Checksum Arcanius

Ever since I read the article Cool URLs don’t change, I have wanted to try out extension-free URLs. However, the few times I attempted, my .var files, as outlined in Apache’s online documentation on the subject, didn’t seem to be working very well. So I finally read further down that page and came across an alternate method of achieving the same ends: Options MultiViews. I quickly wrote myself up a .htaccess file, and voila: you can access files without their extensions now, like http://arcanius.silverfir.net/wp/index. Apache automatically searches for matching files and serves the best one it finds.

The reason behind doing something like this is that, for example, one can change server technologies (although I’m not about to switch from PHP), without changing URLs. For example, the above link would point equally well to index.html, index.php, index.asp, index.jsp, index.InsertServerTechnologyHere, etc. Likewise, one can use a similar methods to automatically switch between image technologies, because checksum-arcanius-banner points equally well to a .png (which it is) or a .gif, or a .jpg, or any new image technology that might come along.

So, MultiViews is a good thing, in my View. Oh my goodness I’m hilarious!

I implemented Tim’s suggested tweaks to improve the look of the page in IE. I’m not sure how far down that road I want to go though. After all, when someone asks me why it looks a little funny, I can tell tehm that they are simply using the wrong browser, and set them straight. It just might be a great way to spead Firefox.

A long-promised, long-overdue event occured today: I finally updated the look of my site. It isn’t perfect – in IE, it has a few rendering glitches – but I don’t view it in IE very often, so I don’t care. If someone wants to help me out in this area, feel free. Otherwise it may be a while (just this update certainly took its time).

Let me know what you think. I like it myself. But then I suppose I wouldn’t have done it otherwise :-D.

Web Designer and generally 1337 dude Dris has been working on the back end of a future MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) and because of the great flexibility of SilverFir.net’s setup, asked to have the work hosted here. Naturally, I said yes, and as a result I was treated, along with a number of my friends, to quite a treat today. We each entered our names, then used our arrow keys to move little circles around the screen. Ok, so maybe it doesn’t sound that exciting now, but once we have the game server running as a daemon, we’ll open it up for a public trial and you’ll see why I feel the urge to tell all my friends as soon as I start playing. And then we’ll see who’s laughing (probably it’ll be both of us… yes, its that much fun!)

Tonight, I completed a major software upgrade of SilverFir.net. The process was extremely painless, thanks to Debian‘s excellent package management system. Now all I have to test out is if the system will reboot or not, since among the things I updated is lilo, the Linux Loader.

The experiene has left me thinking somewhat more favorably of Debian over the choice of many of my friends, Gentoo. Gentoo compiles everything from source, which is nice for ultimate optimization, but it takes forever, and really, its packages are no more customizable than what I have with Debian. Besides, I compile from source – without package management – the major server software I use anyway, because I want even more control than Gentoo offers easily – so the rest of the stuff is just helper software that I want to work, hassle free. And Debian does that, Gentoo does not.

For now, at least, Debian remains my distribution of choice.

There has been some major sparsity over the last week, something I aim to correct here.

There were several contributing factors:

• I was feeling bad
• I was doing things
• Lego League is getting busy
• Work was getting hectic
• I was behind in math

Notably, Half Life 2 is not yet on that list.

Now, I am all caught up in Math, work is going well, TRC is decently on track, I am feeling great, work is moving along nicely, and, well, as soon as I finish my Math test on Monday, you might not hear from me for a while due to HL2.

Oh, there’s also real work going on on a site update, look wise. Don’t get too hopeful too early though.

Well, the comment spammers finally got to me. They found a way to sneak past WordPress’s built in spam filters, so a nifty little SQL was required to dispatch of the spam comments quickly. However, over the past three days, hundreds of spam comments waiting in moderation queues got to me, and so I decided to take action.

The result of phase I of overt anti-spam actions here at Arcanius is now complete. The goal here is to keep it highly streamlined for commenters yet baffle spammers, for a little while at least.

Wish me luck.