two reasons:
- They are really, really arcane. All I want is the equivalent of search and replace. One dialog box that lets me say "Change this link to that link in all pages" would be all that is needed. Trying to even find a reference to your home page in their links view so that it can be fixed is just horrible (try it when your FrontPage web includes > 3,000 links).
- I'm terrified as to what it might do to my pages. Just damn terrified. Its too risky.
Now do you see why I appreciate Radio even more than ever? Radio isn't yet perfect but it is damn good and with all the resources that Microsoft has, for me to have 2 1/2 hours of my valuable time wasted because of bugs in their product is unacceptable. Radio doesn't do that to me.
Disclaimer: FrontPage user since 1997. I know it like the back of my hand. I'm furious right now.
8:07:39 AM
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And, So, I Learn to Write in Radio, No Training Wheels, No Nothing
I took a big step yesterday -- I wrote my first essay in years that wasn't done in Word and wasn't done in FrontPage -- I used the Radio Stories feature. Sure, I've been writing posts for a while now but essays are different -- more thought involved, longer, more formal. Here is the essay:
Marketing Software when You Are a Small Company
It's on marketing software when you are a little tiny company. I have to say that it was a neat experience. We've all grown so accustomed to the handholding, the bloat of word that going without the autocorrect, the 1001 icons and such is a little bizarre but I did feel as if I was focusing more on my content and less on my presentation.
From now on, I'm going to try and do more essay writing in Radio and then publish it both here and on my own site. For example, this article is now at two places:
The date coded urls that Radio generates are a huge service to the reader. I think most people, even non tech folk, when they see that in the browser bar get the feeling "Hey, this now". And that's really, really cool. People like knowing the information's context. For example, a software marketing article that dates from 1996 would ignore the web and be kind of useless.
Writing Essays in Radio. To quote Jim Morrison. "Very good, Very good, Very Neat, Very Neat". Hmm... Would he have blogged?
6:35:09 AM
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© Copyright
2002
The FuzzyStuff.
Last update:
4/16/2002; 6:35:12 AM.
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