The New Whatever, Part II

Posted on March 26, 2003    Posted by John Scalzi      2 Comments

Okay, here’s why I changed over to Movable Type.

1) It’s free. Although I suspect strongly I’ll be sending along some money to the people who created it, because why not.

2) My pal Bill offered to install it for me, thus allowing me to avoid (mostly) a show of my own total and irredeemable stupidity when it comes to all things software. I make no bones that I’m barely qualified to change the color values on the Movable Type CSS scripts; if I try to do more, something is sure to explode (probably a vein in my head).

3) It posts and archives simultaneously, which is one less thing for me to do.

4) Finally, it does various things (like set up comments and RSS feeds and what have you) that I wouldn’t particularly care about if I had to set them up myself, but which I think are kind of cool if I don’t have to bother with the heavy lifting.

The major drawbacks to MT that I can see at this point are that the software lacks a spellcheck (which means my spelling is about to become a whole lot more awful around here), and that if my Web site should ever collapse, there goes a whole bunch of writing. I could take preventative measures in both cases, but if you’ve noticed a running thread in this entry, it’s that I am dispairingly lazy. So more misspellings and a reliance on Google’s cache are sure to be in order. I don’t know what I’ll do if Google stop caching. I assume it will be because the apocalypse is upon us. In which case, cached Web pages, or lack thereof, will be the least of my problems.

Someone has already been kind enough to formally welcome me to the Blogosphere (if you use blogging software, you are by implication at least blogger-esque). I appreciate the thought, and I do expect I will probably start posting some more shorter, blog-like posts now, simply because it’s no longer a pain in the ass to do so. But I imagine I will still largely write the longer-style inteminable ramblings you’ve all come to expect from my fevered brain, if for no other reason than that’s what I’ve been doing for five years now. I’m old! I’m cranky! I’m set in my ways!

Anyway, enjoy the new look and surroundings, and feel free to use the comments section and whatever else. However, don’t get any smudges on the wall. I want this place to look new for at least a couple of days. Okay? Okay.