Category: Before

Marcus H. of Bugford, Kansas writes that shortly after he printed the Beans for Breakfast May Calendar using the metric A4 format file and decidedly non-metric North American letter size paper, his employers announced they’d begin honoring UK Bank Holidays. Across the pond at Forthwithshire in the Home Counties, Stan M. claims his love life improved dramatically after he printed April’s Beans for Breakfast calendar using the letter size file and A4 paper.

I make no guarantees that your results could be the same as these lucky gentlemen’s. In fact I’m required by law to discourage such experiments. But if your luck can be traced back to printing the June Beans for Breakfast calendar with mismatched paper sizes, I’d like to know about it. Send email to (jeff at this domain) or leave a comment below.

This is the June Beans for Breakfast calendar. Files are 130 kb PDFs, which means that Acrobat Reader (or something like it) is required:

Letter Size (United States & Canada)
ISO A4 (Everyone else)

Yesterday afternoon at Pier 62/63, I saw a few people packing up after the John Kerry speech that was held there in the morning.

I visited the new Seattle Public Library yesterday and took some photos…

Photo Friday: Marco

I’ve seen a few stencils by this artist painted directly onto sidewalks and mailboxes. These are the first stickers I’ve noticed. They’re all over the place around 15th Avenue right now.

Is that first word in Cirillic script

(something like “gpon”?) or am I over-thinking this.

Frozen Chicken — Here’s the same sign in March.

Bloggers monopolized the front room at a party at Manuel‘s house yesterday. Faces turned ashen and voices grave when the subject of the Movable Type licensing structure came up – not so much because of the subject itself, I think, but because everyone knew that I was sure to go on at length about it.

I probably need to lighten up.

That’s better.

Six Apart has moved quickly to refine the Movable Type 3.0 licensing structure based on customer feedback. The number of authors and weblogs allowed under the cheapest paid license is being raised to five authors and five weblogs. The two higher license tiers will be eliminated and one blog/one user add-on licenses are now available for $10.

The definition of a weblog, as it’s used in the license, has been refined; the license now specifies that one Movable Type powered website, regardless of how many Movable Type “blogs” are used to generate it, is one weblog. (eg: The main body of Justin’s Skull / Bones site and the “Erstwhere” link blog on its sidebar are counted as a single weblog.) Inactive weblogs and inactive users aren’t counted, even if they’re still backed up on the Movable Type installation.

If I upgraded, Struat.com would be covered by the basic paid license and I’d be able to launch one more Movable Type project. But I know that, going forward, I’m going to experiment with blog-type projects, start new sites and shed others, and I don’t want to have to constantly reassess what I’m doing based on whether or not I’m one user over the license-set limit. The new licensing terms are still too restrictive. The per user/per weblog licensing model doesn’t work for me. I’ll use another program for my Marco Polo project, probably the next WordPress release or another open source CMS. I’ll stick with Movable Type for my current MT-powered sites and will support my brother’s Movable Type powered site. I made a small donation to Ben and Mena a couple of years ago, and that can be applied as part of a licensing fee, so I might eventually get a paid license and upgrade to Movable Type 3.0 just to see how it goes. If I do that, I’ll definitely keep the current installation intact, in case I want to revert to that setup and less restrictive license. As for my book site, I really should have been open to a free alternative even before the commercial license became more restrictive and I’m glad that I’ve had the chance to re-evaluate.

Finally, I’ll say that I’ve been happy with Movable Type ever since I installed it. Without Movable Type this site probably wouldn’t exist – either that, or it would really suck.

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More…

onepotmeal: “S called his editor and said, Hey, I’ve been thinking, I want to relicense my book.”

Client and Server: “One day, you get a call from the car dealer and they ask you, “Hey, we’re working on a new model and we’re looking for people to test it out and tell us what’s wrong with it. Now, mind you, in order to use this car, we’ll have to take your old one away.” You think, OK, sure, let’s do it.”

kottke.org: “The tiered personal pricing still doesn’t make sense.”

Ben Trott in May 5th IT Conversations interview: “Movable Type has always been a really great tool, and the fact that we’ve had 38 cents donation per download says that even though the donation model worked out well for us when it was just Mena and myself it’s not going to support a company.”

