The Last Mile

Six.5.06Every Friday, I think that this will be the weekend that I finally finish this project and it never quite turns out to be true. But this weekend I really do think I’m going to be done, at long last. As I near the end of this redesign, I realize that I’ve dedicated unreasonable chunks of time to Six.5 (and Six.0 before it), so perhaps it makes sense to start considering what the heck kind of yield I’m looking get back from all this trouble.

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Sushi Made Simple

MP3 SushiEnterprising shareware authors are writing terrific software for Mac OS X, and this stuff is not only powerful and handsome, it’s exceptionally easy to use. Witness Alexandre Carlhian’s MP3 Sushi, which allows you to broadcast your MP3 collection over a local network. The program makes prodigious use of Apple’s Rendezvous technology, making the process of sharing your collection with others on your network, or finding available collections on your network, literally as easy as flipping a single switch. Seriously, it took me less than 2 minutes to get MP3 Sushi running, making it perhaps the simplest server software I’ve ever dealt with, either as administrator or client.

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The Commercial Con

ConfidenceTonight I went with some friends to see the new movie “Confidence,” which stars Edward Burns and Rachel Weisz as a pair of con artists at odds with Dustin Hoffman. Before I get into commenting on the film, let me just tell you that what I’ll remember the most from this evening is that there’s no escaping advertising, even if you’ve paid the exorbitant ten dollar ransom on a movie ticket. Advertising is unstoppable.

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Extracurricular Laughs

SundazedWhen I came out of art school, I tried to take on lots of freelance work because I was impatient to build a portfolio full of real-world projects that I actually liked. Now that I am a part owner in my own business, freelance work doesn’t interest me much anymore. If it’s too small for Behavior, I tend to pass on it because it tests my physical stamina enough to run the studio. I’d much rather burn midnight oil working on Subtraction.com. But a friend asked me to throw together a little postcard for a weekly comedy show of which she’s a part at Chicago City Limits.

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Blogger’s Toolbox

Six.5.05For the sake of posterity, a few technical notes on how I built Six.5. First and most predictably of all, I’m proud to say that this whole endeavor has been a Mac OS X production (aside from browser compatibility testing on Windows of course). If you’ve read any number of posts here, you already know a few things that I’m head over heels about, and Mac OS X is one of them. This operating system has been a total pleasure to use, and completing a sizable personal project like this entirely with native X applications has me more excited than ever about the platform.

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Space-Age Webloggers Pad

Six Apart Ltd.Six Apart Ltd., who are responsible for Movable Type, have just announced the upcoming debut of TypePad, a hosted weblog tool based on MT technology that looks set to compete head-to-head with Blogger. This is terrific; I’m really happy to see that the MT engine will be broadening its reach.

TypePad is just one part of a frenzy of fairly major announcements today from the husband and wife team of Ben and Mena Trott; the company has also completed a round of financing, hired notable blogger Anil Dash as V.P. of Business Development, and formed a board of directors.

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Talk Talk

Talk to HerPlenty of movies entertain me and manage to surpass my often limited expectations, but when I watch a film like “Talk to Her,” I’m reminded that there is an art to filmmaking and it’s capable of making my jaw drop. Pedro Almodóvar’s latest feature begins as a tale of a female matador, shifts to an unlikely friendship between two vigilant and lonely would-be lovers of coma victims, interludes with a parody of silent films and concludes something like “Dead Man Walking.” From the very first few moments, I was transfixed by Almodóvar’s unpredictably elegiac, hilarious and disturbing roller-coaster ride. Its lingering power is one of emotional resonance, but I will gladly pay another ten dollars to see any movie that can even approximate the beauty of “Talk to Her“’s bullfighting cinematography — it’s one of perhaps two times that I’ve ever seen film look uncannily, rapturously like painting.

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A Hundred Words or Less, or More

Six.5.04When I was posting to this site with Blogger, and when the blog portion of the site was about 250 pixels wide, my posts were much shorter. Now they’re longer, sometimes much longer — this isn’t necessarily a good thing, but it illustrates the by-now-old saw that the medium is the message. In contrast to Blogger, Movable Type practically begs for more words for each post.

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Immovable Parts of Movable Type

Six.5.03Movable Type is probably among the top five best pieces of software I’ve ever used, whether online or on my desktop, but it has its shortcomings. But before I get into them, let me reiterate my continuing awe at its flexible, ingenious feature set, all of which is available for the princely sum of free. Ben and Mena Trott’s generosity is truly a marvel, and they’ve engendered a wonderful, vibrant community of users.

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