I just filled my tank for less than $20. Holy shit, guys.
Also I am pirating Sarah’s internets. Yearg, me mateys.
In random news, I appear to be 28. Quite tired today. Kind of figured that bit started at a slightly more advanced age, but then, I’ve always been a tad broken.
Anyway, let’s quote some bear emails, in which Sarah is funny.
From: Erik
Subject: Now With 100% More Bears
Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2008 01:42:36
To: Sarah
http://www.thingsbearslove.com/
The boomboxes one is made of pure genius and win.
From: Sarah
Subject: Re: Now With 100% More Bears
Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2008 13:06:57
To: Erik
Faced with the rising popularity of the humor site www.thingsbearslove.com, the Ursine United Front (UUF) today released a statement.
“While websites such as ‘Things Bears Love’ appear to be comical, their stereotyped pictures of bears inflicting damage on humans perpetuate a false understanding that is, sadly, too deeply rooted in our society. This site shows bears as using subterfuge and violent tactics in order to hurt humans. As is the consistent message of the UUF, we do not seek a position of power over humans, nor do we have any desire to inflict harm upon them. We seek reconciliation with our primate bretheren, and look forward to continuing our negotiations for rights to the contents of their trash cans.”
In which I’m going to ramble a bit about blog design issues, because I’m in that mood right now.
Issues with current MT install (3.34)
1. Templates are a giant mess, many of them have been ported forward from my version 2 install, and have become unwieldy. I am now in a position where I need to re-include large amounts of functionality that is either missing or got stripped out.
2. The MT search script varies between OMGWTF and shitty, and I see scant possibility of fixing that.
3. Automatic comment closing largely fails. I have it via widget, but there’s no automatic about it – I have to beat on it by hand to work. This is annoying.
4. I’d like inline comments. this piece of code purports to fix that. I’d like to not have to go to the trouble of making sure it works.
5. I’d furthermore like a more robust system of either user registration or spamblocking. What I have works moderately well, but enh.
6. Pagination of archive pages would be nice, not to mention a better system of getting to old entries from the front page. this bit of code purports to do that, but again, I’d like to not need to make the hack.
7. As it stands, any kind of RSS feed is on the level of staring at the big iron boat and waving my spear.
8. I need to tinker with my pages a bit so as I can have 500 pixel wide images without breaking the damn thing, see previous post.
9. Backend functionality peeve #1: Batch editing is annoying as fuck, and I can’t do things I’d like to be able to do with it, such as close all the damn comments.
10. Backend functionality peeve #2: Template editing makes me want to shoot myself.
11. Backend functionality peeve #3: It sure would be nice if I could mange my images dir through the MT backend, but the current way I’ve got to do this may as well involve sacrificing goats with bronze knives, and it’s a lot faster to use my FTP.
12. Backend functionality peeve #3: A lack of simple and easy rich text/HTML editing for both entries and comments.
13. Backend functionality peeve #4: Rebuilding is goddamn annoying.
14. Backend functionality peeve #5: I wish there was an easy way to backup and download all my shit.
15. Sidebar Cleanup Project #1: Some sort of recent comments thing would be nice. I see no way to get there from here without much pain.
16. Sidebar Cleanup Project #2: Reintegrating the archives links back to the main page via some sort of archive tree like everybody on Blogger already has. This is probably doable via some sort of MT hack, with a lot of pain.
17. Sidebar Cleanup Project #3: Integrate all the remaining Things To Do pages into the blog, removing the now obsolete AoK section, or get rid of many of them entirely. These are really low traffic sections of the site (Google Analytics believes nobody visits them at all), but they have a very high image content.
18. Sidebar Cleanup Project #4: Insofar as most of what people do here is check my archives, Archives and search ought to be the top things.
19. Sidebar Cleanup Project #5: Things sure were more fun when the old chat box thing was still here. Wish it was still around. Not a lot, but.
20. Archives Cleanup Project #1: Archives need to be cleaned up by adding categories/tags to entries. MT has (annoying) functionality for this, but the project is large.
21. Archives Cleanup Project #2: Archive links that explicitly refer to http://dwip.alsherok.net need to be changed to strip the site URL.
22. Archives Cleanup Project #3: The Europe pictures page needs to turn into a blog post. This is unhard, but needs doing.
23. Archives Cleanup Project #4: All image-heavy posts could use folds in the middle to reduce loading times, although pagination might eliminate the need for this, which is good, because re-adding folds to my archives pages is another big project, let alone identifying posts.
24. CSS Cleanup Project #1: Comment boxes do not resemble rest of site.
25. CSS Cleanup Project #2: Search page does not resemble rest of site.
26. CSS Cleanup Project #3: The styles, while a good idea, aren’t going anywhere and need to die.
That’s a lot of things.
Upgrade Possibilities – General Issues
Any software package I upgrade to needs to be able to solve most or all of these issues with a minimum of anguish on my part. In particular, I’ll need to be able to do the following:
- Import my existing backlog of almost 800 entries and 2000 comments with no fuss.
