It’s here! It’s here! It arrived sooner than expected, but I won’t be able to pick it up until I head home for the day. Maybe I’ll cut out of work for lunch and go pick it up. The wife will be happy it’s here already. Looking forward to playing with it and checking it out.
It’s got more horsepower than my desktop at home. I think it’s time for an upgrade soon…
We’re now a multi-computer family
After getting tired of trying to share computers at work and at home, the wife decided she needed to get a laptop to use for school. We were planning on getting one eventually, but yesterday she decided she needed it now.
So last night, I got onto the Dell website and after some hemming and hawing, bought a Dell 5150. It’s a bit of a hefty laptop, but after she decided she probably wouldn’t be hauling it around with her all over the place, I opted to go for power over weight.
Now we wait and hopefully it will arrive in a week or so.
Looks like I’ll be hanging onto my beater Honda for a little while longer.
MT-Blacklist Wishlist
In Your MT-Blacklist Wish List, Jay asks what should go into the next version of MT-Blacklist.
Here is what I’d like to see:
- Blacklist entry editing. Sometimes I make a mistake entering one of my own entries, and the only way to fix it is to delete the old one and add a new entry.
- Integration with comments and comment moderation (MT 3). Something like a button that says “This is spam” and would add the entry into Blacklist.
- How about storing the blacklist entries in a a database table? It might slow down the blacklist though
Although not plugin related, another thing I’d like to see is the format of the Latest 100 changes changed to something that could just be copy/pasted into the blacklist. Then I wouldn’t have to grab the master blacklist file all the time and have it tell me that most of the entries are already in the blacklist.
That’s all I can think of at the moment. If I come up with more, I’ll add them in.
How I use MT
In the latest entry to SixLog, the question is asked: “How are you using the tool?“
If free isn’t an issue for you and you’re willing to pay for a version of Movable Type (say the $69 version) and the blog/author limits won’t work for your current use, write a non-emotional post explaining how you’re using Movable Type and TrackBack this entry.
I work in the Radiology department of a university hospital. When I first decided to install MovableType on my server, it was in response to one of our radiologists who wanted some software that our residents could use to log the procedures they perform. A place where they could leave notes, pictures, descriptions, details, whatever. Our program typically has anywhere from 4-8 residents per year, so there would potentially be as many as 40 weblogs and authors. A weblog would be perfect for this kind of application.
Unfortunately, they decided to go with a different system, so now this installation of MT hosts 1 active author and 4 weblogs.
- my personal weblog.
- a departmental weblog used to post announcements, activities and department news and the like.
- a private weblog used to track changes to the server and maintenance notes.
- a test weblog that I use to experiment with.
In the near future I plan on introducing MT to our Radiology Informatics group to see if they might find it useful as a group communication tool. This would involve adding 5 additional authors and at least that many more weblogs. I also plan on introducing MT to the rest of our faculty to see if our radiologists and residents might find it of any use. Thats maybe another 30 or 40 authors. Of course I don’t expect all of them to use it. If 10 of them decide it’s useful enough to use regularly, then I would be impressed.
Clarifications from SixApart
Plenty already logged to the blogoverse about 6A’s clarifications to the MT 3.0D release. There still continues to be some vitriol expressed by people who insist on remaining offended by 6A’s release and license changes though. Even a troll has emerged to muddy things up and do all the nasty things trolls do.
6A’s clarifications on the licensing terms and definitions as well as changes to the number of allowed users/weblogs does make things easier, and I think goes a long way to placating the majority of people. Now what I’d like to see is some statement about where 3.0D fits in with what 6A has in store.
3.0D is clearly a developer’s release intended primarily for plugin developers to create new plugins and rework existing plugins to fit into the new framework.
It will be available to everyone, not just developers; we’re calling it a Developer Release to emphasize the fact that 3.0 itself is not a feature release in the traditional sense. With this release we hope that the developer community will implement some great extensions for 3.0.
Since many of Six Apart’s employees are Apple fanboys/girls, we make the analogy to the first releases of OS X: the first releases did not offer that many new features themselves, only a more stable and robust platform for developers to build upon.
This clearly implies that unless you want to be active in developing and testing plugins, there’s no need to jump in and upgrade. I think a lot of people missed this part and focused primarily on the licensing issues (which I think still could use some reworking).
In any case, I’m starting to feel comfortable enough with using the beta I’ve been testing to move over to the free version of 3.0D (at least start testing it). I think I still have Typekey issues to work out, but no blocking issues. And once my CSS book arrives, I’ll be looking forward to having some fun messing with the look of my weblog.
And with that I think I have blogged enough about 6A and MT 3.0D and the release. Back to our regularly scheduled programming.