March 2008 Archives

I am trying out Movable Type to see how it works with the site. I had been using Drupal but wanted to create multiple sites under the elvisripley.com domain. Drupal didn't really handle that very well. I am experimenting with Movable Type and it seems to do what I want and handle it the way that I want. I would like to keep my website files neat and tidy without a lot of junk in the root directory or any other directory where I needed to go often. Each site, elvisripley.com/b as an example, can have its own users, settings and look just like it is in independent install of Movable Type or Drupal or Wordpress but it has the same log in.

I think the reason I switched from Drupal was because it could do anything you wanted but you had to set it up. I think that for usability it is still another generation away. For a large site I wouldn't hesitate to use Drupal but for my own site ease of use was what I was most interested in. With Movable Type the only probably I had starting out was the problem of what does Movable Type think it is supposed to be? After I got a hold of that I think I got a good handle on it all. There is also a great iPhone interface for managing posts and comments, that is the kind of thing I am looking for. I don't want loads of power if I can't use it easily with my iPhone. Movable Type, because it is more user oriented, will be much more likely to have an iPhone app for management like Windows Live Writer.

Below is a sample of my QuickTime embed code with a nice javascript play button that should work with all templates now. I like that much more than any solution I have found so far. I used to watch Get Smart all the time.

This text was on the homepage while there was no other site content.

Last night I came to a site upgrade and that is the best time to rethink the way my site works. Most of the work involved in my site is keeping the old stuff working. I have switched platforms a few times and keeping all the links constant and the content working was starting to be a pain and it also limited me greatly. I have moved everything over to archive1.elvisripley.com and it works fine. I will change the look to keep it more in line with how it used to look. You might notice that is called archive1. That is because now that I have done this it wasn't so bad so I will probably do this more in the future. Also now that I have archived the whole site and see myself doing it in the future I can plan for that and keep my files and code much cleaner than it had been. I try to keep my email inbox at zero and have gotten pretty good at it but my site was getting sluggish to work with, maybe more like a snail because it had barriers in addition to being slow and gross.

I am evaluating the current state of the internet to decide which direction will be best for the site but also for me to use because that is the most important thing. If it is easy I will be much more interested in using it.

Elvis Ripley (my name is on here twice)

I put up these pictures of Viet's going away party. It is a good set but I also thought I would put up this video. When I shoot a group of images I usually just put up one, whatever is best during the second long burst but when you view them all together it is a pretty nice experience.

A6-6T6 Tower

In the last part of 2007 I had been looking for some speakers and a subwoofer. It was pretty tough to find something that was just the right balance of cost and sound quality. Most companies after you go above the cheapest speakers try to balance cost, sound quality and high quality wood cabinets. It doesn't really help for me. I just want it big and cheap. Here is an example of some of the speakers I was considering and maybe also these. Both of those are fine examples of speakers but still not as much performance as I would like and a little nicer looking than I would care to have.

Spiky Feet

Subwoofers are another search I have been on for a long time. In the last couple of years there has been a big growth in a more manufacturer direct model for subwoofer as well as more subwoofer only dealers instead of speaker makers who also make a subwoofer. For subwoofers I looked at Hsu Research along with Aperion and AV123 from the above speaker examples. My favorite was from SVS mainly because I wanted to have a cylindrical subwoofer. How sweet would that be? But SVS also makes good box subwoofers too.

In what I thought was the end I had decided on getting the SVS SBS-01 5.1 speaker system with that nice box sub above. It is a very nice setup, the sub is great but the speakers are a little expensive for being a little small and they are also not very efficient. Around that time, this is probably November, I found an article about some subs made for a theater. I wondered how much that would cost and saw that on the company's site you could figure it out and it wasn't very much for some car sized subwoofers. That lead me to their home subwoofers. I read reviews for about a month and decided they were where it is at for price performance. Also most people aren't happy with the way they look so it was perfect.

I ordered a subwoofer, which as far as I could find reviewed higher than most of the other subs I was checking out. That then led to a couple tower speakers and a center, you get a discount if you get a package. It was all very reasonably priced but the subwoofer is made on order and they are backed up quite a bit. Last Thursday it had been 10 weeks and the towers showed up after 8 weeks. That is a pretty long time. The subwoofer is expected to ship tomorrow so it will arrive this Thursday or Friday, right at 11 weeks from order. Yowser.

In terms of a review, these speakers sound really amazing. The clarity and range of the speakers I ended up getting are really fantastic. The towers and center go lower than I would have expected for the size of each one. They are really super and I am glad I have them. I will really go into everything when the subwoofer shows up.

Elemental Designs A6 6T6 Tower Set