icerabbit’s blog is moving

The icerabbit’s blog is moving servers from http://icerabbit.wordpress.com to its own server space over at mediatemple.

(depending on when you read this entry, the move has already happened)

Right now the new address (removed obsolete link) is still lengthy but we will get that resolved.

I decided (with a little nudge from Bruce) to take the plunge and just go for it (moving the blog). I have the server account and I have half my theme ready. So why not? Things have been a mess the past year. Waiting for iBlog 2, then waiting for a better export plugin for my entries from iBlog while getting my toes wet with wp. It is time to move on, roll up the sleeves and step away from .mac and wordpress.com. Time to get intimate with some code again and unleash the code monkey in the rabbit.

If you visited http://icerabbit.wordpress.com directly - now or in the past - please hop over to our updated digs at http://www.icerabbit.com and blog at http://www.icerabbit.com/blog.

Thank you and see you there.

Site changes

I have just imported most of the old iBlog library into WordPress.

In the next couple hours & days I will be making some corrections like adding missing images back. The conversion process also left many entries with improper line breaks and read more links where they are not needed. And, there’s only several hundred of them.

Update: I am still adding images back to the older entries. I’m doing them a few at a time.

Minor construction

I’m in the process of tweaking a few things, so I apologize if during
the update process certain pages and/or images are not available.Hopefully I can fix that pesky Safari stylesheet switching problem
(if not alternate styles will be dropped)

By the way; I did notice
the shoutbox column has been empty the past days. I don’t know why. The code is
there + the homepage myshoutbox.com is up; but I can’t pull the messages? Server
error? I notified the admin

Stylesheet problems

I just noticed that stylesheets no longer stick across categories,
entries, … in Safari?!Safari has a problem showing my blog without
the default style on the first visit (there’s a few blogs with the same
symptom), which is why I added the little extra note at the top “if no style
is …” Now things just got worse. After the latest security update for OS
X (2005-003-001), every time I go to another page the styling is plain text. Of
course there’s nothing that obviously changed to Safari other than Unicode
International Domain Name support with the security update.

Strangely enough,
FireFox never has had a problem with the styling options. Every time, no matter
how empty the cache & cookies etc, it shows everything nice & styled.

I’m not sure what to do about it. I may take the stylesheets down
till I find a method that’s more Safari compatible. I did send another bug
report to Apple. Not that the previous ones changed anything. My luck they’ll
fix it in Safari 1.3 or 2.0, whichever we see with Tiger (sigh)

I’ll
look into the problem tonight. Hopefully I can figure something out. In the mean
time I apologize for all the inconvenience.

Update: Surfin
Safari from Safari guru Dave Hyatt suffers the same issue across
pages. So it’s a bug to me. I’m curious how long it’ll take for this issue to
make it through the “Report bugs”-mill. Tried to contact Dave directly, but it’s
a no go. His comments are locked down because of spam & no email displayed.
So I’m crossing my fingers that either Report Bugs, OS X feedback or Safari
Support message will get to the right inbox or desk and will result in a prompt
Safari update that fixes both alternate style-sheets issues.

Sideblog

Testing sideblog integration.Should the sideblog not be displayed properly - as in
aligned to the right above messages, or not shadowed right - please refresh the
page in your browser. Safari is known to not automatically get the latest
style-sheet.
Thanks!

Update: Minor bug arose since I modified
some CSS. The updated category & entry pages (where the Messages now appear
on the left - LOL) are being published.

Gallery frustrations

Switching from JAlbum to Galerie and back to JAlbum.History:
At some point last year I lost my custom JAlbum templates when I formatted my
Cube (& PC). I had all my documents & files safely backed up, except for
the customized files that resided in the JAlbum application subfolder. Oops! I
was able to dig up an older version on a backup CD-ROM or DVD but that version
was really outdated. And, on top of that, I was having problems with JavaScript
errors with some more advanced features. Time for a break.

I just
started puzzling things back together [ it's New Year ]. What better than a
clean start? With my first little creation, JAlbum (v. 5.1 now) was giving me
“out of memory” errors right out of the gate? Ditto with some of the built-in
themes? Some frustration later I decided to try Galerie. Downloaded &
installed it. Changed a few settings and create gallery. Whoppa. AppleScript
Error -43 - Some object wasn’t found. What the? Repeatable problem. In the
support forum I did get immediate response. User error. Galerie doesn’t handle
subfolders, which happens to be a deal breaker for me. I don’t want to do every
folder & index separately on multiple levels.

Back to JAlbum
then. David Ekholm (creator of JAlbum) helped identify that something in the
Canon 20D’s EXIF data causes the EXIF extractor to error. Mmm. They can’t leave
all that stuff standard, can they? But, at least I can keep tinkering on my
template by leaving the EXIF processing off … and once my template is
operational, I can publish new images

A newer look

After initial URL trouble yesterday, with the updated code from this
morning, things should be straightened out. As far as I can tell everything
should appear correct in Safari & Firefox.
I’m aware of the menu issue
with IE in Windows. I’ll look into it tonight.Upd.: Add : some
issues with lack of reading the standard CSS set + not supported by older Safari
versions for the time being.

I will look into fixing the issues.

For those with OS X pre Panther & Windows 9x/XP: for the most
standard compliant & safest browser, I always recommend the independent open
source alternative: FireFox It offers excellent protection for
Windows users compared with the oh so vulnerable never ever safe Internet
Explorer (which is far from up to date).

Summer time

Summer calls for tropical water, windsurfing & clear skies.

I’ll likely tweak some more, which is why the hard hat sign is up

ActiveTopic.com calls it a day

Thanks to uberjan for alerting me that activetopic is
halting their shoutbox service (which I use on the right for the message area).
Hopefully they don’t pull the plug until I have a replacement in gear.
Shoutbox.com doesn’t look bad, but as I was customizing it earlier today, it
lacks important features & customizability … Maybe they’ll have to do for
a while.

Spring time

As winter is coming to an end, I wrapped a new theme
around the blog.Note:
Safari 101 does not display the “hints” when you point at something in the
navigation bar

March Status

As you may notice, we’re still doing a little bit of
work, digging around in the code, squatting a few bugs, double checking
browser interpretation issues, …Items on the fix list
are:
* unneeded read more links (requires a future iBlog update)
*
black line on right side of iBlog resized images (iBlog bug)
* squeeze old
DHTML menu in place, use alternative or static menu
* PNG transparency bug
(blue background) with IE for Windows
* MSN status indicator does not work
- Alternative?

Items on the update / future feature list
are:
Euh, secret No, I’m introducing some extra categories to keep
things sorted a little better.