Author: Wil

Author, actor, producer. On a good day, I am charming as fuck.

mt with plugins vs. typepad: which do you prefer?

Posted on 5 March, 2006 By Wil

Okay, I’ve rebuilt the entire old WWdN database, and made significant progress on the relaunch of WWdN:2.0. I owe a HUGE debt of gratitude to Mike Pusateri, who pulled the entire WWdN databse, pre-fuck-up-by-wil, including all the comments and everything, and put it into a 38MB text file for me to import back into WWdN. Thanks to some help from Movable Type support, I was able to put the old entries back online, and add the WWdN:iX entries to the pile. (Don’t bother looking at WWdN; they’re not in a public directory, yet.)

So this is a HUGE step toward relaunching WWdN, and now I find myself at a bit of a crossroads. I’d like to solicit some advice, if you don’t mind, from the bloggers who still read me.

When I return to WWdN: 2.0, I have a couple of options: I can domain-map WWdN to TypePad, so you’re visiting wilwheaton.net, but I’m managing the content from TypePad, or I can switch back to MT 3.2, and hope to mimic as much of TypePad’s functionality as I can via plug-ins, while duplicating the super-easy WYSIWYG editor with ecto, and something as-yet-undiscovered for Linux.

The thing is, I’ve grown to REALLY like the TypePad interface over the
last several months. The WYSIWYG editor is hawesome, and adding new
sections to the right side of my blog (like the synidcation buttons, the book and music recommendations, advertising, etc.) is as simple as clicking a few
links and pasting a little bit of code. I really like how easy TypePad
has made everything for me; it’s allowed me to put my energy into
creating content that hopefully doesn’t suck, rather than mashing away
at annoying code that never seems to validate, anyway.

And that’s where this post comes in. If you’re an MT 3.2 user, what are your must-have plugins? If you’ve used them both, is MT 3.2 more or less useful for managing enclosures (for the RFB) than TypePad? Have you been able to make MT 3.2 act as sort of a CMS, the way I’ve described above? (Please don’t bother telling me to use WordPress or Drupal or whatever CMS you totally love. I’ve done a lot of research, and I’ve determined that it’s going to be MT 3.2 or TypePad.)

There are some changes coming with the redesign that I think you’ll all like: no more lame fixed-width fonts and cells, a mobile version, better integration of things like flickr and technorati, and some of the really cool things that we’re doing with metroblogging.

I’m still working with my friend on all that stuff, so the re-launch of WWdN isn’t going to happen right away (surprise), but I can at least see the soft glow of a new and super-cool website on a distant horizon.

technorati favorites

Posted on 2 March, 2006 By Wil

Technorati added a new service to the already useful search, explore and watchlist functions they offer, which allows users to create a list of their favorite blogs. Though WWdN dropped out of their top 100 when I hosed the database back in September, I was still invited to participate in a "featured favorites" thing, with people like Arianna Huffington and David Sifry.

You can see which blogs I chose here. If you’d like to add WWdN:iX to your own list of favorites, you can use the handy link over on the right side there, where you can also add my blog to several different RSS readers.

All this stuff will be built into the redesign of WWdN, which should be finished and launched shortly before Duke Nuke’Em Forever ships.

jon stewart pwns larry king

Posted on 2 March, 2006 By Wil

Kingstewart
In case you missed Jon Stewart on Larry King the other night, Crooks & Liars has video and a partial transcript (but you really need to see or hear it, because a lot of the way Jon Stewart talks is lost in the literal written tranlsation.) Larry King made several feeble attempts to create controversy, and Jon Stewart kicked him square in the nuts each time. Witness this exchange:

KING: You don’t want Medicare to fail?

STEWART: Are you insane?

KING: No.

STEWART: You’re literally asking me if I would prefer
— yes, Larry, what I’m saying to you as a comedian I want old people
to suffer, old and poor people to suffer. That is — that is — what we
want is — what seems absurd to me is the length that Washington just
seems out of touch with the desires of Americans to be spoken to as
though they are adults.

Nice try, Larry; too bad Jon didn’t go for it. Maybe you can team up with Nancy Grace for a two hour Aruba Special to get back on familiar, more comfortable ground.

