Jim Dalrymple.com

Sometimes I feel pretty stupid — this week was one of those times. I’ve been running my server without Spam Assassin because I really didn’t need it. However, lately it’s become necessary, so I decided to set it up.

Right away it started picking up spam email and marking it correctly. Then it started marking emails spam that really wasn’t spam. So I setup the Junkmail and Notjunkmail email boxes so I could train the Bayesian filters.

But it didn’t really work. Then I realized that there was no cron job setup, so the damn thing wasn’t learning anything. I downloaded Spamtrainer ran the fixes and the rules and everything is running fine now.

I sat there this afternoon looking at my daughters Dell wondering why the hell it had to be so difficult to join a wireless network. A Mac is so easy — turn it on and it finds the network for you. That’s it, nothing else.

Read the rest of this entry »

I did some reading over the weekend on what it would take to implement “live searching” on the site. What I mean by that is searching a Web site in a similar way to how Apple has implemented live searching on a Macintosh using Spotlight.

This morning I decided to take the plunge and after toying around off and on today I got it pretty much done. I still have to work on the CSS a bit more, but it’s functional.

It should work on most browsers, although it doesn’t for sure on IE for the Mac — then again who cares. If you use Safari, you even get the rounded corners and drop shdows.

So, to use the live search function just click in the search box and start typing. Results should popup under the search window almost immediately; using your arrow keys (or mouse) scroll down to the story you want and hit enter. If you want to exit out of search, just hit the Escape key on your keyboard.

I like to keep the server as up to date as possible, usually waiting a few days to update after Apple releases a fix or Security update. Since I was on vacation for a week and traveling the three weeks before that, I missed the last Security update for Mac OS X Server. I can tell you now, I wish I was still missing it!

Read the rest of this entry »

I have been experimenting a lot with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) lately to see what can be done in designing a simple Web site. If you are using Apple’s Safari 1.1 or later, you are seeing things on this Web page that people using Camino, Firefox, Internet Explorer and most other browsers don’t: text shadows. Using shadows for story headlines is nothing knew; people have used Photoshop for years to make graphics with sophisticated layers and drop shadows, but the text shadows you see on this page are all done with CSS — not a graphic in there at all.

Safari supports new properties proposed for CSS level 3. In fact, Safari 1.1 has added support for three new properties: text-shadow property, rgba() colors with alpha values, and the :selection pseudo-element.

CSS has become much more prevalent in Web sites over the past couple of years — the recent redesign of Macworld and MacCentral (where I am the online editor) makes extensive use of CSS. Using a style sheet you can easily change text size and many other elements of a Web site, including the ability to add drop shadows to any text on your Web site.

While doing this blog I set out to use CSS as much as possible. I met my goals to a great degree, although there are still a few tables; ultimately, I would like to rebuild it without using a single table.

Unfortunately for some, Safari is one of the only browsers supporting these new properties. If you don’t use Safari, you can see what you are missing by checking out this image of the Web site.