At the 3rd-party Apple store this afternoon, my girlfriend pointed out this iPod speaker dock, saying it was rather good looking. I was horrified, and then found it really funny. I suppose her bad taste explains why we’ve been together so long.
— Posted from my iPhone
In the past few days, I’ve had a couple of conversations with people about what the “best” hosted blogging platform is (pure coincidence, my life isn’t that geeky). I’ve been using Google Blogger for this here outlet since 2002, with a short WordPress dalliance in-between that cost me a few weeks’ worth of posts when my hosting company suffered a database outage.
Blogger isn’t really so bad, but it IS bland and boring. In exchange for solid, Google-level stability, you have to put up with a small selection of dated templates and no easy way to customize your blog without some knowledge of HTML and CSS. But at least you can. Everything about the page can be changed, provided you know how. I’m quite familiar with the ways of the internet, but I can’t make this page look good to save my life. Adding widgets is quite easy, though, which gives it an advantage over the next service.
WordPress.com – a hosted blogging service, not to be confused with the WordPress.org blogging software for installing on your own server, offered by the same company – is very modern in comparison with Blogger, but doesn’t allow you to insert your own widgets and bits of code. That means no cute little Flickr slideshows, ads, or shoutboxes. Some plug-ins are offered by WordPress.com itself, but those are limited. Templates/themes are also limited to the ones included, with some minor tweaks to header images, colors, etc. but these tend to be very nice and good enough for most people.
Typepad costs money, unlike the first two choices, and I’ve always held it in high regard for the fact that they’ve managed to stay afloat in a sea of free competitors, and their marketing has been quite good. The site’s landing page boasts a large number of high-profile bloggers and professional journalists who swear by Typepad, and promises hundreds of expertly designed templates to turn even complete luddites into proud owners of beautiful sites in mere minutes. –– When I finally tried to sign up for the free trial this week, the reality was a complete disappointment. These templates are anything but modern and attractive. It’s hard to justify paying a minimum of US$5 a month when just a few more dollars can get you…
Squarespace. The things that are being done by this company put their competitors to shame. Sure, their prices are a little high, but I’ve yet to see the design and technology at work here being offered anywhere else. Many software packages say you can put a website together with virtually no HTML knowledge, but they’re still pretty hard to use. Squarespace lets you drag and drop content, switch layouts/themes with a few clicks, and do complicated CSS adjustments like changing the width of columns, the amount of leading (space) between lines of text, font sizes, etc., with sliders and other intuitive controls. All in real-time, so you can see the changes you’re making. If you want to get technical, it apparently lets you do that too.
Of course, there are a bunch of others like Livejournal and Vox (both free and owned by Six Apart, the company that offers Typepad), but I can’t recommend them for any serious use. They’re kind of hybrid blogging + social networking platforms, limited in scope and geared towards more ‘fun’ and socially oriented applications. You can’t use your own designs, and I don’t think you can export your data if you’d like to move to another service. Blogger, WordPress, and Squarespace make it easy to leave, always a good sign.
My conclusion is, if you can afford US$8-14 a month, Squarespace is your best bet. Their gallery of customers includes Mark Ecko’s personal blog and corporate site, Digg founder Kevin Rose’s blog, and a few other great-looking examples. If you’d rather go free, choose Google Blogger if you have some coding knowledge or would like to put ads and fun gadgets on your page. WordPress.com is a stylish, easy alternative for people who just want to start writing.
Feeling rather tired in the afternoon and with no work to do, I thought I’d hit up Starbucks for the usual triple venti low-fat iced latte and an hour with William Gibson’s so-far-enthralling Neuromancer.
I’ve gotten into the habit of relying on the local NEA (National Environmental Agency) website for weather forecasts, despite having been burnt – perhaps ‘soaked’ is the more appropriate word – on a number of occasions. Still, I checked the website before leaving and was guaranteed by a minutes-old analysis that the good weather would last the rest of the evening.
It takes less than half an hour to get to the nearest Starbucks. Barely a minute after making it here, it started coming down; a fact I could not have anticipated with any of my bodily senses, but perhaps should have with some basic pattern recognition and Murphy’s Law. Photographic proof is enclosed.
The question I’m leading up to is this: what does it take to be a government-employed meteorologist in Singapore? Do our tropical conditions make the job more difficult? Is it more guesswork than science? If you go to the site, you’ll see an animated rain map which charts the movements of storm clouds over time.
In the past, I’ve had a lot more success than the “experts” in predicting the spread of rain just by watching which way the winds appear to be moving, but in today’s case the storm hadn’t started yet. Why can’t we get accurate weather reports? Will someone hire me to do this without some sort of degree in making shit up?
Actually, I do have an English degree.
— Posted from my iPhone
Every week, Play-Asia does some kinda inventory purge and puts out a single non-bargain bin game at bargain bin prices.
This week, it’s Timeshift for the Xbox 360 at approximately SGD$25 (inclusive of shipping).
It scored a rather respectable 70% average on Metacritic. Seeing as it’s a pretty slow quarter for games, I thought I might put this out there. Here’s my affiliate link to the store: Buy Timeshift at Play-Asia.com
Offer ends next Tuesday, the 24th of February.
This is the view I grew up with for about nine years until we moved. The sun rose in the East to the left and set over behind those trees on the right. In the middle between some buildings you can just make out some of Orchard Road, Far East Plaza and the Tangs pagoda, in particular. Every year during the National Day Parade, we’d stand out on the balcony here and try to see the fireworks to the East. As Singapore developed, taller buildings rose and blocked off all but the highest-rising rockets.
This was taken with an iPhone 3G and stitched together (3 photos) with the Pano app. Some exposure enhancement was later applied in Photoshop and Lightroom.
Sitting at the next table over is a group of possibly Russian men drinking beer in the middle of the afternoon, playing cards. They’re using the thin paper stock of an airplane issued deck, or maybe it
came free with a cheap, unrelated purchase. Further along the row of rickety tables is an Indian gentleman with slicked-back hair and an American accent, even further still, a Buddhist monk and a couple of English chavs. The monk is not drinking.
Smoke in the air, with the sounds of so many different tongues it would be pointless to call them foreign (on whose behalf but my own?), it’s a scene romantics and film critics might fall over themselves to
identify as belonging to another time and place, Morocco in the 1940s maybe, Blade Runner’s hybrid America perhaps — given the hide and seek aromas of nearby Asian cooking and the aggressive buzz of neon — but also one that many of us take for granted here in Singapore.
A beggar approaches and manages to fleece a few dollars off those present. I am invisible to him. The monk numbly declines.
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