Nothing funner than slamming in a Movable Type upgrade (original) first thing in the morning before I take off to sunny California. Looks immensely cool, though. Let me know if you see any problems. It’s worth installing, though, for a myriad of reasons readers won’t notice. Better text formatting HTML allowed in comments (hm, OK, that’ll be noticable) Creative Commons license support (gotta turn that on) The above was egregious, but also tested the text formatting. As usual, let me know if anything breaks. ...

I was looking for a way to permit random people to submit entries to Movable Type, and there’s not really any way to do it out of the box, so I wrote this CGI. It is not entirely polished; in particular, it ought to use a config file and of course the HTML is gonna need to be changed. It also ought to display a success page. However, I realized last night that I was going to wind up modifying it substantially to meet my specific needs and that it wouldn’t be so generally useful post-modification, so here you go. Note that unless you add NoPublishMeansDraft 1 to your mt.cfg file, submissions will be not be posted as drafts. More details on that here. Edit: Mmm. Yeah. Sorry about that; I stuck the CGI off in the extended entry bit.

Gotta remember to do Game WISH (original) next week, if I have time, which I might not, since I’ll be at Dundracon and other West Coast points all weekend and my weeks are innnnnnnnsane!

After getting Sorcerer (which I will talk more about at some point) and reading Gibson’s new novel Pattern Recognition (ditto), I got all fired up to write up a little discussion of using the former to run a game set in the environment of the latter. Then Rob MacDougall beat me to it, so I just posted my thoughts in the thread he started. Man, I’m getting some good gaming out here.

So the Onion went and asked a bunch of celebs who they could take in a fight. I gotta say, if you respond to that question with “I believe in non-violent solutions” or words to that effect, you’re kind of wimping out. This is the Onion. Have a sense of humor. Maintain your principled stance on non-violence by saying “Nobody, because I have a principled stance on non-violence and I’d just curl up into a little ball even if it was Nancy Reagan coming after me.” ...

In honor of Jon Carroll’s 2/11 column, and inspired by my friend R. Francis Smith, I present the Candidate X Store (original). Candidate X: he doesn’t like killing people. It is, in my mind, a perfectly chosen phrase. Everything there is priced at cost; I don’t make any money off ‘em. The slogan is thanks to R. Francis.

Couple more Oscar tidbits: Donald Kaufman was nominated (along with his brother, Charlie) for Best Adapted Screenplay (original). That’s gotta be a first. Also, the meticulous kodi notes that none of the Best Picture nominees take place in the modern era. This shows that Miramax likes historicals. Joke! Except not really. Edit: fixed my gross misquote of kodi. I plead running out the door.

Surprisingly unobjectionable Oscar nominations this year. Yes, Two Towers more or less got stiffed. However, I’m rather glad to see Christopher Walken get a well-deserved nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and I’m glad to see John C. Reilly get the same on sentimental grounds even though I haven’t seen Chicago yet. (Note: Bill Condon wrote Chicago. Good talent involved in that there movie, and hey, Condon got nominated for Best Screenplay Adaptation!) I’m also very pleased about the Best Actor nods to Michael Caine and Nicholas Cage. And they noticed Julianne Moore in Far From Heaven. ...

EMI/Capital has purchased a clue and is reissuing Warren Zevon’s back catalog (original). Plus bonus material, including an entire unreleased album from his early days. I think it’s wonderful news, if a little belated. (By way of Jim Henley.)

Eugene Volokh provides me with an excellent launching point for some stuff I’ve been mulling over lately. He’s discussing recent polls which may show that the British public is not behind the US war on Iraq. In his wrapup, he says “I hope British public opinion is not being accurately reported here. But if it is, then just reflects the errors of the British public, not the errors of a hawkish policy.” ...