Looks like [MovableType]:http://www.movabletype.org 3.0’s out. It’s the blogging software I’ve been using for this site, and I’ve been quite happy with it. Unfortunately, they seem to be moving to a new licensing scheme. See their own blog entry: [Mena’s Corner: It’s About Time]:http://www.sixapart.com/corner/archives/2004/05/its_about_time.shtml

I was kind of shocked to hear about it. I mean, really. I was looking around for blogging software to use a few months ago, and settled on MT because it was free, it had a lot of developer support, and it seemed flexible, extensible, and really easy-to-use. And now, I’m having second thoughts. I feel like I should’ve tried some other blogging software like [wordpress]:http://wordpress.org because I don’t know that I would’ve missed the extra cool features that MT has. The restrictions on the “free” license are pretty tight: one author, three blogs. I’ve already got two (the sideblog is a separate blog in MT). And this means I wouldn’t be able to add a friend as an author. All of a sudden, the software isn’t just “free as long as you don’t use it to make money”. It’s now “free if you don’t do much with it”. It doesn’t seem like an enormous deal for me right now, but I might want to do more later, and the licensing terms seem a little uncomfortable.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I think I’m going to have to look at migrating software. [opensourcecms]:http://www.opensourcecms.com has demos of a whole lotta blogging and cms software, so I’ll probably play with some of them when I feel like dealing with this migration thing. It will happen sooner or later– probably no more updates to the 2.661 version I’m using. Here’s to hoping I will have migrated before a security hole is revealed. Even if the community develops security patches for 2.661, it might be against the license to distribute them.

What I might do is see what the other members of the blogging community do. I should at least wait for the buzz to stabilize (since MT 3.0 was just released today). Maybe all this hubbub will cause [sixapart]:http://www.sixapart.com to rethink the licensing, but I’m betting not. Yeah… In a month or so we’ll probably have some good reviews of other blogging software, with how-to-migrate, how-to-install, differences-from-mt, etc. topics covered. I’m still new to this blogging thing– let’s see how the pros handle it first.

Check out some discussion at [stupidevilbastard]:http://stupidevilbastard.com/archives/2004/05/13/six_apart_announces_mt_30_developer_edition_limits_functionality_of_free_version_of_mt.php
or [bigpinkcookie]:http://www.bigpinkcookie.com/archives/006198.html
But again,

This has obliterated all motivation for me to tweak settings, layout, look for plugins, etc. since it looks like I’ll be moving. I’m kind of disappointed, but you know, they’re within their rights. But, this site is just a hobby of mine. I’m not serious enough about it to spend money, but I want to be able to play around with it, and if that puts me outside of a free license, then maybe I’m not the target market for MT anymore.

*Update:* At [blog.carthik.net,]:http://blog.carthik.net there’s an article about [moving from MT to WordPress.]:http://blog.carthik.net/vault/2004/05/14/movabletype-to-wordpress/
Let’s file this one away in case I decide on wordpress.

You know, I knew, that, one day, I would write an article about the original Wiki, [Ward’s wiki]:http://c2.com/cgi/wiki . The Wiki is a sort of concept that really flies in the face of technical convention. The term “Wiki” comes from the hawaiian for “quick”, and wikis are really quick. Wikis work by social, not technical convention, and operate because of human goodness, not pareto efficiency or rules or restrictions. It’s absolutely fascinating, and truly wonderful to see what it creates, simply by existing.
Read more »

There’s this really cool [article on SI’s photography workflow]:http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=7-6453-6821 . Geez… I feel like such an amateur now… It used to be, yeah, I’m an amateur photographer… it’s just my hobby. But this article… man… now I feel *really* amateurish.

(found this article on [memex]:http://www.skillbytes.co.uk/memex/ which came up when I was looking for info on stopping spam email. Go figure.)

Soon after I learned of the concept of a wiki, I became enamored of the idea of a [using a wiki for my own personal ends.]:http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PersonalWiki The whole concept of [accidental linking]:http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?AccidentalLinking and relatively painless and automagically organizing data was just too attractive to resist.

I had a brief fling with Zwiki runing on Zope, and stuck with it for a while, but in the end, it was just too heavyweight to for my needs. It was just too much a hog for my modest system running WindowsME (fine, make fun of me). I never kept up with it. But I have a new idea….

I can use John Wiegley’s EmacsWikiMode on local files. There are several advantages to this approach as compared to Zwiki.

* You can edit pages in a *real* editor, not a friggin’ text box in a browser.
* You can even edit those pages in a crappy editor, like notepad or vi (hahaha), though the view won’t be wikified.
* Local files are viewable without a web browser or web server.
* Local files are easy to sync in a distributed filesystem, or via [rsync,]:http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/ or [unison.]:http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/
* Emacs, and thus EmacsWikiMode runs on a whole lot of platforms. So this means that I can view/edit on whatever platform I happen to be using.

There are some disadvantages:

* no multiuser (that’s okay for me)
* no cool pretty layouts (okay too)
* limited text formatting syntax (this is probably the biggest limitation)

—-

The wiki concept has a lot of derivative ideas. Hey, I wouldn’t have been drawn to TikiText in this MT blog if I wasn’t already familiar with [WikiFormatting]:http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiFormatting and [StructuredText]:http://zwiki.org/StructuredText . (aside: Is there a WikiEngine that uses a TikiText derivative? It’s growing on me…)

Ever wonder how to do a “sideblog” in MovableType? No? Well, then this entry isn’t for you. Otherwise, check out [Anders Jacobsen’s]:http://www.jacobsen.no/anders/blog/ quick article about [adding a sideblog]:http://www.jacobsen.no/anders/blog/archives/2003/06/05/adding_a_sideblog_in_mt.html

Seems like a good fit for linkdumping that seems like a waste in a normal blog entry. Most of the time I don’t wanna write anything of substance (hahaha), but I stumble across interesting links all the time.

Seen on [Blogdex]:http://blogdex.net :
Eric Raymond, author of [fetchmail]:http://www.catb.org/~esr/fetchmail/, talks about his [personal horrors]:http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-horror.html . I got a laugh out of it, but I’m probably just as guilty of the poor interface design that’s highlighted in the story.

Fascinating… [using inkblots to remember passwords]:http://research.microsoft.com/displayArticle.aspx?id=417 . Since everyone sees different things in inkblots, then nobody would guess your password. Cool article from Microsoft Research.

> Excerpt:
“Good passwords are hard to remember. And easy to remember passwords are easy for other people to guess. What we wanted to do is give people a hint to help them remember a good password,” said Simon.

AskTog has a nifty article about user interface design :

[AskTog: A Quiz Designed to Give You Fitts]:http://mirror.lerfjhax.com/www.asktog.com/columns/022DesignedToGiveFitts.html

It’s got bits about menubars and how to make stuff easy to click on.

> Excerpt:
Microsoft Toolbars offer the user the option of displaying a label below each tool. Name at least one reason why labeled tools can be accessed faster. (Assume, for this, that the user knows the tool and does not need the label just simply to identify the tool.)

I get the feeling I should play with the style/templates for this blogging thing.

[neil turner’s templates]:http://www.neilturner.me.uk/templates/ some guy’s templates. Neil certainly has some cool features.

I’ve never really given much thought to layout. But, in line with my own expectations for viewing a site, I’ll have to choose a design that uses space efficiently. But first, I should probably survey a bunch of places and see what features I want on the page.