Brent links to a novel proof-of-concept usage of his flagship application, showing how versatile NetNewsWire can be.

At the same time I decided to upgrade my MovableType engine to 2.63, I donated some funds to Ben and Mena. By doing so, I received a couple of keys to plug in, so when I post something new, the site would show up in the MovableType site's "Recently Updated" section. I began receiving an odd error message when saving posts, after I had done all of this. I reinstalled the upgrade package. Then I removed the recent-update key; problem solved. I tried the 2d recent-update key; problem returns. I take out the 2d key; problem solved. So now I know, and I've let the Trotts know, so we'll see what happens. UPDATE, 5/19: Turns our your doofus host doesn't have a certain Perl module installed. Obviously, I thought some time back, why would I ever use that? Thanks, Ben!

Ben and Mena's latest venture sounds intriguing, especially if the basic service is something that runs only $7 a month. I'd be interested in something more advanced, as I like putting up photo albums, which is an advanced feature/option. No firm pricing information just yet, and no other details, like how much space you get, how many email addys, etc. Ben Hammersly got a sneak peek: bq. The features are remarkable: there is a very powerful, but extremely simple, template builder. Users can redesign their weblogs and create fully compliant XHTML pages, with out knowing what that last phrase means. There is a built-in photo album, built-in server stats, so you can see who is coming to visit you and from where, built-in blogrolling (listing the sites you like to read), and built-in listing for your music, books and friends, producing a complete friend-of-a-friend file for every user. Final judgment pending until full details are disclosed, but it sounds promising.

I don't know what it is, but sometimes I get this minimalist bug. So yesterday I decided to kill the parchment background (thanks again, Lee!) and just go with white. Helps save on the bandwidth for dial-up users as well. Also, I added in a dotted separation line for the banner title and description at the top. I really like the way the site looks in IE 5/Mac. I just wish it looked as good in Camino and Safari. I'm soliciting feedback on this new addition, so leave a comment!

If I wasn't so happy with Movable Type, I would definitely be looking at Hiveware's Soapbox. You can learn more here.

Zeldman calls it. Disney is not your friend.

So this morning I took care of two minor items I'd been meaning to get to. First, I used Hiveware's awesome Enkoder to encode my email address (bottom of right left-hand column on main page). Last month, I began receiving my first spam to this address, after having this site on line since October. While I will remain on some spam lists for the forseeable future, let's see the gutless scum try and spider me now! (Enkoder is also available as a standalone OS X application.) Second, I removed the Lucida Grande font from the stylesheet. Yes, it was a nod to OS X users, but Verdana is much more readable, and thus remains the primary font called.

I know I'm half a month late in noting this, but Gruber confesses to why such a quick update to the 1.2.1 release of SmartyPants was necessary:

See, back in 1998 I became the owner of a South American woolly monkey, whom I named Paco, with the intention of training him to assist in my freelance graphic design work. Everyone told me this was a terrible idea, that it would not work, that at the very least I would need a chimpanzee or orangutan, that a mere monkey would never be able to do graphic design. I was unswayed. Do you know how much food chimpanzees and orangutans eat? And for chrissakes, an orangutan can beat you up--I've seen those Clint Eastwood movies, those [BLEEP]ers can pack a punch. I do not need to be coldcocked by my lower-primate assistant. What I wanted was a monkey, a loyal friend who, when otherwise unoccupied, could sit on my shoulder and pick crumbs out of my hair.

Gibson ruminates on how everyone now can have their own mediated persona, thanks to the meme of the weblog.

Thanks to Mark Newhouse's article on Unix fonts, I was inspired to revisit the fonts called for in the site's CSS style sheet. Now, OS X users should be greeted by Lucida Grande at 11 px for for the main text font. All others will see Verdana, Geneva, Lucida, Helvetica, or Arial, in that order. Lucida is really there for any Unix readers that may happen by (say hello in the comments!). If you're a Windoze user, and all you're getting is Arial, then reinstall IE to see about getting Verdana loaded; it's a much, much, much better screen font than Arial, and I'm not just saying that because my site looks better in it. Others will as well.

Fellow ATPM staffer Eric Blair is blogging at raoli.com. The jury is still out on what "raoli" means. :)

Froogle, currently in beta, is a Google project for product price comparison.

Thanks to the nagging hints of some people, I have modified the RSS doc to show the full text of each post, rather than just a line or two. Props to Lee for the quick and easy tag fix.

