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Awhile back, I joined the League of Reformed Bloggers and added the list to my front page. The LoRB has grown quite a bit even since then, and the list is now rather unwieldy.
I would like to limit the list display to some number of lines, making each load a random set of the LoRB members. I am also willing to have only a set number that increments.
OK, so I can think of at least four ways to do this on my server, but I'd like to avoid programming. I looked on the Blogrolling site but they really don't seem to have much of a customization interface.
Anyone have any easy ideas?
If I don't figure something out, I will try and piece something together myself and make it available to all from my server. But no promises.
Somehow, I agreed to putting together the content management system for the guys in Toronto. Why did I do this? Why? What possessed me?
We're down to really wanting Plone but having to settle for Xaraya, Dragonfly or Metadot. Jim likes Metadot because it's mod_perl. I like Xaraya because it does not require root, therefore our clients can install it on a hosted server. We both prefer Plone but there are installation issues — Jim's servers have the wrong version of MySQL, which he doesn't like anyway. Dragonfly is easier but it's really just Coppermine on steroids (it's a Nuke rewrite) and we don't do pictures. We did look at PHP-Nuke, but it has a tendency to bring servers to their knees. A lot of hosts won't permit it. Dragonfly (supposedly) solved some of the CPU load issues. Xaraya looks the best of the PHP-based CMS.
We're taking these on the road, though, and will help our clients see the benefits of using some collaborative tools. INFOSEC, my old employer, tried to get the folks to use a CMS but because it was so hard to use they couldn't. They kept on trying to get Microsoft Sharepoint to work. At one point I had an account with their old online business CMS host, but that took a dive.
If you're going to start a CMS for whatever reason, I have some pointers. I'll develop them and post them over at the Open Source Echos bizblog hosted by Echo Software. I'll leave a link.
I've been meaning to write about how I got roped into chaperoning our church youth's doing the 30 Hour Famine ("Do the famine") and got told I was the new youth leader, but it's too personal so I won't. I had the best time I've had in years being locked in with them, sleeping on a basement floor, with no food and all our outdoor activities cancelled because of a freak "winter mix" storm so ending up playing bad games, watching kid flicks (ever suffered through 13 Going On 30 with a bunch of teenage girls?) and playing unimaginative Game Cube games. What's not to like?
Mara Beller, Professor in History and Philosophy of Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, wrote an interesting article on the Sokal Hoax that describes how the weird, wacko theories of several quantum physicists sound at least as bad as some of the excesses of the post-modern litcrits. Scientists think that because they have a great deal of knowledge and skill in a particularly difficult domain that they have similar levels of knowledge in skill in humanistic domains. Doctors and lawyers have the same problem, so perhaps it stems from the insularity of the professions. The article is a decent discussion of the general problem, focusing on the Sokal Hoax as a starting point.
Dr. Hutcherson, pastor of the Antioch Bible Church, who has organized several rallies opposing same-sex marriage here and in Washington, D.C., said he threatened in those meetings to organize a national boycott of Microsoft products.
After that, "they backed off," the pastor said Thursday in a telephone interview. "I told them I was going to give them something to be afraid of Christians about," he said. [NYT, "Microsoft Comes Under Fire for Reversal on Gay Rights Bill", by Sarah Kershaw]
Um....
I've had all types of new visitors recently, and in my normal suave ability to keep customers, I immediately blogged about comics when they were all Christian evangelicals. That's how to keep your readers happy, folks.
I'm sitting here in the sweltering heat, at least for Indiana's North End in April, listening to the Chafers and loading up a wiki for a test run. One of the many things that I am doing right now to keep whatever career I have alive is working with a invitation-only conference in Toronto about an organizational theory that is not at all well received but founded on actual results. They want a wiki and I've been doing web stuff since I put up my first catalog site in beta in 1994. And I still can't remember how to untar something. "What was that switch again?" Command lines go in one ear and out the other these days.
Michael Bates wrote an entry on his blog pleading with me to keep up manasclerk's The Power Struggle. I could say that I'm a sucker for Okies since my wife's from Edmond, outside OKC. Or I could play up Bates's recent problems with the Tulsa paper, closely resembling as they do our maid of honour's problems with the Oklahoma legislature about a piece she wrote for that weekly outside voice that certain parties didn't take kindly to, leading her to avoid visiting for awhile. (Good luck, Michael: whenever you're ready, there are Good People waiting for you to cross the border into God's country, that other state with a panhandle....) But truth be told, I contemplated pulling the site here because I really just wanted to get rid of my business contacts from my personal blog. I thought about simply moving the blog to another directory and even did the install out of the bloghost, since the company that ran is closing this year and they don't care. But I decided that it was too much work just to get rid of my business contacts.
There are many benefits to blogging anonymously. Mostly because I can lie, lie, lie. And that I don't get fired. But since I don't have a an employer and as a consultant don't have a current client, I doubt that much will happen. I suppose that BIG or INFOSEC, two ex-clients I often discussed, could sue me if they actually thought that any of this was about them. I don't think I've said anything nasty about either's core business: they're both incredibly respected corporations for good reasons, being top flight with their customers.
Many of my friends became drug addicts and as a result, I always had a problem with what I saw portrayed by film makers and television producers about drug use. I am glad to see that the New York Times, our only remaining "paper of record" in the States, agrees. They reviewed HBO's Rehab, a documentary on tonight that follows a set of druggies in rehab.
The dirty little secret about addicts is that they are boring.
Amen to that.
When Moore wrote The Watchmen back in the mid-1980s, he wanted to use the Charlton Comics characters that DC had recently acquired, including some of Steve Ditko's most memorable creations after Spider-Man. I had some of the old Blue Beetle and Captain Atom comics from the 1960s and enjoyed them. I was glad when DC decided that Moore couldn't be allowed to destroy their new properties.
Twenty years later, DC doesn't have a problem with Johns, Rucka and Winick doing it. It's getting to be what you have to do as a writer for superhero comics nowadays: kill off a minor hero. Or his wife. God help you if you're a Marvel minor character or a DC female.
After reading Michael Spencer's recent essay trying to explain his faith to other Christians ("I'm Not Like You: An Apologia to My Readers (Calvinists especially)"), I'm glad that I'm not normally considered much of a Christian. Spencer works for a small Baptist boarding school that has more than a few emotionally damaged students, in one of the poorest parts of America. He writes a good deal on the web and apparently people like responding to him. There is something about how he writes that draws you in, a voice that is compelling, so perhaps he attracts repsonses. But they have been so forceful that he's had to issue a direct comment to them.
He closes his apologia:
[ Continue reading "The Problem of Being Reformed" ]Alan, why did you have to send me Tony? I had just settled into a good depression with the Bloated Goat of Despair (BGoD) about work and life in general. I figured that Tony was just another guy, another stiff who needed some job consulting. And then with one statement he destroys my despair and I go into prophet-mode again. When I see the glory of the One Living and True God pass by me, I will blame you for it.
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I really need less sidebacks. And I'd love to be able to mix alcohol drinks. I don't even know how to make a screwdriver. Or a martini. I don't even know what goes into those things. I'd love to have a drug that would enable me to mix alcoholic drinks. You'd think that one would have to go to a class or read a book or something. Man, those pashas of passion pharamceuticals really have outdone themselves!
Now, could you get me a pill that will make me employable? Or even insurable?