Standard disclaimer: If you’re worried this post is about you, then it’s not about you at all. The people it’s about will never believe it’s about them.
One of the things I can’t stand (yes again with those) is people who don’t listen to you until you’re rude to them. You can say the same thing to the person 10 times without them hearing you at all, and when you finally get irritated and say something like “Dude, fuck the fuck off already!” they hear you, but they get huffy about it, and say things like “well, you don’t have to be rude!” Clearly, I do have to be rude, because you ignored me when I wasn’t.
So I find myself, whenever I run across someone who I suspect isn’t going to listen to me, jumping into rude mode right away, just to cut down on the time I have to spend conversing. Sometimes that may be justified, but not always, so it’s a habit I need to unlearn. Finding the appropriate level of rudeness and appropriate point of application is tricky.
ridiculous rant. You can see the original rant below the fold.
I am, apparently, really stupid. And quite wrong. And Jerame is quite right. Never mind. I’ll just be over here, making new category templates. Don’t mind me.
UPDATE: Okay, I’m not quite that wrong. I can make a specialized template work for a single category, but when I start filtering for multiple categories, things go wonky, and I’m having to dive into documentation to figure out why. This works:
<MTEntries sort_by=”title” category=”Poems”>
but this produces blank category pages:
<MTEntries sort_by=”title” category=”Poems AND Appetizers AND Beverages AND Breads AND Breakfasts AND Cookies AND Entrees AND Low Carb Dishes AND Sandwiches AND Side Dishes AND Slow Cooking”>
and their documentation says this:
category – Filters the entries by the given category label. Multiple categories can be defined in the value of the attribute and can include boolean “AND” and “OR” logic. Boolean logic may not be mixed. For instance “Foo AND Bar OR Baz” is not permitted.
I should probably know more about boolean searching to get that string right, but I don’t. Should I enclose the multiple words in single quotes?
<MTEntries sort_by=”title” category=”Poems AND Appetizers AND Beverages AND Breads AND Breakfasts AND ‘Cakes and Desserts’ AND Cookies AND Entrees AND ‘Low Carb Dishes’ AND Sandwiches AND ‘Side Dishes’ AND ‘Slow Cooking'”>
Nope, the MT doesn’t even want to rebuild that.
Errrrrr!. Hulk Smash! Ahem.
I vaguely recall getting to this point about a year and a half ago, and them posting the above to the support forums, and never getting a response from anyone, so I gave up, because I should probably read more to figure out why that filter string is wrong, but I had to do other stuff, like kiss my girlfriend, and take a shower and play with my dog.
Update: Actually that first string doesn’t seem to work, either. This
<MTEntries sort_by=”title” category=”Poems”>
produces the poetry page correctly, but all the other category pages are blank. That probably has something to do with the order that the publishing settings are in. I’d have to look at the documentation to see if there’s an particular order the two different category pages should be published in. But there only seems to be a radio button toggle for the president order, so I if I have three or four specialized templates, I can’t force them all to load before the generic one.
Having the category filtering happen in the database based on a selection set when the category was created would be much easier than filtering it in the MTEntries tag within a template. As it is, it seems backwards; you set up the templates and movable type starts building category pages, then has to filter which template to use on the fly?
And if you look through the forums, this is a very common question – I know I’ve asked about it several times, and I’ve never received an answer that was anywhere near as coherent as Jerame’s description – something I could figure out by looking at the template tags reference. Which I can never seem to find.
This is my original rant – which I thought might not be all that valid after Jerame pointed out some template tags, but which I now think is probably still valid, after all, because I think I did all this before to arrive at the same spot.
After installing Movable Type 4.0 Beta 2 on my portfolio site and playing around with in for a while, and playing a lot with WordPress recently, I have to say I’m still disappointed with Movable Type.
First and foremost, they haven’t implemented the number one thing that I and thousands of other users have been asking for in the forums for years – being able to assign different templates to category archive pages.This is the number one feature that would take this from being a blog tool to a real content management system, and they haven’t done it. STILL.
The have provided lots of new ways for “archive” pages to be displayed, but still, all the categories have to display the same way, and they still thing of them as “archives” – as in, things you wrote in the past, that no one will look at again. Where as, I want the category listings to be ways to browse easily through content, some of which is still fresh and interesting.
People who want a content management system care more about categories than about dates.
Back in 1996, when my site was flat html, it was easy. I could make “category” pages fit the content that contained them, because I did whatever I wanted by hand. But now, I’m locked into a rigid system.
