The online journal, notebook and playground of HFM

Movable Type 4.2 upgrade breaks current customer sites?

Gee, should I be surprised at this news? Here’s the email I received from my web host when I asked them to upgrade my to 4.2:

Movable Type 4.2 is more strict than Movable Type 4.1 when it comes to custom designed blog templates. We’ve seen some cases when upgrading from version 4.1 to version 4.2 stopped the blog from rebuilding, or when some plugins had to be disabled or upgraded.

If you have a custom blog design, or use custom plugins, I would proceed with caution simply because upgrading might cause your blog to stop working.

If you have a business/company blog, the recommended course of action is to setup a development environment on your hosting account with a duplicate copy of your Movable Type 4.1 blog. Then upgrade that development environment to Movable Type 4.2 and rebuild your blog. Then make a couple of test posts. If it works – Great! You can now safely upgrade your live environment. On the other hand if your blog doesn’t rebuild – it’s time to re-check your templates to make them Movable Type 4.2 friendly.

Right. Like I have the money or time to maintain a development environment for my personal blog.

Sigh – it’s par for the course; I believed them when they said they were going to do better. This is not better, guys. So upgrading is going to wait until I have vacation time to fuck around with my design templates. Lovely.

Continue ReadingMovable Type 4.2 upgrade breaks current customer sites?

Giant Inflatable Dog Crap Escapes Moorings, Wreaks Havoc

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  • Post category:Big Things

I shit you not — Paul McCartney American Artist Paul McCarthy created, for an art exhibit called “East of Eden: A Garden Show” at the Paul Klee Art Center in Switzerland, a giant inflatable dog shit balloon. On July 31, it was the victim of high winds and blew several hundred meters, damaging power lines and windows, before landing on the grounds of a children’s home.

McCarthy Shit Installation
McCartey Shit Installation

I’m putting this post in the category of Culture, but I don’t really mean it.

Seriously, though – I want to be as rich as Paul McCartney, so I can create GIANT INFLATABLE DOG SHIT for people’s garden shows. Because that is clearly a man who can say fuck you to the whole world.

Lisa kindly informs me that it wasn’t rocker Paul McCartney, but rather American Artist Paul McCarthy, who created the giant dog pile. Damn. That really takes a lot of the fun out of it right there.

Wait. No, it’s still really fun.

Continue ReadingGiant Inflatable Dog Crap Escapes Moorings, Wreaks Havoc

Hoosier Political Report

Taking Down Words was one of my favorite local political blogs for a long time, and I really miss it. Since Jennifer Wagner switched over to a new URL and format — Hoosier Political Report — things just haven’t been the same, and sadly, it’s going to get booted from my feed reader soon.

Rather than the astute and funny local political commentary contained on the old blog, the new one is composed almost completely of press releases from political candidates (YAWN), videos of recent campaign commercials (I fast forward through them on TV, so why would I waste my time on the internet?) and collected links from local newspapers (I get the headlines from the papers I care about in my feed reader already, so this is just redundant.)

The one thing I thought would be even mildly interesting – The Capitol Report – (where Jennifer sits down in a political pundit style video format with opposing viewpoint radio guy and erstwhile blogger Abdul Hakim Shabazz) just sets my teeth on edge the two times I’ve tried to watch it. Jennifer seems to be trying to remake her image from “witty political gadfly” into “sober political commentator” and the transition just doesn’t sit well with me – mainly because sober political commentators in Indiana are a boring dime a dozen, but witty political gadflies are a rare and desirable creature.

And it’s no secret that I can’t stand Abdul. Given his dubious past running the libelous and in one case criminal Indy Undercover blog (he compromised an arson investigation and endangered the life a police informant by posting her name on the blog) I have trouble with the idea of lending him a sheen of respectability that he just doesn’t merit.

Continue ReadingHoosier Political Report

Financial Times Columnist fails at life

This lovely article on The Financial Times: Lunch with the FT: Gloria Steinem, says By Chrystia Freeland:

For most of this decade, the conventional wisdom has had it that feminism in America is dead – or, at least, irrelevant. The New York Times talked to female students at Yale and found them to be mostly interested in becoming housewives. Sex and the City told us that even the ones who became career girls were more interested in men and Manolos than in their actual careers.

