MOTD

I noticed nutella mumbling about the ability to check the output of his entries. I only just realized that he was actually entering everything in HTML, and ignoring the actual plain-text formatting that motd uses. Even his entries that were just blank unadorned paragraphs were separated with <p> tags instead of blank lines.

Well I've now switched laziness away from the old "genericwiki" formatter, and over to reST. This means that shoving HTML code inline will no longer work, and you'll have to learn reST layout in order to punch in unicode entities or make non-trivial links. The end result, however, will be to banish those hideous less-than/greater-than symbols from everyone's posts.

But the bonus is that you can always test by running rest2html on an entry and checking your result in a browser.

You know, I saw in a movie how people on stilts can run 45 miles per hour.

Hey, Sammy. You sure it weren't cartoons you was watchin'?

I've been enjoying Nick's experiment in bringing together a critical mass of blogs on a single subject. Since one feed cross-references another a single update from one feed generates enough traffic to push everything else out of the Laziness view. The downside is that I can no longer use Laziness to catch up on the latest versions of the toons that it used to receive. I haven't managed to catch Spamusement on the Laziness page in weeks. The sad thing is that one picture of a city rail station sign is cute, poignant, art, whatever but several dozen per day is just sad. The cross-linking emphasises the lack of original material. Hopefully the same exercise can be repeated with a more specialised interest group.

Life is pretty good at the moment, so good that I am getting suspicious. My new colleagues are great but I can't get used to having really competent management above me. I keep expecting them to drop the mask and start acting solely to promote themselves. Similarly I can't get used to how competent the drivers are here. I am not saying they are perfect but they do odd things like stopping at red lights and using their turn signals. The crazy thing is that people also anticipate what others are doing and will make space and slow down or whatever. Back in Lake County Illinois people are so self-centred that the idea of cooperative behaviour just doesn't cross their mind. I realise that they absolutely do not typify mid-westerners but I loathe them all and condemn them to a lifetime of having to deal with each other. The bad thing is that I have to go back there this weekend to close up my old apartment. Naturally the rental agency is trying to screw me out of my deposit. I'll definitely be shaking the dust from my feet when I finally leave. Good riddance! Mercifully the new manager at my old job is apparently acting more and more crazy so people are leaving in all directions. Two more friends will be joining me in the Bay Area (at other companies) before the end of the year. It also turns out that the insane manager has a long history of acting the way they do. They were managed out of three jobs in rapid succession (the explanation of "I had to move to follow my spouse" is complete crap. I knew my previous company was on the way down hill but this is more than a coup de grace. This is dancing on the grave.

This weekend had me on an intensive tour of the peninsula and city with the aim of finding places to rent and/or (ahem) buy. My guide chosen by the relocation agency was great fun and showed me some of the hidden gems both down here in San Mateo county and in some of the neighbourhoods in the city. While I had previously travelled all over I still had plenty to learn. I wasn't aware of towns like Redwood Shores (wouldn't want to live there, but good to know that it exists) and was amazed at how the Mission Bay area has changed over the years. I haven't decided on my final plan but I don't have to move from my temporary housing for another couple of months so I don't have to rush. I definitely need to move nearer the city, or at least within BART distance. I haven't tried Caltrain yet.

The only negative thing that has happened to the area since I left is the increase in traffic. Since I don't have to face a horrible daily commute (I am currently 5 minutes from work) this doesn't affect me too much. One Sunday I made my obligatory pilgrimage to Point Reyes and CA1 was still eminently drivable and the beach (Limantour) still large enough to swallow the visiting humanity.

No, moving back here was definitely not a mistake.

No! It's true! I saw it in a movie!

I just ripped off the RSS 2.0 theme files from another pyblosxom package, so now the feeds should be working again, though at a different URL.

http://zork.net/motd/index.rss <-- teh new url.

http://zork.net/motd/nick/index.rss <-- example user RSS category feed.

So, Rilo Kiley was on Austin City Limits last night (which isn't helping Crackmonkey 's perception of them as a country band), so I recorded it with the intent to make oggs. After fumbling around with getting the inputs working on my computer (Audigy input volume can apparently only be controlled by an alsa mixer, not an OSS mixer using the ALSA compatability mode) and when I finally got it working everything was all staticy, due to a combination of my cheap cables and the fact that my audio card is inside my computer, which is all sorts of electricly noisy. Then I realized I can just plug my iriver into my TV, so that's what I'm doing. Beaujolais!

Made it! After about 2350 miles I arrived in Fostah City this afternoon. I have stories of the journey to relate (being woken by armed police at 1:00am in Nebraska was one of the highlights) but being in a rather splendid apartment overlooking the marina suggests that it was all worth it. Free internet access is also a big plus. Tomorrow is the first day at the new job so I need to do some reading. Later droogies!