Woah, I thought the forums were gone on moveabletype’s website. They sort of are. Can you find the link? I have not been able to yet.. I know that the forums are there because I am on them right now. For new users, it would not be so simple. Oh, there it is, I found it. That is, honestly, what troubled me the most about all of this.
The community, any way you cut it, has been moved to the back seat of the bus now for Six Apart.
Wondering what I am talking about? Read this:
http://www.sixapart.com/corner/archive/2004/05/its_about_time.shtml
I can’t argue with them on their decision to take the free community support and do something with it. That’s what business is good at and is half the reason we have so many innovative products out there. On the other hand, some companies PAY for R&D, which is what the community has been doing for Six Apart for a good long time. For free.
I can’t argue with their decision to make money on a great product. Hey, they deserve to make a tonne of money off of this software. However, their approach seems a bit wacky.
What this is.. is not an upgrade. It is a rebrand. New logo, new messaging. Moveable Type has shiner packaging and so they think it is worth more [than it was]. Which I agree with. It does look better. Is it worth more? It’s always been worth quite a bit, but they’re charging more for it than an iPod at the highest end. This price point is doom. The limitations are doom. The disappearance of community is doom. Basically this is an optics disaster in one of the most listened to and connected communities on the planet.
I hope their 26 employees are Public Relations wrecking balls and not programmers so that they can break through the walls they’ve put up for themselves.
By the way, if I was to continue running and upgrading moveabletype, the cost would be $206 CAD with no functional benefits. Yeah right.
Yeah. So what else is there for people to use? You can still use Moveable Type for free if you want. Once you register with them, you can download good old 2.661. Probably for a limited time. The new one is free but they don’t offer any support for it. And like I said, the forums .. well, I don’t even know if you can find them any more unless you already happen to know where they are. Weak sauce, weak sauce.
So anyways, we still got something out of the whole deal. But emotionally I consider the deal to be over. I may be interested in them from a business angle, but Moveable Type doesn’t do everything that I would need CMS to do, so that’s unlikely. In that regard, Moveable Type is competitively priced, but functionally falls short of other solutions.
the swan
lately birds have been in my life in a weird way. a week ago when i was hanging out with charles, this crazy eagle took two seperate swoops at a seagull for dinner despite two crows trying to take the eagle out and a hundred seagulls voicing their opinion on the demise of their unfortunate brother. this happened no less than 10 feet away from where i was standing. i left my camera in the car that day because i figured i had seen everything at clover point. argh.
here is charles’ description of the epic crow-seagull-eagle thriller, lifted from his livejournal:
I went out for a drive with davin tonight and we ended up down at clover pt. beefore hitting up alzu’s. (where we actually met alzu btw) So when we get down there, a few people are chillin some kites up in the sky, and we clamber down the rocks where i proceed to smash flotsam on jetsam. and we walk around to the main point and check out some green [bleep] and all of a sudden about 20 seagulls are screaming like crazy, making absurdly loud comments about each other’s mothers and davin and I are like wtf? Then all of a sudden this crazy [censored] eagle swoops down with a seagull in it’s grip. We go “WOOOAAAAHHHHH!” “that seagull is fucked!” It was crazy windy out and this retarded seagull is trying to flap away, so the eagle lands on some rocks, then some crazy mother[censored] crows start dive bombing him, and he’s like “piss off!” then he takes off, with the gull in his grip, and drops in the water, so he’s like “fuck, that’s dinner!” and does two fly-bys to pick him back up to fly off to into the distance with all these assholes chasing him (assholes being other seagulls).
hehehe! charles kicks ass.
but i digress.
last week i went on a walk at lunch time and discovered a swans nest and two swans to go with it. the nest had several huge swan eggs in it and the swans just poked around while i enjoyed a sunny day. so, i made friends with the swans that day last week. i didn’t have my camera with me, again.
