Lately I’ve been experimenting with the look of the website and the new features of Movable Type. I had created a style using a style generator and thought would be okay with a few tweaks, but then I realized that it looked like crap in Firefox and Safari. I want to keep blogging while I figured out what I wanted to do, so I’m basically going back to the default style / templates. Hopefully the plain white won’t be there for long, but I don’t know how much time I’ll have to spend on this over the next few days.
I would say pardon my progress, but I’m not sure that what I’m doing can be called progress. Also, I hate those “Pardon My Progress” signs. There’s so much construction happening on campus, the progress gets in the way sometimes. The Student Union on campus is being renovated. It makes navigating around that part of campus a little bit of a pain. There was one one of those “Pardon My Progress” signs outside of the Union a while back. Not only are they inconveniencing me, but they’re being smug little smart asses about it. At least they’ll be finished with that building soon.
The 10th Wonder Podcast is one of my favorite podcasts. It’s devoted to the show Heroes. The podcast is produced by Mississippi State University students. I first found out about it in MSU’s student newspaper, The Reflector.
Recently, they put out an open call for contributors for the website who would write about all the latest Heroes news. I offered to be one and some of the stuff that I’ve written has started to show up on the site. Check out the site and the podcast.
I don’t think I’m the only one who is not really taking sides in the high definition format war. I’m not so secretly hoping that neither one will last. I’m happy with my standard DVDs. I’m sure that when DVDs first came, out there were plenty of people who were content with VHS tapes, but I wasn’t one of them.
I probably won’t get my wish though. Blu-ray is out selling HD DVD and I heard somewhere that it is finally outselling VHS. The price of players is going down and it might be low enough to tempt me in a year or two. Even if I do start buying high definition discs, I won’t be replacing all of my old movies. At least that’s what I’m telling myself now.
It has been way too hot around here lately. According to Weather.com, it is currently 99° in Starkville, MS, but it feels like it’s 105°. I heard that there is a national heat wave, but I haven’t been paying much attention to the news lately. I do know that there is a severe weather alert for this county. I don’t remember it being this bad last summer. I’m used to the heat because I grew up around here and I usually prefer warmer weather, but this is ridiculous. Air conditioners don’t seem to be working as effectively and last month’s electric bill was crazy. I can’t wait for those fall temperatures to get here.
Earlier in the week I finished reading A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. It’s about two children that everybody considers to be strange. With the help of three beings disguised as old women and a new friend, they go on an interplanetary journey to find their long missing father and fight the forces of evil. It’s aimed at a younger audience, but I enjoyed reading it. Apparently it’s the first of a series of books about these characters. Maybe I’ll check out some of the others.
I’m steadily making progress on my book list.
Dreamcatchers, Stephen King
Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
Summer of the Monkeys, Wilson Rawls
The Hedge Knight, George R.R. Martin
The Sworn Sword, George R.R. Martin
The Taking, Dean Koontz
Timeline, Michael Crichton
Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling
On Bullshit, Harry G. Frankfurt
On Truth, Harry G. Frankfurt
The Long Walk, Richard Bachman (Stephen King)
His Majesty’s Dragon, Naomi Novik
Throne of Jade, Naomi Novik
Black Powder War, Naomi Novik
Empire of Ivory, Naomi Novik
What Would Jefferson Do?: A Return to Democracy, Thom Hartmann
I started my current job 1 year ago today. YAY! Sometimes I still catch myself refererring to it as my “new” job, but I should stop thinking of it that way.
Since most other Movable Type upgrades have gone pretty smoothly, I was hoping this one would be the same. Well, it was kind of a pain. The first part of the problem was my fault. I didn’t read the documentation closely enough. MT4 isn’t compatible with the old database I was using. Oops! My bad! I had to convert to a MySQL database.
Once I got the DB converted and started the update, it stopped on the screen that says upgrading the database or starting upgrade or something like that. I also got a JavaScript error that said TC was undefined. It turns out that a lot of the files in the mt-static directory didn’t get copied when I FTPed them. Once I got all the files uploaded, the upgrade went by quickly.
I’m looking forward to playing around with the new features. It looks like it’s going to be cool. This month will be 3 years since I made my first entry, so I think I may make some (minor) changes to the design of the site. Web design isn’t my specialty, so don’t expect much.
I signed up for Last.fm in December, but it wasn’t until a few weeks ago that I downloaded their software and actually starting using the service. I think it’s pretty cool. If anybody uses it, feel free to add me.
I played Excite Truck on the Wii for a little while last week. I don’t like racing games that much because I’m not very good at them. The thing I liked the most about this game is the ability to use a custom soundtrack. Actually that may be the only thing I liked. I loaded up a bunch of songs on my SanDisk card in anticipation of playing this game. Racing to The Smashing Pumpkins, Green Day, Pearl Jam, and even Mariah Carey made me keep playing after I probably would have normally stopped. I hope there are more games with the custom soundtrack option on the way.
I had planned all along to go out at midnight on Friday night to get my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Unfortunately, I discovered earlier in the day that the place where I reserved my copy (Sam Goody) wasn’t going to open at midnight like they did when the last book came out. They weren’t going to open until 8AM Saturday. There explanation was that they weren’t a bookstore and Wal-Mart and Barnes and Noble were both selling it at midnight, so there wasn’t really a point for them to do so since they didn’t have many copies. I guess I shouldn’t have tried to be a loyal customer. I decided that waiting until Saturday morning would be okay. Sometime later Friday I decided since I had only put down $1 at Sam Goody, I would check out Wal-Mart sometime after midnight and get a copy there. Why wait? I went around 3AM Saturday morning to buy a copy and read a little before I went to bed.
I just finished reading it a little while ago. It was soooooo gooooood. I didn’t want to blow through it too quickly, but there were times when I couldn’t put it down. I won’t spoil anything, but I thought it was a great ending to the series. I liked the definitive conclusion that it gave. I’m sad that the series is over, but I hope that J.K. Rowling doesn’t write more Harry Potter stories.
Now I need to sleep. I’ll think more about this tomorrow.
Dreamcatchers, Stephen King
Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
Summer of the Monkeys, Wilson Rawls
The Hedge Knight, George R.R. Martin
The Sworn Sword, George R.R. Martin
The Taking, Dean Koontz
Timeline, Michael Crichton
Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling
On Bullshit, Harry G. Frankfurt
On Truth, Harry G. Frankfurt
The Long Walk, Richard Bachman (Stephen King)
His Majesty’s Dragon, Naomi Novik
Throne of Jade, Naomi Novik
Black Powder War, Naomi Novik
Empire of Ivory, Naomi Novik
What Would Jefferson Do?: A Return to Democracy, Thom Hartmann
I don’t think I’m the only one who is not really taking sides in the high definition format war. I’m not so secretly hoping that neither one will last. I’m happy with my standard DVDs. I’m sure that when DVDs first came, out there were plenty of people who were content with VHS tapes, but I wasn’t one of them.
I probably won’t get my wish though. Blu-ray is out selling HD DVD and I heard somewhere that it is finally outselling VHS. The price of players is going down and it might be low enough to tempt me in a year or two. Even if I do start buying high definition discs, I won’t be replacing all of my old movies. At least that’s what I’m telling myself now.
in anticipation of playing this game. Racing to The Smashing Pumpkins, Green Day, Pearl Jam, and even Mariah Carey made me keep playing after I probably would have normally stopped. I hope there are more games with the custom soundtrack option on the way.
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