A guy came up to me while I was taking this photo and we started speculated about who might be living in this house. This is an interesting corner. There’s another worn down house next door. There’s a big colorful school bus with a chimney parked on the lawn, and a tiny garage that somebody might be living in. I haven’t studied the “Notice of Proposed Land Use Action” sign that’s posted on the garage, but I presume that everyone is being evicted and that the houses will be replaced with condos.

The man I’d been talking to explained that he’d once helped save a condemned apartment building in New York under a squatters’ rights law. Then he introduced himself, he’d just gotten out of the VA hospital and was moving into tent city. He’d come over from Bothell because he thought that one of the church’s on my street was giving out lunch today, but it turns out they only do that on Wednesdays. “Bothell is an odd place for us to be, since all the services are down here in the city.” I mentioned that Madison Market was giving out free tofu hotdogs today. “I just had one. It was really good.” That didn’t seem to appeal to him, but he thanked me before moving on.

I thought I’d go for a short bike ride this morning, before getting around to anything productive. The back tire needed a little air. When I removed the cap from the valve and turned the little widget, the tire collapsed with a long held gasp of air and a spit of grease. Presta valves are a lot more sensitive than the old car-style valves. I prodded at the pin in the valve, it wasn’t clicking into place as smoothly as it should have, but didn’t seem too damaged. I reinflated the tire, closed the valve, and, after turning off the CD player, and leaned down the listen. The hissing sound was nearly inaudible.

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There were a couple of summers when I was a bored kid, that I rode my blue hand-me-down ten-speed into town, or sometimes out to Sunnyside, every couple of days. I’d do the business of a friendless teenager, buy a Big Gulp or a Star Trek novel, or run errands for my mom or even for my little brother and sister. The country roads were scattered with puncture weeds and pointy gravel, and I would get flat tires all the time. I’d have to get off the bike and wheel it back home. Sometimes I just rode the rims, feeling a little guilty about it. I eventually started using thick puncture resistant inner tubes wrapped in a tire liner made from strips cut out of the flattened tubes.

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I went to the bicycle shop and got a new tube. I tried on a pair of shoes at the hipster clothing store. Then I wandered down to Bauhaus and got a bottle of 7-Up. I went outside, and all the free seats were positioned in places where I’d need to ask the nearest person, “Is this seat being used?”. Before I’d finished choosing which person to bother, a young guy who’d been sitting in an isolated spot next to a parking meter hopped over with his spare chair and set it down beside me. He was wearing a woman’s halter-top. I thanked him and sat down. Shortly thereafter, a husky older guy walked over to a motorcycle that was parked at the meter. He started getting ready to leave, put on a pair of gloves and his helmet, retrieved another helmet from a compartment on the back, and climbed on board. He passed the spare helmet over to the guy in the halter top, who gleefully set it atop his head. The engine revved, they swung a right onto Pine, and disappeared. The guy on back pinched the chinstrap gingerly with two fingers to keep it from rubbing against his adam’s apple.

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With the release of Movable Type 3.0 Developer Edition, Six Apart has unveiled a paid licensing structure for installations that involve more than one user or more than three weblogs.

The Movable Type installation at Struat.com supports two users with five active weblogs. If I were to upgrade to Movable Type 3.0, the license would cost me $69.95 ($99.95 after the introductory period).

I’ll be launching another project soon that will be comprised of two Movable Type blogs. This would raise the licensing price for a Movable Type 3.0 installation to $119.95 ($149.95 after the introductory period).

My commercial used book site will include some weblog elements. If I used Movable Type on that site, as I’ve been planning to, the most restrictive commercial license would cost me another $199.95. It seems conceivable that I might use more than five blogs there — licensing for that setup would cost $599.99.

I’ve gotten a lot of value out of Movable Type — probably $120 worth. If I were to upgrade to the new version, it’s possible that it might be worth the licensing fee. But the new restrictions make a paid copy of Movable Type version 3.0 less flexible — less valuable — than my current installation (under its “legacy” license). The new weblog and user limits feel arbitrary to me (“feel arbitrary,” though I’m sure that a lot of thought went into them). I won’t be upgrading my software under these restrictions, and I won’t be able to use Movable Type on my books site. I’m really disappointed. Movable Type is a great piece of software.