Month: April 2006

Meta: site redesign

meta

Update on the internets shenanigans and goings-on.

First, my site redesign. I’ve been wanting to do a site redesign for a while. I even teased about it a while ago, but I can’t find the post, so no linkie. Just know that it’s been on my back-burner for a long time.

I really like the moon background picture, and the three-column look, but it’s not standards-compliant and it really sucks for folks on dial-up. Yes, there are still people who have dial-up internets. I know, I know, you thought it was an urban legend like Budwiser not selling beer to Arabs or Bill Gates sending you $5, but it’s true.

I also wanted to somewhat simplify the overall graphic design. I’m pretty sure I’ll just have two columns, for instance. I’ll still have a moon theme but it will be subtler – moon bullets on my posts, for example, and a moon banner picture across the top.

Here are a couple of sites that I like and that are inspiring me:

There might be more but those are the ones I can think of (and link to) off the top of my head.

Second, my political posts will be on a separate domain and a separate blog. After going to Powell’s last weekend to see Markos Moulitsas Zuniga and Jerome Armstrong talk about their new book, Crashing The Gate (about which event I have a post I need to finish up), I thought I’d work on blogging local and national politics a bit more extensively – and I had a domain I registered a year ago and hadn’t been using that would comment on my cynical view of politics.

Say “hello” to The Lie Factory.

Likewise, I’m moving my running-related posts to a brand-new domain and separate blog. For now anything to do with training or racing will be there. Right now I only have one post, since I just bought the domain this morning (from GANDI, a French company that only charges 12 Euros per year. I forget the exchange rate but it’s cheap, believe me).

Introducing Run, Moon, Run!.

Once the site re-design is done here, I’ll add some bells and whistles to TLF and RMR. For right now I’m just using some default Blogger templates.

Meta: sorry

meta

Sorry for the lack of posts ’round here. I’ve got (yet another) a new project I’m working on, and a couple of posts in draft form that I’ll try to toss up here when they’re good and ready and not one minute before.

In the meantime, let me just say “ow.”

Impact

Politics

Markos Moulitsas Zuniga and Jerome Armstrong at Powell’s

Surprisingly contentious crowd – “third party” questions come up a lot

Markos is asked about building blog traffic – “You, blogging to your immediate friends and family have a much larger impact then I do, blogging to millions.”

I’d never thought of it before in that way. My family all reads my blog, but probably only my dad has ever heard of DailyKos or MyDD. My sister and brother-in-law have never heard of Kos at all. Out of my friends, only Ken really reads political blogs – OK, he rarely reads my blog, too, but since we agree on politics that’s OK. 🙂 I can motivate my friends to participate when needed, especially my non-political friends because I know the issues they care about, and I only ask them to participate when it’s something that they would see as important. So there’s trust – I’m not just blindly asking them to send money or call all the time, like they’re an ATM or robo-caller.

Bedtime

General

Wow! Sure, I’ve wondered if my union was in bed with management.

But I always assumed it was metaphorical. Not literal.

Copies of the relevant articles archived here and here.

Boot Camp

Tech

I’m totally stealing this from John Gruber, but I think he’s being really really eloquent when he says:

“Holy shit!”

Apple has released a public beta of a utility to let you dual-boot Windows XP on your Intel-based Mac, called Boot Camp.

And the bestbestbest part: this technology is going to be included in the next version of Mac OS X, 10.5, Leopard.

This totally looks like a surprise strike at a target of opportunity. What’s that? Oh, haven’t you heard? Windows Vista isn’t going to ship until 2007. But IT OK, Microsoft is going to put stickers on any PC even barely capable of having Vista installed on it, thus guaranteeing that anyone who actually upgrades in ’07 has a really really shitty experience. Nice one, Microsoft! Go, Apple!

Once people get used to running Mac OS, and can compare it side-by-side with XP on the same hardware… I’m betting that some folks eventually just get rid of XP altogether. Not all, mind you; I’m sure some will continue to use both, and some will actually prefer XP for many reasons. But there will be at least some switchers, and that only works to Apple’s advantage, since the bulk of their income still comes from sales of hardware, not software.

Knowledge Base article with all your FAQs about Boot Camp found here.

OK, that does it. I’m totally dual-booting my new sexy thing this weekend.

Bug Man gone

Politics

Holy crab!

An article about the corrupt management at the county in the local paper

AND

Tom DeLay weaseling out of facing the voters?

Good things are supposed to come in threes.

If I get any more good news today I might…

Damn, I got nothin’. I just can’t be that lucky.

Update 4:14 PM – I’m adding this (image stolen from Duncan Black, who probably stole it from someone else found it somewhere else), mainly for Tracy, who actually made me do the Snoopy dance earlier today when she didn’t know what I was talking about:

Picking a team

General

Over the weekend, Josh Marshall took a break from his usual excellent journalisming about politics and mused about the esoteric topic of baseball team loyalty. He’s trying to pick a team, now that he’s living in New York City.

Basically, he’s asking if he should root for the Yankees. In his words:

“But the Yankees? Becoming a Yankees fan almost seems like apostasy.”

Essentially, Josh is pointing out that a little suffering makes enjoying the victories sweeter. And since the Yankees hardly ever lose, there’s really not enough suffering to make it enjoyable.

Don’t look at me like that. I understand him completely. Maybe only baseball fans can get that.

At any rate, he asked for comments and suggestions from fellow baseball fans.

I sent him the following:

I don’t know if you’re a fan of “Get Fuzzy”, a syndicated comic strip about a guy named Rob, his dog Satchel (named after, of course, Satchel Paige) and his cat, Bucky (named, of course, after Buck O’Neil from the Negro Leagues)…

…but I think, if you are, all you need to know is that Bucky is a Yankees fan. Do you want to be like Bucky?

The comic is set in Boston, though (which coincidentally is the hometown of the artist, Darby Conley), so that might tend to explain things.

Smacky’s mama

Smacky

I realize I stopped Friday Cat Blogging a while ago. Mainly because my camera is teh suxxorz.

Tracy has revived the tradition with post about Snickers, her mama cat. Er, former mama cat – she had that “fixed”.

Just for reference, Snickers is Smacky’s mama.

More exciting spam

General

Last Thursday, a co-worker announced over the tops of the cubes, “I get the most boring spam ever!” With much vehemence.

Since I was the only one there in at least a 4-cube radius, I wandered over.

He had his personal webmail open, and was going through and deleting vast numbers of messages. “Here’s one for donuts,” he complained. “Another one! One for a Chevy Tahoe! Mattress offers!” Delete, delete. “J. C. Penney!”

I said, “Dr. Seuss? Insurance? You’re right. Very very boring.”

He shook his head. “I must not go to the really exciting websites.”

“Listen, if you want, I can show you some… I get porn spam all the freakin’ time.”

He looked up at me. “Nah. I’m too old for that shit.”

“But you had to think about it, didn’t you?” I smiled back.