If you’ve had problems viewing my blog or commenting the past week or so, it should be fixed now. It was an odd problem with the new Movable Type 3.2 upgrade I installed and my .php files not working properly.
After using it for a week, I still really like the new features, though I’m not as thrilled with the comment protection. I still don’t understand how it works, which means I have a hard time tweaking it to make it work better. MTBlacklist seemed to be more straight forward. I suppose it is saving me time–I just wish it was saving me more time.
You know, I was really starting to miss these late night trips to the King CDC everytime the security alarm goes off. Good to be back. In blog form.
My wife is a teacher at the King CDC, a daycare center operated by Bethel University in a building owned by the Union Gospel Mission in Frogtown, a low income neighborhood of St. Paul. About a year ago there were break-ins and vandalism all the time. A rock thrown through a window, people carting off really crappy boomboxes, people trying to steal sub-standard printers. Fun stuff.
After a while they installed a security system, which helped. Of course it hardly stops someone from breaking a window for fun. It happened again tonight, and the security company started calling people on the list. The call finally came to us and we came down to check it out. Talked to the cop, called the right people, and now we’re waiting for someone to come board up the window. And I’m blogging.
The author of The Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning, lives in New Orleans and stayed in the city during Hurricane Katrina, evacuating only after the flood walls failed and the mandatory evacuation order was given. Manning talked with Christianity Today about the African American community in New Orleans, how he almost ended up at the Superdome, and how his future is in doubt like most people in New Orleans.
He also talked about the minimal damage in his area and the usual questions of why:
I happen to live in an area where, by the sheer grace of God, things are dry, except for the broken tree branches that fell on the road. I have sewage. And a few miles away some children drowned. I don’t ask why. I don’t ask why there are a million displaced people and 2,400 children still missing, and I have sewage. I just say thank you. The words of the poem [“Bone”] by the Pulitzer Prize winner Mary Oliver make a lot of sense to me.
She said, “truly I know / our part is not knowing, / but looking, and touching, and loving.”
Yesterday I upgraded to the new Movable Type 3.2. So far, so good. (though I can’t stand their new user’s manual—it’s way over written and makes everything sound harder than it really is.)
This does mean that MTBlacklist, the old spam filter I used, is no more. MT 3.2 has built-in spam protection, and the guy who wrote the code for MTBlacklist says it’s now obsolete (he now works for Movable Type). I’m sad to see it go since it kicked some major spam butt. Let’s look at the numbers for my blogs:
100,957 comments blocked (which means I never had to deal with them)
12,316 comments moderated (which means I had to delete them from the system, though they were never public)
12,796 comments blocked for using the word ‘poker’—I added the word to the blacklist out of frustration sometime in August 2005, apparently a smart move.
946 comments blocked for using the word ‘f-ck’—another word added out of frustration.
That’s a lot of comment spam, considering my blogs only have 2,200 legit comments total (and 145+ of those are about Simple Plan’s Pierre Bouvier).
Maybe you thought I was exaggerating when I recommended the movie Serenity. Maybe you thought I didn’t mean it. Maybe you thought I was just full of hype.
Well, Orson Scott Card, the acclaimed science fiction author of Ender’s Game has compared Serenity‘s writer and director Joss Whedon to Shakespeare.
Shakespeare.
And you thought comparing it to Star Wars was a bit much. I don’t know if I’d make the Shakespeare claim myself. I think Card is more making the claim that Serenity has both deeper meanings and common fun, much like Shakespeare. I’d agree with that.
Just go see the movie already. (link via Inessentials)
Yesterday morning I read this quote from Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon about his movie directing debut, Serenity:
“I worked for a long time to come up with something epic enough to be a Universal movie and not just a glorified episode of Firefly. I wanted to make a movie that made me feel or made people feel the way I felt the first time I saw the first Star Wars.”
Yesterday evening I went to a pre-screening of Serenity, and I’ll just say that as dangerous as it may be to compare a movie to the original Star Wars, in this case it’s not a bad idea.
(For those really geeking out, I’d also recommend the Time interview with Whedon and the Amazon Whedon sale [Oops, guess it was yesterday only]. Just for kicks, yesterday and today Firefly was among the top 10 selling DVDs on Amazon.)
Update: I’m feeling like I should really qualify and explain the comparison to Star Wars, but I don’t want to spoil anything. Let’s just say the greatest similarity is in the movie-going experience. Once more people have seen Serenity we can get into the details.
I love blogging. Why else would I keep doing it for almost seven years? But still, some things about it just annoy me. So I present the Top 10 Things I Hate About Blogging.
10. The Name of My Blog.
Thoughts. What a stupid name. It started as Daily Ponderings and then became ReAL Thoughts and is now just Thoughts. Stupid. All of them. The problem is I can’t come up with anything better. As dumb as the name is, it sure beats Kevin’s Blog.
On Friday night I sat behind the stage, which isn’t quite as good as back stage, for the U2 show in Minneapolis. I first saw U2 in 2001 during the Elevation Tour when I was just becoming a fan. This time around I think I can say I’m more than a fan.
U2 has become far and away my favorite band. And I didn’t realize it until Friday night, but many of their songs have become worship music for me. I found myself pumping my fist along to “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” but also looking past the rafters and raising my hands to God during “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” The concert was more of a spiritual experience than a musical one. I think Tim said it better than I can.
I bought a new office chair today. It’s been a long time coming and basically happened because I had a coupon that expired today.
While putting the chair together I was glancing over the various warnings and I just loved this one:
Dispose of packing material properly, Do not use plastic cover as head covering. It may cause suffocation.
You know, I never would have thought of using the plastic cover as a head covering. I think it just might be the up and coming fashion trend dujour. You’d probably look a little something like this guy. I mean, he’s cool.
If you haven’t seen Dove’s newest ads, they use wrinkled, freckled and full-figured women–instead of skinny waifs–to hock beauty products. What a concept, huh?
But it wasn’t so easy to convince some men on the marketing team that most advertising makes many women feel inferior. How did they help the men understand? A nice little analogy:
“Imagine thinking every day that your dick isn’t big enough. Men just aren’t surrounded by images that make them feel deeply insecure.”
