It's where I talk to myself. Gaming, politics, and links I don't want to forget about.
The Scala Choir cover of "I Touch Myself" is kinda making me sentimental just at the moment. It’s really beautiful. There’s a bit more about the Choir here, with a video. There’s a classical piece, Nocturne, opus 40 by Dvorak, on the official site.
I just added the Fluxblog feed to LiveJournal as flux_blog, by the by. There’s also a syndicated journal called fluxblog, but it’s using the RSS feed which is not so current.
Timothy Appnel says, “The delineation between TypePad and MT have become clear with this release — TypePad is for general users wanting to blog and Movable Type is for developers and professional organizations wanting to do more then just weblogging.”
This may be true from Six Apart’s point of view. However, it is not clearly true from the point of view of Movable Type users. I am not a developer or a professional organization; I am a general user who wants to blog. I also want to use Textile and subcategories and threaded comments and so on. Six Apart has provided me with a simple way to add plugins to my blog; they have put that capacity in the hands of semi-technical general users. They have created a user base which will not be satisfied with TypePad as a general blogging solution.
I don’t know if Timothy’s assumptions about delineations match what Six Apart thinks, but if so, it’s going to be important for Six Apart to take a look at the user base and make sure their categories match the real categories.
Disclaimer: I think Six Apart is a good company and I really like their product.
Movable Type 3.0 pricing is, bluntly, horrendous.
I don’t think software needs to be free; I shelled out for Movable Type 2.5, because I thought it was good software and I wanted to pay for it. I also don’t mind paying more for professional versions of the software. However, the new pricing is linked to the release of Movable Type 3.0, which doesn’t feel much like a major version release to me. The important new features, from a user point of view, are comment moderation. That’s not enough to justify a $75 price hike on the basic version of the software.
What’s worse is the limitations they’re putting on the various price tiers. Since there are no major new features in 3.0, they’ve elected to limit the number of authors one can have on a weblog, and the number of weblogs one can have in a given installation. I.e., a user who’s been merrily humming along with multiple blogs and multiple authors may suddenly have to pay $600 to get the functionality they paid $25 for previously.
These aren’t hypotheticals, either. Shelley would need to pay $600 bucks. So would Michael and Ginger. For no significant new features.
Me? $70, discounted by the amount of my previous donation. But I wouldn’t be able to casually fiddle around with new ideas any more. So, yeah, I’m looking at WordPress and Textpattern.
I got into the Movable Type 3.0 beta the other day, but I had no idea what I would test with. I didn’t want to convert Population: One over since beta code can’t be expected to be stable. And then it hit me — keep my current obsession out of the way of anyone who doesn’t care about MMORPGs.
Accordingly, I give you Population: Heroes. The LiveJournal feed is (or should soon be) popheroes.
Kerry said today that his first choice as Secretary of Defense would be John McCain. Nice move — it’s less threatening to the Democratic base than McCain as VP, and it’s less damaging in 2008 when McCain runs for President in his own right. It also still brings a lot of the advantages that McCain as VP brings.
This could also be a trial balloon to move the McCain as VP idea forward. We’ll see how McCain reacts. Good move on Kerry’s part either way.
Want to see unedited photos directly from the cameras of American soldiers in Iraq? Check ‘em out, from the people who brought you Yet Another Friendster Clone and Am I Hot Or Not. Via Clay Shirky, who points out that information cannot be contained in the digital era.
For our thirty-eighth mashup we’ll go with an absolute classic of British television, The Sandbaggers. If you like espionage at all, I strongly recommend it. It was all kinds of tense and thoughtful; lots of each episode takes place in the offices of British Intelligence, where people are arguing about the ethics and practicality and safety of missions. And plenty of each episode takes place out in the field, where intelligence agents are not supermen.
For the record, I spent most of Saturday having a pleasant Mother’s Day celebration with my family.
Sunday was the day I spent mesmerized by City of Heroes. And there is a screenshot album, which will keep getting updated as long as updating it amuses me. “Some villains do not wish to end their lives of crime. The Teleonaut uses his mystical shadow powers to reason with them.”
Tim Bray wonders if the use of “stand up” to mean “deploy” is a defense/intelligence IT coinage. I think the answer is yes. I hire ex-military IT people when I can (see below), and they always use “stand up” like that.
Sidenote: in my experience, IT people who’ve spent a while in the military are diligent and responsible and get things done. I look for people who’ve reenlisted a couple of times, rather than people who’ve done one term and left. The kind of discipline they learn is incredibly useful. For example, military IT people will invariably write runbooks. (Hire a veteran today!)
While driving home along Mass Ave last night, right after the Virgin Megastore and right before Longfellow Bridge, I notice one of those big LED official traffic billboards with some unexpected messages on it. The first one, I’m thinking, “Well, that’s a bit odd but maybe it’s some nice gesture for some cop who’s retiring or something.”
Then I see the second message.
Then I pull around and stop and get all these pictures. (The better ones are after I figured out that I should turn off my flash.) The kids doing it are messing with the thing while I’m taking pictures; changing the messages and so on. It looks like someone left the control panel unlocked.
I worry a little bit about my plans to blog this, but hey, if they didn’t want their names known they perhaps would not have displayed them to a few hundred passing cars on Mass Ave.
Happy Saturday night, Boston. I do love this city.