It turns out that I was wrong — they serve different purposes. When I know the name of what I want (be it a song, person’s phone number, or application), Launchbar is much more efficient (I think there is a use-frequency algorithm employed). Spotlight is more useful when I just know a tidbit of data I am looking for.

In the “International” preference pane, on the “Input” tab, there is an option for “keyboard viewer”. This look and acts as an on-screen keyboard. I am pretty sure this is new to 10.4.

Update: It turns out that I was dead wrong about this on many fronts. It is not an on-screen keyboard because the modifier keys (shift, cmd, control, option) do not “stay down” when pressed. And it was in Panther. Duh.

Thanks to my friend David Niemeijer of Assistiveware for setting me straight.

You have no doubt noticed by now that your website has been down since Monday (12/20) at approximately 8 pm EST. I am writing to explain what happened, why it happened, and what steps I am taking to prevent similar situations in the future.

On Monday evening, the server was hit with a “worm” described at http://news.com.com/Net+worm+using+Google+to+spread/2100-7349_3-5499725.html?tag=nl. When I first noticed this, I thought my server had been compromised by an intruder and went about working with the server provider to close any security breeches and restore the corrupted html/php files from the daily backup. (at that time, no one knew it was a worm.) That restore was complete by 11 pm, and within 30 minutes the files were defaced.

The server provider, by default, keeps one nightly backup (around 11 pm est) and does a weekly backup every Wednesday. Because of the timing of this event, the daily backup was also corrupted.

This worm rewrote the contents of index.* files. Because you are on a “shared server”, you were affected regardless of whether or not you use php

When I discovered I had been hit a second time, I opted to take the entire webserver down, upgrade php to address the issues, and only then restore from the 12/15 tape backup. I was told by the provider that they would have a fully supported upgrade of php in place by last night. Rather than doing a custom installation, I opted to wait.

I have been assured that the upgrade will be in place by later this morning’. I will then restore all files to the 12/15 backup and restart all the sites by mid afternoon.

Unfortunately, this means that I weeks worth of data has been lost. Going forward, I intend to prevent this by making a local copy of the provider’s nightly backup.

Peter took some pictures to record the event. I was so excited to meet Matt Mullenweg — the father of wordpress. He was even more impressive in person than his online identity. I was particularly surprised in his uncanny ability to interpret my speech (a feat in and of itself) and repeat it back in non-tech speak as represented in this picture.

he’s on his way over here now… stay tuned.

In my “hacking”, I have created two plugins that I think are pretty cool and might even be useful by others (they are to display archives differently and to display links differently. But, I have no way of assessing the acceptability/validity/originality of the way I coded them, which makes me reticent to share them with and for others in any “official” way.

What I find interesting is that a lot of this in people’s personality and style. Cyberspace communities have the same social dynamic issues as any gathering of people.

I selected Mambo as the engine for Adaptive Environments about a year and a half ago. By the time we launched, the Mambo-ishness of the site is barely recognizable. Because I had worked with Mambo, I picked up a. client in the spring who THOUGHT he wanted to use Mambo.

Luckily, I was able to get him to “see the light” and ended up combining Wordpress, phpBB, and a commercial link directory application that is much too poorly implemented to mention by name.

I think it is a goo thing when I cringe looking at work I did a year ago — it shows how much I have learned.

It is a rich compendium of tools to get tons of information on any url. I was especially surprised (yet gladdened) to see many of the accessibility validators — a term I use reluctantly — on the “Develop” tab.