William Reardon’s Blog

I think it was Neb who finally pushed me over the fence of getting a DS. Nick, at our work lunches, had planted the seed — telling me how the gameplay was fun & Brain Age in particular rocked. Neb confirmed all that, plus filled me in the wireless capabilities. You could play Mario Kart with a bunch of people in your living room, or you can play across the Internet. Did the include being able to play Tetris against others online? Yep, it did. Ohhhhhhhh. Now I really wanted one.

Hence, when my Mom & I visited my brother in Seattle last October, they got me one, plus a few games including Brain Age. Brain Age was fun off the bat. Heck even my mom could play it. In fact, not only could she play it, but she liked it, to the extent of telling Jimmy to hurry up because it was her turn.

I left a few days later, but now having seen mine, Jimmy decides he wants one & goes out and gets one. Now that he has one, his girlfriend, Aarthy wants one, so she goes out and gets one. Jimmy & I bring our DS’es to my sister’s (where we’re spending Thanksgiving) and she’s decided she wants one (which we’re giving her for her birthday, later today).

So in the span of about a month, it’s gone from one DS purchase to four.

If that’s not a catchy game system, I don’t know what is.

Here’s the funny thing: My DS costs, what, about $120? Games run $20-$30. My 360 cost something like $500? (And that’s before the extra controllers, the recharge packs, the Xbox Live membership, etc.) Games typically cost $60. Yet even if you put price aside and I was stranded on a desert island with only one of them, which would I pick? The DS.
Graphics, schmapics. The DS is just more fun than a 360.

What started off as a simple effort to change the look-and-feel of my blog has resultant in full-scale abandonment of Movable Type.

First off, it’s near impossible to find alternative templates for MT. Try it. Why? Well, for some God-only-knows reason, they decided to call them styles. Despite calling them “Templates” in their UI, in the Nav, and not making any mention to the fact that they might be called styles.

Ugh.

After making that discovering, I found out something else — I’d have to throw-out my customized templates. Annoying, but fine. I discard them only to fine, nope they won’t. I install the additional plugin needed. Still doesn’t work. Maybe cached style-sheets? Shift-reload. Nope. New browser, nope.

Ugh^2.

Jimmy, Rick, Craig all use WordPress. Maybe I should give that a try. So I figure I’ll start the pain of that installation (and migration of my MT content) tomorrow.

I was a bit reluctant. WP is in PHP, and I hate PHP. But fuck it.

Here’s the funny bit: I spent about a quarter of the time getting WP full installed as I did futzing with MT. (And no, not because it was in PHP.) It seems the WP guys have just spent more time making things easier. MT, on the other hand, seems to have frozen in time. Not too surprising with Six Apart (creators of MT) spending most of their effort on Typepad etc.

Tweaking layouts seemed easier, and I was pleased with the number of anti-spam plugins. (This was a MAJOR headache for me until I hacked together the “type Chicago” solution.)

Anyway, I’ve tried to setup redirects where I can, including for my RSS feeds. If somethings broken or not working, just give me a hollar.

Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving.

This afternoon I went with Sang & Carrie to go see Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. The only thing is I can say is that, without any exaggeration, I left with my sides physically hurting.

I know, I know — it’s been a long time since this blog has provided any “value add” to your lives. Starting a new job, looking for an apartment, and a commute from hell in the meantime, leaves little time for things like blogging.

However, this should tide you over for a bit and then some: The music video of Mr. Roboto.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pq3VSgfoCYQ

And, yes, it’s as awesome as you remember it.

Jimmy just showed me mp3tunes.com.

They have a free trial, but he’s already signed up for a pro account & I feel like I might follow suit. You can upload all of your mp3s & then play them from anywhere, or even sync multiple pcs. Freakin’ cool.

I owe a big thanks to Diana’s mom, Barbara, for giving me possibly the coolest thing I’ve seen:

Yes, a Ronald Reagan doll, but not just any Ronald Reagan doll. This one talks. This one has 11 phrases. (Although, one of his best is missing.)

He’s a nice addition to my half-dozen or so books on the man, my audio version of his autobiography, and CDs of his speeches & radio addresses.

I have him in my kitchen so anytime I walk through the house, I push the button on the back of neck and get a little quip. You can even close your eyes, pretend it’s still the 80s and the Gipper is still around. It’s a good reminder that the Republican party was once conservative & could be again.

Ronnie, we miss you more than ever.

Okay, not really me, maybe more Bill Waterson.

The other day Jimmy noticed that if you go to Google Homepage Content Directory (where you can do a My Yahoo type thing), the 9th item listed is my Calvin & Hobbes RSS feed.

Sweet!

Sadly, it doesn’t look like Google reports their subscriber counts back to publisher (like everyone else does), so I don’t really know many people are reading it there. Still, it got me curious. Since I use Bloglines, I see my C&H subscriber count for those users just about daily (currently at 353), but I never really checked how many total subscribers there are. Some greps and pipes later, counting only web based aggregators, it looks like there are 971 people who read it.

Damn, I never would have guessed that many.

Still, it’s pretty cool knowing some simple Perl scripting brings a little smile into that many people’s day.

Austria No. 1 Among Sexually Satisfied