That question was just one of several "gotcha" attempts which failed
spectacularly when Jon refused to take the bait, and instead turned the
ludicrous question back on Larry King, who of course had no response other than this painful frozen half-smile that was equal parts fear and lothing. When Larry King wasn’t completely controlling the tone and content of the show, you could feel how uncomfortable he was. Jon Stewart was so funny, and so quick-witted, and so smart and so insightful, if Larry King wasn’t trying so hard to create controversy where there was none, you’d almost feel bad that he wasn’t able to keep up.

attention star trek fans – i’ll be at the grand slam in pasadena next week

Posted on 1 March, 2006 By Wil

I just realized that the Grand Slam convention in Pasadena is coming up in just ten days, running from the 10th until the 12th at the Pasadena Convention center.

I haven’t done any conventions since this show last year, because I didn’t feel like I had any new material, I thought it made sense to take a break from cons, yadda, yadda, yadda, but since I have Just A Geek: The Audio Book, and some advance material on Do You Want Kids With That? I thought it made sense to attend this show.

I also thought it would be a fantastic and unique opportunity to do a Star Trek podcast, with interviews of anyone I could talk to, as well as an audio diary of my experiences at the show.

So I gave Adam at Creation a call, and even though it’s super last minute, he added me to the schedule. I doubt I’ll be doing anything up on stage (everything is booked already) but there’s a chance I may sneak on to introduce someone, or do something cool.

Hope to see some of you there!

down the rabbit hole, into tomorrowland and beyond

Posted on 28 February, 2006 By Wil

Don’t you love it when you chase some links down the Internets rabbit hole and discover something hawesome you wouldn’t have discovered on your own?

I started at boingboing, where Cory linked to a blog created by Pixar employees who offer advice to Disney on how to improve Disneyland. I love Disneyland (I’ve been a nerd for MiceAge, Laughing Place, and Yesterland for years) and I really hate what they did to the park in the last decade or so, especially the absolutely horrifying "updating" of Tomorrowland. It was cool to read this post where Merlin Jones says many of the same things I’ve been saying for years:

The utopian, ultramodern design of 1967’s New Tomorrowland, gleaming
like a moonscape in stark white, black and cool shades of blue and
silver, was unsucessfully updated in 1998 to reflect a bronzed
Victorian/Vernian mechanical view of the future. While this was great
at Disneyland Paris, where the concept was fully realized, it never
gelled here in Anaheim, particularly as a layover to the modernist
original.

[. . .]

Tomorrowland’s apocalypse is the elephant-in-the-room at Disneyland. It
should be fixed immediately – – and before any new expansion or
additions. This decay impacts the guest’s experience and memory of the
park. The imminent return of Submarine Voyage and new Monorail trains
will help get the ball rolling. Why not drop the other shoe and revive
the entire land at the same time? It would be a marketing coup.

The blog is still relatively young, and I read the entire thing in about thirty well-spent minutes. I hope that the new management at Disneyland will listen up: it’s not about selling plush toys or trading pins, guys. It’s not about "synergy" with whatever movie is going to be forgotten in two years. Disneyland is about escaping from the cares and troubles of real life, and immersing ourselves in a world of Adventure, Fantasy, and a great big beautiful Tomorrow.

Continuing down the rabbit hole: I looked at some of the links on their blog, and found myself at Don Shank’s blog, which has some really amzing artwork he did for The Incredibles (one of my favorite movies of all-time) as well as some ultra cool artwork he’s done for himself. I can do a lot of things, but drawing is a skill that has always eluded me. As far back as fifth grade, I remember my dodge ball nemesis Jimmie Just could draw the most amazing monsters and things, while I struggled to do a step-by-step Garfield (which Donald Garwood could draw flawlessly.) I’ve favorited and bloglines-ed Don’s blog, and some day I’ll get the courage to ask him if he’ll do a drawing for one of my books.

I hope this illustrates how cool the internets is: I never would have seen Don Shank’s blog if I didn’t read boingboing, and I wouldn’t read boingboing if I hadn’t met Cory at the Boxing with Barney EFF event several years ago. (Even though I read the ‘zine version of boingboing back in the day, I didn’t know it was a website until 2002-ish.) It’s sort of like following real-life hyperlinks to a website, where you follow traditional hyperlinks long enough to find that place down the Long Tail that seems to speak only to you.

Photo of Space Mountain via Flickr user Sky Traveler
Image of Noobly Squirbulette via Don Shank’s blog.