Main

Because it seems to be de rigeur to talk about your toolset/philosophy.

This site is built on Movable Type, it started with whatever was current in 2003. I like Movable Type, I get Movable Type, and in all the years i've had the site, I've only had one load problem, namely the comments CGI. We'll get to those in a second. Movable Type, by default caches everything. The only thing the DB is needed for are moves/adds/changes, and comments if you handle that through Movable Type. Also, Movable Type's security record is much better than WordPress's. Tumblr annoys me, and fuck Google.

Some time ago, I got tired of spam, and instead of stupidity like CAPTCHAS, which suck for people with bad eyes, I went to a registration system. Don't care what you put in, but it did make all the spam go away, and no one had to play stupid decoder games. After getting Fireballed and watching my comments cgi screw itself into the ground, I outsourced all of it to Disqus. Been happy with that ever since. So basically, were I to hose my DB completely, the only thing I'd lose is the ability to modify existing entries or add new entries. Other basic functionality would be untouched. Yay no single point of failure.

Tools: For posting, I use MarsEdit. That's it. If I'm away from my machine for a while, I just don't post. I love MarsEdit, Daniel Jalkut has done a fantastic job with this tool. I have a host of format tricks that keep me efficient, even though I insist on using the raw code version. The WYSIWYG functionality is awesome, but I'm happy with the code version. Oh, and TypeIt4Me. I'd be lost without that.

Any site maintenance is done in a combination of BBEdit, Coda, and Movable Type's built-in tools. I try to avoid the latter, as using them usually means I've fucked something up.

The site design is one I did years and years ago, after realizing the original one really sucked. The column sizes are rigid and occasionally, it does weird stuff on iOS. I may get annoyed enough by that one day to deal with it, but it's random enough for now that I just ignore it.

The CSS, I don't care enough about to go into, it works, and that's all I care about. I do have one thing that I find amusing, which I stole from PZ Myers, and that is my "blockquote.idiot" style. It's a modification to blockquote that uses Comic Sans. It makes me giggle when I use it. I have long forgotten what fonts the site uses, and I don't care enough to look it up now. They please me, and so they stay.

Feeds and stats provided by Google Feedburner. I used Feedburner before Google bought them, and they haven't fucked it up so much I feel a need to change. But I have faith. If you can't tell, I'm really unimpressed with Google. They made ads such a pain in the ass to managed that I just yanked them. I replaced their search with Bing, and if I can ever get Bing ads on the site, I may just use those. Google is just so completely human-unfriendly and shady a company to deal with, unless you're buying ads and are therefore an actual customer, that I refuse to deal with them when I can avoid it.

My comment policy is pretty open, but I have a small number of requirements:

1. Don't be boring. I don't care if you argue/disagree, but be interesting. Know how to use English well. If you're going to cuss, do it with some adeptness, don't just vomit profanity. If you're going to write a comment, make it one worth reading.
2. Don't lecture me about profanity. I don't fucking care that you don't like it. This is my site, I pay for it. Fuck you. Oh, and if you try to tell me that profanity is some kind of negative sign with regard to intelligence or vocabulary, I'm going to steal Stephen Fry's bon mot on the subject and call you a fucking idiot.
3. Do not be surprised that I don't believe or think as you do. I'm not in your little cult or group, whatever that group may be. I like aspects of many groups, but by the time they get stationary and a tax id, they're off in stupidland. As proof, I offer the FSF, and Skepchicks.
4. Don't bring up shit from post A on post B. I'll just delete the post and probably ban you. I hate that shit. I know every comment that comes in here, comment on the post you're commenting about, and we'll be fine.
5. Don't expect me to take you, this site, or me seriously.
6. Know what "ad hominem" is before you use it. Really.
7. Don't use "Hobson's Choice" when you really mean "Morton's Fork".

I'd rather not ban people, but I won't care overmuch when I do. If you decide to stop reading this site, I don't really care that much. Not every thing is for every body. Like I said, I don't make money from this, the only ass I have to kiss is mine.

Oh, and copyright. This site is copyrighted. The old-fashoned Harlan Ellison kind. Not copyleft or creative commons or any of that bullshit. You want to use content from here outside of what is permissable under US or local copyright law, (i'm fine with people in other countries using their own laws in this case), just fucking ask. I try to say "yes" whenever humanly possible. Short of wanting to put an entire post up in "The NAMBLA Times", you'd have to work pretty hard to get me to say no. Even if I don't like you, I'll probably say yes. I'm weird that way.

Comments

Warning for Notes users: The commenting system uses HTML.
I know this will be scary for some of you, especially Notes fans. However, open standards, rah-rah.
If you want to use less-than or greater-than signs, or other similar characters that HTML reserves,
you'll simply have to learn to do it the HTML way. Luckily, HTML is kind of popular, no matter what
your re-educators have told you, and you can easily find help on the intertubes.