...by the inmates...for the inmates...
Wednesday, August 14, 2002Contractors, Refinance, Apartment, Birthday, College Help, Celica
Maria hired a contractor to wash all windows in anticipation of wedding next month. Window contractor arrived several hours early, conflicting with pest control contractor. (Lions and Spiders and Bears, Oh My!) Since pest control spray is toxic (duh!) we had to reschedule the spraying. The pest control contractor is under new ownership. We had used the previous owner since we moved to the redwood forest 11 years ago. He finally retired, selling his business to another local pest contractor.
Faxed an authorization form to the refinancing company.
Maria, Crystal, and Nate visited the apartment with the landlord. Nothing exciting; just reviewing which items stay with the place when present tenant moves out.
Called my brother Scott for his birthday.
After work, stopped at the college to help Maria sort through old computer cables and software. Chinese restaurant for dinner. On the drive home, my Celica GTS hit 27,000 miles. Gas today at the Beacon station was $1.749 for 91 octane.
Directory Browsing Follow-up
Follow-up to Directory Browsing with Radio.A couple people have written in about my
directory browsing post earlier today. Some thoughts:Rogers Cadenhead reports that "The Python Community Server, the open source clone of the Radio Community Server at http://www.pycs.net, turns off directory browsing by default."
If you put index.txt in your "gems" folder, nothing will happen. This is because the "gems" folder disables a function in Radio called "rendering" - by which Radio transforms a simple text file into an HTML file and then uploads it to your web site. The gems folder is for any files you specifically want Radio to leave alone... so we need to create an HTML file called index.html that we can save in the gems folder. I've created one - download gems_index.txt (right-click, select "save as") and save it into your gems folder. Rename it index.html (in the gems folder), change the URL from http://your.blog.here/ to your blog URL, and Radio will take care of the rest.
By the way - rendering is a little-known feature in Radio. Create a folder in the "www" folder in Radio. Save a text file in there, wait a few seconds, then go to your web site. You'll have a file formatted with your site template - containing the text from the text file. Play with it a bit - it's a great way to save e-mails to the web, create static files for your web site (it's how I created the about page for this site), and other easy ways to add HTML pages to your site without thinking about it.
[tins ::: Rick Klau's weblog]
Directory Browsing
Prevent Directory Browsing in Radio.
I think this should be an option built in to Radio, but it's relatively easy for you to do on your own. Here's the issue: Radio is a web content management system - when you add content to Radio, it automatically uploads that content to your website. For many users, their web site is hosted at http://radio.weblogs.com/. (Others, like me, host it at their own domain.) Radio maintains its content in a hierarchical folder structure. But relatively savvy individuals can type in your URL and add folders they want to "snoop" on - and Radio doesn't prevent this.
There's an easy way to do this: drop a text file into any folder you want to restrict access to. The text file is just a couple lines, and it includes a meta refresh command that forces the browser to load a new page. Here's my file - save it as index.txt, and drop it into any folder other than your "www" folder.
To try this out, try going to someone's Radio weblog and adding /categories after the URL. You'll now see all the categories they've set up. This isn't necessarily snooping, but there may be some private categories they've posted. (There are other examples, but hopefully you get the idea.) If you're the individual maintaining the blog in Radio, adding this text file to the folder will automatically redirect the browser to your site's home page.
Memo to Userland: I'd like this to be an option in the application itself. If I disable directory browsing, Radio should automatically drop this text file into any folder it creates.
[tins ::: Rick Klau's weblog]