September | 2003 | mashby

September 11, 2003

Movable Type – Technology At Its Finest

A couple of day ago, I wrote about how technology is, more often than not, a pain in the ass. Of course not all technolgy is a pain. Every so often something comes along that just works and people fall in love with it. I think the PalmPilot was a shining example of that. In fact, Palm coined the term The Zen Of Palm to explain their design philosophy and the resulting popularity of the device. Although I agree with the Zen of Palm, the bottom line was that the device just worked – that’s why people bought them.

So there are exception to the “crap that doesn’t work” rule and recently I was reminded of that as I worked with Movable Type. Movable Type (aka MT) is what is called a “Content Management System.” In plain english, Movable Type is a program that manages the content on your website. This weblog is all managed by Movable Type. I installed the program on this web server, customized it to fit my needs and design and use it to post content to the website. Posting my little rants is all quite easy. I have a simple form that I type the days diatribe into, click the “Post” button and ta da, a post appears on the front page. After awhile, a post is then archived so that you can read it later. MT isn’t the only content management system out there, but it’s very popular. Why? Because is just works.

September 10, 2003

We Need A Bigger Bed

It’s a miracle, but Gracie slept in the bed with us the whole night! This is the first time we’ve gone the entire night without Gracie starting a ruckus with the cats, so clearly we’re making progress. Plus, I have some new photos.

September 9, 2003

Technology Defined

It’s a shame, but I think most people find technology to be a pain in the ass. In fact, if a piece of equipment is a pain in the ass, then I think it’s labeled with the moniker of technology.

September 8, 2003

Fiat Lux

A good friend of mine, Rachel Luxemburg, just launched her own weblog.

September 7, 2003

A Toast To Dr. Foster

On Friday night, Holly, Mom and I went to the Davis Kidd bookstore for a book signing. Dr. David Foster was signing his new book, The Power to Prevail – Turning Your Adversities into Advantages, so we decided to pop on over and grab us a copy.

September 6, 2003

Holly’s Rockin’ The HISzzzhouse

As mentioned in Wednesday’s post, my wife Holly performed for the first time at Bellevue Community Church for their yearly Vision Night. Vision night is similar to their mid-week service except that the topic is on the Church itself. Dr. David Foster talked about the vision of BCC, where they’ve come from and where they are going, that sort of thing. Even though he was referring to where BCC is headed, as usual he also gave me a lot to think about my life as well. 🙂

The music is always incredible there. Lionel Cartwright does an amazing job as the Creative Arts Director and some of the best music in Nashville is found at BCC every weekend. I know that Holly was truly honored to be asked to sing backup. BCC is chock full of top notch musicians and having the opportunity to perform with them is a big deal. Don’t believe me? Well keep this in mind, Lionel has 2 Top 20’s, 3 Top 10’s, and 3 Top 5 hits, one being a number one song, “Leap Of Faith“, to his credit and that’s just scratching the surface. 8)

September 5, 2003

Weblog Publishing Tools For Movable Type

Weblogging Application Icons Recently I did a review on Weblogging With Your Palm, however since I do the bulk of my publishing with programs on my laptop, I thought it might be good to do a quick run down of what’s available for Windows clients. This mini-review is focused on tools that work with Movable Type (MT). The listed apps may, or may not work with your chosen system if you’re not using MT. I’d suggest a Google search to see what other product are out there for your software.

Why Use A 3rd Party Client?

The MT interface is pretty straightforward and easy to use, so why use a 3rd party client? The short answer is spellchecking. 🙂 The long answer is that, depending on the client you’ve chosen, there’s a wealth of tools to help you with your post. For example having a WYSIWYG HTML editor, being able to compose offline, or being able to save your posts locally. You may not need these extra tools, but if you do one of these applications should fit the bill.

September 4, 2003

Floating On A Sea Of Forgetfulness

Back in college you could judge the quality of a weekend by how hungover, or how exhausted someone was. Today, one good clue is how many dishes I have to do in the morning. We had quite the time this weekend judging by the number of dishes I washed the other day. Of course, I don’t need a dish count to remember how much fun and relaxing this weekend was. 🙂

I had planned to get a lot of work done. I had been clueless of the fact that this past weekend was Labor Day weekend until a client reminded of the fact on Friday. My first thought was that I could use the extra day to catch up on a few things and I could spend the most of the weekend in my office. On Saturday, Holly and I got a few things done around the house, but we used a good part of the weekend just catching up and getting in sync with what each of us has been up to. We blocked aside Sunday as the day to relax and planned on Monday being a very busy day.

September 3, 2003

Hear Holly Live Tonight

Holly will be performing live tonight at Bellevue Community Church for Vision Night!

September 2, 2003

I’m Now A True Believer

On Sunday we went to Church at BCC. The praise and worship music was great, as it always is, but there was a special surprise. Phil Keaggy was playing lead guitar (yes, we rock out in Church) that day and he played a special song entitled ‘True Believers.’ Phil is a legend in the Christian music industry, yet I had never heard any of his music. I was totally unprepared for what I heard.

The song featured Phil by himself with an acoustic guitar. It began simple enough with a him strumming and singing. Then he stopped and began playing percussion on the face of the guitar. He had an effect pedal that allowed him to sample and playback in a loop what he had just played, so after playing percussion for 4 bars, he started strumming the guitar again. The percussion part he had played just before looped behind him. He kept adding more and more parts to the point where he was a one man band. On top of all this was a great song!

Month / September 2003

Why Use A 3rd Party Client?