today i came back to the place and stood on the hill, this time with my camera. i looked down and saw the female sitting on the eggs while the male sat on a bunch of dirt on the dirty beach. they both looked rather content with what they were doing:
so long stylus
for many years in victoria, one could walk down to a place in victoria where it was possible to peruse the latest rave flyers, look at local DJ’s mix CD’s framed proudly on the wall, look through a selection of local underground branded clothes, or talk to a friendly DJ or store worker. it was home to the occassional brilliant import record, which you could listen to or even mix on the turntables that were set up. the store itself usually opened whenever the employee of the day woke up and figured out whos couch they had crashed on. that store was open for one last day on saturday. the owner and perpetuator had a great time with the store during its 6 year run, but knows that it is time to move on. in this case he will be working in the construction industry, making a lot more money. his name: scotty. the store’s name: stylus.
this is stupid
i think alessa rejected my testimonial for her on friendster. friendster is dumb anyways, but kind of neat at the same time. i see friendster still getting quite a bit more traffic than orkut, which is also stupid, but cool and neat as well.
well, bye!
super bolt
julie is awesome!
raving legends
here is a picture (from last night) of nigel tasko, melixxxa, peter beatty and damien norris. this is, more or less, noble house and the alien mental association. they were responsible for a whole slew of great underground massives on the west coast, having brought in such DJ’s as Sasha, John Digweed, Dave Seaman, Paul Van Dyk, Paul Oakenfold, Jerry Bonham, etc etc. Huge.
there may be more, finally, in the works.
It was a bit of a late night last night. I started by going to Steve’s (broken wrist) to watch the Flames burn the Sharks. Then I went down to Hush to meet up with Leah and talk to Brent but talking to Brent didn’t happen. I was due at QV’s by the time Brent arrived so I left for QV’s to meet james pezguy where we then plotted away for an hour and a half or so. It was great to catch up with him. he definitely took the initiative in us hanging out in a flatteringly honest and inventive kind of way:
http://www.cheezy.net/blog/archive/000199.php
I don’t like to go out on week nights any more as I like to start winding down by 10:30ish at the latest these days. Ocassionally I’ll go out later than that, and last night was one of those nights. It was Braeden’s birthday party down at Hush and so I hung out and enjoyed the company of some friends that I only see when I go out. Which .. is unfortunate.
tonight i will make music and by tomorrow i will have slept the good sleep.
something different
so here you go, something different. everyone posts pictures of themselves when they’re happy and feeling great. here is one of me and matt when we’re feeling spent from .. i can’t remember what. this is a picture from december.
i recently joined an online community as a newbie. i have not been a newbie for anything in a long time. pretty cool! it’s a trinidad and tobago message board — a pretty active one too. within a day of making an introduction post i received 10 replies. not bad at all!
i have been making some sick beats lately. it’s all about the huge snares now. panning, slight reverb, compressed. lovely.
it’s too nice out
the radio show was a sketchfest last night, even though it was fun, mostly on-time etc. i think i played a total of 7 records, which when you consider the amount of time i put into putting together records and music, it’s pathetic. i played charles paul’s new “chompers mercy kill” remix of magnetic last night, which is a really awesome tech-trance bit (not really tech-trance but it’s the closest thing i can think of) and it mixed quite smoothly. think nathan fake-ish.
i did more work on dreamcache last night. i finally removed the ducking tamborine. wtf was i thinking in the first place? it works well (actually) on magnetic but i never intended to keep it in the track.. it was more of a space-filler that i used until i figured out what i really wanted. this is more like it.
so i burned it to CD last night but unfortunately i burned a data CD of the audio track. i didn’t end up playing it (obviously). next show..
this weekend means more work on the pacific front logo concepts and meeting up with justin and charles to jam on our idea.
mememe
hey here ya go. this is something we can all participate in!
basically what you do is.. post a comment with a memory of me in it, and then post a similar post on your blog. leave a link to your blog in your comment, and i’ll reciprocate if you make a similar post on your blog! how about that? eeeasy! come on, you must remember one thing about me.
you can participate even if you dont have a blog. just leave some sort of memory of me in the comments section.
idea borrowed from the geekgirl.