Archives for August, 2005
File This Under ‘Society Gone to Heck’
People injured in cheap iBook sale: A rush to purchase US$50 used iBooks turned into a violent stampede Tuesday, with people getting thrown to the pavement, beaten with a folding chair and nearly driven over, according to a Fox News report. The story adds that one woman went so far to wet herself rather than surrender… [ read more ]
Um, yeah… How totally absurd is this? People beating the crap out of each other for four-year-old iBooks? I’m totally speechless. How the heck did the organizers of this silly sale think this wasn’t going to happen? Someone should be held liable for injuries & damages, don’t you think?
As sad as it is, who wants to bet that we’ll wind up seeing a clip from this on Real TV or America’s Funniest Home Videos in the near future?
[UPDATE] This photo sequence shows just how nuts the thing became. Kind of reminds me of a Who concert…
Site CMS Application to Change
When I first started this site, I used MoveableType as my weblog application. It was okay, but I ultimately found it was way too vulnerable to comment referrer spam. It was almost a daily battle to get rid of the crap generated by the lazy scum who think it’s all about a Google ranking. On top of that, MT was dependent on Perl libraries that were difficult to install under OSX.
Because of that major hassle, when I moved hosting from a pay-to-host service to my own box, I decided to make the switch to Wordpress. For the few months I’ve used it, WP has been an okay solution. However, based on some disturbing news that I’ve read lately regarding vulnerabilities in some of the code, I’ve decided that it’s time to take a look at a more comprehensive Content Management Systems (CMS) to run the site.
Right now, the front runner is Drupal. Mostly because it works so nicely with ecto, which I have found to be an indispensable application. Drupal is easy to configure, and the templating system is fairly simple to deal with. Plus, it pretty much has all the modules I need in order to produce my site. I’ll be experimenting with it on my alternate site for a couple of weeks, getting all the tweaks down. Keep an eye out for “the change” that’s coming soon.
In Memory of the King
I remember exactly where I was 28 years ago when I heard the news that Elvis had “left the living.” I was a youngster of only 12, and I was spending the summer in Aztec, New Mexico with “Nana” Neal. I remember that one of the kids I hung out with (a girl — I think her name was Laura, or something like that…) came out of her house and told me about it. I can vividly recall the cottonwood trees swaying in the afternoon wind of her front yard, the color of her house (pale yellow) and even the temperature of the day.
Now, I’m a fan of “The King,” but not so much so that I’d ever plan to make a pilgrimage to Graceland or anything like that. I like his music for the impact it had by helping to open the door to a genre of music that was considered “taboo” at the time. By doing so, he (and others like him) made it possible for countless other artists to experiment and expand on the blues. Most of those groups had a major influence on my own musical development, which ultimately led me back to the “heart of the delta” in my short lived music career.
I don’t play much anymore — too many middle-aged obligations — but I do remember listening to the music of Elvis Presley with a special fondness in my very early years. So to “The King” I say: “Thank you. Thank you very much.”