- Redesign to my own color scheme with a minimum of fuss.
- Add in some form of treed archiving.
- Inline commenting.
- Add in tags/categories easily.
- Search that isn’t atrocious, and doesn’t require me to go get a Google API.
- Reasonable comment management.
- A backend that doesn’t make me hate it.
- Visible at 800×600, which turns out to be really useful a lot even with large screen resolutions.
- I need, and this is a deal breaker, to be able to add quotes (which are currently set up as blog entries) and have them show up alongside main body blog entries, similarly or identically to my existing system.
Upgrade Possibilities – Movable Type 4.23
Pros:
- Longtime MT user, so I’ll more or less know my way around.
- While I need to redesign all my templates, it appears much easier.
- All those modern features I talked about appear to exist for the most part.
- Backend appears improved, including better text editing.
- Quotes can be dealt with in a fashion that I know works.
Cons:
- I’ll still need to significantly hack the templates to make shit work. Also I’m not even sure what the default template looks like, which may mean a LOT of hacking.
- Pretty sure the search functionality still sucks a lot.
- Fairly uncertain as to out of the box pagination, etc.
- Rebuilds. *sigh*
Upgrade Possibilities – Wordpress 2.6.5
Pros:
- As much of the functionality I want is based on what a lot of WP blogs do already, working with that will be fine.
- Insofar as both Whir and John Scalzi have WP blogs set up in what I consider a reasonable fashion, I know that what I want is doable.
Cons:
- I’m not significantly in love with what appears to be the default WP search display, and WP itself uses Yahoo, which I see as a not fantastic sign.
- Looks like a lot of template hacking. I may be wrong.
- The backend a couple years ago made me want to die. Will it now? I am unsure. Definite lack of comment text editing though.
Upgrade Possibilities – Sandbox
Pros:
- Insofar as things I want to do that aren’t based on WP are based on things Samson did, that’s a good thing. In particular, user profiles and search. While much of the top nav bar stuff is irrelevant to me, the gallery and downloads stuff could be nice.
- Template looks generally hackable insofar as the layout is mostly ok as is, and I don’t need to perform brain surgery. There appear to be more things I don’t need than things I need to add, which is a good place to be.
Cons:
- Of course, the public code is a whole lot less advanced than what Samson runs.
- Is the quotes thing doable? I dunno. An issue.
- MT import?
- Archive treeing, not so much.
- 800×600 is Sir Not Appearing On This Blog, seemingly.
- The backend, as of the last time I looked which was granted a year and a half ago, was Not Good, and Not Good is Bad. Wonder if this ever got fixed.
For our special end of Season 2 episode of exploring certain bad costuming decisions on the part of the Highlander crew. Because, while on the whole this show is filled with epic levels of awesome, and Duncan MacLeod runs around generally looking like the awesomest man on the planet (ask my girlfriend if you doubt this), some days, his dress sense is…off.
Wifebeater Mac drinks beer, then beats his wife. On his apparent crack barge.
Some days, the period flashbacks involve awesome costuming, such as this one of Amanda and Rebecca, which made my girlfriend swoon.
Other days, not so much. Here is Romance Novel Mac, dressed in his Romance Novel Scotsman garb. With a headband. It would be easy to heap scorn on this sort of thing, except for one thing…
…the villain who shows up right after, who apparently stopped by on his way to audition for a really bad 1980s hair metal band.
As I was saying about the romance novel thing. Here’s Bodice Ripper Ritchie.
I’ll spare you all of the shots I could have taken of all the flashbacks in Counterfiet I & II involving Tessa and Mac on a four poster canopy bed with, yes, red satin bedsheets.
If only I didn’t know it will eventually get even worse.
Lastly, a word on Quickenings. If you’re a fan of the show, you know them, you love them. Destructive events. The blow up lights, windows, cause lightning to arc. I think we’ve even blown up a couple of cars.
Apparently, they also cause piles of hay to smolder. Not violently burn to ash, mind you. Smolder.
Yeah, notice all that hay, burning.
…oh wait.
[19:00] TontoMarius: The cheetah book abducted my brain.
[19:00] serenadingwords: what?!
[19:00] TontoMarius: I blame all of today on the cheetah book.
[19:00] serenadingwords: …i should get you a shelf cheetah to match shelfcat.
[19:01] serenadingwords: Link
[19:02] TontoMarius: Total false advertising.
[19:02] serenadingwords: oh?
[19:02] TontoMarius: I expected like, cheetahs with pistons or something.
[19:02] TontoMarius: internal combustion cheetahs
[19:02] serenadingwords: Heh.
[19:02] TontoMarius: with little nitrous injectors for MOAR SPEED
Then, via Facebook:
So, I dunno. I guess sometimes I get to be funny today, as opposed to back in the day? I think this is kind of a lie, but hey.