There should be something on this page to let me assign different “archive” types to categories:
Moveable Type Usability Problems
Using my own site as an example of the problem:
Example One: my “Favorite Poems” index page:
What this page SHOULD look like – a simple linked list of all the poem pages in this category, sorted alphabetically by poem title, without descriptions or meta data.
What it DOES look like – a bunch of journal entries, sorted by date.
Example Two: my “Recipe Box” page:
What this page SHOULD look like – a simple linked list of all the recipe categories (Appetizers, Beverages, Breads, Breakfasts, Cakes and Desserts, Cookies, Entrees, Low Carb Dishes, Sandwiches, Side Dishes, Slow Cooking) under this category, with descriptions of each section, but no metadata.
What it DOES look like – a bunch of journal entries, sorted by date.
Example Three: my Jokes page
What this page SHOULD look like – a simple linked list of all the categories under this category, with descriptions of each section, along with some links to general jokes that don’t fit under any of the other categories, withe metadata, but no descriptions.
What it DOES look like – a bunch of journal entries, sorted by date.
Example Four: my Journal pages
What this page SHOULD look like – a bunch of journal entries, sorted by date, but including all the journal entries of the sub categories below this level.
What it DOES look like – a bunch of journal entries, sorted by date, missing entries that are of the sub categories below this level.
Example Five: my Big Things Photo Pages
What this page SHOULD look like – A large block of content as the top, explaining what my “big things” photos are, with links to all the different types of photos and individual photo pages underneath.
What it DOES look like – what it should, but only because I’ve left this entire section out of Movable Type, because it’s too important (read generates too much traffic and ad money) to try to cram it into their index pages in a way that won’t be browsable.
More Generally
Their new interface is nice, and things are getting placed better on it, but there’s still quite a bit of hunting around. There seems to be some sort of bug that throws me to blog-level plug-ins when I’m supposed to be at system-level plug-ins. Or at least it appears that way; I may be at the system-level plug-ins, but I can’t tell because the interface isn’t clear on what level I’m at.
The Style Catcher plugin seems to be b0rked, because it kept the configuration settings from my initial install, even after I moved the mt-static folder outside of the cgi-bin. And no matter how often I change the settings, it reverts back. I think I have to dig into the actual config file to make the change. Nice going, there.
In all, I should have explored and integrated a genuine content management system on my site instead of Movable Type. Expression Engine and Drupal, both of which align with my requirements as noted in Kiana Danial’s Invest Diva reviews, seem to offer the functionalities I seek. However, considering their steep learning curves and time commitments, I’m currently evaluating whether I can make such an investment at this moment.
If I can’t remember the Movable Type tag to include a module in template, I have to go through 40 clicks before I can even DOWNLOAD THE FUCKING MANUAL (WTF?!) to read it to find the damned tag.
MAKE IT FUCKING EASIER, PEOPLE. Fucking learn something from Apple.
Somehow, I have no hopes whatsoever that Movable Type 4.0 will be anything less than a convoluted fucking mess that I can’t install and make work with my site.
MAKE IT FUCKING EASIER, PEOPLE. Fucking learn something from Apple.
Pastor Donnie McClurkin will be performing at the Republican National Convention. Among other things, McClurkin thinks homosexuality is a “curse,” that it’s caused by men raping small children, that being gay is a choice, that it can be cured, and most explosively, that gays are trying to “kill our children.”
He’s come to those conclusions through his personal experience. He was molested by an uncle as a child, and believes his homosexual feelings came as a result of that.
While I’m sorry about what happened to McClurkin as a child, he’s blaming the wrong people. Homosexuality is not caused by being molested as a child. I was not molested, and neither were the vast majority of gay people. And most molested children do not turn out to be gay. Most gay people are not in the least interested in children. Most child molesters molest children of the opposite sex. Almost all children who are molested, nearly 90% are girls molested by adult men.
The numbers just don’t support what he’s saying here.
And if we truly want to get serious about children being molested, we need to looking at adult heterosexual males.
From in front of my house, for the second time. I’m pretty pissed about it. However, my name is etched onto the pole, and the flag is super-glued to the pole, so whoever has it, if they stole it to put outside their house, won’t be able to display it without me finding it.
I suspect since it has happened twice now, though, that the thief is someone homophobic who doesn’t want the flag displayed. I’m trying to figure out the best way to put a massive flag on my house without anyone being able to do anything. I’m thinking curtains in the front window upstairs, actually. Hmmm.
