I'm disenfranchised with the WordPress development process, but I still think WordPress is a fairly groovy application. It lets me do what I want, and mostly stays out of my way. I say "mostly" because having used it for two years, it's hard for me to differentiate what works very well and what I've learned to just work around.

I'm not currently interested in exporting all of my data, importing it into some other application, and then learning to deal with a whole new set of things that mostly work. As such, I'll be sticking with WordPress for the immediate future. Moreover, looking around at the available options for blogging, none of the alternatives -- or the sites powered by them -- have me saying "Wow, I want that!". They all do the same things, by and large: publish content, accept comments, and manage some links. That's all there is to blogging, right?
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I picked up a 300 GB hard disk for a very reasonable price. I bought it without really thinking about how I'd use it. Since purchasing my laptop, I've not used my old Shuttle PC for much -- it and Carina's old desktop have been made "family PCs" mostly for the kids' use.

I'm not keen on adding any more PCs (or noise, or heat) into our house at this time, so how best to make use of this drive? A NAS would be useful, so that the kids can use it to store their data, allowing them to use either PC (all too often one of them is playing The Sims just when the other decides now is the perfect time to finish that story she started writing five weeks ago...). It would make a nice backup location for Carina's and my laptop, too.

I'm eyeing the Linksys NSLU2. It looks like a reasonable, low-cost, stand-alone solution. Even better is the fact that I could run Debian on it!

Any other options I might be overlooking?

I attended a presentation yesterday that introduced Ruby on Rails. I've been hearing a lot of buzz about it, but it wasn't entirely clear to me what it was or why it was so great.

Ruby is a programming language. Rails is a web application framework written in Ruby.

Some of the stuff that Rails does is very slick. For example, there's no need to define in your code what the structure of your database table is. Simply tell Rails to connect to the database -- it'll parse the tables and automatically create objects for each of the tables. It's possible to write complex database-powered applications without writing a single SQL query. Neato.

The presenter showed an example of using a "scaffolding" to quickly create the base classes for an interactive application. In less than three minutes the presenter had a functional database-powered app, and he didn't write a single line of Ruby code himself. The scaffolding created the classes, and generated the necessary code to accomplish at least minimum functionality. I was impressed.

I doubt I'll be digging into Ruby on Rails any time soon, though. For one, I'm not keen on installing Ruby and whatever it requires. I'm also not keen on learning yet another programming language, especially since I'm still a long way from anything other than an amateur PHP coder. And finally, I don't really see myself dealing with (m)any of the problems that Rails was designed to solve. That said, the motto "convention over configuration" really resonated with me.

I might look harder at CakePHP, something which was mentioned to me recently. I told some friends I was going to the Rails presentation, someone said "Cake PHP!", and I just blinked a few times. Not knowing what was so swell about Rails, it wasn't clear to me why anyone would want to replicate it for PHP. Having now seen what's so swell about Rails, I do sort of want some of that for PHP!

I broke down today and got a palmOne Treo 650. I finally decided that it was silly to carry both a mobile phone and my Sony Clie organizer (it was particularly aggravating to key in new phone numbers to both units). I also bought a Bluetooth wireless headset, so I'm officially entering into the borg/geek cabal. ;)

So far, I'm pleased with the device. It'll take some getting used to, no doubt; but I'm enjoying the discovery process. I looked at the cheaper Blackberry device, but what can I say -- I'm a Palm man. I've been using Palm-based organizers for six (maybe seven?) years now, and I'm reluctant to change. I'm also fond of several third-party applications on which I've come to rely (like Lockbox, among others).

I'd consider using the Treo as a more feature-filled replacement for my iPod shuffle, if I can find the right software (the bundled RealPlayer is unlikely to satisfy me). Freedom caught my eye initially, but I see it does not work with Bluetooth headsets. Does anyone know of a Freedom work-alike that supports Bluetooth? What other groovy Palm apps do I need that I might've missed with my old monochrome Sony Clie?

In other news, our turtle Dinky is now eating carrot slices out of my hand. This pleases me a great deal.

I'm listening to Brave Men Run, and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. The author really captures a lot of what I remember feeling when I was fifteen, and when I had my first date. It's an interesting story, well read, and I'm glad I decided to give it a listen.

The only thing that really bothers me, though, is the long intro and outro for each segment. I would really like for podcasters to recognize that some (maybe many?) people will be downloading and listening to these things long after the initial release schedule has passed. As such, the extended intros are kind of annoying. Worse still are the metacasts in which the author pleads for votes at some podcast ranking site. The voting for these things is long past, so their mention in the introduction to the podcast is jarring, and frankly superfluous by the time I get around to listening to it.

The one exception I make to the above rule is EscapePod. I like Steve's introductions because he usually has something relatively interesting to say. The intros on Brave Men Run, however, are long blocks of music that just make me agitated because I don't want to listen to music but the damned story!

So podcasters, please: either recognize that future listeners won't care about your longwinded introductions; or at the completion of your original release schedule please make new files available that give us just the story.

Thanks.