Notes from behind the curtain

The hammering you hear backstage is the result of continuing hard work as the Waveflux redesign continues.
It has been quite the adventure thus far.
Current outlook: Guardedly positive.
Current timeframe: Days, not weeks. I think.

Jim Talent: Gay basher for Romney

One of the very best things the Missouri electorate ever did was to usher conservative water boy Jim Talent out of the Senate and into the unemployment line. You’d think that the humiliation of losing to Claire McCaskill might have taught Talent the folly of pandering to homophobia in exchange for votes…and you’d be wrong. [...]

This is why we filled up the tank this morning

The local gas stations will probably be selling regular for five dollars a gallon after today:
Oil prices, after taking an initial dip on a weekly government report on inventory levels, crossed the $100 threshold Thursday and continued a six-year, five-fold spike driven by surging demand and limited supply.
U.S. light crude for February delivery crossed $100 [...]

Malcolm Middleton wishes you a Merry Christmas

My wife told me something yesterday that I hadn’t realized: there really is a traditional Christmas-time contest in the UK for the number-one music single, just like in Love Actually (but without Bill Nighy, sadly). Cor blimey!
M was amused to see that the current top contender is a bleaty little tune from wholly fictional, cloven-hoofed [...]

Is our Forbes reporters learning?

Forbes.com may be the “home page for the world’s business leaders,” but let’s hope those leaders don’t take the magazine’s advice on raising children. A slideshow accompanying the commentary “Where to Educate Your Children” lists St. Louis as the 9th best place in the country - out of 20 - to have your kids schooled:
No. [...]

The Lumiere Place-Dispatch

Visitors to the web analogue of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch had best put their Ray-Bans on first, lest their retinas be scorched by the garish Lumiere Place advertising that serves as wallpaper today:

Subtle!
The P-D must have decided it could make additional cash by renting out the space formerly occupied by its non-revenue-producing (and fairly unattractive) [...]

The head hobbit returns

There and (wait for it) back again
It probably shouldn’t please me as much as it does that Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema have resolved their legal differences and that the director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy will return to Middle-Earth as executive producer of The Hobbit …but I am indeed pleased. Very [...]

Roid rage

For me, the most interesting aspect of Mitchell Day was the overblown “team coverage” given the story by local NBC affiliate KSDK. This is what happens when a station tries to take ownership of a story. Similarly hysterical is the war font treatment employed by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Why, it’s the biggest story since the [...]

Open sourcery

You can hear the call echo across the blogosphere: Movable Type is now open source. But let’s get down to brass tacks, shall we? What does this development mean to me?
Directly: Not a thing, really. Examining code makes me feel like I’m trying to read goat entrails. I have no desire to download nightly builds. [...]

Comment is not free

Commenting is rather catch-as-catch-can here at the blog, and I have no idea why. Thought I might have remedied it last night. Thought wrong.
Working on it.