Live from Austin!

I upgraded to the latest WordPress. I’ve checked LiveJournal OpenID login, and it works. However, since some people have complained that they can’t get it to work, I’ve also enabled manual signup.

I also took a look through the available plugins, and found the OpenCalais Archive Tagger. It uses the Reuters OpenCalais project, a database of semantic information, to automatically go back and add relevant tags to all your previous posts. I’m giving it a go, I figure anything that can make it easier to find interesting stuff amongst the 20 years of writing here has to be worthwhile.

I’ve been testing to see which feed readers support authentication sufficiently to enable you to log in to LJ somehow and hence see LiveJournal protected posts in your web feed reader.

Do work, by prior login: Sage. Akregator. Opera*. Safari*.

Do work, by modifying URL: Mozilla Thunderbird.

Do not work: Google Reader. Bloglines.

Other people report that they work: FeedDemon. NetNewsWire.

*Not tested, but I’m pretty sure they do because the feed reader code is part of the web browser.

In all cases, the basic feed URL is http://users.livejournal.com/sucker/data/atom where sucker is the LJ user ID.

To modify the URL for applications like Thunderbird, place ?auth=digest at the end of the URL; for example http://users.livejournal.com/sucker/data/atom?auth=digest The feed reader software should then ask you for a login name and password of your LJ account, in order to access the feed.

For feed readers that work with prior login, you go to www.livejournal.com in the appropriate browser and log in. The feed reader then picks up protected entries next time it refreshes.

Trying out feed readers

There are tools to export your LJ friends list to OPML. You can then import the OPML into a feed reader, and try out the equivalent of your friends page to see how it looks.

Other solutions

If you’re technically inclined, you can use the LiveJournal authentication proxy. Or if you trust some random guy with your LJ password, because after all you’re only using it to gain access to read stuff, then you can use the hosted version he provides.

This is the approach I’m going to take, as I’m too addicted to reading web feeds on my BlackBerry. So if you’re in the habit of posting friends-locked stuff on LiveJournal, and plan to continue to use LiveJournal, please add _lj_sucks_ as a friend.

Effective immediately, the LiveJournal abuse team will be known as the LJKGB. That is all.

As you have probably noticed, I’ve just gone through a major software migration for my web site.

I was using typo. It was OK, but had a few problems. While its web site describes it as “lean”, that isn’t really the reality. It also relied on a combination of Apache, LigHTTPd and FastCGI that tended to break down without explanation.

The biggest reason for change, though, was that typo’s authors’ idea of what was important functionality was diverging from mine. The wakeup call was when someone spent a bunch of time replacing the regular page templates with templates written in HAML.

For those lucky enough not to know, HAML is a stupid and inexplicably trendy idea in the Rails community, comparable to LiveJournal’s S2 style system. Basically, instead of creating your page templates in HTML and CSS, which everyone can understand and for which there are a zillion useful tools, you instead write program code in a whole new language which has minimal documentation. The program then generates the HTML and CSS.

Of course, this destroys the entire point of template systems, which is to separate code from presentation and make the presentation layer editable by non-programmers using common tools.

I wouldn’t have minded the HAML idiocy so much if it wasn’t for the fact that typo still lacked support for things as basic as user authentication for commenting. So I looked at other web content management software… and looked… and looked.

I tried Blojsom. Supposedly it’s what Apple uses. If so, I hope they’ve done a lot of work on their version, as it’s a major PITA to set up, and very complicated even when you get it working.

In the end, though, I knew the main feature I wanted: OpenID support. Hence, I found myself reluctantly herded towards Wordpress, which has a working OpenID plugin. (Or at least, it works for my OpenID account when I test it. I don’t think it has XRI support, though.)

I did entertain the idea of writing my own CMS. I even sketched out some design notes. But it really is a solved problem, I just didn’t like the technologies used to solve it.

Let’s be blunt about this: I hate PHP, and I hate MySQL. PHP is the Visual BASIC of web programming languages, a mess which grew with no planning out of a quick hack, a kitchen sink language known for its amenability to security holes. MySQL is a toy database, popular because it’s fast, fast because by default it doesn’t actually provide the basic ACID functions a database is supposed to provide. (Sure, you can turn those on, but once you do, today’s PostgreSQL is faster under non-trivial load.)

But I don’t believe in religion, especially not when it comes to software. I’m a strict pragmatist–whatever it takes to get the job done, even if it may offend a few aesthetic sensibilities and fall far short of perfection.

