mashby | The personal blog of Michael Ashby

October 3, 2007

Is It Just Me, Or Does MovableType Seem Dead?

I’ve been working on a large project for a client and we’re implementing the latest version of MovableType. When I first got into MT there was a thriving community around the software and it was a lot of fun, but all of that seems to have changed. MT4 was just released, so you’d think there would be a lot of activity around it, but it just seems, I don’t know — d e a d.

Many of my friends have switched their blogs to WordPress, including my good friend Rachel over at Fiat Lux and for larger installs, it would appear that Drupal is the current flavor of the month. Yet it seemed that MT still had a strong presence and large community around it.

Yet, as I drill down bugs, glitches and fixes for MT4, I have to say that things seem awfully quiet. Maybe I’m too close to it right now, but the forums seem awfully quiet to me. Anyone else find this to be true, or is it just me?

September 16, 2007

Upgraded To MT4

I upgraded to a fresh install of MovableType 4. I’m working out the kinks, which are all over the place, but I just wanted to give you a heads up as to what was going on.

August 5, 2007

Help Me, I Don’t Get Facebook

I’ve heard Leo Laporte talk about Facebook at lot on the TWIT Podcasts and I have an account, but I have to confess that I just don’t get it.

To me it looks as if Facebook is nothing more than LinkedIn, but for personal stuff. Am I wrong?

At first I thought it was more of a personal hub that pulled all your online content into one place. For example, I thought that it would pull my Flickr photos, Twitter and all my blogs into one “digital hub”, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.

I figure I must just be missing something so I thought I’d make a quick post for some feedback while I go digging for a review, or something to that effect.

August 5, 2007

Gary Vaynerchuk On Conan

Gary Vaynerchuk, who recently took over one of my favorite sites Cork’d was on Conan recently and did a very funny bit with Conan on how to build a “proper” palate for wine tasting. Good stuff!

August 5, 2007

Two New Photosets

I put up two new photosets on Flickr today.

1. Un-boxing Holly’s New iMac
For the past few months, we’ve slowly been working on converting the spare bedroom into an office/project studio for Holly. With the room completed, the first major purchase was a new 17″ iMac. This series shows the un-boxing of her long awaited iMac.

2. iPhone Unboxing
Photos of my new iPhone, which I purchased the first week of it’s release. 🙂

Hope you like them!

April 23, 2007

A Good Example Of Why I Read Martin Dugard

Mike Rohde turned me onto Martin Dugard last year when he was blogging for the Tour de France. It was one of the highlights of following “Le Tour” tour and lucky for me, Dugard found the blogging experience a positive one and decided to continue blogging on his own once the tour was complete. So for the past year or so, I’ve greatly enjoyed his blog at http://www.martindugard.com/.

The chief reason that I’ve enjoyed reading Dugard’s blog is his writing style. It’s almost effortless and yet it inspires me to push harder and do better. Granted, I haven’t put my butt in the saddle yet as a result of reading his pity prose, but it has bolstered me to do better in work and in the general sense of my day.

Last week Martin had an article that particularly inspired me. It’s entitled “Boston – Roubaix” and I encourage you to take a moment to read it — it’s a good one.

Enjoy!

April 19, 2007

Do My Eyes Decieve Me?

I’m looking forward to seeing Apple’s iPhone is going to look like when it finally ships in June. There are days where I think I’m going to be the first one in line to try and buy one and then there’s other days where I think I’ll wait for the next version to come out.

Then the other day, I was clicking on links from the Engadget web site and a came across THIS (third image). Do my eyes deceive me, or is that a c l e a r iPhone? :O

April 19, 2007

My Response To Deb Shinder’s Article

I like Sunbelt Software and I have been a fan of their products for years. Additionally, I’ve been a reader of their blog SunbeltBLOG since it’s inception. If you’re interested in Windows security, I highly recommend adding it to your RSS reader.

That being said, I came across an article on their blog entitled “Are the Open Sourcerers Selling You a Bill of Goods?” by Deb Shinder, which frustrated me after reading it. The article irked me because it’s clear that Ms. Shinder is some what ignorant of exactly what Open Source software is, or isn’t, and yet felt compelled to write something on it. She doesn’t bash Open Source per se, but she does take issue with it, so I decided to write a response.

That response ended up taking a good bit of time to write, so as a result, I decided to post it here as well. Feel free to “read Shinder’s article then refer back to my response. Otherwise it might not make sense being out of context.

April 18, 2007

Holly’s New Song – This Is My Day Today

I just finished submitting a song to the American Idol Songwriter competition for Holly. She and her good friend Mary wrote the song specifically for the competition in the hopes that they will be chosen as one of the songs used for the top 3 finalists. If you’re not familiar with how Idol works, when the show is down to the final three (I think it’s three) contestants in the finale, an original song is chosen for them to sing. This is the first time in the competition when original music is chosen for them to sing and not something that’s already been recorded. Continue Reading

April 4, 2007

Mac OS X Global Font Size?

The other day I was at my Mom’s house and she asked if I could take a look at her MacBook. Everything was working fine, but she found that the fonts were a little small. I went poking around and was able to enlarge the fonts in the Finder and on the Desktop, but that seemed to be the only places, other than individual applications, where I could alter the font size.

So to all my Mac gurus out there, I have a question. Is there a global font option to enlarge all fonts system wide?

In Windows there an option called “Font Size” under the Display Properties that allow you to set the font size for the entire system. Is there a similar option in Mac OS X?