How to make Movable Type work properly on Dreamhost

  1. Turn on Dynamic Publishing for everything, with all options ON

That is all.
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And I was just starting to consider other hosting options (Media Temple or Pair or something, anything that would let me publish new entries and let guest leave comments on my blog without returning 500 timeout errors) after receiving the last supercold response from Dreamhost support:

Hello,
Ok, I found the issue. It seems that your script is loading up over 90
megs worth of .. something directly into apache.
I’ve seen this with MT before, and we have no idea what on earth it’s
doing. We limit apache memory to 90 megs, as that’s a fairly large chunk
for one apache process.
You’ll need to consult movable type about that, as we don’t provide
support for custom scripting.

Now that’s what I call, “Can I get a ‘fuck you?'”

Natty Dread

A few months ago I wrote about the dragonfruit trees in our backyard secretly blooming at midnight. Well, these are pitaya by day:
20071002banana-killer0132.jpg

Bob must have been thinking of pitaya when he named his famous album.

20071002banana-killer0133.jpg

These are the red-fleshed variety, which only grow half as big as the white-fleshed ones.

As it turns out, the universal truth about fruit (“best when fresh picked and grown organically with water buffalo cakes as fertilizer”) is especially true for pitaya: I can honestly say that the dragonfruit we grew tasted better than any I have tried until now, and I have tried many from roadside stands and markets alike. In fact, growing them naturally raised the overall flavor from “disappointing considering how exotic it looks / slightly and boringly sweet” to “tasty, almost delicious.” Overall, a wonderful result: I love seeing stacks and stacks of dragonfruit being sold at the roadside fruit stalls, but I’ll never buy one again.
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Bonus tropical fruit shot:
20071002banana-killer0134.jpg

Our baby mango trees are already bearing fruit and straining under the weight!

New Commenting Authorization Explanation

I had to make it a little harder to comment on this blog, because the version of the software isn’t going to let my “type gecko” authorization work. Also, this is only made necessary because of stupid comment spammers, who all need to eat a dick and die a painful death. Sorry, I tried to avoid this system because it’s a pain in the ass (eyes, actually), but it’s still fairly simple. Please click on the example diagram below (to open an enlarged version) if you can’t figure out the new system by yourself:
captcha-explanation.jpg
Also, my system is still slow. Comments appear to hang after you click Submit, and may or may not be immediately published. If you try a couple times, I usually can fix the problem for you because the comment registers in the system, but isn’t actually published or visible to you until I manually publish it. Sorry, it’s all the fault of the spammers!

Pandora, Boxed

This is so sad:

Dear Pandora Visitor,
We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for most listeners located outside of the U.S. We will continue to work diligently to realize the vision of a truly global Pandora, but for the time being we are required to restrict its use. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative.
We believe that you are in Thailand (your IP address appears to be xxx). If you believe we have made a mistake, we apologize and ask that you please contact us at pandora-support@pandora.com
If you are a paid subscriber, please contact us at pandora-support@pandora.com and we will issue a pro-rated refund to the credit card you used to sign up. If you have been using Pandora, we will keep a record of your existing stations and bookmarked artists and songs, so that when we are able to launch in your country, they will be waiting for you.
We will be notifying listeners as licensing agreements are established in individual countries. If you would like to be notified by email when Pandora is available in your country, please enter your email address below. The pace of global licensing is hard to predict, but we have the ultimate goal of being able to offer our service everywhere.
We share your disappointment and greatly appreciate your understanding.

RIP, Pandora. Shame on those that killed you, for without unrestricted access from outside those walls, you truly are dead.