Navel Gazing

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. ...

Movable Type 3.0 pricing (original) 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. ...

I got into the Movable Type 3.0 beta (original) 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.

Feeling fitful. Posting to be light or non-existent until such time as feeling goes away. Nocturnals M&M book v. good. Adventure! D20 as expected; not v. good but solid. Pavis/Big Rubble omnibus reprinting v. good. Believe I have finally cracked the Glorantha mindset. Much like perl mindset, but with less punctuation. (Previous sentence, while jocular, is not a joke.) Still not king.

In April, people grabbed the index.xml file at the root of this site 499 times, presumably hoping for an RSS 2.0 feed. Mostly it was two aggregators politely retrieving the file once per hour. Sadly, that file hasn’t gotten any new content for three months, since I decided to only maintain an RSS 1.0 feed and an Atom feed. I was going to hand-craft a new item for that feed explaining that I had given up on it, but then I noticed that it was already in RSS 1.0 for some reason, so I just linked it to the RSS 1.0 feed and had done with it. This entry may or may not reach the eyes of the people behind those two aggregators, but if they’re paying attention they’ll see it. (Hi, guys! I’d switch to /index.rdf, but you don’t have to if you don’t wanna.) ...

Hey! I’m an Amazon product! No, really — you can review the blog and everything. That’s really surreal. It’s just Alexa information stuffed into the usual Amazon template, but it’s still surreal. I wish it had the full Amazonian functionality; I want to see “5 people recommended reading a David Foster Wallace novel instead of wasting your time here.” It’s easy to find the page for any random website. Go to A9 (original) and search for the URL you want; then click on the Site Info button next to the appropriate search result. I’m fascinated by the reviews some sites get. “With some of the most communist reporters in the news business, CNN has again proved that communism doesn’t work by being beat by the FAIR and BALANCED Fox News. It’s about time America got its news from a real news group - not some biased network who is out of touch with real America (and no, REAL America is not on 5th Avenue!).” ...

Movable Type 3.0 won’t have subcategories, and David Raynes’ SubCategories (original) does not screw up the basic database structure, so I took the plunge and put in subcategories on this site. You can see them; they’re the indented smaller categories in the category listing on the right. If you look at the Gaming category, say, you get to see all the entries in Gaming and in the subcategories of Gaming. If you look at Game WISH, you only see the Game WISH entries. This suits my organizational nature. ...

The next five or six days will see very few updates, since I will be wallowing in the sybaritic capitalist glory that is Walt Disney World. Say g’night, Gracie.

I just got a Nigerian scam message as a blog comment. End of the Net predicted; Trackback at 11.

It’s a brand-new server! ( See here (original) for details.)