Installing MT 3.34 on Dreamhost

After spending a whole day trying to figure out the right combination of fcgi wrappers, Movable Type core file extensions, and .htaccess voodoo, I think I got it figured out. All of my problems were due to 2 main reasons:

  1. There is no version 3.34-specific documentation easily available, including on the sixapart website
  2. As always, I made mountains out of molehills. In my defense, I can’t help it – shell access and the command line get me excited…

Therefore, I offer the following advice for the installation/upgrading of MT to version 3.34 on a Dreamhost shared server:

  1. Change your domain settings to run PHP 5.2.1 and enable FastCGI support via the DreamHost Web Panel (under Domains > Manage Domains > Edit button under heading “Web Hosting”)
  2. Ignore all of the instructions on the web for enabling fastcgi for MT 3.33 (specifically, don’t change file extensions from .cgi to .fcgi or .fpl)
  3. Perform a standard MT install/upgrade (choose your own adventure: easier method that takes longer / 1337 h4xx0r)
  4. Create/modify .htaccess file in your MT core directory with the following 2 lines:

#AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
AddHandler fastcgi-script .cgi
(.htaccess tip taken from here)
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Now, this seems to have worked for me, but obviously I cannot guarantee it will work for you. Also, I’m by no means an expert, I just wanted to share my experience with getting this particular version of MT running on DreamHost (who, by the way, will not help you with any 3rd party software problems that are not “One-click installs” via the Web Panel, including MT – which I totally understand but feels a bit cold when it’s 3:30 AM and you’re just sure the problem is server-related and has nothing to do with the fact that you don’t know what the hell you’re doing.)

Impossible Fish


Why not ride on the coattails of the Impossible Fish Tank? (See that? That’s how to give credit, bitches…)
We somehow acquired a small fish tank at the house and went out to buy some fish to keep as slaves (not slaves in the sense that they will work our land for a share of the crops, but in the sense that they exist only to amuse us, since freshwater fish make such shitty companions/rescue animals).
We went to the local pet shop and found mostly a bunch of fat, quivering goldfish and mollies, which I detest, as I like my slaves skinny (and preferably, forlorn/amusing). In a tank wedged between the goldfish, however, we found the fish pictured above. Rather than thinking about how I’d never seen fish like these before, or how unnatural their coloring looked, I instead thought about what a stunning resemblance they shared with some fishing lures in my tackle box at home:

So you may understand that I reacted with some surprise when the worker at the pet shop, while scooping these specimens into a bag for us to take home, told us that they had in fact been artificially colored. And I do not mean to say that they were painted or dipped in some kind of dye, either. It was INJECTED into their bodies!
…………..
Fucking third world!
Poor fishies!
I no longer think of them as slaves; they are my babies and I shall care for them tenderly (feeding them processed food pellets once a day) until the time of the Big Flush.

vindicated

An ATM ate my bank card and the screen flashed OUT OF ORDER in incredibly annoying red letters. I socked it pretty hard and it spit my card back out, then it resumed normal operation. That was pretty much the best thing that happened today (besides finding a really good fried chicken vendor downtown).

museumr

View full
Go play, if you have a flickr account.
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Here’s the original:
http://flickr.com/photos/cbuddha/433197026/
And there’s a story behind it: Went fishing in crazy hot weather a few weeks ago on a ghetto pontoon boat; caught a few fish and saw this little guy hit the water and start drowning. Fished him out with my Thai “fish hell” rig just as he stopped struggling. Put him on my finger and blew on his wings, and he came back to life! It was pretty cool.

Choose your own bitter pill

I found some really good videos on YouTube, but they are all downers. I don’t know if it’s wise to watch so much sadness and suffering in one go, so I suggest choosing a single theme from the following:
1. Sadistic dolphin killings in Wakayama, Japan
“Each year, the idyllic and peaceful setting of the village of Taiji in southern Japan is shattered by almost unspeakable cruelty as incredible pain and ultimate death is inflicted on defenseless dolphins.” I actually had no idea that this was taking place so close to where I lived – it’s in Wakayama… If I had known that just a couple years ago…
Dolphin Massacre in Japan
and
Japanese Massacre – Dolphin killing in Taiji Japan
FUCK cultural preservation and FUCK the limpdick Japanese government for not stepping up to these sadistic rednecks – this is just wrong.

2. Thai Brides – A glimpse into the system
“Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends is a television documentary series, in which Louis Theroux gives viewers the chance to get brief glimpses of things they wouldn’t normally come into contact with. In most cases this means interviewing people with extreme beliefs of some kind, or just generally belonging to subcultures not known to exist by most or just frowned upon.” Louis Theroux is the youngest son of famed travel writer Paul Theroux and this episode exposes some pretty pitiful circumstances and individuals.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
That said, I’d buy Lake Palmer a beer anytime.