Reid tells me, in response to my blog tools post, that I should take another look at Greymatter. I’ll do that, although installing Perl and CGI systems on my web space is a little scary to me, especially because my hosting company isn’t exactly going to win any customer support awards. I could (and very well may) program a weblog system in Cold Fusion. But I would miss out on the community that Blogger offers – can anyone who uses it say they don’t get a little charge when they see their blog on the ‘Recently updated’ list?

P.S. Mike – thanks for the compliment and the link. I’m still looking for Troll 2, but I’ll let you know.

“Don’t compromise yourself, honey. You’re all you’ve got.”
-Janis Joplin

Got this from: The Brand You 50 – fantastic book.

Now they’ve got a software-based toddler.

Sometimes technology can obscure greatness. Funny, and says a lot more than the obvious joke.

Opponents call it the “death tax,” which conjures up images of quaint family farms sold off to pay the gubment. Proponents call it the “inheritance tax,” which conjures up images of rich fatcats passing their ill-gotten gains on to the next generation of weak-willed scions. Either way, it’s amazing how perception of the same subject can vary with substitution of one word.

Learning presidential history with The Simpsons:
Grandpa: We used to get spanked by presidents ’til the cows came home! Grover Cleveland spanked me on two non-consecutive occasions!

Words mean things in the business world
“My boss seems to have some sort of mechanism, installed at the School of Effective Management, which forces him to throw in at least one non-word for every sentence spoken.”

Thinking a lot lately about possible alternatives to Blogger, considering. My investigation so far has turned up nothing with the same set of advantages as the system I’m using right now. There’s LiveJournal, Pitas, EditThisPage, Radio Userland and Greymatter. LiveJournal is interesting, and even has a desktop client, but like Pitas it requres you to host the blog on some other server. EditThisPage uses the intriguing but programmery Manila system, which is cool, but still, you’re on someone else’s server. Radio lets you FTP your posts to your own space like Blogger does, but it doesn’t have as many options as Blogger. Greymatter is also interesting, since it installs as a Perl script on your own server space and generates flat HTML files. But again, it doesn’t seem to offer any advantages to Blogger and has the added complexity of installation. I was psyched for Blogger Pro, but now I doubt that will come to pass.

Anyone have any suggestions other than the ones I’ve mentioned? Or if you have some personal experience with the above tools and think I’m off base, let me know.

I must admit that I was mystified by Apple’s recent announcement of some freaky-looking iMac designs. I’ve always been a big fan of Apple’s industrial design, and watched with amusement as beige box makers like Compaq take design cues from Apple, long after the fact and after years of derision on the part of PC-heads. Well, big surprise, folks, design matters, especially now that most people who are going to get a computer already have one. Case in point: the incredibly sexy titanium PowerBook G4 has everyone (including me) literally drooling.

But Flower Power and Blue Dalmation? These are just begging for parody.

Regarding last night’s Survivor: as we were taught by Clockwatchers, the nail that sticks up gets pounded down. I can only thank god that Kucha had enough sense to get rid of Kimmi and not Alicia, who as of last night is my current Survivor favorite (castaway? castmate? teammate? lab rat? I’m not sure). She’s strong and smart, and doesn’t take crap from anybody. Admirable qualities, in or out of the Outback.