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Trivial Pursuits => Arts & Entertainment => Topic started by: linnea on June 24, 2004, 05:25:32 am

Title: Blogging
Post by: linnea on June 24, 2004, 05:25:32 am
So, yeah. My ISP doesn't have shell access, nor do I have Perl on my server. Rather than beg webspace from friends, I decided to give Movable Type's (http://www.movabletype.org) TypePad (http://www.typepad.com) a shot.

I know that some of you are running MT on your personal and professional webpages. Any advice?  Am I retarded for paying for TypePad? Mine is pretty rudimentary at this stage. Livejournal is okay and everything, but it has a certain...stigma.

I would definitely be interested in seeing links that you all think are worthwhile. My site is still very bare-bones, but I'm excited to get it together.

http://Somebody nice.typepad.com/
Title: Blogging
Post by: jough on June 24, 2004, 05:45:34 am
And your LiveJournal blog isn't good enough because...?

Well, I don't really blog, even though I answered in the affirmative in your poll.  

Jough.com has sort of a blog - I use MT to put up news about myself - then I'll add entries for like, two weeks straight, every day, and then abandon the site for six months.

I've spread myself pretty thin between nine different web sites, so admittedly blogging is a very very low priority.

But for diarists, blogs are great.

I really like Movable Type - I also use it as a generic CMS for Cinema Review (http://cinema-review.com) which is nice because I can add users and have authors add their own articles.

So how much is MT's service?  Because you can get web hosting with your own domain name and e-mail and everything for like, $5 a month (at least, my company has plans that start there).
Title: Blogging
Post by: jough on June 24, 2004, 05:48:20 am
NM regarding their pricing - I forgot that I have the power to look things up on the Internet:

http://www.typepad.com/site/features/

They seem to start at $5 a month for next to useless service, then $9 seems to be the one they want you to sign up for, and then a $15 service.

I gotta say, it's a frikkin' rip-off.  Especially if you know HTML.

You're still in your 30-day free trial period, right?
Title: Blogging
Post by: Choop on June 24, 2004, 05:54:04 am
Yeah, MT just changed their whole pricing scheme and there was a minor uproar in the free (as in beer and speech) software movement. This is why I looked at Textpattern (http://www.textpattern.com/) as a generic CMS. The design I posted last week came from my local install; now I just have to figure out the whole templating thing, as it has its own undocumented library of tags.

But blogging? No, rather like Jough I'll journal like mad for a couple weeks and forget about it for a while; unlike Jough that while usually doesn't end.
Title: Blogging
Post by: jough on June 24, 2004, 06:00:34 am
Choop - do you like TextPattern so far?

Yes, MT is no longer free and has changed its codebase significantly so that it's not easy to upgrade from a previous install. So you'd pretty much have to start over.

I have no problems using the older version, although they promised changes and upgrades which obviously aren't going to happen now that they've changed their entire business model.

Luckily, there are 50 billion competing products at SourceForge alone - and worse comes to worse I can very very easily roll my own blog.

I actually have made my own for my Poetry X development log:

http://text.poetryx.com

Of course, it's pretty bare-bones in the admin panel.  I never really bother to make the back-end stuff look pretty, especially if I'm the only one who's going to be using it.
Title: Blogging
Post by: linnea on June 24, 2004, 06:47:45 am
I'd like to make additions and improvements to my lj, but I am unfortunately retarded when it comes to code.

I have a 90-day trial with TypePad. So I figured I'd at least give it a shot. Although it was fun setting it up, and it was easier to customize the appearance than livejournal, it's still a bit frustrating. With TypePad and LJ, you can get all sorts of different layouts, and customize colors, and whatnot. I have to say that I like TypePad's interface better.

I have seen people's blogs that are published with MT or Textpattern, and they have some really interesting layouts. For example, I found a nifty site where you can make these rad little buttons (http://www.kalsey.com/tools/buttonmaker/). I have made a few, and now I just have to figure out how to add shit to my TypePad layout. Meh. Guess I'm going to have to learn more about webdesign and coding, or else I'll remain eternally stuck with a semi-custom journal like in lj or TypePad.

