19 May 2004
Heiko explains German Father's Day: "Tomorrow is a national holiday in Germany; it's church related, Ascension Day... Not coincidentally there also is Father's Day tomorrow. It's the day when fathers leave their family at home, get social with other fellow sufferers, and drink lots and lots of alcohol, all while cycling (or riding) through the countryside." Sorry, Heiko, only fathers are allowed to participate.
20:21 (0)
Kindergarten Watch Christopher had a busy day yesterday. Not only did he have his hearing checked (which he happily demonstrated on me last evening with his doctor kit: 'Now the big bear and the little mouse are running in your ear!'). He also checked out the speech therapy kindergarten in Winsen. He loved it. The groups are very small (9 children), they have a great gym, and best of all, a huge toy helicopter. The amount of actual therapy (twice a week) is the same as the local integration group. The director talked with him for over an hour and thought he'd he an excellent candidate for the group. She found it very good that he listens and responds to corrections.
The group would also work well for his parents. The hours are 8:30 to 14:30, with transport provided (Winsen is 30 km from here). The place would be guaranteed for one year, with possible extensions after that. That's a schedule that we can plan around.
The final diagnosis will be on June 17, when we have an appointment with the county health department. After that we'll be able to make some decisions for both Christopher and Papa. 06:31 (1)
18 May 2004
Love and Money (I've been corresponding with Heiko Hebig, who represents TypePad and Movable Type in Germany, about the new MT license.)
Hi Heiko,
The free version would be enough for PapaScott, but I'd already donated twice over the past couple of years and was looking forward to the Pro version. At any rate, on the first day already I cashed in my keys and purchased a personal license, as my way of saying thanks for the past 2 years of great software. Now 6A and I are quid, they don't owe me anything anymore.
But if I were to recommend MT to an small to mid-sized organization, $199 is a pretty steep entry price, especially if they aren't yet convinced that weblogs are a good thing.
My idea would be to drop the distinction between personal and commercial use, keep the unsupported free version as it is, charge $29 per blog for the supported version, with volume discounts starting with the 6th blog.
Anyway, I won't be dropping MT because I object to the license. I have been playing around with WordPress because I find the technology interesting, and especially contrasting the static-build of MT vs. the dynamic approaches. I also find the idea of seamlessly switching backends intriguing. (MT on even-numbered days, WordPress on odd-numbered days, and Blosxom on Sundays?).
It's all about love and money. You need both.
Scott 21:31 (2)
0xDECAFBAD: Use Atom for a Universal Blog Transfer Protocol 18:06 (0)
Postbank to offer instant transfers to internal accounts 11:31 (0)
Dear Mena, Re: Six Log: How are you using the tool? I do pro-bono work on websites for several non-profit organizations. It would be prohibitively expensive to purchase a commercial license for each of these sites. Sincerely, Scott Hanson 11:02 (1)
Can You Hear Me Now? Christopher had his follow-up exam at the ear/nose/throat specialist this morning. His hearing is now normal. :-) :-) :-) 10:46 (1)
16 May 2004
MT to WordPress Some notes on importing MT entries into WordPress:
- The script in the WP RC uses the MT export file, so post numbers are not imported. That might be important if you use the post number in your permalink, like I do.
- MT 3.0 seems to have a bug in the export routine... the dates are missing an AM/PM designation, so all posts and comments posted between noon and midnight are off by 12 hours. MT 2.661 exports from an MT 3.0 database just fine, though.
- The default encoding of WP is UTF-8, so you either have to convert the MT export file from Latin 1 to UTF-8 (either recode or BBEdit works fine), or change the encoding in WP (under Options->Reading) to ISO 8859-1.
BuzzMachine: The SixApart solution: Divest TypePad 16:33 (0)
15 May 2004
Six Apart backpedals on MT license 10:59 (3)
Test Site On the other hand, the release candidate of WordPress gets a lot of things right on the first try. 04:43 (4)
If your database craps out, your entire site is unreadable. 03:51 (4)
14 May 2004
Anyway - What WordPress Does Right 21:10 (0)
Movable Type Cashes Out The weblog world is ablaze with the news of the new licensing scheme for Movable Type. $99 for a personal version, a free version limited to 1 author and 3 weblogs, with the top commercial version (20 authors) at $599. A bit overpriced, I would say. If I were to introduce weblogs into my company's intranet (100 employees), it would be cheaper to install a Notes server (with hardware and much more functionality) than to license MT.
The controversy, though, reminds me of when Userland Frontier went commercial in the late '90s. A great product, an active developer community... but when it was no longer free, the community disintegrated. I hope that Six Apart is paying attention, and will rethink its pricing. 18:53 (1)
Last One Gone is a Rotten Egg! Press release from my employer: "The company is carrying on discussions with potential investors to secure continued financing. Only with a positive result can the liquidity and therefore the existance of the firm be achieved. Because the talks are in a critical phase, the board has decided to postpone the annual meeting scheduled for tomorrow." So is the time to leave a sinking ship when my feet start getting wet, or should I wait until the water is up to my neck? 05:51 (2)
13 May 2004
DSL is female After weeks of pre-publicity, now we know. Alice is a DSL product from local provider HanseNet (a subsidiary of Telecom Italia), and is embodied (so to speak) not by an avatar but by a real-live 17-year-old model in heels and a high slit dress. 'Alice is fast.' 'Alice is dependable.' At least we are being spared 'Alice is cheap' or 'Alice is easy'. The posters are tame compared to, say, those from H&M, but the idea is still questionable. If there were a German version of misbehaving.net, they'd be having a field day. 05:51 (0)
12 May 2004
Living in Europe: Czechia or Czech Republic? 16:30 (0)
I'm now a Medienkritiker Well, not really. But Davids Medienkritik did just post a plea to help translate posts into English, and I'll be helping out now and again (once a week or so).
