Blog posts

I’ve finally found time to make some changes to Services_Technorati. The key issue I’d been wanting to address was caching and following comments from Doug Clifton and Ryan King I finally got round to working on it. I’ve decided to make use of another PEAR package, Cache_Lite to handle the caching. That way I can hand off most of the responsibility for ensuring compatibility across different filesystems as well as allow for the flexibility to reflect searches with different options. The overheads are slightly higher, but the added flexibility certainly makes my life as maintainer easier. ...

The Six Apart Professional Network blog makes mention of a Moveable Type-powered project called Musicblog. Using blogging to break down barriers between artists and audience seems a good (if obvious) idea, so I quickly headed over to check it out. On the main site I saw: “Musicblog is a joint project between EMI Music and Pixelfury. We utilise the best social software applications to provide easy communication between music-lovers and artists.” But checking out the featured Musicblog, that of The Doves, was a disappointment. So far, it looks rather as if it were written by a publicist and consists largely of the sort of news artists have always carried on their websites. Hopefully it’ll move beyond window dressing, and develop more of an identity (like that of, say, The Decemberists) but I can’t help but feel that once again the music industry just doesn’t get it.

The latest version of my (S)FTP client of choice, Transmit, has just been announced. I particularly enjoyed spotting Sufjan Stevens’ tracks in this screenshot. Sufjan will be one of the featured artists at this year’s Festival of Faith and Music at which I will also be speaking.

After a few days’ distraction I’ve now submitted a draft proposal for Services_Technorati. The attention.xml support still isn’t working as it should, but other than that it seems to hold together. Getting it up there hopefully means a little help with testing, and perhaps a bit more impetus to keep working on it. You can find the PHP source and a quick example here.

Not having read many reviews, I wasn’t expecting The Story Of The Weeping Camel to be nearly so moving as it turned out to be. Part documentary, part drama (as I understand it the characters were acting, but were playing a story built from their real lives) it draws a picture of life on the fringes of the Gobi desert that becomes quite breathtaking. It’s difficult to work out whether the event that forms the film’s culmination is a true record, but whether or not it really happened, the portrayal of the melding of lifestyle, music and ritual it conveys is more than worth the rental fee. Whether it is rightly nominated for Best Documentary may be difficult to say, but probably isn’t worth too sustained a debate. ...

Responses to the debt initiative launched at the G7 Finance Ministers’ meeting last week are finally becoming easier to come by. The general tone is a cautious welcome for the announcement, but continuing concern at the lack of specifics. The Jubilee Debt Campaign (UK) response notes that: the communique did not commit to any specific actions, or offer any new money for debt cancellation. Nor did it address the crucial issue of the strings often attached to debt relief. Jubilee Debt Campaign and other organisations are demanding that creditors must stop making debt cancellation conditional on impoverished countries implementing economic policy reforms - such as enforced privatisations or cuts in public spending, which can harm the populations of poor countries as much as the original debts. ...

Those who scan the comments of this blog from time to time may have noticed that an online publication called CCM Buzz picked up on the whole Christian Music Makeover debacle. It’s good to see more attention coming to critiques of that particular initiative, but I’m hoping that it will not focus attention too much on one very particular concern rather than casting a spotlight on broader issues with that industry. Kate’s latest column at Catapult “Unsound Rock” is a good read for those wanting to think more about the peculiar cultural phenomenon called CCM. She was also good enough to write some kind words and publish the full text of an email interview with me over at Evangelical Expat.

One of the projects I’ve been working on of late has been redeveloping the NACCAP website. NACCAP is an organisation for Christians who work in the world of Higher Education admissions in North America, and I took over management of their site at the start of the year. It’s constantly reminding me of the complexities of moving a large existing site onto a new footing. There are three key aspects to the management of this site: maintaining existing features, gracefully transitioning the existing content into new systems, and adding new functionality. Ideally, the last of those would be completed before any other work is begun. Having a new Content Management System and Process in place would save considerable time on keeping the site up to date, and would also make the process of moving everything into clean, accessible templates a great deal easier. Sadly, things don’t work that way. ...

Warning: This entry contains comments that could be construed as ‘spoilers’ (thanks to Colin for the reminder) The blog world is awash with conversation about last night’s West Wing, due in part to the portrayal of noted lawyer Larry Lessig by Christpher Lloyd. Joi Ito was the first I saw with the news that Lessig’s role in the story was connected with real life events, and now Larry has chimed in himself with some reflections on the experience. ...

With an existing blog going strong it may come as a surprise to some that I’m starting a new one. Thing is, there are a lot of people who read my other blog who have little to no interest in my occasional comments on web development work, and I have a hankering to write about that a little more. So I decide to start another blog here, to sit alongside the rest of my work site. ...