Well, GitM has been running slower and slower ever since I installed Movable Type 3.11 a few weeks ago, and, yesterday afternoon, the server decided it had had enough. So I’ve been locked out of the blog here for the past 24 hours, and MT is still running slow as molasses. I also discovered my digital camera batteries have all gone the way of the dinosaur, which may nip my proposed Flickring in the bud too. Sigh…it’s been a very entropic week.
Category: Blog Nation
My Friend Flickr.
Since it’s getting such good press around the blogosphere (and since Raza at High Industrial was kind enough to send me an invite), I’ve opened an account over at Flickr, which so far seems like a rather neat photo-sharing application (and one whose deep functionality is probably wasted on me.) At any rate, I’ve been meaning to take more pictures lately, so hopefully this’ll provide a nice impetus. If you’re on there, say hello.
Something in the Air.
June ain’t got nothing on September…Congrats and best wishes go out to my college roommate Ray and his lovely wife Susan, who were married on Saturday here in the city, to my HVL stroke Ted and his bride Colby, who married the same day in nearby Cooperstown, and to Webgoddess and her Snook, who announced their engagement over the weekend. May you all have warm words on a cold evening, a full moon on a dark night, and a road downhill all the way to home!
A sad and shocking hiatus.
Many condolences to the family and friends of Aaron Hawkins, a.k.a. Uppity Negro, who tragically took his own life sometime last week. While his site wasn’t in my daily blogroll, I eventually found myself there a number of times over the years, and his posts and commentary were consistently funny, passionate, and well-written. Aaron was an inspired individual, and his loss is tragic. (Discovered on All About George.)
Letters to Clio.
If you’re here by way of Ralph Luker’s kind referral at Cliopedia, welcome to GitM. You can find other (US)-history related content at the orals lists and among the writings…The general booknotes and soapbox may also be of interest, although many of those library entries were written way back in the summer of ’97 at the ripe young age of 22, and they show it. And, if you’re looking for other quality blogs by budding Columbia historians, I’d recommend Baldanders, The Naked Tree, Peasants Under Glass, and Pickle in the City, all excellent sites maintained by colleagues in the program.
Firedster.
While tooling around on Friendster the other day, I noticed I’d somehow lost a handful of friends very recently. Now I know why…one of them was fired for blogging. (More here.) Hmmm…given the innocuous content of Troutgirl’s posts, this would be lame in most any circumstance. But since Friendster’s whole bag is “social software,” this seems particularly pathetic. (Found via Plasticbag.)
Six Clicks Under.
“What happens to your online self when you die?” By way of LinkMachineGo, City Paper delves into Ghosts in the Machine.
Blog Implosion.
Steve at Now This provides quality commentary on Dave Winer’s recent weblog meltdown, which I discovered while trying to access Tomb of Horrors. Since Winer has successfully parlayed his whole self-promoting Father of Weblogs schtick into a cushy Ivy League sinecure, you’d think he at least give all those blogs an early warning before he shut ’em down (or, perhaps, convince fair Harvard to pony up some server space.) Still, acting like a self-interested jerk has been Winer’s M.O. for years, so I guess something like this wasn’t unexpected. Update: Winer gets worse.
Technical Difficulties.
Well, between Tenet’s resignation and Reagan’s end, my cable modem picked an eventful few days to give up on me. More to come next week, after the Time Warner technicians have ascertained and corrected the problem.
Three.Oh.
So, as most of y’all probably know by now, there was a great hullaballoo in the Blog Nation today over the release of MT 3.0, and specifically over Movable Type’s decision to start charging for various premium packages. Since GitM is just a one-user, one-blog operation, I still qualified for the free download, so I personally can’t complain. At any rate, we’re running 3.0 around these parts now, so if everything suddenly disappears, you’ll know why. To be honest, I’m such a low-level user anyway that I haven’t as yet noticed much difference from 2.62. The new comments-editing page seems geared to quick and easy mass deletions, which should alleviate the spam situation. I also haven’t enabled the TypeKey comment registration quite yet, but may begin playing with it in the next few days.