I love my MacBook. I love it more than my previous Compaq laptop. It’s so much lighter, thinner, and well, OSX is much better than Windows. The reason I went with a MacBook and not a MacBook Pro was because I didn’t want a laptop that was as large as my old one. I wanted it lightweight and compact. The problem I see now, and it’s not so much a problem as a minor annoyance, is that I miss the larger screen. My old laptop had a 17 inch widescreen. My desktop has a 21 inch widescreen, and the MacBook has a 13 inch. The only time I really need it is when I’m working on website stuff. I like to have multiple windows open, along with IRC and instant messenger, and be able to move stuff around. More screen space equals more productivity for me. With a 13 inch screen Firefox or Smultron or Transmit take up the entire screen. Oh well, I still prefer working on my MacBook to my Windows Vista machine 99% of the time and I have no regrets in buying this over the MacBook Pro. I really can’t wait for my next desktop. I do believe that will be a Mac too.
One of the things that has bugged me over the past year or so with WordPress is that the community seems to be disappearing. Some of the developers have left to create other software and some have just left. It seems the passionate group of volunteers that helped support WordPress have moved on as well. The WordPress IRC channel was once a place I enjoyed hanging out in and helping whenever I could. Now, I never speak in there. I hardly look at what’s being said in there at all. Some of the volunteers that helped out in the forums have even been asked to leave by Matt and company. Matt seems to be doing a great job at driving a wedge in the community. His way, or leave. Or as he once put it, you don’t like it, fork it.
Themes.wordpress.net is pretty much a graveyard. I used to go there several times a week to check out all the nice new designs that people were making. Even if I wasn’t ever going to download the themes it was nice to see what was being produced. Now the only place that publishes new WordPress themes on a regular basis seems Weblogtoolscollection.com, and that has even seemed to slow down a bit. I don’t know if that’s because passionate theme developers aren’t producing themes anymore or what. Now your choice is to use Google and hope you don’t find a site that puts malicious links and/or code into the theme you download.
The latest thing that Wank pointed out is that the Plugins page on the Codex no longer exists. It was a fairly complete list of plugins for WordPress. It’s no longer there. So if Matt chooses to tell you your plugin isn’t good enough for the official repository, there’s no place to notify users that your plugin exists. That page on the Codex was a great page. Also absent from Extend is the link for themes. It was there before 2.5 came out. So, Matt takes away the theme repository, has the plugins page deleted, drives away developers and volunteers and this is supposed to be a community? Yeah, right.
I don’t know what it is but I’ve been really bored with the movies I’ve been watching lately. Even independent movies, which have become my favorite movies over the past couple years, haven’t kept my interest. Too much crap is coming out of Hollywood. I’ll give you some examples(warning, may be minor spoilers).
Southland Tales: The only thing I can say about this movie is WTF? I shouldn’t be surprised at how weird and dumb this movie was. It was by the same guy that did Donnie Darko which has to be one of the most overrated pieces of crap to come out over the past several years. Even all the celebrities (Justin Timberlake, Sarah Michelle Gellar, The Rock, Sean William Scott, Kevin Smith) couldn’t save this movie.
Sweeney Todd: Pure crap. The play is much better. Depp was ok, Helena Bonham Carter was terrible. Boring movie.
No Country for Old Men: Another movie that was overrated. Yes, the acting was good, but the story I thought was stupid. Why did they have to kill Woody Harrelson so quick? Why introduce the character at all if five minutes later he’d be dead? Made no sense. I don’t see how people liked this as much as they did.
The Mist: This movie I was actually made me mad at myself for watching it. I thought, Steven King and the director of The Shawshank Redemption (also written by King), it should be halfway decent for a horror movie. No. Though it was funny to see the religious nut convert everyone and how stupid people get during a panic, the ending spoiled the entire movie. Complete crap. There’s been movies where the ending has totally saved an otherwise crappy movie (The Others), but this is a case where the ending made me so mad and was so terrible I can’t believe the studios even let it be shown in theaters that way.
I have watched a couple good movies recently. Dan in Real Life I thought was excellent. Steve Carrell did a great job and it was one of those movies that engulfed you and made you feel what was going on while watching it. The Darjeeling Limited was surprisingly awesome. The performances were great and the soundtrack was even better. It was much better than Wes Anderson’s previous film, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. For the most part though, everything has been pretty bad, and with the looks of what Hollywood is doing (remakes of TV shows, cartoons, and movies (a remake of Short Circuit… really?)) it doesn’t look to get any better any time soon.
Well, I’m officially 25. Yesterday was my birthday and now I’m a quarter of a century old. I had a good birthday. My parents and sisters got me exactly what I asked for and my mom cooked one of my favorite meals. Not only that, but it was sunny, warm, and the Cardinals won. A good day all around.
As I look back at the last couple years since college, and we all tend to look at ourselves a little more harshly around birthday time, I do realize I’m not where I want to be with my life. The job I have is not the job I want (or need). The people here are great, but it’s not the teaching position that I wanted to get into as soon as I got out of college. In order to get a high school position, I may have to move. I’ve been thinking about going back to Springfield. I know the schools and the area to an extent, so it shouldn’t be hard to adjust. I would rather go to Springfield than Kansas City (even though several of my college friends now live there). I couldn’t live with Royals baseball. Cardinals all the way! Anyway, I have got to find a position somewhere for next school year. Cross your fingers and hope I find something because I’m 25 now. Too old to still be here.
Bush continues to be a shining light for democracy and freedom. Now he’s censoring information about abortion on health websites. It never ceases to amaze me how religious this moron is and is so against abortion because it’s wrong but has no problem killing thousands of people for oil money. I really do hate this man. Might as well call us China with his spying on the American people and censoring public information because it goes against his beliefs. Here’s the article from Wired:
A U.S. government-funded medical information site that bills itself as the world’s largest database on reproductive health has quietly begun to block searches on the word “abortion,” concealing nearly 25,000 search results.
Called Popline, the search site is run by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Maryland. It’s funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, the federal office in charge of providing foreign aid, including health care funding, to developing nations.
The massive database indexes a broad range of reproductive health literature, including titles like “Previous abortion and the risk of low birth weight and preterm births,” and “Abortion in the United States: Incidence and access to services, 2005.”
But on Thursday, a search on “abortion” was producing only the message “No records found by latest query.” Continue Reading…