Why, espcially considering that David's views are, um, somewhat to the right of mine? Because it's a good blog, and it starts good conversations. Even if Germans and Americans tend to disagree, at Medienkritik they're at least talking to one another. As a bilingual expat, one thing I can offer to the community is to translate things that are interesting, and David's points are always interesting and worth considering.
Translation is hard work and I am by no means a profressional translator, but at least the first post was fun. I felt like I was behind enemy lines, writing headlines for the Bild-Zeiting. 06:54 (8)
11 May 2004
Müssen nur Wollen This is a brilliant song, and perfectly sums up my mood at the moment. Imperfect translation is mine. more... 21:14 (0)
Bloglines extension for Mozilla 11:46 (0)
Hymn Manual: "Apple creates excellent products. OS X is the most usable commercial operating system I've ever experienced. The iPod is great little device. The iTunes Music Store is a great way to buy music. Technologically speaking, I am enamored with almost everything they do. Ethically / legally speaking, however, they are (unfortunately) just as bad as most other big corporations." 11:37 (0)
Don Park: "I am not saying (the soldiers accused of torture at Abu Ghraib) are all angels corrupted by evil interrogators. What I am saying is that they are not too different from you and I. The problem is not just them, but all of us." 06:22 (1)
10 May 2004
Useless Spiegel One thing I noticed while on vacation was how utterly useless Spiegel Online is for keeping up with German news. Take this evening, for example. Of the 5 'Top Stories', 3 are on the US and Iraq (if I want to read Bush-bashing, I'll go closer to the source), 1 is about sports (Oliver Kahn), and 1 about German news (Finance Minister Eichel). Even under 'Politics' there is little serious domestic news (2 of 7 stories; taxing brothels does not qualify as serious). While other blogs complain about alleged bias in the German media, I would be happy if the premier German news site simply could be somewhat more relevant. 23:02 (5)
Up In The Air We're now a month into the process of registering Christopher for kindergarten, and we are more confused than ever. As you recall, he is behind in his speech development, and it has been recommended to us several times that he not join a regular kindergarten group. There is a local 'integrated' group that includes sessions of speech therapy each week, and there is a 'therapy' group in the county seat Winsen (over 30 km away) that is intensive speech therapy. However, our speech therapist today told us to choose carefully... that the therapy group does not necessarily include more therapy than an integrated group. In any case, the diagnosis has to be confirmed by the county health office, and our appointment there is not until June.
Either group will be half-days, and will not be compatible with 2 full time working parents. I've informed my employer of the situation, and that I'll be either requesting part-time or leaving completely (and going freelance), but until we have more details, I can't make any decision. 22:06 (5)
Tim Bray: "But if I'd had to write a one-liner as to why (I though the war in Iraq was a good idea), it would have been something along the lines of 'to stop the torture and brutality in the Baghdad hellholes.' Well, so much for that." 10:03 (0)
09 May 2004
code: theWebSocket; - Apple Archives 20:45 (0)
Brad Choate: OS X software inventory 20:42 (0)
and had her own home page at the animal shelter in Lüneburg. 12:29 (2)
PapaTech: IMAP for aggregators Wouldn't it be nice? [more...] 06:39 (2)
08 May 2004
Zieht den Bayern die Lederhosen aus! (Pull the pants off the Bavarians!) Bayern Munich is the New York Yankees of German soccer: rich, arrogant, hated and successful. It is therefore gives me great satisfaction to report that Bayern was defeated by Bremen at home 3-1, thus clinching the Bundesliga title for Bremen. I may not live to see Bayern relegated, but it's nice to see them lose once in a while, especially to a northern team. 18:23 (2)
Trial Marriage We've just returned from the animal shelter with a 1 year old female grey tabby, tentatively named Nena. We have a trial adoption for 2 weeks. If we are all happy with one another after that, we'll stay together permanently. 16:10 (0)
06 May 2004
PapaTech: The Dark Side [more...] 18:05 (8)
03 May 2004
Heiko Hebig to Bring TypePad to Germany While I was trying to sleep off my jet lag this afternoon, Heiko announced that he will be representing Six Apart in Germany and helping to launch TypePad here. Is there room for two blogging companies in Hamburg, both seeking world domination? I think so. 21:40 (0)
02 May 2004
For Sale: iTunes Prepaid Card While in the U.S. of A., I picked up a $15 iTunes Prepaid Card from Target, thinking I could thus sample the lovely graces of the iTunes Music Store. However, I didn't read the fine print, which requires that I set up a Music Store account to redeem the card. Since I don't have a US credit card, and I'm too old to ask my mother to use hers, I was unable to use the card. Anyone want to buy it, payment via PayPal? Send me a mail, make me an offer I can't refuse (over $14).
Update: The card is sold! No more inquiries, please. 20:36 (0)
Return We've made it safely back to cool and misty Hamburg. We'd love to spend the day sleeping off the jet lag, but that is a luxury reserved for non-parents, it seems. 12:10 (4)