EDITED TO INCLUDE POSTSCRIPT:

Ohh, I almost forgot to mention. I really like the album feature that TypePad has. I've seen all kinds of gallery software, but again...I have never gotten around to installing that shit on my server. So it's pretty handy to be able to upload pictures of my cats in album format (http://Somebody nice.typepad.com/photos/linnea/random_022.html).
Title: Blogging
Post by: Carlos del Vaca on June 24, 2004, 02:33:22 pm
I installed Moveable Type at the start of the year, and I have to say I like it quite a bit.  I post marginally more often than I did when I was bangin' it all out by hand in HTML.  Which is to say, once or twice a week.
www.bigfool.com/foolblog
Title: Blogging
Post by: andalucia on June 24, 2004, 03:20:03 pm
(Keeping in mind that I'm a teenage girl and so that makes it OK*)I use one of the LiveJournal wannabes, xanga (http://www.xanga.com/), which works out pretty OK for me as a simple little notepadsy thing to write about stuff when I'm for whatever reason too indolent to walk up the stairs and grab my real notebook.  I'm kind of embarassed of it, and I wish I could actually do some html design on my "site", but it's free, and hence, ok.





*Man.  I love using that excuse.
Title: Blogging
Post by: andalucia on June 24, 2004, 03:20:29 pm
My browser messed up and I double-posted.  Nothing to see here.
Title: Blogging
Post by: side_show on June 24, 2004, 03:28:13 pm
Quote from: "linnea"
Ohh, I almost forgot to mention. I really like the album feature that TypePad has. I've seen all kinds of gallery software, but again...I have never gotten around to installing that shit on my server. So it's pretty handy to be able to upload pictures of my cats in album format (http://Somebody nice.typepad.com/photos/linnea/random_022.html).


And a lovely lil' album it is:

1) I love your cats and they're so cute I want to squish them.
2) Has anyone ever told you that you look like Audrey Tautou? http://video.movies.go.com/amelie/
3) I'd probably enjoy having a blog but I am totally illiterate when it comes to html. Any suggestion for how a total dolt can blog?
Title: Blogging
Post by: linnea on June 24, 2004, 04:17:48 pm
Quote from: "side_show"
1) I love your cats and they're so cute I want to squish them.
2) Has anyone ever told you that you look like Audrey Tautou http://video.movies.go.com/amelie/?


^_^ Wow, nobody's ever said that--thank you. Tautou is gorgeous.  I have always thought that I look more like Janeane Garofalo, whom I love. <3
Title: Blogging
Post by: side_show on June 24, 2004, 04:26:07 pm
Quote from: "linnea"
^_^ Wow, nobody's ever said that--thank you. Tautou is gorgeous.  I have always thought that I look more like Janeane Garofalo, whom I love. <3


Tautou is definitly a beauty - I think it's your hair in the pictures you provide that does it for me, or maybe that you look a bit mischievous.  I tried to get the Amelie hair cut, but my hairs not super thick like hers so it didn't work out.

I've been repeatedly told I act like Janeane Garofalo, and have been repeatedly told "you're just like Janeane Garofalo" - which I take as a complement, cause she's smart and funny and pollitically aware.  I did however date a guy who all who know me refered to simply as "the shitter" (from a published story from when I wrote a dating column for an now defunct online magazine) who was obsessed with Janeane Garofalo, and was attracted to me because a coworker told him she worked with someone "just like Janeane Garofalo."
Title: Blogging
Post by: jough on June 24, 2004, 04:46:39 pm
I find Garofalo comparisons to be disturbing.

I mean, isn't she the pretty girl who thinks she's ugly and basically hates herself?

She was good in "The Truth About Cats & Dogs," though, and would have been much preferable than Uma Thurman's character was.
Title: Blogging
Post by: side_show on June 24, 2004, 04:52:52 pm
Quote from: "jough"
I find Garofalo comparisons to be disturbing.

I mean, isn't she the pretty girl who thinks she's ugly and basically hates herself?

She was good in "The Truth About Cats & Dogs," though, and would have been much preferable than Uma Thurman's character was.


I actually read a really great interview with her where she says she wished she was never in that movie, and also that the concept that she is "ugly" is a concept of the media's making, not her own.  And as for the fact that she would be more preferable than Thurman's character, I've never seen the movie, but isn't it basically a rip-off of "Cyrano de Bergerac," and if so, isn't that the point?
Title: Blogging
Post by: CortJstr on June 24, 2004, 05:19:31 pm
Quote from: "jough"
I find Garofalo comparisons to be disturbing.

I mean, isn't she the pretty girl who thinks she's ugly and basically hates herself?