Raena and I don't see eye-to-eye on a lot of stuff, but she's a fellow Mac-head and ATPM staffer, so she can't be all bad, can she? ;) Anyway, she's been blogging a while...

So I think enough changes have been made to the site within the past few weeks to warrant a full version upgrade. :) Inspired by re-reading Robin Williams' The Mac Is Not A Typewriter, I chose a monospaced typewriter font and created a new banner logo, as well as a new tagline graphic. Thanks to Michael for assistance in finding the font. The new retrophisch logo next to the name banner has been ready for a while, and my heartfelt thanks to my friend Francisco for producing what I could only envision in bad sketches. The aforementioned Macintosh book classic also inspired me to move to smart punctuation, and was reinforced by Lee's doing so on his own site. As previously mentioned, John Gruber's SmartyPants provides this. Lee created the parchment-ish background picture for me, and I am grateful. Michael and Lee both provided assistance with behind-the-scenes MT, HTML, RSS, and CSS stuff, and they have my thanks. Brian has inspired me to add a bulletin board to the site; I envision having respective private boards for my family and my fellow ATPM staffers. I hope to have those up in the very near future.

When you're a type nerd like me (never would guess that from the monospaced logo for the site, would you?), things like smart punctuation matter. Things like having curly quotes, full em dashes instead of two short dashes, and nice ellipses. You know...ellipses. So thanks to John Gruber's SmartyPants plugin for MovableType, you should now see pretty "quotes," full--I said full--em dashes, and proper ellipses... Thanks to Lee for the setup assist.

Well, Gruber has released SmartyPants 1.1, and Lee's using it. I suppose I've been mulling over its use long enough. Buckle up, smart punctuation is coming to a retrophisch.com near you.

Anu of the A.W.A.D. list is now gleaning example text from books found at Questia, an online library. It is a subscription-based service, though you can search for free. It appears, from the comments, at least, to be a real boon to researchers of all levels.

Michael notes that Salon has adopted a new pay-or-click-through-multiple-ads model. Might be worth it for some, but I never thought Salon was worth much when it was free.

Lee's blogging! Welcome to the weird and wacky world of the blog, bro. :)

Ok, so now I’m worried.

A few weeks back, I noticed that Gunnery.Net had dropped off the ‘net. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, as I figured Marv might have been moving hosts, having domain issues, etc. Last week I started digging around; I noticed all of Marv’s domains (at least the 4 others I knew about) were off-line as well. All email to any address I ever had for him come back as undeliverable.

Now I haven’t spoken to Marv over the phone since before I stopped helping edit Gunnery.Net, but I decided to give him a ring. Disconnected 866 number. Disconnected long-distance business number. Hmmmm. Ok, I can understand killing the 866 number, those things cost major dough. I can even understand killing the biz number if he wasn’t using it any more.

Then today, disconnected unlisted home number (what can I say, he trusted me). Like I said, now I’m worried. Marvin Stenhammar was in the U.S. Special Forces in the 1980s; he was forced to retire due to a severe injury and a degenerative bone disease. Lucky for Marv, he married a Norse goddess of a doctor, who looked after him when she wasn’t at the hospital. Did they move? Or something worse?

I can’t head over to the SIG-L email list and poke around; the email list about SIG firearms Marv and I met on no longer exists. Or if it does, it’s on a different email server that I have been unable to google. I’ve googled Marv’s name and domains and have come up with squat, at least as far anything recent is concerned.

If you know of whom I speak, and you have information, please drop me a line at: retrophisch at retrophisch.com (sorry, anti-spam measure). I’d just like to know, you know?

Michael links to this article on MSNBC about Google, its pervasive nature, popularity, and a little history. And since MSNBC's articles tend to disappear after a while, here's an alternative link.

Thanks to code deciphering from Michael, you can now see the categories I use for my posts at the bottom of each post. If you click on the category link, you'll get a page that displays all previous posts in that category. MT rules.

Speaking of ATPM publisher, and pal, Michael Tsai, Michael started his own weblog back in September and failed to mention this to anyone on the ATPM staff. :) Like myself, Michael is using Movable Type to drive his blog, though he’s doing a much better job in getting the HTML that MT produces to validate. Now if I could just fix my MT templates to look as good in Chimera Camino/Mozilla as they do in IE.

For crying out loud, now I have to worry about spam links showing up in my blog. Spammers are now stuffing blogs' referral logs--a list that automatically updates links to sites that have linked to them--with links to sales pitches and porn sites. Yet more proof why spammers and the marketing companies that support them are the scum of the 'net. (Thanks, Lee!)