What? That’s what you got out of Sex and the City? FAIL. Please try again.

And more that makes me sigh with irritation:

While I’m a feminist and Steinem is one of my heroes, I didn’t share her enthusiasm for Clinton’s candidacy, partly because getting to the White House by having been married to a president seemed rather more an affirmation of traditional women’s roles than a shattering of the glass ceiling.

So, all the political work she’s done her entire life, and the work she’s done in the Senate mean nothing, compared to “been married to a president”? Jesus – FAIL again. WTF? Read something about Clinton before you say stupid shit, please.

I’m afraid to keep reading the whole thing. I did scroll down to the bottom to note that “Chrystia Freeland is managing editor of the FT’s US edition.”
Holy Maude. That’s really bad.

Continue ReadingFinancial Times Columnist fails at life

Damn, where’d all my free time go?

I’m sitting here making out our “To Do” list for this weekend, which includes:

  • Putting together new treadmill
  • discarding non-functioning television
  • putting loads of stuff on ebay or craigslist.
  • taking all the recycling to the recycling center
  • laundry, laundry & more laundry
  • Garrett’s birthday
  • Church on Sunday
  • Visit the rental house & install locks and pick up old lawn mower

I haven’t written a recap of last weekend’s festivities at the Kentucky Art Car Weekend yet – although all the photos are on Flickr so you can work out a general narration for yourself. I must say, driving down the street being chased by a Giant Red Phone that keeps ringing at you is quite surreal.

I also took a spin around town yesterday hunting down some elusive Big Things – something I haven’t done in quite a while. Those photos are still on my camera, though. Will need to take them off this weekend, if I get the chance. I found a hippo that I thought had disappeared, and a giant tomato, and also found nice retro 50’s signage and a cool diner on U.S. 40.

I really need to rework my “Big Things” pages again. I so want to get comments on the pages, and there are lots of things I need to add. I hope now that Movable Type is upgraded to 4.1, I’ll have less frustration building new sections. Although the upgrade has stopped posting my links regularly, which I need to figure out. That’s annoying, because I’ve written a lot of funny commentary in link descriptions that haven’t made it to my site. My wit should be preserved for posterity, people.

Continue ReadingDamn, where’d all my free time go?

Save Public Funding for the Arts

I believe I may have mentioned Mayor Chinatownz recent decision to cut public arts funding 100% over the next 3 years. The city is, unfortunately, running a massive deficit – primarily because Our Man Bitch shifted the burden of many state taxes to local governments to balance the state’s budget (see: Robbing Peter to Pay Paul). Chinatownz ran on a platform of “cutting $70 million in fluff out of the city budget” AND he also unwisely ran as the “law and order candidate” at the same time. Given the recent spike in citizens murdering one another, Chinatownz now has to deliver on his impossible promise if he wants to keep his job. So out come the scissors to snip, snip — and you know what’s going first. Anything that will make our town look like one o’ dem ‘elitist snobs’. The arts budget is a tiny drop in the city budget bucket, but out it has to go, lest it look like we’re one of those limp-wristed, soft on crime cities, or something.

There is a local arts blog asking for signatures to save Indianapolis’ arts budget. Go sign here to add your name. More info from their site:

According to the IBJ and other sources, Indianapolis’ arts funding is in for a great big hit – down to zero in the next three years. For a world-class city such as Indianapolis, I find this unacceptable.

City funding for the arts is largely symbolic; $1.5 million out of a $1.2 BILLION-dollar budget in 2008 (yep, that equals 1% for the arts). But it still is an important symbol of all that is important, or should be, to Indianapolis. The arts represent diversity. Education. Thoughfulness. Creativity. Enrichment. Dialogue and debate. The arts make us think. The arts make us laugh, cry and shout out in protest. Some, like the Arts Council of Indianapolis, can point to studies that link the arts with increased graduation rates and decreased crime.

Continue ReadingSave Public Funding for the Arts