I am still doing some work to QA some of the older posts, and this template will be changing, but I am fully migrated over to micro.blog and off WPEngine.
It was all pretty easy, I did get some help from Manton from Micro.blog with my import. (Thanks Manton!)
I've decided I am going to try to do something roughly in the vein of The Installer Newsletter, which I look forward to every Saturday. Many browser tabs are opened.
I've been recovering from having lumbar spinal fusion surgery over the last few weeks, and have been limited in terms of what I'm able to do. I returned to work this week, but my energy level is nowhere near as robust as it normally is, yet.
This week, I finished On Photography by Susan Sontag. She passed away 20 years ago, but many of the thoughts about the art of photography in this book endure. With the emergence of digital photography and now ai applied to photography, someone could easily write a thoughtful sequel to this book.
I also finished In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larsen. This non-fiction book about William E. Dodd, who was the US Ambassador to Hitler's Germany in 1933, was actually a pretty quick read. I am going to read more Erik Larsen in the short future. Lots of really interesting pre-war context in this book. Shout out to Libby for making it easy to borrow these Kindle books from our Public Library.
I watched Godzilla Minus One the moment it was up on Netflix, and have been re-consuming it in bits and pieces in my home office while doing glamorous CTO tasks like my expense report. It's excellent, not just the best Godzilla movie, but a really good movie in it's on right.
I've also been watching a lot of music on YouTube while spending my doctor mandated times on the couch here at home. Lots and lots of OMA, who do instrumental covers of hip-hop songs, this video is a good jumping off point for them, but you can't go wrong with anything on their channel. Perfect background music for your day. If you want something a tad more aggressive, this live performance by DJ Z-Trip is a classic.
I've been enjoying the new multi-column layout that Threads has released on the web. It works pretty well on iPad as well. I do wish they had lists, like vintage Twitter did, that's how I consumed so much of my Twitter content over the years.
I'm (still) playing a ton of World of Warcraft Remix: Mists of Pandaria. I'm enjoying it so much that I didn't even start playing the new Destiny 2 expansion as planned this week. My gaming time is limited as I am only allowed to sit up for 30-45 minutes at a time. Still also doing Wordle and Spelling Bee almost every day too.
Super excited that SDW updated his site this week, he's one of the more inspiring folks on my radar. I subscribed.
I listened to a lot of podcasts this week, catching up on the ones I missed. The State of the Hardware 2024 Episode of Cortex is the one that had me buying a new microphone for future audio pursuits. Really enjoy all the "State of the" episodes of Cortex.
Seems like enough for this week. Hope you have a great weekend. Really looking forward to WWDC on Monday. Wish I was allowed to travel for it.
I've been to three XOXO's, and I loved each of them in its own way.
I'm very excited that they are bringing it back one last time this year. I hope I can financially afford it, as well as make the time for it. I made and renewed meaningful people connections at all of them. Also, the Field Notes have been spectacular.
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I've moved this site from the host where it's been for years to a, hopefully, more reliable and secure host.
I, in the process, managed to mess up the DNS entries, so this site may not have been responsive in the last 24 hours at times.
Hopefully, we're clear of changes now, and I can focus on making posts.
Just a quick post to start the new year.
I made some updates to the bio/about page on this site, removed the twitter link there, as I am not actively posting to Twitter at this point. I am on Mastadon here.
Hard to believe that this little, under-updated, site is 25 years old today.
It would be hard for me to sift through my feelings about this, the world, and the web are very different places than they were in 1997. What I can do is express some gratitude for are the people and places that this little blog was a doorway to. Meeting the other bloggers at that very first SXSW has led to years and years of inspiration and a career path that I couldn't have even imagined the day I made that very first post.
I can only hope that I can become a better steward of this site in the coming years, and update it more in what is really starting to look like a post-Twitter world.
I've had some time on my hands the last few weeks, as I'm currently between jobs. It's been pretty great to have some time off. I was working at Turner for 16 years, spanning four different properties, and a myriad of projects. I've really enjoyed spending time with my family, and focusing on what's important rather than immediate. I'm at the very beginning of my job search, and will likely post more about that here soon, as I need to do some work on my CV first. Turner is a very different place than the one where I started in 2003.
