ALERT ALERT ALERT

Wow, that was quicker and easier than I thought. I have just finished importing all my Blogger posts into my new blog and am, as of now, stopping updates of this blog. For new updates, please go to the new site.

Everybody remain calm.

So I've been tossing around an idea for some time, but didn't really have anyplace to go with it until my friend Arvind e-mailed me earlier this week. I'm thinking about defecting away from Blogger. Shocking, I know, but as good as it is for beginners and dilettantes (both of which I was not so long ago–and which you might argue I still am), Blogger definitely has its limitations: no search capability for the entire contents (including archives) of a blog, limited customizability, no integrated TrackBack functionality, no support for categories, etc.

Also, since I now have my own domain, I thought it might be nice to integrate my web presences in one place. In order to publish a blog on my own domain, however, I'd need blog publishing software. The main platform for doing this, of course, is Movable Type, but it is relatively expensive (read: not free), and therefore against the very spirit of blogging and the internet. Then there's iBlog for Mac, which is also not free. As for free publishing software there are Greymatter and, the one my friend e-mailed me about, WordPress. I was pretty impressed with WordPress when I checked it out, and now I've installed it on my domain's server, which was insanely easy (they advertise that you can do it in under 5 minutes).

Now for the hard part: making the decision. I'm all but ready to do it, except that I'd like to find some way of porting my old posts over, if possible. If not, it's not like I'll be deleting this blog anyway, so they won't disappear. Hmmm.

Have you seen this?

The new Flag button on the Blogger bar? I'm not sure how I feel about it yet, but I am cautiously optimistic. It does not promote censorship, but does remove them from liability quite neatly and also provides a clever way for them to find spam blogs.

Big pimpin'

So I have got to share this with you. Did you know that Häagen-Dazs just came out with a light ice cream, with 1/2 the fat content of their regular ice cream? I had taste-tested a couple of flavors at a local festival a few months ago, and promptly forgotten about it. But when I was walking through the grocery store last week, I noticed that it had finally hit store shelves, so I got myself a couple of pints. One was vanilla bean, and the other dulce de leche. The former is really very good, but the latter is simply divine. Just amazing. Go out and get some right now. I mean it. Get in your car, go to the nearest grocery store or ice cream purveyor of your choice, and get some.

So my sister just got

this nifty new tablet PC. You know the ones? Where you can write on them like a notebook and have the data digitized? And in an effort to christen it, she and I had a deep philosophical discussion over e-mail (she's the one in red):

BBCR

Well, it's done. I've added Blogger bar color recommendations to my blog templates site.

D'you know what makes me completely INSANE?

What makes me gnash my teeth and want to PULL OUT MY HAIR? #*@&%(*U@ people who leave their #$(*@)(* shopping carts in the middle of the grocery store parking lot. People who can't walk 10 feet to the @*#*!#U@*$ cart corral to drop it off, so that, you know, others can drive through, or god forbid, actually PARK in the parking lot? I was just walking out of the grocery store and some Mensa member had left a cart sitting right behind my rear bumper. !! My car was literally 10 feet from the cart corral. 10 feet! GRRAAARRRRRGGGGHH. Excuse me. I have to go punch something.

I've been rejected!

:( Lilac Moon is no longer using one of my templates. I am devastated. Well, OK, you caught me. I'm not that devastated. She is, after all, an artist, and the days that she would use someone else's work were bound to be numbered.

Anyway, in other news, my OCD is manifesting itself again. I am giving serious thought to adding a section on my blog templates site giving recommendations of blogger bar colors to use with each of my templates. Why? Because I'm unreasonably bothered by people using entirely the wrong blogger bar color choice with templates that would clearly go better with another color. What do you think? Should I do it?

Pretty damn cool

Computer-assisted origami. (Thanks to Matt for the link.)

On the perils of living in California: item #58

It must be the newest thing in cheap marketing, but for the last year or so, I've been noticing that local businesses have been hiring people to stand along major thoroughfares waving signs and arrows advertising them: Quizno's Subs, Computer Repair, Fresh Flowers. Some of these sign-wavers really get into it; they'll bring headphones and some portable music device and be dancing around, waving their signs, waving to passing drivers.

As a way of getting people's attention, it's both low tech and amazingly effective. It's also a dangerous distraction to drivers. This may have something to do with my unfortunate tendency to look with the entire car and not just my eyes, but I can't imagine that anything that suddenly takes a driver's attention off the road can be good for the overall accident level.

On the perils of living in California: item #16

I paid almost $40 for a tank of gas yesterday. For my 4-cylinder car. Granted, it was mid-grade gas, but still.

Let me begin by apologizing in advance to

all of my out-of-state friends. You know, the ones I am about to make fun of.

You ever notice that people who don't live someplace tend to give it nicknames or shorten its name? But the people who actually live there don't do it? I don't know what it is, but for some reason, a bunch of my out-of-state friends call California "Cali". Now, I don't know one person who actually lives in California who calls it Cali. It's just not done. They'll use the whole name more often than not, or CA, the state abbreviation, in a pinch. But never Cali.

Take San Francisco. No locals or city residents call it "Frisco" (I have met someone from the East Bay who called it Frisco once, but I put that down to a moment of insanity). Usually we just call it the city. San Francisco, sure. SF for short, or even, rarely, San Fran, but never, ever, Frisco.

What's up with that? Weird.

Update 08/05/2005 12:15 - Case in point: The Notorious B.I.G.'s "Going Back to Cali". He used both "Cali" and "Frisco" in that song. Where was he from? Wait for it...Brooklyn. I rest my case.