Don’t tell Blogger, but…

I’m now up-and-running with Movable Type. You won’t be seeing any of that here, obviously, which is why I am happy to announce that DR will be moving to a new home in the not-too-distant future. I haven't yet decided if I'm going to port all of the existing content over to the new site, but either way: I hate broken links as much as the next guy, so everything that is currently here on Blogspot will stay here indefinitely. With regard to the new URL and whatnot, stay tuned.

With regard to the installation of Movable Type, on the other hand, I have this to say: UGHH. I have installed it on two systems at this point: the first install took probably two days of fiddling, cursing, and hair-tearing; the second took literally 10 minutes. The take-home point is that while Movable Type is actually wicked easy to install if you know what you’re doing, the available install documentation is nearly useless if you don’t. It’s mostly readable to me now that I have a clue, but that didn’t do a me a whole lot of frickin’ good last week, did it?

So yeah, you should expect that my first post to the new DR will be a Movable Type install tutorial of some sort, because it sure as hell would have made my life a lot easier.

What's up with those ugly footnotes?

I apologize that things around here look a bit sloppy (especially the more recent posts). I'm posting in HTML that is aimed at a stylesheet I haven't written yet. I hope to remedy that one of these days.

Update: the footnotes have been spiffed-up and linked properly. To the list of things I do not understand, add the following: formatting for superscript and subscript is HTML-based. CSS, anyone?

Oh, right...

As you may have gathered from my recent post about scrolling, I'm attempting to get back into the blogging thing. I know it's been a while… ahem, a long while… so my apologies for that.

The devout readers among you may have noticed that DR has reverted to the (entirely capable) “Minima” template, thanks to the Blogger upgrade that Google launched last December, which kindly steamrolled my old custom template. Never fear, I'll revamp it sooner or later.

Hmmm… further updates: I think the content around here will be changing a bit, as reflected in the updated sidebar. Whereas before I posted about language and also lots of other… random stuff…, I'm now going to focus on user-interface design, technology stuff, Mac stuff, and certainly still the odd language point-of-interest.

Lastly, for your stalking pleasure: you can now follow my goings-on via Twitter. If you want to.

Pardon the Mess, Part 2

In response to my exciting news, I have been told that the new site design "doesn't look much different". Needless to say, I strenuously object — the layout is similar, but there are a substantial number of subtle and not-so-subtle changes.

So. For funzies, I've added an exciting new feature — by clicking on the links below, you can switch back and forth between the "old" and "new" site designs courtesy of an elegant little javascript written by Paul Sowden at A List Apart. Go clicky-click back and forth a few times, and note the differences!

Old  | New

PS
What I've actually done is written my own blogger template and stylesheets from scratch, which, considering that I had no idea what I was doing at the outset, was quite a bit of work. The fact that the layout hasn't changed too much is far more indicative of the fact that I liked the old layout than that I was lazy or something.

Pardon the Mess

Well. The much anticipated blog makeover has finally happened, and just look at the mess! I will hopefully have everything squeaky clean and in working order again by tomorrow evening.

I'd love to hear your thoughts — as I am now in full control of the appearance of this page, I can adapt very easily to insightful comments and requests. Talk to me!

Blogger by Tag, Part 2

Three things —

First, regular readers will have noticed that my grand tagging plan is coming along nicely. As nicely as was to be expected, that is.

Second, regular readers may also have noticed that although it was promised, there's been no sign of a blog re-design. Well, I'm working on it.

Third, in the interest of keeping you, ahem, interested, my next post will be about something completely different: punctuation. Stay tuned.

Asserting My Web-Design Prowess

OK, OK. I don't actually have much web-design prowess. But I'm working on it! This blogging thing has inspired me, and what that means for you, dear Reader, is that you should be expecting a blog re-design in the near future.

As I mentioned, I'm still in the "learning" stages of web design. I'm currently using my other web page as scrap paper, as it were, for my experimentation. Thus far, I've been doing all of my playing locally. From now on, though, I'll publish whatever I've got at the end of each day. For a preview of what's coming, or just for a chuckle, feel free to visit.

All that said, I should point out that this is more motivated by my desire to learn than because I feel a re-design is in order. As with my Tagging Initiative, the biggest changes will occur under the hood. I intend to keep the "look-and-feel" mostly the same, because, honestly, I quite like Blogger's templates. I just think it's time for me to take control.

Blogger by Tag

Iam in the process of tagging my posts. "Tagging" is the hot internet term for assigning keywords, or "tags," to just about anything on the web for easy searching and on-the-go categorization — as always, see the Wikipedia entry. Tags are a form of metadata. That is as much information theory as you're going to get from me.

There is no native Blogger support for tags or categories, so things here could be a bit messy over the next few days as I screw around under the hood.

After a thorough Google search (because that's where information comes from), I feel in the Blogger-tagging know. Many creative individuals, of which I am not one, have though up clever ways by which to implement tags in Blogger. These "hacks" fall under three broad categories:

1. Leveraging the tagging power of del.icio.us.
2. Creating a new blog for each category and linking them together in a clever fashion (this is more category- than tag-oriented).
3. Linking to an intra-blog Google Blog Search for each tag.

Each of these hacks has its own advantages and disadvantages. I'm starting with 3, as it's the easiest to implement. Further down the road, I might move to a more powerful and elegant combination of 1 and 2. That is, of course, unless Blogger beats me to the punch, which, given the apparent popular demand, is likely.¹

I'll try to keep you, loyal reader, posted (har har! — blogging puns). Please do let me know via comment if you have any questions, complaints, suggestions, or, um, comments.

¹ Speaking of popular demand — if you, like me, want Blogger to add native tag support, make yourself heard! Blogger keeps a running user Wish List, so go vote vote vote for "I want a way to organize posts by topic or category."

Update: apparently our voices were heard, because tagging support was among the features Google chose to included in the new Blogger (they call them labels, c.f. Google Mail). DR has been updated appropriately and my hack-y system has been removed.

ab initio

I've decided that it's time for me to share my opinions with the world.

I hope you're ready to listen.