Category: observations

AndrewBlog: Making a Good Blog for Dummies

I’m not asking you to be J.R. Tolkien or C.S. Lewis just proof your posts. Take pride in your work and your blog will due fine.

And this is from a Bloggie-nominated post?

Brad Choate: Settling in with the penguin:

“As for portable computing, check out my new ride. Yes, really. Peer pressure is a terrible thing. I had way too much money. Now Apple does. I think at this point in my technological life, anything but Windows will do.”

Old news, I realize, but Brad was always extolled as a smart guy who actually preferred Windows, i.e., he could bend it to his will. Commanded no small amount of respect, as a result.

[Posted with ecto]

This has been long overdue. When I look at my webstats pages (generated nightly), it’s become well-nigh impossible to know what a URL represents if it’s called 0001454.html. So I looked at a couple of articles on how this can be done and found it was surprisingly easy.

In fact, it’s so easy and sensible, I wish this had been a config option in the default install of MovableType.

First off, read the articles linked above. The explanations there are better than I can do, so take advantage of them.

Then, download the amazing MT-IfEmpty plugin and install it (a simple matter of copying two files).

I ended up with a hybrid approach, using some of the stuff I picked up in both articles: my individual article naming scheme looks like this:
<$MTArchiveDate format="%Y/%m/%d"$>/<MTIfEmpty var="EntryKeywords"><$MTEntryTitle dirify="1"$></MTIfEmpty><MTIfNotEmpty var="EntryKeywords"><$MTEntryKeywords$></MTIfNotEmpty>.html

I like to use file extensions as navigational aids, so Mark’s approach wasn’t for me.

At this point, you simple rebuild all files and voila: your new archive style is in effect, all links in your pages point to the new pages you just made, and your old pages are intact for those who have bookmarked them.

[Posted with ecto]

Turns out this tip I borrowed got me on the front page of blogdex.

I couldn’t figure out why I was over 4000 hits on a Sunday . . .

now playing: Carnival of Sorts (Boxcars) from the album Chronic Town by R.E.M.

[Posted with ecto]

chaotic intransient prose bursts: ecto 0.2 (and 0.2.1) release notes:

This little application gets better and better . . . the changes since 0.1.9 are too many to mention here, but it’s like a whole new app. Faster, more features (including a usage modes toggle that allows you to hide some features in the UI: take that, bloatware purveyors!): a 5 mouser, for sure.

Did I mention the responsive support and development staff (yeah, it’s one guy, but you wouldn’t know it)?

now playing: Knock On Wood from the album From Langley Park To Memphis by Prefab Sprout

[Posted with ecto]

CreativeClass.org:

I have been reading entirely too much about the political scene and thinking about what to make of all of it.

One way to interpret some of what I read is to assume that free-thinkers and other independently-minded folks are not welcome in the land of the free. A little harsh? Perhaps.

This turn of thought took me to the Creative Class website: the notion of a Creative Class is one explanation for why some cities are more dynamic and successful, in many ways, than others. It doesn’t necessary have to do with size or location (Seattle ranks higher than much larger Atlanta, for example, and I leave it to others to work out how the climate or geography factor into it).

The premise is that a strength and resilience of the community has more to do with how creative the population is, as defined by the diversity of its businesses and general culture. A community with a lot of ethnic restaurants/food stores and theaters is deemed to be more creative than another with more mundane fare and little or no home-grown culture.

If, as many claim, the culture here is swinging away from a more global outlook, away from international foods and products (at least those from unsympathetic nations), are we marginalizing the creative elements in society? What if the prevailing mood became such that it was not longer cool to be hip? Hard to imagine it happening here in the Republic of Cascadia, a/k/a Ecotopia , of course.

if you live in a place that ranks high on the Creative Index, think about what makes it that way? Lots of different people, tolerance of different ideas, manifested in art, clothing, and entertainment options are some of the factors. What if that all went away?

What if the culture wars are re-ignited in the wake of a Bush victory? Imagine the nations of the European Union or our large Northern Neighbor capitalizing on the alienation of America’s most resourceful people and finding ways to make it easy for professionals and creative types to emigrate . . .

Seeking the bohemian lifestyle and rejecting the values of American materialism, a number of intellectuals, poets, artists and writers fled to France in the post World War I years.

Could we see a reprise of the Lost Generation? I recommend exploring the website and examining how well its positions reflect the reality you see everyday.

now playing: Cars And Girls from the album From Langley Park To Memphis by Prefab Sprout

[Posted with ecto]

BBC – Where I Live – Western Highlands and Islands – Island Blogging:

“Here you can view each of the entries by island. Some may have more than others, and some islands may have no blogs available to view at all yet as the project is just under way and the size and populations of each island varies greatly.

Select an island from the list below.”

Now this looks interesting . . . . I can scratch my itch to live on an island without uprooting the family.

[Posted with ecto]

Teal Sunglasses: GarageBand day one…

Not criticisms by any means, but I wanted to hand off some data points to help people understand what might hapen if they (like many of us) haven’t upgraded to G5’s or the latest powerbooks yet… Garageband has plenty of capability in it, even on my relatively slow (3-5 generations back) machines (I”m actually rather impressed), but there are limits, and if you want to do everything, all at once, it’s going to take some resources…

Sounds good: I’ll make do with my iBook or my old B&W G3 just fine.

“I firmly believe RSS feeds should contain the full text of an entry and here is a good answer to those of you who might be asking “Why?””

This does seem like a good idea (he said, after making sure he was offering full posts), but I’ve thought of one case where this isn’t necessarily the best approach.

If you subscribe to a meta-feed like this one for Seattle-area weblogs or this one for Austin, you would never actually see the original feed, instead just getting the aggregated feeds. So the only time we, originating the content, would ever see any traffic was unless someone wanted to comment . . . .

[Posted with ecto 0.2.0]

Local News – Vancouver – canada.com network

It took a while for Microsoft to come after Mike Rowe Soft, but on Nov. 19, Rowe got an e-mail from law firm Smart & Biggar, claiming he was infringing copyright and demanding that he transfer his domain name to Microsoft.

Smart & Biggar[sic]? What, Dewey Cheatum and Howe was taken?