Month: May 2003

And So it Begins…

Tonight is the first leg of The Amazing Race 4! Whoo hoo! Following is my random commentary on the show – I’ll post the opening comments so they are visible to everyone, and the rest I’ll “hide” in the extended entry portion to prevent any spoilers. Consider this your warning – there might be spoilers ahead.

:: Phil opens they show in Los Angeles, the “Gateway to the Western United States”. Call me crazy, but how can it be the gateway if it’s on the far edge of the West Coast? I would consider Denver the gateway, or some place other than LA.

:: The teams show up in stretch Hummers. Hummers are goofy looking to begin with, and should be left on the Army base. I really don’t like them “stretched” and in white. Very odd looking indeed.

:: Tian & Jaree: “Friends, models and thrill seekers.” They share the thought that “girls have it easier than men in a lot of situations … you know, thank God we’re good looking!” Oy.

:: Steve & Dave: Air traffic controllers from Chicago. Plan to run the whole race “without breaking a sweat.”

:: Reichen & Chip: The married gay couple this leg of the race. (Team Guido from the first race never said that they were married.) Was there a gay team on TAR3?

:: Millie & Chuck: Dating TWELVE years, and virgins. Chuck admits that he’s scared of commitment, and Millie says it’s time to either commit or move on. I predict that they end up engaged when it’s all said and done. That or Chuck ends up having a torrid affair with Reichen and Chip.

:: Steve & Josh: Father and son with struggles to work out.

:: Russell & Cindy: Close friends that *she* hopes will take the next step. Uh oh, this sounds familiar. He’s not ready for a relationship – it will never work.

:: Monica & Sheree: Friends and NFL wives. I think they should be booted by default – with their husbands in the NFL, do they really need the million dollar prize? Ok, ok, that’s probably not fair.

:: David & Jeff: Friends from California. Confident that they can win the race.

:: Amanda & Chris: Dating for five years, from Souix Falls, South Dakota. They’ve never left the US. Hmmm…

:: Kelly & John: Recently engaged. “No matter what, we’ll still love each other. And hopefully still getting married!”

:: Debra & Steve: Phil says they are from Indiana. The website says they are from Kentucky. Which is it?

:: Jon & Al: Circus clowns. Interesting…

:: 13 legs in the race, 12 teams, 3 in the final round, so 9 pit stops are elimination points. Last team is eliminated. And they are OFF!

Geek Love

Pressing for Words…

As I mentioned earlier this week, WordPress is now available – have you checked out this features list? Many, many cool things built in – including the ability to manage your blogroll within the software and still have it display the recently updated blogs.

Has anyone downloaded it and tested it yet? What did you think? I’m going to try setting up a test blog using all of my posts from this site to see how it handles a huge blog with a ton of archived posts. I would love to hear what other people think about it.

More importantly – if you haven’t tried it out, why not? What would it take to get you to look at a different blog system? What features is WordPress lacking that you must, must, must have? What keeps you tied to the blog system you currently use?

Geek Love

Fresh MovableType!

Get the latest release! MovableType has released version 2.64, with many good things:

This is a maintenance release, fixing various CSS, XML-RPC, UI, and Creative Commons errors. This release also plugs a number of cross-site-scripting (script injection) holes for search queries, comments, TrackBacks, and notifications, and is recommended for anyone using any of these features. We have also improved the options for available RSS templates–in addition to the RSS 1.0 template that we have always provided, the default templates now include an RSS 2.0 template instead of a 0.91 template. Also in the default templates, this release fixes the rendering of the default stylesheet (“Clean”) on Windows Internet Explorer.

First of all, I should note that if you’re using an older version of MT, you are at risk to security holes. There is a reason that updates come out – and why it’s important that you do them.

Now on to the most important thing for me… Whoo hoo! RSS 2.0 is now a default template! Yum, yum! Tasty RSS feeds for everyone! You do have an RSS feed, right? You know why you want RSS, don’t you?

I’ve been thinking about this recently – how many people read this site through RSS feeds instead of online? If you’re one of them, could you drop by and leave me a comment so I know? There isn’t a good way to track who is feed reading a site, so I thought I should just ask!

BlahBlahBabble

Something is Going Down…

Hmmm… something is going down here in downtown Houston – there are at least six news helicopters hovering overhead. Unfortunately, there isn’t any information on the Houston Chronicle or KHOU or KPRC sites yet to clue me in.

It’s a bit unsettling to see all of these helicopters just sitting there. What do I do? I grab my camera, of course! (I’ll post the photo tonight.)

Update: It was a high-speed chase of a stolen car that ended in downtown when they slammed into another car at McKinney and Smith. They tried to flee on foot, but they were caught, in part thanks to a bystander that helped. “He threw a forearm to the suspect as the suspect ran by him,” said HPD Officer James Price. “He fell into the scaffolding and that’s when I was able to catch him. He helped out tremendously.” (from the KHOU website.)

Amuse Me

Ok, But Who is Zed?

I was talking with Mike on the phone last night, and he told me all about this cool animated desktop background that he found which displays streaming letters – just like when they are watching the Matrix in the movie. I thought it sounded really cool and I wanted to check it out, so…
Me: Cool! Where did you find it at?
Him: (as I heard it) TheMatrix dot SourceForge dot Net.
Me: THE Matrix?
Him: No, THE Matrix.
Me: Huh? THE? Or Z as in zebra?
Him: Z as in Zebra. ZedMatrix dot SourceForge dot Net.
Me: What? Wait? Zed or Z? I’m so confused!
Him: Zed.
Me: But I thought you said Z?
Him: I did. But they call it Zed in Europe. Well, in England at least. But it’s Z. ZMatrix dot SourceForge dot Net.

Is that true? Do they really pronounce “Z” as “Zed” in England? And if they do – what’s up with that? Why? Why do we say “Zee” instead of “Zed” over here on this side of the pond? I’m determined to get to the bottom of this…

And I still think he was just making it up to mess with me. What is real?