I spend most of my time at work developing using IBM Lotus Notes and Domino. Every time Notes is mentioned on Slashdot, a bunch of people will rant about how bad its UI is. They miss the point utterly. Believe me, the poor UI of Notes is only the most glaringly obvious defect it has; there are far worse problems underneath that the average end user is blissfully unaware of. But you know what? It works. It is sufficient. It lets you build groupware applications and dynamic web sites with fine-grained security in days, not weeks. That is why people use it. The only other tool I’ve found which comes close is Ruby on Rails, and that’s still too immature for me to want to use it on production systems. (That, and it’s surrounded by a community of people who think things like HAML are a good idea.)

So, here we are. I’m editing this in a nice AJAX WYSIWYG editor with spelling checker (an idea shot down by the typo developers), and you should be able to log in with OpenID to comment (an idea the typo developers seem utterly uninterested in).

It took most of Saturday hacking with Ruby, PostgreSQL and MySQL, but I believe I’ve managed to transfer not just all my data, but all your comments too. I think I’ve even managed to keep all the permalinks the same, and preserve all the timestamps. I’ve temporarily lost the tags functionality, but should be able to get it back with another plugin. Hopefully Wordpress will prove more reliable than Typo, and hopefully the OpenID stuff will interoperate correctly with LiveJournal. If not, pray that I inexplicably become independently wealthy and have the time to write something that does the job properly.

Another user gets suspended from TrollJournal for posting public information, info that had been made public by the person detailed.

The backstory is that LiveJournal has introduced advertising in the form of “sponsored communities” with third party identity tracking.

To quote the LiveJournal “contract” back in 2004:

It may be because it’s one of our biggest pet peeves, or it may be because they don’t garner a lot of money, but nonetheless, we promise to never offer advertising space in our service or on our pages.

The most recent terms of service are slightly different:

You understand and agree that some or all of the Service may include advertisements and that these advertisements are necessary for LiveJournal to provide the Service. You also understand and agree that you will not obscure any advertisements from general view via HTML/CSS or any other means. By using the Service, you agree that LiveJournal has the right to run such advertisements with or without prior notice, and without recompense to you or any other user.

Well, we’ve established how much a written promise from SixApart/LiveJournal is worth. The new advertising pages weren’t announced in the news to users, of course; they were quietly trailed in the community devoted to LJ’s business decisions.

Something else wasn’t mentioned. In addition, it appears that the “communities” are being seeded with positive “buzz” from user accounts set up specifically for the purpose. And when insomnia (aka Mark Kraft) did a little trivial investigation, he discovered that one of the people running the new “communities” was a SixApart employee with a brand new account, rather than a regular user. In other words, it appears that unlike regular communities, the new sponsored “communities” are to be carefully moderated strictly by Six Apart employees, doubtless to ensure that no pesky free speech will upset the advertisers.

In fact, perhaps in reaction to the latest round of criticism, at least one of the new viral marketing pseudo-communities is locked down tight so you can’t even join it without asking a Six Apart staffer for permission.

The latest LiveJournal Abuse Team abuse is “nipplegate”. Someone on the Abuse team decided that female nipples were offensive. When this was challenged, the terms of service were promptly rewritten to retroactively justify the decision. (Which, if you’ll recall, is something I suggested as a resolution for my disagreement with the abuse team, and something they rejected out of hand and claimed wasn’t possible.)

If anyone had any hopes that the purchase by sixapart would lead to a little more maturity and professionalism from LJ Abuse, it seems like that day is a long way off. They claim that a total ban on female nipples is essential, but that pictures of a dead baby with congenital defects are OK.

A bunch of people have temporarily deleted their journals in protest. I’m sure that’ll achieve precisely nothing; save LJ money on bandwidth as a protest? Who thought that one up? If you want to protest, take your content elsewhere. But I’m doubtful anyone will do that, though it does seem as if the number of active accounts on the system has started to drop.

Anyhow, I mention this because coincidentally, I’ve just finished migrating my Vegas pictures and writeups. The pictures are now on Flickr, you can find the writeups via search or tags. In particular, back in 2004 I wrote:

Which brings me on to the subject of breasts. They seem to be a major source of fascination in Las Vegas. You take an otherwise tired concept like a bunch of women dancing on stage, add a sprinkling of tits, and magically you have compelling entertainment.

I notice that one of the shows has two versions. During the day you can see the clothed edition, which is billed as suitable for children of 5 and up. In the evening, there¿s the topless version of the exact same show, which you need to be 16 to see. From this I deduce that young American children will be traumatized if exposed to the sight of human breasts; presumably they are all bottle-fed, which would also explain their later fascination with watching Vegas showgirls.

Ah, those funny Americans and their bizarre puritanical ideas. I remember being amazed back in 1997 when I discovered that Victoria’s Secret airbrushed the nipples from the photos of women modeling their products. Then again, since breasts can shut down an airport and cost a TV station $550,000, maybe it’s best we try to protect children fromlearning about them.

Wait, what am I saying? They’re just breasts. Get over it, America.