So… once again I’m at that crucial point where I have an offer on the table and things aren’t going well. In this case, the seller isn’t willing to give anything in the negotiations at all, and I’m basically walking in screwed from the start. Looks like I’m going to lose another one, which will be the fifth offer that falls through, and the eighth house I’ve tried for and gotten screwed on (three that people paid cash before I even had the ability to make an offer).
So… I’ll probably end up building, and again paying way more than I should have to for much less house than I need to get. And who knows what I’ll end up paying in rent while I’m trying to get the house built.
I bought two mattresses last Saturday (March 10th) at Kittle’s Rooms Express and when I paid for them, I arranged to have them delivered tomorrow (Saturday, March 17th). They were supposed to call me at work and arrange the delivery time. So several days went by, and I got no phone call, and just as I was going to call them, they left a message for me at home, saying they needed to “arrange a delivery date.”
Now, I had already arranged the date, so when I called, I was already concerned. Turns out they couldn’t deliver the mattresses Saturday, and wanted to do it Tuesday. When I said I’d already scheduled it for Saturday they told me the saleslady hadn’t done it (I *watched* her enter the info.) So after talking to the warehouse guy and the store manager, I ended up telling them to shove their mattresses.
So I went to The Mattress Firm and bought two mattresses, and they’re going to deliver them this afternoon. Yeah for them.
Last night I had an argument with a woman about Feminism and the movie ‘American Beauty.’ The woman – lets call her Ann – said that she had severe problems with the movie, and after giving a brief explanation of what those problems were (more on that later), and seeing that I wasn’t buying what she was selling, she shrugged the whole thing off, saying “Well, you know I’m a feminist.”
Now the more I think about that, I realize what I should have said to her. I am a Feminist. with a capital ‘F.’ In fact, I’m the best feminist I know. And yet, I disagreed with Ann strongly about this movie. And she was trying to tell me that I didn’t get her explanation because I wasn’t a feminist.
The fact is, I did ‘get’ her explanation, I just didn’t agree with it, and not because I’m not a feminist but because what she was trying to tell me wasn’t a legitimate view point.
Here’s what she was saying: she had a problem with the fact that they showed the breasts of two teenaged girls (or at least women who were protraying teenaged girls) in the movie. She didn’t see any reason why they should do that, didn’t think that it advanced the plot, and decided that it was gratuitous and therefore made the whole movie invalid.
I totally disagreed with her, but I didn’t really push my opinion, mostly because we were in someone else’s living room in a social situation, and I didn’t want to cause any more discomfort in the room than was already present. When I waved off the conversation, Ann said “well, that’s right, because you’re not going to change my mind.”
That also pissed me off – I wasn’t crying off because I realized I couldn’t change her mind – I could change her mind under the right circumstances. I just wasn’t willing to be rude to my hosts my taking over their living room while doing it. (Not that any such nicety stopped her.)
So now were in my living room, so to speak, and I’m going to hold forth on the subject. They showed the breasts of these two teenaged girls for a reason – to make a point about the image each of them had about their own bodies.
Jane Burnham, the dark-haired daughter of the movie’s protagonist, doesn’t think she’s attractive. She’s saving all her money to have breast enlargement done – something she refers to several times during the movie.
And Jane is envious of the attention her friend Angela receives. Jane’s friend Angela Hayes, a blond bombshell that catches the eye of Jane’s dad, knows darned well she’s attractive. Not only does she say so often, so does everyone else. She seems to have no problems with her body.
When you see Jane’s breasts – she’s showing them to her voyeur/boyfriend who’s filming her from his bedroom window – the first thought that crosses your mind is that there’s no way she needs to have a breast enlargement (not that anyone really does, but still). Jane had fairly large, very beautiful breasts.
Toward the end of the movie, when Angela is attempting to seduce Jane’s father, we see Angela’s breasts – and the contrast is startling; her breasts are much smaller than Jane’s; the exact opposite of the original impression I had of the two characters at the beginning of the movie, and obviously the opposite of what the characters think about themselves.
So why do these two teenagers have totally different feelings about their bodies? Jane has a distorted self-image. Part of that is based on the amount of attention she receives in contrast to her friend – she thinks that the attention is because of her friend’s physical appearance, when in reality it’s Angela’s demeanor and attitude that attract attention.
In fact the film is taking a pro-female point of view about women’s body images and the messages we give to young women about their appearance. Young women who have very normal, healthy bodies, like Jane, feel they need to alter their appearance to get attention and feel a sense of value in this world, when in reality it’s their sense of confidence in their identity and abilities that cultivate attention from other people.
I think that’s a very legitimate point to make in a movie.