One project that I've put off for a very long time is moving this blog to more reliable and modern hosting. Additionally, I have wanted to finally move all the entries into a single CMS. With the 22nd anniversary of this site looming in a couple of weeks, now seemed as good a time as any to try and get this stuff squared away. The site has been on the current host since 2010, and with the advent of cloud hosting, I can actually reduce my cost and greatly improve the speed of the site, which is really terrible at the moment.
Previously, most of the entries that were before March 2000, when I switched the site over to Blogger/Radio Userland as a backend, were sitting in either a flat file, or on this server, which is still somehow up and running.
Over the last two weeks, I have manually been bringing those older entries over to this existing server. This will allow me to export everything from WordPress as a single set of combined entries. Unfortunately, there were a few hundred entries, and so it took quite a while.
Happily, I just finished this task. It meant having to read what the me from 20 years ago was thinking about, which was dreadful at times. It was also cathartic. I'm quite embarrassed by what younger me thought and the quality of my writing in the earliest entries was atrocious. Having said that, this won't keep me from leaving these entries intact. I think it's honest to leave them as is.
This migration poses some issues that still need to be resolved. For instance, most of the links in the very old posts are either dead, or resolve to domain squatters, or even to porn sites. I need to figure out a strategy.
In a similar vein, I would love for my old inbound links to all resolve to the right place, but I cannot think of a way to make sure that this will be the case in a new static generator CMS. With this entry, there will be a total of 2600 posts, so doing something manual is not really a good option. I may have to punt on that at this point.
Next up is making a version of the site with some cloud hosting, and a static CMS. This will be the part that I will enjoy the most, I am sure.
Dave asks for a comparison between Manila and Blogger. Not a subject to be taken lightly for me. To start, here are some screenshots of the editing environments(kinda big): Manila Bump Blogger Editorial Interface Existing Desktop Editing Enviroment
First, where I think they are the same. Both provide a Web based editorial environment from which to update your site. Both allow you to do this within an HTML framework of your own choosing. Blogger allows you to edit and upload regardless of where you are and where your site is hosted. Manila, today, is strictly limited to editing pages that are on a Manila server, but you can do that from any Web connection just like Blogger. I’m sure that Userland plans to add the ability to use Manila to update sites served on non-Manila servers from static HTML, or even possibly other types of dynamically served environments. Both editing environments are compelling, but Manila’s supports as many pages as you create, where Blogger is focused primarily on pages that contain Weblog entries. This ends up meaning that Manila has much wider reaching applications and can be used for every page of a site rather than just the actual Welog page. The entry interface on blogger is seperate from the actual page of content you are posting(see screen shot above.), and I think that it makes it a more friendly interface for the daily entries that it is focused on. Both environments support multiple author sites.(Which I won’t be using, but others might want to know about.)
The editorial environment on Blogger 2.0 is also more mature.(Thus the 2.0 in its name.) It features a search engine that allows you to pull up your entires with certain strings in them. When I have two hundred daily entries in this new site, it would be really useful to have this feature. Manila provides the same functionality, assuming that you have the search engine turned on and indexing your site. Blogger also allows you to preview and then edit your posting before actually publishing it to the site. I would like to see more customization of the editorial environment in both apps. I would like to have one place as a site editor with all of my links to frequently visited sites and the edit interface for the site. This is possible with Manila through some template customization, but I haven’t gotten to that stage yet.
My recommendation right now is determined by your situation. If you have an existing Weblog type site and already have a hosting environment and space, you’re better off using Blogger. It will take far less reworking to get things up and running, and you won’t have to sacrifice any other server side stuff you currently use such as PERL, Cold Fusion etc.. If you don’t have these things, the space on Userland’s Manila server offers you a chance to set things up from scratch and benefit from Userland’s ongoing improvement of their offering. If you have your own server box, you can buy Frontier and set up your own Manila framework for your self and others.(I have a retired desktop machine serving 9 sites) It’s worth mentioning that Userland has been improving their software on an almost daily basis. I have my copy of Frontier automatically update itself over the Internet every night, and those new features will appear in the interface seemingly out of nowhere. I love that.
