I’m considering switching the NoodleFood comments to Disqus, as that would enable me to add a whole lot of awesome features without the burden of programming them myself. Any thoughts on that — or suggestions of alternative systems?
As I mentioned in Saturday’s post, I’m suffering from server problems related to file permissions. Some upgrade to the kernel created security problems, so my internet host turned off chmod access. That wouldn’t be so terrible, except that any new file uploaded to the server is now created with permissions of 600 (read and write only for the owner) rather than with 644 (read for all, write only for the owner). I can’t change the permissions manually, neither through the shell nor with ftp.
That means that individual pages for new blog posts are not viewable on the web; you’ll see an “Error 403: Access Forbidden” page instead.
That sucks hard, particularly because my internet host has only offered vague promises about when the problem will be fixed. Hopefully, some work-around will be hit upon soon, as the current set-up means that all my web sites are either frozen or broken.
In the meantime, you can read posts from the the main NoodleFood page and view and post comments using the “New Page” link at the bottom of the post.
Update: My internet host just finally told me a method by which I can chmod the files manually. That will be a pain, and I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to do it pronto, but at least it’s something.
NoodleFood is long overdue for an update of its blogroll. I never managed to implement the requested additions posted in these comments back in February. So those requests are on the agenda for this update. If you have a different addition to request, please post a comment with the URL and title below. Thanks! (Please don’t e-mail me; I’d like the list of blog to add to be gathered in one place.)
Also, I’d be interested in using some kind of software or service to help me manage my blogroll more easily. I’d like to be able to see which blogs have new posts, to sort blogs by tags and ratings, to see when I last visited them, and so on. Any suggestions?
Due to restricted internet access, posting will be light this upcoming week. I’ll post just one thing each day. Also, please don’t behave like wild beasts in the comments.
Oh, and please don’t e-mail me. I’m unavailable.
I’m willing to post announcements of any significant event — such as a lecture or conference — that is likely to be of interest to the bulk of my readers, i.e. Objectivists, fans of Ayn Rand, advocates of free markets, and the like.
However, please don’t just ask me to announce the thing in question. Instead, send me the actual text of an announcement that I can simply quote in my blog post, preferably with HTML links already properly formatted. (Please, no HTML e-mail: use plain text.) That will make me love you for your thoughtfulness and consideration of my time. It will also ensure that your announcement is posted in a timely fashion, rather than languishing in my “to blog” folder.
Basically, I’m more than happy to help, but please don’t make such help a burden to me. This principle applies whether I’m crushed by dissertation work or not: I don’t want to have to do your work for you in order to do you a favor.
(Yeah, I’m feeling crabby. Get over it.)
Due to the demands of my dissertation, teaching, and other non-negotiable obligations, NoodleFood will be on a reduced schedule for the next month or so. I’ll only be posting one post per day — if I can manage that.
No, this isn’t today’s post. It’s not that bad yet.
I’ll be updating my blogroll sometime in the next few days, so if your blog is not on it but you’d like it to be, please post a comment with the URL and title below. Thanks! (Please don’t e-mail me; I’d like the list of blog to add to be gathered in one place.)
Blogger is very confused right now: it’s periodically republishing my blog with old material from December every few hours. (It’s like some server has the wrong date, and it’s moving forward it time at like five times normal speed.) To make it right, I have to manually re-publish a recent post.
I have no idea what the problem is, but I do hope that Blogger’s programmer peopleguys fix it right quick tomorrow morning. In the meantime, enjoy those old posts!
For the sake of getting a more accurate count of the number of people reading NoodleFood via its RSS feed, I’ve just changed the location of that RSS feed on dianahsieh.com. The old location now points to the long-existing feed on FeedBurner. Basically, the goal is to get everyone drawing the feed from FeedBurner.
If you have any problems with the feed, you can post a note in the comments or e-mail me. Or you can point your RSS reader to http://feeds.feedburner.com/noodlefood.
My web server is currently having problems. It’s coughing up 500 server errors on my various comment scripts, and doing so ever-more-frequently. I’ve just submitted a support ticket, so I expect that the problem will be resolved soon.
In the meantime, if you get a 500 server error, the only thing to do is reload the page. However, if you’ve just submitted a comment, reloading will probably result in a double submission of the comment. (I’ll delete any of those that show up.)
Thanks for your patience!