The Republic of T.

Freezing out Mac/Firefox Users

I've now been told by at least two people, both Mac users and one a Firefox user, that this blog tends to crash their browsers. Is anyone else having this problem?

I have a couple of suspiscions for what might be causing this. It could either be the script that displays the cost of the war in Iraq, or the script that grabs the blogroll from my Bloglines.

I'll disable the first one, and hope that's it. If that doesn't take care of it, then maybe the impending move to my own domain and a hosting service will do the trick.

What Do You Use?

OK. It's clear that I've been obsessing about blogging software for the past week or so. I've installed and tried various different set-ups. I've gotten to the point where I now check blogs that I read regularly, looking for a "powered by" link that says what runs that particular blog. Here are the packages I've tried in the past week.

• Drupal
• b2evolution*
• Geeklog
• Movable Type
• pMachine
• WordPress*

The ones with the * by them are the ones I've had the most success with in terms of importing my old content. There are a few others (GreyMatter, BlogCMS, Pivot, TextPattern) that I've looked into but haven't tried yet. So far Wordpress has been the easiest to install and use. followed by b2evolution. I'm still waiting to see if I can successfully import stuff into Drupal. I tried one method, with little success. I'll have to try it again over the weekend. My reason for wanting to use Drupal is that I like the degree of flexibility. I'm figuring out, though, that I can use WordPress pretty easily, and that I like the extra functions in b2evolution. so I might end up using one of those. I'll need another week to decide.

The question I want ask readers here, those who don't use subscription services, is this: What blog software do you use? Why did you choose it? What do you like about it? 

Spoke To Soon?

OK. Maybe I spoke too soon earlier. I've been doing some stuff on the new Drupal site this morning, and things have been going kinda smoothly. But just a minute ago. something changed. I'm not sure what. But now whenever I try to do anything besides look at the homepage I get the following error message.

An error has occurred while handling your request. This error may be a result of a malfunctioning script or CGI application.

Error 500 Internal Server Error (mod_rewrite: maximum number of internal redirects reached. Assuming configuration error. Use \'RewriteOptions MaxRedirects\' to increase the limit if neccessary.)

So, I'm at another stopping point. It may very well be that I'm in over my head, and should either stick with Typepad, or find something easier to use. Movable Type? WordPress? I'll see if I can get them to work. There's got to be something I can use that doesn't require me to be a programmer for crissakes.

Another Gmail Giveaway

I have 5 more Gmail invites to give away. I've already gone back and checked with everyone who emailed me last time and didn't get one. So, this time the invites go to first five readers to send me an email at my Gmail address.

It's Just About Time

The following from Wired was enough to make me want to stand and cheer.

Effective with this sentence, Wired News will no longer capitalize the "I" in internet.

At the same time, Web becomes web and Net becomes net.

Why? The simple answer is because there is no earthly reason to capitalize any of these words. Actually, there never was.

True believers are fond of capitalizing words, whether they be marketers or political junkies or, in this case, techies. If It's Capitalized, It Must Be Important. In German, where all nouns are capitalized, it makes sense. It makes no sense in English. So until we become Die Wired Nachrichten, we'll just follow customary English-language usage. (Web will continue to be capitalized when part of the more official entity, World Wide Web.)

In fact ai may stop typing long enough to deliver a brief, one-man standing ovation. Having worked on the web as a writer, editor, and now blogmaster, for the past few years the business of capitalizing "internet" and "web" never made sense to me and was enough to nearly drive me around the bend. However most of the time I went ahead and capitalized the words in my work when it was required. It was a matter of picking my battles.

But no more. If Wired is finally making a stand, then I shall stand with them. It might have made sense to capitalize the two when they were relatively new mediums. But I've been on the web for over 10 years now, as have a lot of other people. I've been emailing for even longer. So, even though people are only just beginning to understand the potential uses of the internet and the web, they aren't new anymore. The Internet is just the internet, and the Web is just the web.

One from "Mean Maureen"

I started reading Maureen O'Dowd's columns in the New York Times when I came across one posted in an onlien forum. I think she's dead on, for the most part, in her assessment of the current Bush administration. This column in particular is an interesting assessment of the conservative influences in the administration, and how this president has heeded them apparently to his peril. (Not to mention those who continue to die in Iraq.

This passage, in particular, hits home:

The war in Iraq and its aftermath have proved that Mr. Cheney was wrong to think that a show of brute strength would deter our enemies from attacking us. There are improvements in Iraq, but it is still a morass, with 326 soldiers dead as of Friday. It's hard to create security when we are the cause of the insecurity.

One from "Mean Maureen"

I started reading Maureen O'Dowd's columns in the New York Times when I came across one posted in an onlien forum. I think she's dead on, for the most part, in her assessment of the current Bush administration. This column in particular is an interesting assessment of the conservative influences in the administration, and how this president has heeded them apparently to his peril. (Not to mention those who continue to die in Iraq.

This passage, in particular, hits home:

The war in Iraq and its aftermath have proved that Mr. Cheney was wrong to think that a show of brute strength would deter our enemies from attacking us. There are improvements in Iraq, but it is still a morass, with 326 soldiers dead as of Friday. It's hard to create security when we are the cause of the insecurity.