Except in her issue of Ms. a few months ago where was stone-cold nasty looking. I don't know who told her that was a good thing to do with her hair but that person was clearly fucked in the head.
Title: Blogging
Post by: jough on June 24, 2004, 06:12:23 pm
I won't even ask why you were reading Ms.

Oh wait, you live with a woman, right?
Title: Blogging
Post by: CortJstr on June 24, 2004, 08:57:17 pm
Quote from: "jough"
I won't even ask why you were reading Ms.

Oh wait, you live with a woman, right?

And the woman I live with was in the masthead of that particular issue.
Title: Blogging
Post by: slink on June 24, 2004, 09:37:11 pm
Quote from: "side_show"

and also that the concept that she is "ugly" is a concept of the media's making, not her own.


In reference to her hatin herself regarding that, all I know is that when I met her and Rickman, he said later that she was an horrific alcoholic who tended to throw the filming schedule off by hitting her head on things.
But then given I met him through my ex's aunt, who was a pretty horrible person, maybe he is too. Didn't seem it, but...

I didn't really get a chance to talk to Garofalo at all as she was filming at the time (vistied the set for a day to hang out).

It's funny, I've never even seen the film surface anywhere. It was a fairly independent one...

Bingo (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0250716/).
Title: Blogging
Post by: wombat on June 24, 2004, 10:32:21 pm
Quote from: "jough"
Oh wait, you live with a woman, right?


You say this like it's some kind of disease.
Title: Blogging
Post by: St_Zartan on June 24, 2004, 10:34:49 pm
Quote from: "wombat"
You say this like it's some kind of disease.


Women get infections. Just ask Newt Gingrich!
Title: Blogging
Post by: jough on June 26, 2004, 07:01:17 am
Quote from: "wombat"
Quote from: "jough"
Oh wait, you live with a woman, right?


You say this like it's some kind of disease.


No no... well...

No, I just meant that a bloke living alone who subscribes to Ms. would have to be someone trying very very hard to be a poofster without knowing what that lifestyle truly entails.

Also, I mean, Ms.?  It's not every day that anyone would admit to reading it, let alone a man with a modicum of self-respect.

That's all I meant.
Title: Blogging
Post by: CortJstr on June 26, 2004, 03:46:36 pm
Quote from: "jough"
Also, I mean, Ms.?  It's not every day that anyone would admit to reading it, let alone a man with a modicum of self-respect.

That's all I meant.

Again, my S.O. was in the masthead of that issue. The non-profit she works for bought Ms. a while back so she has to work on it now and then.
Title: Blogging
Post by: jough on June 26, 2004, 03:49:00 pm
I hear you, brother.  Your manliness is not in question.  It just struck me as funny - "So I was reading something in Ms. the other day..."
Title: Blogging
Post by: Carlos del Vaca on June 28, 2004, 01:33:59 pm
I hate people who spam the comments on my blog.
I HATE them.  I fuck*ng HATE THEM.

That is all.
Title: Blogging
Post by: Gimpson on June 28, 2004, 02:30:07 pm
Quote from: "carlosdelvaca"
I hate people who spam the comments on my blog.

I HATE them.  I fuck*ng HATE THEM.


I recently had to shut down comments on one of my old entries because the comment spammers were pounding it mercilessly.

A shame, that is...  I really hated to end the lively discussion of that dream I had about Saddam Hussein and The Grateful Dead a year ago.
Title: Blogging
Post by: V-Adore on June 28, 2004, 08:26:10 pm
Quote from: "Gimpson"
Quote from: "carlosdelvaca"
I hate people who spam the comments on my blog.

I HATE them.  I fuck*ng HATE THEM.


I recently had to shut down comments on one of my old entries because the comment spammers were pounding it mercilessly.

A shame, that is...  I really hated to end the lively discussion of that dream I had about Saddam Hussein and The Grateful Dead a year ago.

Man, the one time that happened to me, I just sort of let it run its course. (http://www.livejournal.com/users/eiviiaru/75665.html)  Well...mostly. (http://www.livejournal.com/users/eiviiaru/78036.html) (Sadly, the post that started all of it -- the author of the bad smut I was ragging on calling out her minions to destroy me, and then about 500 comments of the minions being really impressed that I wasn't coming to defend myself on the author's blog which I do not read -- got deleted.)

This proves the first law of blogs: when I post something meaningful, self-searching, or attempting to be beautiful, nobody cares, but when I post some random dorky ramblings, the monkeys mob me with powerful power.