I used to be a programmer. For years I’d sit at some computer or another hacking away at whatever was interesting or required at the time. It’s all I did. I may not have been a Rock Star(tm) or Ninja(tm), but I built stuff that worked and that clients liked. A lot of it. When development was all I did, there were things that were critically important to me. Languages. Frameworks.

The release of “Tinderbox 4.5”:http://eastgate.com/Tinderbox brings prettier maps, faster agents and new visualation options along with a boatload of incremental improvements. I’ve jotted down a few notes.

I felt so dirty as I wandered into Best Buy to grab a copy of Vista. There was really no way around it, since I sometimes need to test web stuff in IE, manage a few SQL Server databases and of course play the occasional game. The Vista install process on my MBP via VMWare went easily enough, so I was feeling cocky. What about this Media Center streaming to XBox thing I’ve heard so much about?

Every six months or so I decide it’s time to switch blogging engines. The last time it happened I switched from Movable Type to ExpressionEngine. I switched then because I’d heard good things about EE and wanted to try it out somewhere. This time, I’m going from ExpressionEngine to WordPress. Why? Because WordPress does pretty much everything anyone needs for a singe author weblog. I don’t want to design my site.

I’ve been feeling a bit wonky for a week or so. Tonight It got uncomfortable enough to consider asking a doctor or two to about it. The Internet said I had several symptoms of a heart attack so better safe than sorry, eh? So here I am. Wired up to monitors, oxygen tube up my nose for the past 4 hours. EKG looked fine. Bloodwork pending. Just had an ultrasound to check my gall bladder I think.

Back to WordPress. Posting from the iPhone with their app. This is much easier.

I’ve removed comments from this here blog. Not because of trolls. I get very few comments anyway so abuse hasn’t been a problem. Not because of spam. Disqus did a good job of preventing that. Then why? Because on the off chance I write anything interesting enough to comment on, most of the comments will likely end up on Friendfeed anyway, so why not just let them happen there instead? Friendfeed hasn’t fragmented the conversation, it’s stolen them completely.

Inspired by the post at but she’s a girl…, I thought I’d jot down a few of my own notes on how I too use Tinderbox as a Daybook. One of the more useful things I’ve been doing with Tinderbox is to keep a running log of things I do each day. This “Daybook” has become a way to track billable time for clients, record technical notes, and keep a basic journal.

Two words: Angelina Jolie. Finally, she’s back as Fox; exactly the type of too-hot bad-ass she was born to play. As for the rest of Wanted, just sit back, put your mind on hold and prepare for gorgeous, non-stop over-the-top action from start to finish. And for the ladies, McAvoy is almost as ripped as Jolie. This movie is why they coined the phrase “Summer blockbuster.” I still don’t get the whole bullet-bending thing, but I don’t think that even matters.

That’s it. I’m out. Twitter has lost most of its utility for me over the past several weeks. It’s like feature whack-a-mole. One day replies are disabled, the next it’s the “older” link. IM is pretty much always dead. I have been ramming Twitter down everyone’s throat since before it had an “e” in the name, but I quit. Between the whack-a-mole game and the FAIL whale it’s not worth it.

In Bruges is pitch black, very funny and totally recommended. Colin Ferrell is awesome here.

The movie Teeth, about a young woman with teeth in places no one should have them (vagina dentata) was funny, gross, interesting and terribly, terribly disturbing.