trainedmonkey
blo.gs lives?
so today i happened to stumble across the news from last week that yahoo “transferred” blo.gs to automattic.
i guess i can finally let the domain names lapse that i had planned to create a service like blo.gs on.
the march of time continues
i haven’t had much to say. very out of character, i know.
or maybe i’ve had a lot to say and don’t know how to say it.
i am looking forward to the dr. horrible’s sing-along-blog session at paley fest 2009.
maybe i’ll write about that next month.
a little blog-la-sphere love
i spent a few hours adding a real submission page to blog-la-sphere, to help streamline the process of blogs getting added. and so i could shut down another email address that was mostly a spam magnet.
you can’t see it now, but there will be a list in the top of the middle column showing any blogs that have been added within the last week. the middle column also shows posts from the last 24 hours, rather than posts from the last month and a half.
finally, i dialed down the frequency that sites are checked for updates if they haven’t updated recently. if a blog hasn’t been updated in more than a week, it will now only get checked daily. if it has been more than three months, it will only get checked once a week.
but no picket fences
the rowan lofts are having an auction on february 8, 2009 to try and get enough units sold so that they don’t have to follow the path of some other recent developments and open as a rental property. this article in the downtown news has a bit more of the details.
i am starting to get the itch to own instead of rent. the place we are in now is feeling very temporary, and that hasn’t helped motivate us to unpack everything.
unfortunately, most of what we would have for a down payment is currently tied up in paint, canvas, brushes, and other art supplies.
there would be something to ending up back at 5th and spring.
hello kitty christmas
this is just a basic sugar cookie and frosting, with a little help from a cookie cutter in the shape of hello kitty.
truth be told, the cookies aren’t very good. i will have to use a different/better sugar cookie recipe next time. but these were all about the presentation.
merry christmas!
how open is drizzle?
one piece of jay’s advice to mysql got me thinking about something that bugs me about drizzle development. jay said:
Make all decisions open and transparent: For the non-maintenance team, make a policy that all decisions about the kernel design be done in an open forum, with the community able to participate in the discussion. Have stewards that are willing to negotiate the design decisions with the community and do everything in a transparent manner.
since jay is one of the key lieutenants in the drizzle effort, it only seems to fair to put them up against that standard. one thing i have noticed is that there is relatively little discussion on the drizzle mailing list about all the coding that is going on. the latest discussions mostly seem to be flypaper for standards wonkery and taking shots at mysql.
meanwhile, you have big refactorings of code like mark atwood’s plugin-ization of several features that seem to just go into the code without any discussion of the design or implementation.
maybe all the discussion is happening on the irc channel, but that is not a great way to get much of the potential community involved. how much of it is happening off-line? maybe more than the core drizzle developers realize, or would care to admit.
stuff that doesn’t control me
i had been using a plastic water bottle while at the store (refilled from our water dispenser in the back), but it started smelling a bit off. so i ordered a klean kanteen stainless steel water bottle. it isn’t insulated, so it can be a little cold when first filled, but it has a nice large opening and should be easy to clean if it starts to get funky.
i also got an all-ett wallet (the european) to replace my old thick wallet. the fabric it is made from is crinkly, but i hope that will mellow with usage. it is half as thin as my old wallet, at least.
we got a sprout coat tree from cb2 so we have someplace to hang our coats this “winter.” this is much better than our old system of draping the coats around on chairs. the packaging was annoying (crumbly styrofoam), but it is a nice solid coat rack that we should have for a while.
accumulated downtown
the holiday block party in the old bank district was a really great event. i didn ’t even get around the corner to 4th street (spending my time between the bank and our store), but what i saw was tremendous. based on the traffic at the store, i have to say i liked the crowd a lot more than the typical art walk crowd. there was just less tension in the air. there seemed to be a lot more people from the neighborhood around.
we went to an event at the new cole’s the other night, and also picked up some sandwiches at the grand opening. there was always a fear that something would just be wrong with the renovation, but they appear to have done it right. i have decided to withhold judgement on the food until having a proper meal there. it was really strange being at the bar again. if i seem less than enthusiastic, it is because that place means so much to us. it is hard to process.
the association, a new bar next door to cole’s was a real eye-opener, though. they managed to stay fairly far under the radar, so stepping inside was a real treat. it felt like a really comfortable, contemporary neighborhood bar. not my usual scene at all, but i could imagine spending some time there.
