Minh’s Notes

…I started this blog. Well, not really: it was an ordinary personal website, intended to host well-researched essays and helpful tutorials on the Vietnamese language. The only thing is, it also had this “blog-in-kind” on the front page that announced any additions to the website. Over time, it morphed and grew into a full-fledged blog, and eventually the website became little more than the blog you see here. All I can say is that it really started with an article about sesquipedalia (in its original form).

I blame Movable Type, the software that has powered this blog from its humble beginnings as an announcements section. It made things so much easier than the tedious process I had suffered through previously: code a page in HTML, connect to the FTP server, find the right folder, upload the page, and repeat for every page that should happen to harbor a Related Links section.

Movable Type’s Save button made that entirely unnecessary, and it fueled alternating flurries of posts and lulls in activity that probably annoyed my regular readers equally. Though at least it allowed me to claim to my competitors – not entirely falsely – that this site was “Updated daily.” That was some claim to make in the days before LiveJournal’s entrance into mainstream culture (and later Xanga’s and MySpace’s).

I’m not going to go into a long diatribe about how far my blog has gone and what herdles I’ve had to overcome in keeping it going – I’ll save that for this time next year, my fifth blogiversary. (You knew that was a word, didn’t you?) For now, I’ll just serve up a few links from the (read: my) past:

• The first incarnation of the first website I ever kept online for any prolonged period of time, The Loveland Schools Press ONLINE. Notice the tasteless cacophony of animation. After all, we were still in the late ’90s.
• A mirror of the second incarnation of LSP Online. After more than a year of neglect, I later replaced the main site with a “letter from the editor,” declaring quite eloquently the site’s closure – as if that were necessary.
• Archives from the original Minh’s Notes, before it took on a function more or less independent from MingerWeb, my long-defunct personal site.
• A replica of the design that this blog wore from 2002 to 2003, refurbished with the latest entries.
• The last blog entries ever to be published at my Netfirms site, which I maintained until I moved Minh’s Notes to my brand-new f2o account here.
• Another replica of an old design here, the appropriately-elegant Notebook design that adorned this blog for most of 2004 and 2005, after over a year in production. Someday, I might give in and revert to this beautiful design for old-times’s sake.
• …

And here we are. 2006. The day before my birthday, this site stands at 714 published entries, 428 approved comments, and 329 approved TrackBack pings, including those from one translation (Apuntes de Minh in Spanish), as well as a somewhat-popular feed aggregator for 357 blogs by 236 St. Xers. And lots more stuff that I planned but never got around to carrying out.

So that’s my state of the site address for tonight. I hope you’ve been bored utterly stiff.

Entry №999, posted by Minh Nguyễn at 11:51 PM | Edit | Permalink
Categories: Announcements, Loveland Schools Press, Summary, Weblogging | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (2)

The few of you who have me as a friend on LiveJournal will notice that my blog there has been updated for the first time in almost a year, with a verbatim copy of my last post here. This evening, while my host was perpetually down, I installed MTLJPost 1.9.2, the newest version of a Movable Type that turns my LiveJournal blog into an automatic mirror of this weblog.

My LiveJournal account used to function as an automatic mirror until about August of last year, when a previous version of the same plugin croaked on me, forcing me to basically abandon that blog, which ended up containing every Minh’s Notes entry from this website’s inception in March 2002 to that August. Now that the plugin has been updated, my LiveJournal blog will once again be updated on a regular basis, for those of you who hesitate to venture outside the world of LiveJournal once in awhile. You know who you are.

In telling people about this tonight, I’ve frequently been asked, “Why?!” Besides the fact that such a system is incredibly shweet – that’s apparently the jargon used by computer scientists – there’s a very practical concern: I need a backup. Ever since my first website, LSP Online, was located at WebJump (now defunct), I’ve kept a mirror of my site just in case something were to go wrong with my main site.

That strategy has worked. In the time I’ve maintained a web presence, two hosts (WebJump and Akshor) have closed their doors without notifying me beforehand, and for a time, both WebJump and my current host, freedom2operate, had downtime so frequently that I was forced to direct people to my mirrors.

