All posts by Dan

Hacking MT: The review

I finished Hacking Movable Type by Jay Allen, Brad Choate, Ben Hammersley, and Matthew Haughey. I actually finished it a few days ago, this is really the first chance I’ve had to sit down and write a review (I kept trying to write it at work, so I could just copy and paste it into the Blog..but nooooo.. apparently, I’m expected to actually work at work) So… Here’s the review!

Incredible suspense, amazing plot, intelligent characters, hot steamy sex scenes.. these are all things that are NOT in this book.. if you’re looking for those.. try a trashy romance Novel.. or maybe check out something over on Satan’s bookclub. If, however, you’re looking for a book that will teach your inner (or outer) geek the secrets of Movable Type.. this is it.

Continue reading Hacking MT: The review

Baby Names

We’re just starting to look at baby names (and since we don’t know if Vegas is a boy, girl, alien or puppy) we’re not just looking at single gender names. This morning at breakfast, I asked Kael what he wanted to name Vegas when he/she/it was born. His response?

“Yoda” Man… I love the crazy kid! I hadn’t even considered Yoda as a name for Vegas. Janice asked to (hoping for something a little more normal I think). Kael’s response to her?

“Vegas”

So.. Kael wants us to name the baby either Vegas or Yoda… Guess we’ll have to add them to the ‘list’

Future Darwin Awards entrant

She missed it this time, but I’m willing to bet that this lady ends up on the Darwin awards before to much longer.

From the linked article:

Lockhart said the woman was embarrassed about the accident.

Her explanation to officers: “I leaned out to spit and I leaned too far.”

And the quote from Captain Obvious the police officer:

“It’s certainly not prudent to open your car door on a highway, especially when you’re not wearing a seat belt,” said Capt. Rich Lockhart, a police spokesman.

Umm… DUH?

Ok..so to start with.. we have this lady..who feels the need to spit while driving down the highway at highway speeds (which, for states that aren’t constant construction zones like Colorado, is presumably 55 MPH or so) this.. on its own is not bad..lots of people do this… Ms. Doolin however, couldn’t be bothered with the simple task of ROLLING DOWN her window to spit.. she felt she needed to open her door (This would be Mistake #1). Then, as if that wasn’t a dumb enough thing to do.. she decides that instead of just leaning her head over a little to spit, she needs to lean her whole body over (This is mistake #2). And for some reason, apparently, when she decided to lean out of the car, moving along the highway at 55MPH…she didn’t feel the need to hold onto anything in the car (like, I dunno.. the steering wheel maybe?) and to compound this…she wasn’t wearing her seat belt either (Mistakes #3 and #4).

The only thing she managed to get right (or mistake #5 depending on your point of view), is that she managed to avoid getting ran over by the rest of the people moving down the highway….

I think we’ll see her on the Darwin Awards inside of a year…

Investment Strategies

So, apparently, I’ve been picking what stocks/mutual funds to invest in the wrong way. I’ve been trying to figure out things like past performance, future estimates for the company, things called p/e ratios.. all that financial muckety-muck… turns out I should have been picking stocks based on morals.

Both virtue and vice seem to be increasingly effective investing strategies. God and Satan are both winning on Wall Street. In recent years, people who have invested in a particular brand of virtue—the Ave Maria Catholic Values Fund—and people who have invested in a particular brand of vice—the Vice Fund—have both handily beaten the market.

And, in case you had to ask, yes.. my choice of the two options would have been to invest in sin and vice.

Optical Illusion

while I was at work tonight, I came across this link. Which is a very cool set of optical illusions showing that our perceptions of an item’s color is heavily influenced by the surrounding items… Very cool.

What are you doing to my bed?

As we’re going around, unpacking and setting up furniture… Kael has been helping us. Last night, we finished putting together mine and Janice’s bed. Shortly afterwards, Kael was in there climbing up and down on the bed, jumping on it, and generally, just being a toddler.

Janice goes up, and asks Kael “What are you doing to my bed?” Which led to Kael repeating that for the next 5 minutes while she was up there, she came downstairs, he stopped… until the next time she went upstairs, when I hear Kael going “What are you doing to my bed?”

Is it a bad thing, if I can’t tell if we’re being mimicked or mocked?

The End of Hollywood!

If the fact that Hollywood is releasing a remake of “The Dukes of Hazzard” isn’t enough to convince you that Hollywood has ran out of new ideas for movies, and we should just count on seeing the same movies with different actors in them… perhaps hearing that not only are they planning on releasing a “Live-Action” version of the Transformers in 2007, (And really, how live action can it be, when your main ‘characters’ are cars and trucks that turn themselves into robots? Has anyone seen a car/truck turn itself into a robot on the highway recently?) Hollywood is also planning on releasing a film version of Voltron.

So..apparently, our big hits in ’07 will be remakes of animated Robot TV shows.. which would mean.. the big hit for ’08 must be a Movie version of America’s Funniest Home Videos.

Google Adsense

As you can see by looking at the left hand column (unless you’ve got adblocking software running) I’m giving Google’s Adsense program a try. I’m not expecting to make a fortune, and if the ads begin to get in the way of page layout (I’m starting to work on new templates, that’ll probably go in when MT 3.2 comes out of beta), I’ll get rid of them. I figure if I earn enough in a year to help pay my hosting costs, I’m ahead of the game (hell..if I earn enough in a year to buy an album off the iTunes music store, I’m still ahead of the game)

Bad Writing

Proof that someone out there has even less talent at writing then I do:

“As he stared at her ample bosom, he daydreamed of the dual Stromberg carburetors in his vintage Triumph Spitfire,” he wrote, comparing a woman’s breasts to “small knurled caps of the oil dampeners.”

That lovely excerpt comes from this years Worst Writer Winner. The full article from CNN is here. It goes on to mention some of the ‘honorable’ mentions like

India “hangs like a wet washcloth from the towel rack of Asia.”

I realize that I will probably never win a Pulitzer prize for anything I write (especially here, where I write more like I talk) But even I would never have considered have a character compare breasts to a carburetor! I mean.. would I compare breasts to fruit? Sure..that gives a good size reference? But a carb? that’d be like comparing breasts to the G5 chip in my iMac!

Hmm….. “Her breasts where as hot and advanced as a G5”

Naah…. doesn’t quite do it for me…

Star Wars: Battlefront

So, if anyone feels like buying me something, just because… here’s something that would do nicely.

The Mac version of Star Wars: Battlefront is now shipping. For those not familiar with this game.. here’s a brief description from Aspyr’s site.

Star Wars Battlefront™ is an action/shooter game that gives fans and gamers the opportunity to re-live and participate in all of the classic Star Wars battles like never before. Players can select one of a number of different soldier types, jump into any vehicle, man any turret on the battlefront and conquer the galaxy planet-by-planet online with their friends or offline in a variety of single-player modes. Single player modes include “Instant Action,” “Galactic Conquest” and the story-based “Historical Campaigns” mode that lets gamers experience all of the epic battles from Episodes I-VI, fighting from the perspective of each of the four factions within the game

In other words.. one of the best first (or 3rd) person shooters out there! you can play either ‘side’ in the battle, choose from lots of different weapons.. and blow the snot out of the other guy! what more could you want?

If you want a second idea… the Lego Star Wars game is available for Pre-order