I’m not a huge Bruce Willis fanboy or anything, but is it weird that I think Bruce Willis having a semi-public website is a cool idea? The cynic in me still has doubts that Bruce has anything substantive to do with this site, but the concept is interesting: stars communicating directly with their fans.
If he only had an RSS feed.
I really don’t do a lot with BitTorrent. I know it’s the new, big way to get downloads (musics, movies, etc.) but I just don’t have that big of an appetite for that kind of thing. Well, music maybe, but finding a)trustworthy links that are b) free can be a challenge, and who has that kind of time, right?
Enter legal torrent tracker sites. Thanks to Slashot, I now have a bigger list of sites to get legal downloads (well, legal in the eyes of arcane business models).
torrentocracy
Prodigem
bt.etree
CommonBits
And, the already mentioned LegalTorrents
Go forth and download! Oh, but not yet; since all these sites are on the front page of Slashdot, they’re pretty much screwed for the day.
Not like they care, but Bloglines is a great web-based news reader.
(Sidenote: Bloglines was recently acquired by AskJeeves; yeah, I didn’t know AJ was still around either.)
I’m not getting anything for recommending Bloglines, either (is it weird I feel compelled to say that?), but I’m recommending it to a few of you who are reading this little offense to publishing. (I’m looking at you John, drsandy, and J–.)
Oh, and when is WMS-STC going to start a blog? That whole fostering communication initiative? Blogs are a great conversation starter… just an idea. I’d even help you set it up.
Yes, eating instant lunches is Teh Bad, but every once in a while, something warm and delicious is needed at work. If that dish can be had in under 5 minutes, all the better. It’s not like I get to eat lunch with regularity most of the time.
Enter Thai Kitchen Spring Onion Rice Noodle Bowl [ed. scroll to the bottom] (hat tip to Trader Joe’s, which I think is where I bought this). This $2 bowl of pep-me-up is gluten free, egg free, and actually made in Thailand (which, obviously, doesn’t add a wit to the authenticity, but…).
And the nutriotion info ain’t half bad, for an instant meal. Aside from 627mg of sodium, the rest is pretty non-contributory to the ole dietary chart (well, 25g of carbs for those still punishing themselves with one of those diets).
Between these little dishes and my penchant for spicey Thai, sushi, and udon, I swear I must have lived a previous life closer to Asia.
God, I have just brought myself down so many pegs in the food-snob scale. My next Food post will have to be about some dish with an unpronounceable ingredient.
If anyone wants a Gmail account, I have a ton of invites. Just email me at ryan@youknowwhatpart.com
I am back in Michigan, but I’m zonked. Posting may be light this weekend as I’m way behind on the writing thing.
It’s good to be home, though.
I almost forgot. A serendipitous trip to B&N netted a book I’m sure both J– and I will live to regret buying, No Plot, No Problem. As a writer (went to school, got degree), it goes against every instinct, class, experience, and method I can think of. Basically, you have 31 days to write 50,000 words. Other than that, there’s not much too it. The book goes into caging your Inner Editor, some motivational tricks, and the esprit de corps you’ll need to accomplish such a ridiculous goal; beyond that, it’s a fairly easy technique.
The hard part is that I’ve committed to doing it, not just to J–, but to myself. At around 1600 words a day, it’s something I would never set as a goal for myself precisely because it goes against everything I know about writing.
But, as I thought about it, I remembered trying to write like other authors (comon you writers, where’s you Hemmingway hack?). Doing something like this is a jump start to getting the fingers nimble and the juices flowing. My writers block has grown a beard and taken up paint-watching, so anything I can do to coax him out is a good thing. It won’t be publishable, here or otherwise, but it might be constructive.
Updates to be posted
Hopefully not IDing myself too much, but I’m off to Portland for the week. First time to that state (guess which), so it should be fun. I may blog from there if anything warrents it.
Until then, make sure you check out the other side of YKWP.
I know everyone picks on MT for comment spam. They tend to get the Microsoft treatment about their products. They are the no.1 standalone blogging software, it’s only logical they would be targeted by spammers.
That said, however, it still irks me to no end that they haven’t implemented some real tools to fight the spam. MT-Blacklist is awesome, but only until a breach is found. Then it takes the only developer a long time to patch it. Worse for Six Apart, they have old installations out there that have upgrade instructions scary enough that even I thought twice about doing it.
(Sorry, quick aside here, but their installation instructions fail to tell you to upload the Javascript library. Yeah, things don’t work too well when that’s missing
Anyway, why do I post a beef about Six Apart on a MT-powered blog? Because I’m expecting to get a letter like Ken Camp did anytime from my host. I’m surprised this hasn’t happened with more hosts.
My installation is currently in the clear in the situation above. But I fully expect comment spam to be back. For all the chest thumping and high-fiving the development circle-jerkers had when the nofollow hack came out, there will be a way around it. Spammers always find a way (the bastards).
And every day that letters like the above go out, more people will do what Ken did; switch. WordPress has a new version out with some pretty impressive features. I have too much invested in the conversion back to MT, so I’m not quite ready to make the jump. But the option is tempting, and I know from experience the switch to WordPress is almost too simple.
Get it together, Six Apart. You’re not Apple; fanaticism only goes so far.