[For more cases of LiveJournal Abuse Team behaving abusively, check out http://ljabuse.blogspot.com/.]

For several years I was a paying user of LiveJournal. Now I pay for web hosting and run my own content management system. It’s not by choice; this is the story.

In a nutshell, following an altercation with a racist troll, LiveJournal suspended my account without warning, even though I had not breached their Terms Of Service. They didn’t suspend the troll’s account–instead, they announced that (contrary to their written terms of service) racist comments were in fact perfectly acceptable on LiveJournal.

Attempts at compromise to resolve the issue were ignored and rejected, even when I offered to delete offending comments. The money I had paid for the service they were refusing to provide was not refunded.

Continue reading »

So, it’s official: SixApart are buying LiveJournal. Reactions seem to be ranging from horror to relief.

It’s not really a huge surprise to me. In spite of some claims to the contrary, I’d been told that Brad really didn’t have much to do with the day-to-day running of LiveJournal—stuff like policy, dealing with abuse, and so on. I’d already guessed that he was looking for an exit strategy.

I looked at Six Apart and Moveable Type when LiveJournal deleted my account without notice. The basic service (TypePad) starts at $4.95 a month, and that was more than I was willing to commit to. Plus, they have the same kinds of Terms of Service as LiveJournal, and I have no idea how reasonable or otherwise they are at dealing with abuse. Worse still, they put ads on your site. $50+ a year and crappy ads? I don’t think so.

You can use the Moveable Type software and “roll your own”, of course. Unfortunately, you can’t use the ‘free’ version if you “directly or indirectly support any commercial efforts” via your web site, and I’m not ready to agree to any licenses that put restrictions on what I can and can’t say on my own damn web site. To not have restrictions on what you can use your MT web site for, you need to shell out $199.95 for an MT license. Sorry, but that’s way too expensive.

Brad says they won’t be jacking up the prices for LiveJournal. However, note that he also says:

Our old TOS and privacy policies apparently sucked, from a lawyer point-of-view. We never had lawyers create or really even review the old ones.

This directly contradicts statements by the LiveJournal Abuse team. They told me that the TOS could not be changed, that it was the way it was because the lawyers said so, and that they couldn’t even discuss it. There have been public comments to that effect too:

—they do not set policy, they only enforce what has been told to them by LJ’s legal counsel, and they have no leeway in this.

I’m guessing that someone told the Abuse team that that was the case, and they believed it, but still, it points to some serious problems with LiveJournal’s management. (Not that that should be a surprise to anyone reading this.)

Brad says they won’t be jacking up the prices to match Six Apart levels. Well, I’m sure they won’t—not immediately, anyway. But can you really see Six Apart offering two services, one of which is free (or much cheaper) but offers the same functionality as the other?

But hey, let’s be positive. Maybe LiveJournal will finally get support for simply applying a CSS Style Sheet to your journal. We can dream.

So, for those contemplating the future with uncertainty, what are the other options?

Personally, I want some software that’s free-as-in-freedom and doesn’t put limits on what I can say. I want it to support comment threads and authenticated users, and I want it to cost less than $100. It has to have a way to put existing data into it, and to get data out of it for backup. I’d rather it wasn’t written in PHP for obvious reasons, and it needs to statically render as much as possible to keep server load reasonable.

Perhaps people have suggestions? Unfortunately it seems like most of the CMS systems out there are hacked together in PHP. I know about Plone, but their system requirements don’t give me much hope.

I wrote some Perl, and cleaned out all the links to LiveJournal threads from my journal. If you posted comments in response to anything in my journal, sorry, they’re gone, you know why. I also replaced all the LJ usernames and journal and community links; damned if I’m going to give them any free (good) publicity.

People have asked, but no, I’m not going to waste any more effort trying to get the LJ management to clean up their act. I wrote them off as a hopeless cause 2 weeks ago. Besides, I would rather spend my time and effort writing interesting and amusing content.

On a more positive note, I’ve finally learned how to make screen display two terminal windows in one, er, terminal window, rather than just letting you switch to ‘previous screen’ and ‘next screen’. Amazingly, I’d used the program for years without learning that fairly simple piece of knowledge. Next: how to mark text in visual mode in vi…

Finally for tonight, a household hint: It is very difficult to kill moths by throwing water at them.

So, I’m back. I’m afraid it looks as if my LiveJournal account will not be returning. Read the whole sordid story if you’re interested, and then make sure you have a full backup of your journal in case they decide to pull the same shit with you.

Fortunately, I was prescient enough to have just converted my entire journal backlog (or at least, all the good stuff) to blosxom format, so I can redeploy the whole lot on any web host which provides CGI. So I have.

No nifty discussion forum features here. I’m pondering what to do about that; I may just set up a mailing list for interested (and interesting) people who want to discuss anything I post about, or otherwise interact with me.