PolarLava::Blog

PolarBlog V1.2.2 has been released.  This release is does not contain any new features and is strictly a bug fix release.  The following issue have been addressed in this release:

• When saving an existing entry if you used the back button to edit again, when you save the entry the second time you would get a duplicate entry error message.  The duplicate entry detection has been fixed to only operate on new entries and now allows the browser's back button to function without causing problems.  This is an acceptable action as an entry ID is defined when editing an existing entry.  The duplicate detection only needs to operate on new entries where there is no existing entry ID.
• When editing entries, html entities that were defined were being stripped from the text that in the edit boxes.  This was mostly causing problem with "&" entities within links that display on the page.  This is only an issue if you take the time to replace "&" with the "&" entity so your pages will validate as XHTML 4.01 Strict.  I'm guessing I'm the only one that worries about these sorts of things! ;)
• Fixed the RSS feed generator to cache the file according to the ttl value defined in the configuration.  Also, the generator now returns appropriate "Last-Modified" and "Expires" headers.  Now if more new aggregators would start respecting these values instead of blindly retrieving the file every time!  It certainly cuts down on the bandwidth that is used
• Fixed the RSS feed generator to include full entries —both the body and more fields, instead of just the body field.
• Comment Loop Bug - This was the biggie in this release.  The comment retrieval and display under certain conditions wouldd enter an infinite loop.  This problem was generally only seen by new users because of the nature of the problem.  It also existed for users that had upgraded, although most were likely to never have encountered it.  This problem existed because every comment has a parent ID associated with it.  If a comment was in reply to another comment that had the same comment ID as the entry, an infinite loop was being created.  To fix this problem, all comments associated with an entry are now tagged with a parent ID of 0 (zero).  This prevents the conflict from occurring without breaking the nested commenting system.  When upgrading, you MUST run the install/upgrade utility as a database fix must be made on the comment table.

Here's a rather interesting find…10x10.  Which is described as "100 Words and Pictures that Define the Time".  For the full explanation, read their "about" page.  I found this to be a compelling look at the world we live in and hope you do too.

Exactly what the hell was this guy thinking?  Apparently he wasn't!  Clearly a case of our boy Darwin hard at work once again.

I have been so moved by Mr. Philip Quinn's actions that I've decided it's time for a new topic here at the lava flow: "Darwin's Work".  Congratulations Philip!  Don't worry, there surely will be others to join you in the future.  I'll need to back track as I know there are others here before you that need to now be reclassified.  But your level of ignorance, the fact that it relates to lava lamps and your clear lack of brainwork —where this was originally going to be categorized, has truly inspired me.

A better version of the story is currently available on the Police Department - City of Kent, Washington website.  This link is going to get stale rather quickly so save yourself a dead click and read it here.  …more

For those who have been troubled by the commenting bug, relief is on its way!  I received an email with some very detailed debugging information as well as a solution to the problem.  I've implemented the new code on this blog and will be doing some further testing before releasing this update in the coming days.  More detailed information will be provided with the release posting, but in short this is likely only a problem new users have seen.  If you haven't seen the problem you likely won't, so consider yourself lucky! ;)