Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
Six Log pointed out a desktop MT posting application called Zempt that I’m checking out right now. Currently it’s Windows-only, but according to their roadmap, Mac support is planned for two or so revisions down the line.
Looks like Userspace might have some competition down the line! As it stands right now, Zempt looks good for the Windows side of things, and Userspace has my vote for the Mac side of the equation.
I haven’t been following the story too closely, but there’s been a small amount of ruckus lately because the CEO of Userland Software, John Robb, abruptly left the company, and when he did, his entire weblog disappeared from the web.
Nobody seems to be too sure just why his entire archive of posts disappeared. Did John take them down? Did Dave Winer (founder of Userland)? Were they just deleted because they lived on Userland’s server, and as an ex-employee, John wasn’t allowed to use Userland’s hosting anymore? Lots of questions, as as yet, few answers.
Rick Klau is concerned about the situation (rightly so), and ends his post with the following advice:
Final lesson from this situation: never, ever blog at a domain that’s not owned by you. Don’t blog on your employer’s site, don’t blog on your blogging application’s site — make sure your blog lives (and stays!) on your own domain.
This comes at an interesting time for me. Part of my motivation for applying for the TypePad beta program was that, after running my website off of my own server under my desk for years, I’m considering finally relinquishing that amount of control and moving to a hosted solution. Should I do so, I’d be doing exactly what Rick advises against, and, admittedly, there is a small amount of risk in that. Should Six Apart (creators of MovableType and TypePad) fold, my site and all of it’s pages could go up in smoke (for what it’s worth, I don’t think there’s a very high probability of that).
However, it seems to me there’s a very simple solution to this, that, for me, outweighs any risk of my web-based life disappearing into the great bit bucket in the sky, and that’s simply this: back up your files. I know that MovableType has an export feature that allows you to save a local copy of every post on your weblog, and I would assume (though I don’t know) that the other blogging systems have a similar feature. It’s useful both as an importing mechanism when changing sites or weblogs, but it also makes a great backup mechanism. Ever since I suffered the loss of my last webserver, I’ve been making sure to export my site on a regular basis. If anything goes all aflooey (a technical term, to be sure), I’m covered.
It may very well be that John has done just this, and, once he’s settled in at wherever he’s going, his entire website will reappear on the web at a new address. From the number of posts I’ve seen about his ‘disappearance’, I’d say that there are a fair amount of people hoping for that to be the case. Hopefully it’s not too long before we find out.
In the end, then, I’d worry less about relinquishing control of your archives to an employer or to your blogging host company, than I would about making sure you have a current backup so that, should disaster strike, recovery is just a few clicks away.
(via Erik)
Last February, dad noted a story that I then mentioned also, regarding the possibility that Stonehenge might have been intended to resemble feminine genetalia (cold, hard, and immobile — apparently the designer didn’t have a very good sex life).
Five months later, the story is spreading (so to speak). Looks like we got the scoop on this one, dad! ;)
(via Iki)
The big problem (for me, at least) of having a multitude of subscribed RSS feeds in your newsreader is that after not checking in for a couple days, there’s so much to wade through that you end up overloading, and not posting about any of it (sigh). I know I went past a few interesting posts, but they just got lost in the noise.
I’m sure there’s a lot of nifty stuff out there on the ‘net right now. Guess y’all will just have to go find it yourselves. Sorry!
Ever since the hanging chad and botched elections of 2000, there’s been a push to move to a newer, fancier, more high-tech electronic voting system that would eliminate the problems faced in that election. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Easier to count, data logs with accountability, and all sorts of fancy computerized goodies.
Unfortunately, as is often the case, the reality looks to be falling far short of what is actually needed. New Zealand’s Scoop magazine has a very disturbing article examining Diebold’s electronic voting machines, and investigating just how secure they really are. It’s not good news.
The GEMS election file contains more than one “set of books.” They are hidden from the person running the GEMS program, but you can see them if you go into Microsoft Access.
You might look at it like this: Suppose you have votes on paper ballots, and you pile all the paper ballots in room one. Then, you make a copy of all the ballots and put the stack of copies in room 2.
You then leave the door open to room 2, so that people can come in and out, replacing some of the votes in the stack with their own.
You could have some sort of security device that would tell you if any of the copies of votes in room 2 have been changed, but you opt not to.
Now, suppose you want to count the votes. Should you count them from room 1 (original votes)? Or should you count them from room 2, where they may or may not be the same as room 1? What Diebold chose to do in the files we examined was to count the votes from “room2.”
There’s a lot more in the article, none of it encouraging. A new frontier for voting? Or just more ways to botch up the system? I’m afraid it looks like the latter to me.
(via Lambert)
Shelley noticed TypePad weblogs starting to pop up out of the woodwork today, and points out a few that she’s found.
As was mentioned in one of the comments to her post, it’s definitely interesting being in a beta test period with weblogs that are public, and yet being bound by a (limited) NDA that prevents me from saying much of anything about the service itself. This isn’t a complaint at all, mind you — it just means I can’t flood my weblog with “Oooh! Look at that!” and “This is so cool!” and “Check out what I can do!” posts.
In other words, it’s a good thing. ;)
Obviously enough, some of the new toys are going to be fairly obvious, if you know where to look. All I feel entirely safe saying is that everything on this site is created and managed through TypePad — and that’s also a good thing.
And now, I’m off to play some more…
NOTICE: This weblog (The Long Letter) will be going on hold for a bit. I’m not disappearing, though — I’m just going to be using Eclecticism as my primary weblog for the duration of the TypePad beta testing project.
As I’m already signed up for the 26 Things and Blogathon projects on this website, though, those posts will be appearing here when they’re ready to go. Just about everything else, however, will most likely be showing up on Eclecticism.
Once the beta test period is over, one of two things will happen: either I will close down Eclecticism and import all of its entries into The Long Letter, or I will move The Long Letter (and djwudi.com) onto TypePad. When the time comes, I’ll be sure to make a note of that.
In the meantime, though — see you over at Eclecticism!
Britney Spears admitted today that she isn’t a virgin.
In other news, the Pope is still Polish.
(via MeFi)
Looks like Apple’s iTunes Music Store is catching on (or, at the very least, getting enough interest to warrant an interesting experiment): in the US market, the soundtrack for the movie The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen will only be available through the iTMS — no CD’s will be pressed.
I’ve got mixed feelings on this, personally. One of the things that has kept me from jumping full-bore into the iTMS for my music is the paucity of full ID3 tags in the purchased files. As I’ve been importing my CD collection, I’ve been working on being very thorough with the metadata included with each song: Artist, Title, Album, Year of release, and Composer are all information that I want available in my collection. Unfortunately, with the tracks I’ve purchased from the iTMS so far, Artist, Title, and Album seem to be all you get.
With a soundtrack release that (at least in the US market) has no physical media, how easy is it going to be for me to track down the rest of the metadata that I want included for search and organizational purposes? Not very, would be my guess, which concerns me. I like the idea, concept, and execution of the iTMS a lot, and I do support this experiment — just gimme my metadata!
(via MacRumors)
I’m working on figuring out the pros and cons to various ways of approaching the fact that I’ve now got a secondary weblog that I need to keep active as well as having this weblog that’s been active for a good few years now at its current address.
Any bright ideas?