After this exam week, I’m also planning to install another plugin that’ll turn my Blogger blog (also named 1ec5) into a similar mirror. But rest assured: this site will remain the primary location of Minh’s Notes.

Entry №944, posted by Minh Nguyễn at 10:04 PM | Edit | Permalink
Categories: Announcements, Loveland Schools Press, Weblogging | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Brad’s newest post spurred me to list some of the links I’ve had in the queue for awhile, but have never gotten around to posting. Some of these are responses to Brad’s post, so you might want to head on over there first:

• Moon Children – An odd story behind this odd tool. Now all they need to launch is Google Sky, which’ll let you navigate the skies above you – constellations, galaxies, stars, and all.

• Beam It Right There, Scotty – If you already had qualms about Tasers, the military’s new toy puts it all in perspective. This AP article takes a look at technological barriers to deploying ray guns on the field.

• Pathname not found – the once-vibrant Adobe Atmosphere User-to-User Forums have gone to the big 404 in the sky. As my long-time readers may recall, Atmosphere was discontinued in December, and Adobe has gradually taken away its life support ever since.

• The Kelo Floodgates – In case you believed that Kelo v. New London would be used in good faith by local governments, this should shake that belief. Many segments of our population were vulnerable enough before the Supreme Court ruled that land doesn’t even have to be “blighted” to be taken by eminent domain.

• Under Construction – Think twice before creating a page like my ancient construction page.

  Thanks to Ken Walker for the scoop.

• Why PHP Sucks – Why I’ve never actually used my copy of PHP Advanced for the World Wide Web, Visual QuickPro Guide, as good a book as it is. I must’ve gotten spoiled by the interactive REPL environment in Python and Scheme.

• history flow – Via the Wikipedia Signpost, a neat IBM visualization software package that analyzes how Wikipedia articles evolve. The resulting images are interesting to gander at.

• Fairness worth protecting – PBS is my favorite TV network; unfortunately, it’s the victim of an oversimplified understanding of American politics. From the same Signpost story:

  [There is] a new emphasis to eradicate bias by Kenneth Tomlinson, the Bush administration’s pick for chairman of the private nonprofit corporation [Corporation for Public Broadcasting], which was created by the federal Public Broadcasting Act of 1967.

  Tomlinson also hired Fred Mann, a secret consultant, to study the “liberal bias” found on PBS and National Public Radio. Mann, a former Republican campaign consultant, reviewed a number of programs, including “Now with Bill Moyers” on PBS, and NPR shows hosted by Tavis Smiley and Diane Rehm.

  Guests were labeled with L for liberal or C for conservative; questions and comments about the Bush presidency were, according to Mann, “anti-administration.”

  It may be no secret that Bill Moyers is critical of the current administration, but to place such blanket statements on everyone who appears on the network, while current national politics remains quite complex, is to do a disservice to the multitudes of loyal public broadcasting viewers and listeners.

• TactaPad – This input device would beat a mouse or trackpad any day. The only concern I have about it is precision, but it’s so intuitive and natural that I can’t wait until they find a company willing to bring it to market.

  Thanks to Steven Garrity for the scoop.

• Optimus keyboard – Via tuaw.com, an innovative keyboard that looks cool; unfortunately, it looks as if it’s just a few meticulously-drawn images by a design company.

• Which evil nation state are you? – An interesting simile attached to a humorously long disclaimer.

  Thanks to Neil Turner for the scoop.

• Wikipedia’s Word on Folksonomy – Wikipedia may give you a lot of freedom, but it’s not an “exercise in anarchy.” Again via the Signpost, why this is a Good Thing™.

• Accessible Data Tables – Not your father’s HTML table: one that the blind can actually use.

  Thanks to Dave Shea for the scoop.

And now, back to my regularly scheduled procrastination.

Entry №817, posted by Minh Nguyễn at 6:18 PM | Edit | Permalink
Categories: Adobe Atmosphere, Computing, Humor, Loveland Schools Press, News, Politics, Programming, Summary, Wikipedia | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)