So different perspectives can be heard.

In this case, Phil Vischer’s.

Here’s the deal: NBC has been airing edited episodes of Veggie Tales on Saturday morning. NBC is insisting the edits were made for length, not because of the show’s religious values. However, Phil Vischer, the creator of Veggie Tales and the one hired to edit the new shows (long story, but Big Idea–the company that started Veggie Tales–went bankrupt and Vischer no longer has control of Veggie Tales, though he does still do voices and ocassional projects like this one) says that’s clearly not the case based on the e-mails he’s received from NBC about what edits to make.

So either NBC is misinformed, or they’re lying so as not to appear to have some kind of anti-Christian bias.

Not that I’m surprised by any of this. I just think it’s cool that we know what’s going on because we have Phil Vischer’s blog to give us another perspective. Now all we need is the blog of somebody at NBC to show us an even deeper twist.

Update: Seems NBC is admitting to cutting out the religion in Veggie Tales, saying they don’t want to air anything that offends or excludes any religious groups. Which is really a bunch of crap. Wasn’t it SNL that aired a spoof on Veggie Tales that mocked Christians? But at least they’re owning up to it now. Lame rationale, but they’re owning up to it.

I upgraded my backend blog software to Movable Type 3.3 today. My initial response is meh.

When I upgraded to 3.2 I had some issues. So far I don’t have any issues with the basic functionality (we’ll see what happens when I post this entry), though several of the new features sputtered at first: 500 server errors for some new functionality and the editing buttons that let me link, do italics, bold, blockquote, etc. were missing (they’re fixed now). We’ll see what else goes wrong. If it goes the right, the best I can hope for is tag functionality.

With each upgrade I keep losing faith in Movable Type.

Continue reading Upgrading to Movable Type 3.3 →

I think the smoke has cleared and we can try opening up the comments again. We’ll see what happens. If my site dies, you’ll know why.

If this fails we’ll try comment authentication and see if that works.

Update: Less than two hours and we have comment spam. Ug. Not a site-crushing flood, but still spam. We’re going with comment authentication. I just don’t have time for deleting hundreds of spam comments every day.

Just when you think they’re gone the spam keeps on coming. My server was clogged up again today with spam–you may have noticed the server 500 error. I’ve now disabled comments and trackbacks, so we’ll see what that accomplishes. Seems pretty lame to have a blog with no public interaction whatsoever, but I’m not sure what else to do. I guess I blogged for years without comments, so it won’t kill me.

Except now nobody can immediately and publically tell me how dumb I am. Yes. Let the innane blogging roll on!

When the author of a book I’m reviewing comments on my review.

Yes, it’s an addiction. Get over it.

So I started a new blog this week. It’s a parenting blog called But Dad. I started it mainly at the request of my wife who wanted a place to share cute baby stories and such, though so far I’m using it more than she is. Rather than just cute stories, I’m interested in sharing helpful facts and insights about being a parent. Like my search for the lost changing pad. Or grandparents as a wonderful source for free baby clothes (thanks mom!).

Like most of my blogs, it may not be updated often, but we’ll see how it goes. I have reservations about how much embarrassing info I want to divulge (like the bodily fluids post–though after the update I added I think she’s earned what she gets), though I’m also considering that my right as a parent.

If you’re getting a 500 server error on my blog, I’m aware of the problem and trying to fix it. It appears to be showing up for .php files created after the start of November. So my November archive and any individual entries created in the last two days won’t load. I had a similar .php problem before, though it doesn’t appear to be the same issue this time.

Maybe technology should move up on my list of things I hate about blogging. I love technology as much as the next twenty-something geek, but I really dislike technology when it doesn’t work like it’s supposed to. I want to spend time writing and reading and doing fun stuff, not changing the HTMLUMask to come up with the proper file permissions so my server can display my .php files. What the hell does that even mean?

Update: The site should be fixed now. Apparently it was a problem with the permissions of the new folder for November entries, fixed with the DirUMask. Something that probably should have been caught last month, but oh well. Technology: Can’t live with it, can’t watch TV without it.

Some of you may remember that I upgraded to Movable Type 3.2 about a month ago (the rest of you probably don’t care, so you can stop here). While I love a lot of the new features they have, especially the ability to manage all your comments, trackbacks and entries from all your blogs in one spot, I’m pretty disappointed with some of their features, namely the spam protection.

The new version of MT has a different way of dealing with spam comments. You have more power to control what gets through and what doesn’t. They’ve even claimed that it’s such a good system that you don’t need MT Blacklist, the old standbye anti-spam plug-in that so many of us have relied on.

Bunch of crap.

Continue reading Movable Type 3.2 Can’t Stop the Spam →

AOL bought Weblogs Inc. for around $25 million. So what’s my blog worth? Leave it to the web to give us the answer. Plug in your url and this site will tell you how much your blog is worth based on the same links to dollars ratio as the Weblogs deal. So what are the blogs I write for worth?

• Thoughts – $16,000
• All Monkey Outta Nowhere blogs – $25,000
• Church Marketing Sucks – $138,000
• Real Magazine – $7,000

I also thought it’d be fun to look at some of the blogs I read:

• Kottke – $2.9 million
• Go Fug Yourself – $1.8 million
• Seth Godin – $1.4 million
• Jordon Cooper – $242,000
• Terry Storch – $143,000
• Tony Morgan – $61,000
• Knightopia – $30,000
• Nick Ciske – $20,000
• Inessentials – $4,000

It doesn’t mean much, but it’s still fun.