May 2004 Archives

I want to thank my friend, Senator Bill Frist, for joining us today. (Applause.) You're doing a heck of a job. You cut your teeth here, right? That's where you started practicing? That's good. He married a Texas girl, I want you to know. (Laughter.) Karyn is with us. A West Texas girl, just like me. We both married above ourselves, didn't we, Senator? (Laughter.) But Karyn, thank you for coming. I'm proud you're here.

-- Remarks by President George W. Bush, 27/5/2004

Richard Biggs, the actor who played Dr. Franklin on Babylon 5, died unexpectedly yesterday at the age of 43.

From JMS:

This is a terrible loss for all of us. Richard was a consummate professional but more than that he was an honorable, stand-up guy. If he gave you his word on something, you never had to wonder about it afterward. He was always helpful and supportive of all the cast, even those who only came in for one episode, always with a ready smile and determined to do whatever it took to make the scene work. He was, quite simply, a terrific guy, and everyone here is just devastated at the news.

I'm one of 1250 lucky users to have been given a free license of pMachine's ExpressionEngine content management software. I signed up for the offer while I was looking for MovableType alternatives, and was fortunate enough to be one of the first 1000. To what extent I move over to ExpressionEngine is now a decision that must be influenced by many factors:

• Features
• Base requirements
• Performance
• Restrictions
• Transition time and effort
• Loyalty
• Future prospects

The truth is that MovableType 3 is, and will likely remain, out of my price range for the kind of things I would like to use it for. Nevertheless, there are almost as many good reasons to stay with MovableType as there are to switch to ExpressionEngine -- a product that's only really in my price range because I was given it for free. I'm playing around with a test install and trying to get a feel for the product, but the final decision will involve both benefits and compromises, whichever way I go.

Moving an MT weblog over to EE looks like it's going to be a job and a half. There's a conversion process for MT entries but most of my old entries are written in Textile 2 syntax. There's a Textile plug-in for EE, but it only supports Textile 1 syntax, and the conversion is performed on output, adding an unwelcome delay (I estimate somewhere from 2-7 tenths of a second per entry, depending on its length) to each page request. So I would have to find some way to convert every entry from Textile syntax to HTML to avoid an unnecessarily unresponsive website. There's another issue with multiple categories being interpreted as subcategories, which would be a problem for my other site. And EE doesn't support any APIs, which means I'd have to break my Zempt habit.

But my experiments with EE so far have proven to me that it's a much more powerful product that offers many compelling reasons to make the switch. I'm sure I could do a lot more with it than I have, or could, with MT.

Yeah, I know. It doesn't really matter all that much -- it's only software, after all. Both are good products. Neither choice is likely to be a 'wrong' choice. I should just make a quick decision now, and stick to it.

Uhh... I'll get back to you on this in a few days.

Acrimony all over the blogosphere today as Six Apart surprisingly announced their new licensing for MovableType 3.0. Now, if you have heavy requirements, the software comes with a hefty pricetag. Yeah, that's fair enough for commercial sites. It's enterprise-quality software at a very competitive price, and I'm sure companies will gladly pay it. But what of the huge numbers of noncommercial users?

There's still a free version, but look at some of the restrictions that now apply to it:

• No more than three blogs
• No more than one author
• Can only be installed on one CPU

Okay, so the argument is that these restrictions affect a minority of noncommercial users, but since I have two MT installs (and two authors), they do happen to affect me. I would have to pay $69.95 (discount price) to upgrade to MT3 and that's if I consolidated my two MT installs. And the changes also affect Carl, and Susie, and Alex. Put your name down in the comments if I missed you.

None of us makes a penny from our blogs, by the way. So our options are now as follows:

• Pay for Movable Type
• Don't upgrade; stay with MT2 and get left behind
• Upgrade, but knowingly use the software in violation of its license
• Find an alternative content management system

I'm pretty sure that everyone I mentioned above would do any of the last three options before we did the first one. We're not freeloaders; we just have more important things to spend that much money on, since there are alternative courses of action.

I've been using Movable Type since version 1, and I'm happy that Six Apart has become as successful as it is now. But this new licensing is a horrible misstep on their part that has succeeded in alienating practically everybody, especially their biggest adherents. Six Apart have priced themselves out of the noncommercial market. I simply cannot afford this software any more -- not even the cheapest license. I've been locked out.

At least I hope it's a mistake on their part. The alternative is that they have calculatedly chosen to chase the money and screw over noncommercial users. They're a business. Chasing the money is fine. But such ludicrously tight restrictions on noncommercial use will do nothing but turn the very users who have supported the company for years into MT-deserting, grudge-bearing angry people. With a voice. I think they've underestimated the power of this fully armed and operational blogosphere.

Six Apart can still get this back, but they'll have to be quick or this ill will will be permanent. Stay tuned.

What makes a weblog suck?

• Single-line entries
• Entries without a coherent message
• Infrequent updates

Lately I've been guilty of all three of these blogsins (you know, if it weren't this easy to make new words by prepending or appending 'blog', we'd have less dumb terms to deal with in the blogosp... on the web). Inspiration has been lacking, and to make things worse, I've resorted to writing crap entries to fill space, because I thought it looked better than not writing anything (it doesn't).

Ironically, lack of inspiration is not something that's affecting other parts of my life. I'm updating TSiF almost every day, and working on other interesting projects too. Maybe I'm burning all my energy on those things, and by the time I come around to trioptimum.co.uk I don't have any left.

It's futile to try to make myself write something on the blog when I can't think of anything to write. So all I can say is: please to be bearing with me while I work through this temporary lull.

Does it normally take 4 days to rewrite a one-page CV?

Bump.