http://blog.meandmyarmy.com getting back to basics Sat, 30 Dec 2006 14:38:52 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en In the time-poor spirit of the holiday season, I figured I'd get all up to date at once in a mega-post rather than more smaller ones. So here goes, all the stuff that's pushing my buttons in the last week of 2006: The Onion A.V. Club's Best Albums of 2006 - ... http://blog.meandmyarmy.com/articles/2006/12/30/stuff-im-rocking-right-now/ I saw the brilliant and recently awarded Pan's Labyrinth at an early preview on Monday this week. While it was nothing like I had expected, it was brilliant, surprisingly touching and visually arresting in a way that seems rarer and rarer these days. There are some simalarities in tone and setting ... http://blog.meandmyarmy.com/articles/2006/12/21/pans-labyrinth/ ... interviewing K-Fed. My favorite quote: "...after 9-11 and Katrina, hasn't this country suffered enough?" http://blog.meandmyarmy.com/articles/2006/12/21/weird-al-knocks-it-out-of-the-park-again/ It looks like we have a definitive answer on what it takes to get good customer service out of Apple - digg them. After Apple _lost_ his Macbook Pro, this guy got his story on the Digg frontpage - and shortly afterwards, they're falling over backwards helping him out. Contrast this ... http://blog.meandmyarmy.com/articles/2006/12/21/digg-to-the-rescue/ The experiment that was using Typo as a blogging platform is dead, long live the king. Finally, the lack of stability coupled with inability to block spam (hooray for zombie botnets) made the switch necessary. Pleased to say it wasn't too painful (touch wood) and I'll see how it goes. (This should ... http://blog.meandmyarmy.com/articles/2006/12/19/and-were-back-again/ Well, many Apple happenings today. The service centre replacing the dead HDD in my Macbook decided to go out of business without warning anyone, so now I'm looking at the new year before getting a functioning unit back. This being pretty much a final straw, I investigated my consumer rights ... http://blog.meandmyarmy.com/articles/2006/12/06/time-to-buy-a-lotto-ticket/ Cel shading may have officially jumped the shark by venturing into reality, but that doesn't make it any less cool. Can't help but think it would really hurt to bang your shins on something, though... http://blog.meandmyarmy.com/articles/2006/12/04/jet-set-future/ Thanks to the marvels of modern technology that allow zombie botnets, I've had to disable trackback for a while. My spam protection isn't stopping the thousands of spam trackbacks filling things up, and I'm getting sick of manually trashing them out. Besides, trackbacks weren't working right anyway :) I have to ... http://blog.meandmyarmy.com/articles/2006/12/04/the-day-the-trackbacks-died/ Over at the normally good reading at Download Squad, they've posted seven rules for web 2.0 startups. Which seems like a good idea, until you get to this cute juxtaposition: "3. Tell me what it is, not what's inside: I don't care whether your service is powered by Ruby on Rails, ... http://blog.meandmyarmy.com/articles/2006/12/04/no-wonder-theyre-confused/ In case you're wondering about the lack of updates, it's been a tricky month or so. The macbook decided that a defective case and motherboard wasn't enough, so it was nigh time for the HDD to die a painful death. Murphy's law in full force, since I had intended to ... http://blog.meandmyarmy.com/articles/2006/11/30/tumbleweeds-roll-past/