4/12/2000

New Manila feature: if you edit your template in such a way that you can't use your site, you can go to the emergency restore template to default page.

Aaron Sele pitched a 3-hit complete game shutout. M's beat the Tigers 4-0.

Gratuitous chance not to link to Amazon: I just started reading The Death of Artemio Cruz by Carlos Fuentes.

LinuxNewbies: More On Installing Software. Third in a three-part series.

LinuxNewbies: The Other Side of the Coin. "It's not my job to know that."

Ryan Anderson is pitching today for the Rainiers. He's amazing. Sheila and I saw him play in a spring training game against the Phillies. You'll be hearing his name more and more.

Sheila's got pictures of our trip last month to San Juan Battista, the day after ManilaPalooza.

Qube Quorner now has a static version, using Manila's static rendering feature.

Well -- the Mariners lost yesterday. They'll make it up today. Aaron Sele is the starting pitcher.

A story I've been planning to write: Why I Like Linux. I haven't written it yet. But here's the gist: Linux is like Frontier in that it's a large system with lots of text, hierarchies, and rules. The important thing is that it may take work to learn it, but it's knowable. The more you learn the more it makes sense, you start to be able to predict things. There's even a kind of beauty that reveals itself. Windows is much less knowable. I've been a Windows user longer than I've been a Linux user (and a Mac user longer still) -- but on Windows I quickly get to a point where there is only the unknowable. I'm not talking about the kernel here -- I've never looked at the Linux kernel source code -- I'm talking about all the layers above it. I'm talking about configuring Apache vs. configuring IIS, I'm talking about the day-to-day of admin and script-writing and so on. Windows hides, Linux reveals.

But -- it depends on temperament. The same virtues that Frontier has are the virtues that attract me to Linux. Not everyone shares my temperament. (Thank goodness.)

On the other hand, I very much appreciate UIs that are easy-to-use. I'm not a command-line snob. I remain a Mac user, too. Manila could be much harder to use than it is -- it could also be easier. We're working on it.

What drives me crazy is the middle ground occupied by Windows. It appears to give you the control of Linux, but doesn't. It appears to give you the ease-of-use of the Mac, but doesn't.

Finally, to close out this rant -- the irony is that most of the time I'm in front of a Windows machine. It's not universally horrible in all ways. I could honestly write a story about why I like Windows. Perhaps tomorrow. (And I'll give the Linux desktop a sound thrashing while I'm at it.)

The point is, everything's kind of half good.