Now, my dilemma. I like both environment’s, but I have more content on my site than just the Weblog entries, and I have some plans to add to that content so I like the fact that Manila offers me the full site editing functionality. I’m not currently using anything server side with my site, so that’s not an issue. Bump has been hosted by Mindspring since before I even had the domain name, and the hosting includes mail and dns. In order for me to move Bump to Manila, I’ll either have to bite the bullet and build that stuff for my Manila server or continue to pay Mindspring for the space without actually using it. Another issue that I haven’t touched on are my legacy Weblog entries. There is no easy way to move the two years of entries that I already have into either system’s framework. I could do this with Manila by doing it by hand in the Guest Database framework that Manila is built from, but the amount of labor that would take seems pretty monumental. So I remain undecided, but leaning towards using Manila.
Comments, Corrections, rebukes? Email me
I think the last three weeks constitue the longest gap in Bump's almost two year history.(I will hit two years on November 7th.)
Some good reasons for the gap. I switched jobs, and I now work at Arthouse . It's a great, young company. I work with, among a really talented group of people, Jack over at Saturn. My next reason was a trip out of the country. I visited St. Martin for ten days just after Hurricane Jose blessed it's shores with 24 inches of rain. Even though it wasn't the perfect vacation I had planned, it was good to disconnect myself for a time. I'm now slowly returning myself to my normal schedule, surfing and posting.
Dave seems to be posting more content to Scripting News on a daily basis than he has as long as I can remember. It's an indication that there is a lot going on in the Weblog community and in Frontier development. I welcome it, but it's taking me forever to get through all the days I missed while I was away.
Sony launched Trivial Pursuit on the Web this week. I used to love playing the board version. Too bad I don't have enough free time right now to explore the Web version more.
On October 5th, DMOZ.org passed the million site mark.
The Beastie Boys are releasing an anthology named The Sounds of Science on November 23rd. You can also build your own two disk anthology and choose from 150 songs at this site . Ever notice that they don't ever sell their music for television commercials?
I read the newest issue of Discover Magazine on the plane on the way back to the U.S. The cover story was a terribly scary story about Mt. Ranier's inevitable eruption and the destruction in the greater Seattle area that would follow it. I didn't know there were magazines still so afraid they didn't post their whole stories to their Web site, but Discover doesn't. Here's a link to the one paragraph they do have up.
It appears from the light rebuttal/clarification in today's Hear Ye! that I misunderstood/overreacted to what was written. It's worth mentioning that I do like the site, and I went back and read several months of the archives. We actually seem to have a lot in common interest wise.(With the exception of the platform thing of course.) I have been taking myself a bit too seriously recently. Well, it happens, and a wake up call isn't a bad thing. As a result, I'm endeavoring to check out more pages in the Everything/Nothing set this weekend. Aside from the name difference from the "Weblog" group, there doesn't seem to be that huge a difference in the type of sites that populate the community.
It's funny though, because he actually wrote about much the same topic in relation to Linux zealots on March 7th. It's the same attitude that he is talking about and that he is frustrated by. Even if he didn't have that attitude in his original post, there's no shortage of it on the Net.
Rafe over at RC3.org mailed me about an essay he wrote in 1997 that's relevant to my mini-essay. I remember this time for Apple quite well. The company was at a point where it could have gone either way. For people who are primarily Mac Users, it was a dark time. It's a good explanation of why he feels the way about the tools he chooses to use. "I want to use the tools I love." I read Rafe's site every day. He finds good technology stories and tidbits on the Web, and he talks from a knowledgable and opinionated standpoint.(Windows lovers tread gently, He doesn't care too much for Microsoft.)
Anyone who regularly reads Jesse Berst's columns will be shocked by this one. Think Different? Why Jesse Wants an iMac . I think this is just an attempt to get more people to read his column by being controversial. Here's some news for you Jesse: Macs crash about as often as Windows machines. Maybe not for everyone, but people who really push their machines will have problems no matter what they are using. The bottom line is that there isn't the attention to quality that there needs to be in the software industry. As a side note, my new iBook has only crashed twice in the week I have had it. Both times, I was using beta software that caused the problem.(Mozilla M9)
This CNN article has the phrase "'They're just luscious,' Jobs purrs." in it. What kind of writing is that? He purred? I somehow doubt he actually purred. Later in the article, he also "gushes."
While I'm in a critical mood, here's a pet peeve. Why do people who put their press release online on their own site leave the phrase at the bottom that says "For more information see (insert link to site you are already on here)?" Here's an example . To me it says "our publicity firm doesn't get the Web."
