Joan Crawford trivia: Each time Joan Crawford married, she changed the name of her Brentwood estate and installed all new toilet seats. From a short biography of Joan Crawford.
General
19
Jul 04
Two cultures of Piracy
Japan and America, Two “Cultures of Piracyâ€:
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Following the logic of the Japanese companies, Condry asks his students whether there are some forms of music they would always pay for and finds that many of them cite music which struggles to survive in the marketplace or where they have a strong identification with the artists. He suggests that like the Japanese fans, American college students are swayed by loyalty and recipricality rather than legality. The solution to the music industry crisis, he argues, is cultural not legal or economic and it involves changing the relations between music producers and consumers to emphasize shared interests rather than economic exploitation. Imagine that!
19
Jul 04
Stigmergy
Understanding group behavior and strategies of ants and terrorists, via Defensetech. Global Guerrillas: STIGMERGIC LEARNING AND GLOBAL GUERRILLAS
14
Jul 04
Quipsmart.com
Due mainly to my love for those concise nuggets of human thought we call quotations, I am starting a site called quipsmart whose subject will be famous quotes and quotations. The challenge is to do something different than the fifteen or so main quotation compiling websites. Initially, I will focus on tracking down an exhaustive and comprehensive selection of quotations by a few select individuals and build out from there. I may need some volunteers if anyone is interested in helping. My other goal is to provide definitive sources for each quotations, which is something I have always appreciated when searching for a specific quotation. Other ideas include: the automatic linking of words to quotation authors and subjects, and hard to find quotations.
14
Jul 04
More Making the Switch to WordPress
The renowned MovableType hacker, Jennifer of ScriptyGoddess, made the switch to WordPress a while back. This bodes well for WordPress tweaks and WordPress plugins. (Yes, WordPress does support plugins to extend its functionality)
Related:
14
Jul 04
Word Press vs. Movable Type
As many of you know, I’ve switched from blogging with MovableType (a perl-based application) to WordPress (a php-based application). Many of the features are equivalent and they both do about the same kind of thing. The main incentive for my switch to WordPress is that I was annoyed by MovableType’s new licensing scheme. When you dig deeper there are other, more specific, reasons why you might want to make the switch. Here is one person’s good review of the pros and cons of each package:
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Installation (10 points)
Movable Type’s installation is fairly annoying, as installations go. Not only did I have to change all sorts of config variables by hand before installing, I had to figure out the syntax for said variables, which wasn’t immediately obvious (the criteria for “immediately obvious” being whether or not I have to resort to documentation). Then, I had to CHMOD all sorts of files, thanks to MT’s Perl roots. Not to mention running mt-check.cgi to look for a dozen Perl modules… phew. WordPress’ installation is almost fiendishly simple. Run a script to set the database config, run another to install, and be entertained by silly messages along the way. If they would combine the two scripts, it would be nicer, but still— it doesn’t get much easier than this.
Winner: WordPress
Continue reading →
13
Jul 04
Article on Cat and Girl: Girl on Overdrive
Here’s an article on Cat and Girl. I didn’t read it, but judging from the website design I’ll bet it’s pretty good. It’s a good article, and makes a few good points I hadn’t noticed.
No one correctly answered the question to yesterday’s post, so I will have to give away the answer. Greta Garbo is the actress in the new banner, but I’m not sure what film the image is from. Here is another good photo of her:
12
Jul 04
Migrating to WordPress
I’ve been busy since this afternoon working to move my site from Mike’s place over to my new space. My gratitude to Mike for hosting me and inspiring me to strike out on my own. He’s really a great guy and I miss him now that he’s out in SFO with the rest of those EA bums.
WordPress is pretty amazing. I’m glad Movable Type gave me the necessary incentive to try something new by changing their license. WordPress is a free, open-source application. You can’t beat that. I’ve also moved from a table-based layout to CSS (cascading style sheets). Yay!
Anyway, if you notice anything weird that’s not working, or any dead links, or anything you don’t like, or anything you miss, please let me know. That’s a good way to let me know what I need to change. By the way, some things are not going to work properly until the dns changes have propagated. This should take roughly 24 hours.
Okay, for extra credit can you name the woman in the new banner? It’s not that hard. If you look at the eyes I think you’ll get it! I am sorry to see Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable go, but they were there for several years. It is time for someone new.