Dan Feidt's log on Minnesota, Information Operations, spinstorms and latent contradictions.
There will be nice blockquotes, because you know how I like blockquotes. Blockquotes are the HTML which surrounds a big chunk of text, usually indented. I like to make it smaller, with a simpler font. Why not throw in nice little lines above and below. FOR EXAMPLE:
The New York Times reports today that Ariel Sharon perhaps shouldn't have taken all those bribes. I just can't believe it, a sleazy Greek resort hotel deal, it will crush him!?!
2 Ministers Say Sharon Will Have to Resign if Indicted: Two Israeli cabinet ministers said today that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon would have to resign if an influence-buying investigation eventually led to his indictment.Mr. Sharon continued to swat that possibility aside, declaring that he would serve "at least until 2007," when elections are scheduled.
As the conflict with the Palestinians abruptly slipped to the sidelines of Israeli political debate, Israeli soldiers shot and killed a 12-year-old Palestinian boy playing near the boundary fence between the Gaza Strip and Israel...
An Israeli court on Wednesday indicted a real estate developer on charges of paying roughly $700,000 to Mr. Sharon's son, Gilad, in hopes of bribing the prime minister.
The indictment said the developer, David Appel, told Ariel Sharon that his son was expected to make a lot of money, but it did not lay out evidence that the prime minister knowingly took a bribe.
In an effort to fill up more space on the page I will describe this new system I'm setting up, and why it's better. The old Scoop system which was my site until last November had some things that never worked out well. The layout was made of complicated tables and a lot of bad FONT tags, plus everything pieced together with tough Perl code. And it required Apache with a special Perl module which took a lot of memory and slowed my computer. Besides that, it was not very searchable and I couldn't make up categories as I went along, so I wouldn't write about things that didnt go in categories. The headline was too way too big, which made me avoid putting things down more often. Overall a lot of flaws pile up.
I would like to point out that forcing people to register just to make comments is very annoying and I will never do that garbage again. Again, a Scoop problem.
So now there is this new software which is widely used in blogs all over the place called MovableType, and it is nice and flexible. There are plenty of plug-ins and anyone can say anything without bother.
this software is pretty sophisticated but it doesn't require the computer to process Perl every time someone visits. All the pages are generated HTML. Comments may not work too fast.
Now I've made some nice background images for texture but it looks like its maybe a little bit too patchy just yet.
I am putting together what is finally by my reckoning the fifth version of HongPong.com. This one will be more fluid and entertaining than before. The software, including updating my Perl system, took only about an hour and a half. Time for bed. Customizations tomorrow!!