One really cool thing about my new employer is that they have agreed to let me put a Web server for my personal use on their network. I still have to decide what platform I want to use. It's a tough decision.
Today's soundtrack: The Fight Club Soundtrack (Dust Brothers)
What is the best piece of software ever written?
MacWorld reviews Photoshop 5.5. I agree, the update is a really important one for Web people. I still like Fireworks as a pure Web image tool better.
I guess I shouldn't care, but this person rated Bump as a 4.5 out of 9. As you can see, his complaint was that Bump seemed to be more about Weblogs than anything else. Reading the last few weeks, I see a trend too. I guess my interest in the sudden explosion of Weblogs has shown itself in these pages. If you were to read back through the almost two years of entries, you'd find that I haven't been writing about Weblogs half the time for the last two years. I give his rating of Weblogs page a 4.5 out of 9 too. Very arbitrary:-)
They've updated the Sleepy Hollow site to include desktop wallpaper and sketches. It's worth a look or two.
Metascene manages to snag "most favored Weblog status" for the week with this writeup (scroll to the bottom.) I can't believe that I've been doing Bump for almost two years. I also can't believe how many new and amazing log sites have popped up in 1999. When I started doing Bump, the ranks consisted of Robot Wisdom, Scripting News, RasterWeb, Gulker's News Page, and CamWorld (which I wasn't even aware of at the time.) Now there are Weblogs to suit all tastes. Keep em coming.
Salon has an article about running Linux on commercially available laptops which goes into depth about the WinModem issue. I have struggled with this running Red Hat on my Gateway Laptop. I'm forced to use my one precious PC Card port for a modem in order to get Internet access. This makes me angry.
I spent the long weekend cleaning and organizing the Bump clubhouse and the rest of my apartment. As usual with these things, I'm amazed at how much junk I acquire somehow. I'm going to eBay a lot of stuff over the next month.
Evhead changes layouts. It has rapidly become one of my favorite Weblog sites.
The Crossfader noticed he's on my reading list and notes that I'm on his. Maybe I should change the name of the blog from Bump to Yoda? Anyway, he seems to be the only blogger who likes Tribe Called Quest as much as I do. What happened to culturally positive Rap and hip-hop? You must learn!!
Bring the Rock gets a great redesign.
I have no energy. I seem to be in some kind of funk that is beginning to interfere with things. Perhaps I should get more sleep.
I also have become very excited about the release of the new Star Wars movie.
In case you missed it, here's a great Star Wars line story posted to a newspaper site recently.
If you don't want to ruin the movie for yourself, don't read the titles of the songs on the soundtrack. After months of avoiding "spoilers" on the net, I ruined the plot for rmyself by looking at the soundtrack.
Lucasfilm posted four new television commercials yesterday. They are quite good.
I was out at Toys 'R Us Sunday night at midnight for the release of the Star Wars Episode I toys. What a madhouse. There were somewhere between 150 and 200 people in line. Things were surprisingly civil considering. It seems like the figure everyone wanted was Darth Maul. All of the figures and other stuff is available online at shop.starwars.com . The figures are really nice and very detailed. I managed to get a whole set. I think I may be trying to make up for a lack of Star Wars toys as a kid the first time around.
There has been some discussion on the Camlist over the last couple of days about Weblogs , the reasons for doing them and their evolution. I like getting my thoughts out, and if people want to read it, that's great. I am not looking at making this page anything more than that, a neat place for my thoughts and Web links. It's cathartic, and I find that the people in my life have learned a lot about me from reading these pages. It's a journal of my mental process that I can go back to when I want to. It also helps me draw conclusions I might not otherwise find. I think that it's kind of dumb to do it for the other reasons stated in the article I linked to above.
I'm still looking for the holy grail of high speed access at home. Now I want static IP's and to build the serving of everything in house. I discovered a company that is doing this with DSL for $135 a month through the ScriptMeridian list. They are coming to Atlanta soon. This would be perfect(and I would finally get Frontier on my server).
TidBITS has a review of PhotoGIF that is worth reading if you make Web graphics.
Now that MCI Worlcom is considering entering the ComCast bidding , we here at Bump would like to say we have no intention of making a bid.
