• April 3, 2008 Mediajunkie blogs to go offline for about a week »
  Hey, I wanted to notify everyone who blogs using the Mediajunkie service that our server is in need of some serious upgrading and maintenance to deal with security issues. This isn't a trivial fix, and it will require taking all of our blogs offline for up to a week. I apologize for this and wouldn't do it if it weren't necessary. If you'd like to post a blog entry letting your readers know your blog is going offline for maintenance, please do so soon. Thanks! -mgmt...
• October 29, 2006 You may notice some changes »
  I just upgraded the Mediajunkie installation of Movable Type to version 3.33 in hopes that this will solve some persistent bugs (also the makers of MT warn us that there were some security risks in older versions). You may notice that some things look and work different. Let me know if you have any questions or problems. I will also be gradually putting the look and feel back the way it was. More to come....
• April 8, 2006 Dealing with funky characters »
  As a Mediajunkie blogger you may have noticed that I republish all the blog entries written by all of us at Telegraph (a page I intend to redesign, by the way, when I find the time). Another thing you may have noticed is that there are often strange characters in the midst of various entries over there. This is caused by incompatibilities in the way that different applications and operating systems render special characters, particularly curly quotes and dashes. Unfortunately, Windows (and Microsoft Word) have a unique way of generating these characters that looks fine when first posted but ends...
• April 1, 2006 Backing up your blog »
  Our recent being-hacked experience was a close call. Fortunately, the fool who crashed our party mostly just overwrote some simple text pages that were easily restored by republishing your blogs. However, this made me think that everyone on the server ought to know how to back up their blog posts. All of your entries are stored in a database, and Movable Type offers a simple way to create a single text file containing all the posts along with all their metadata (titles, dates) and related content, such as comments and trackback pings. Every now and then I back up the...
• February 23, 2006 Claiming your blog at Technorati »
  Cecil and Marie have recently asked me about Technorati, the blog tracking service and how to make best use of it. The first thing is to make sure your blog is “pinging” Technorati when you make a new post. To check, go to the Settings area for your blog (in the “Configure” block of the left-hand navigation choices of the administrative interface). Then choose “New Entry Defaults.” Scroll down and make sure “blo.gs,” “weblogs.com” and “technorati.com” are all selected. Next, go to the Technorati website and sign up for an account there. Once your account is set up and you’ve...