As you may have noticed, I’ve upgraded the site number to 4.0 (it was previously 3.1). I think the changed warrent a whole number change.
I’ve had a personal website now since before the term “blog” was coined. I’ve never considered this site a “blog”. To be honest, I don’t really even like the word blog. This is just my website. With it I can post information like this, store photos, or run a shoutcast server (which I used to do…and would really like to do again if my ISP let me do it).
A “blog” to me is something that requires a great deal of effort. This is just a play thing for me and a place to put stuff . I may actually start a blog with a particular topic focus, but that’s a different discussion.
I have a hard time writting updates for this site. I’ve easily writting more updates that have never made it online than I have ones that have. Sometimes I just never hit submit before my computer reboots. Other times I just abandon it because I’m not pleased with how it sounds.
I don’t like writing about politics. There are more than enough people out there who do that, and another voice isn’t needed. Besides, I really don’t care. Politics isn’t the most important thing in life, or in our world for that matter.
===================
When I hear a song I like, I’ll often go a few days listening to it over and over. Right now I’m listening to “O Superman” by Laurie Anderson. I’ve heard parts of it before, but I heard the whole thing on a BBC documentary on Minimalism and it got stuck in my head (which is sort of the point of minimalism I think). The song was actually #2 on the British pop charts in 1982.
===================
You’ll notice a bunch of new links on the left side of the site. This is a good chunk of my bookmarks that I visit every day. My current favorite “blog” (I’m always going to put that in quotes) is Foreign Dispatches. Its written by Abiola Lapite, who is a Nigerian born Mathematician.
===================
Nate writes: what is better about Word Press compared to Movable Type?
- The plugin system is really easy. Because its open source, there are a lot of plugins that can do a lot of things. There are plugins that can change how you do posts, admin, comments, and everything.
- There is a big support community. There is a well developed wiki and a lot detailed FAQ’s for doing installation.
- MT, or at least the version I was using, didn’t allow automation of simple HTML in Firefox. I can do that with Word Press.
- There are no restrictions on how you can use it. The latest verion limits you to one author. Beyond that you have to pay.
- Link management is built in.
Usually when you change software, there is something about the old software you used that new software lacks. I can’t really think of anything MT had that WP doesn’t. (editing CSS files is a pain, but it was a pain with MT also) The process of migrating from MT to WP was also very very easy.
I can see no reason other than inertia to use MT.