NSLog();

I posted a "job" opening at The Sand Trap .com earlier today. If you like golf and love talking to some of the industry bigwigs, well, it may just be the position for you.

As I was reading "How Much Does iTunes Like My Five-Star Songs?" Jeff IMed to tell me about Pandora.com, which is essentially an Internet radio station that asks you for your favorite song or artist, then plays more music that's similar in style.

Pandora gives you ten hours for free, then looks to charge $36/year. Two things could make this service a little better:

1. Let me play and manage my stations from within iTunes.
2. Let me get lists of songs that are similar to my favorites so that I can purchase the darn music. I'd use a separate $12/year offer that didn't stream music but simply offered this information.

As it stands now, I doubt I'll listen beyond the 10 hours. I'll just skip the R.E.M. songs that come up and write down the others that I like.

Question: Do you feel that iPod sales drive use of the iTMS or that use of the iTMS drives iPod sales?

My Answer: It's probably a bit more of the latter, but in my case, neither drives the other. I haven't bought an iPod in close to two years (the Shuffle I picked up was more a matter of having a lightweight iPod for when I'm hitting golf balls at the dome in the winter). I don't use my iPod much at all except in the car, and I don't buy much on the iTMS. I use the iTMS occasionally to pick up a single or two, but I also buy albums. All of it ends up on the iPod or, at least, on the computer.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Question: If record companies forced variable pricing on iTunes, how would you react? (NYTimes.com)

My Answer: I'd stop buying music from iTunes. $0.99 is just the right price. Record companies make something like $0.65 per track downloaded from iTunes, last time I checked. Screw 'em.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Brad Choate (yes, there's only one) spent some time with my "Error 500s with MovableType 3.2" issue yesterday and believes he's found the source of the problem: a low Apache Timeout value. Default used to be 1200, but that was recently lowered to 300. The timeout value Interland has set on my server? 5.

A simple perl script was used to test this:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
my $start = localtime;
my $time = int($ENV{QUERY_STRING}) || 1;
sleep $time;
my $end = localtime;
print "Content-Type: text/plain\n\n";
print "Done!\nDuration: $time\nStart: $start\nEnd: $end";

I have a ticket in with Interland to raise the value to 100. The Sand Trap is hosted on a shared account, so I don't believe that there's any way I can over-ride this setting myself. I must be hopeful that Interland has some common sense. If not, well, I'll have to move the site, I suppose.

Yesterday, Carey and I went to watch Madagascar. The movie was fine (the half hour of commercials and previews were not), but what really struck me was just how ordinary the movie was. Particularly compared to Pixar movies.

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 372); »

Question: What was your favorite children's movie?

My Answer: I didn't really get into too many movies, largely because VHS was still a pretty new thing when I was a kid. I liked watching Santa Clause (The Movie) as an adolescent, though. But favorite children's movie? Fantasia, maybe?

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Question: What was your favorite toy as a child? Do you still have it? Do you still play with it?

My Answer: Without a doubt, Legos. I still have my Legos, but I don't play with them.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

This blog is now running MovableType 3.2. It - so far - is working beautifully.

The Sand Trap is also "running" MovableType 3.2. It isn't working beautifully at all. In fact, it's not even really working.

Since installing MT 3.2 on The Sand Trap, I've had HTTP 500 errors left and right when I rebuild anything (by deleting a comment, re-saving an article, "Rebuild Site," etc.). Initially, I had 500 errors just logging in to the site, but those seem to have gone away. The errors when rebuilding persist hours later.

Permissions (755) are correct. I don't have CPanel (one of the former causes of 500 errors). I didn't have issues with 3.16. I have no idea what the problem could be, and turning on Debug mode hasn't shown me any errors. More information appears below, as I discover it.

I've sent an email to support. They've yet to respond. I'll update when they finally get around to it.

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 647); »

For some reason, for the past few weeks, I get several queries a day from what seem to be bots - except they're not, because they respond "intelligently." One is named "betcha20bucks" and they IM constantly asking "WHO IS THIS" and other stuff. From just now:

12:36:34PM betcha20bucks: HI 
12:36:58PM betcha20bucks: WHO IS THIS
12:37:56PM betcha20bucks: EEEEEEE 

Usually it's a simple "hey." I've blocked this person, but Adium's "block" communication may not work. I've just again blocked this person in iChat. Let's see if that works.

I almost never respond to the person, though sometimes they'll get an away message (automatically). By "respond intelligently" I mean that I'll say something and their response will be - while still retarded, misspelled, and ALL CAPS - related to what I said in a way that seems entirely too topical to be chosen from an Eliza clone.

Anyway, the moron has been blocked in iChat now. That seems to have worked.

Question: Do you consider yourself a good speller?

My Answer: You betcha. I may have an occasional typo here and there (in other words, there's no need to go back and try to find mispellings here on the ol' blog), but I typically know how to spell just about everything. I rarely hear a word I've never seen in print somewhere before.

Today at Little One's pre-school they had the word "Kindergarden" on the wall in big letters. Carey and I informed the office that they may want to change it… Misspelled words are a big pet peeve of mine, particularly when they're not something you can attribute to a typo.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Question: Who was your favorite teacher, and why?

My Answer: I had two, and both were in chemistry. It's no wonder that I went into medicinal chemistry in college, I suppose. Ed Koster and Phil Sarver were both very different in their approach to teaching, but I respected both (despite how I may have behaved) and learned a great deal from them. I play golf with Ed a few times a week nowadays, and I was right to have chosen him, well, not as a role model, but as someone deserving respect as a good person and a knowledgeable teacher.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

My uncle is not going to be able to play, so anyone interested in playing in my country club's September (21st) Member-Guest tournament should let me know ASAP. 🙂

I'm on Google Talk now. The settings, for Adium:

Jabber ID: [username]@gmail.com
Password: [Your GMail Password]
Connect Server: talk.google.com
Resource: Adium
Port: 5222
Mail: [your choice]
Security: check "use TLS encryption" but leave "force old-style SSL" and "allow plaintext authentication" unchecked.

That's it. Say hi if you'd like - I'm "erikjb" on Gmail…

Question: Have you ever had a stalker? Or been a stalker?

My Answer: No. I've had some mini-crushes, but I was a bit more the "that's me in the corner, losing my religion" type of guy than the "must know every detail, be everywhere, see everything" type of guy. And I'm fairly certain nobody's ever stalked me… Why would they? 😛

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.