Nate Knows Nada

And now comments seem to be back.  Strange.

Hmm. Weirdness continues here.

For some reason, I do not have comment links on the blog right now. I haven’t changed any settings on the backend of the blog, but they seem to have disappeared between today and Friday (when i got my last comment). I have e-mail in, but for the time being you’ll have to scroll down to “Recent Discussion” in the sidebar to make a comment.

As for my blog software thoughts, I think that I will see how much it will cost to have my theme replicated in a WordPress theme and then transition over to WordPress, either here at Harvard or on my own space somewhere. But I think Manila’s days in my life are coming to a close.

Interesting and excellent TNR article (reg required, I think, but just use BugMeNot) on the faulty theology of Richard John Neuhaus, the conservative Catholic, and his misuse of natural law arguments.

So I’ve been thinking of making some changes here of late.

Primarily, the Harvard Blogs server is switching over, on a voluntary basis, from Manila to WordPress. Overall, I think that this is a good move, since the server we all have been using has been slow and problematic.

My hesitancy about making the shift is based upon the look of my site. i happen to really like the way it looks now. Professional, simple, and easy to navigate. At least I think so.

Wordpress, especially in the Multiple User version we’re looking at, is somewhat less customizable, especially in regard to style sheets and such. I’ve done some research already, and making up a site them in WP to replicate the look here now is going to require me to learn a new set of syntax and such to get it going. But it will depend upon someday gaining some sort of shell access to the new server, which isn’t in the works right now.

I’ve thought about getting my own server space somewhere and going to Movable Type, which has a similar style/theme system to Manila. I’ve use it in other places, and I think that it might be easier to get a new site with the same look up and going on MT.

All of this depends upon converting the current site over to some sort of interchange format. That’s the hard part. i think there’s tools out there, but they’re really meant for system operators of some sort. Which I am not.

So–for the next few days, at least–I am sticking with Manila for my primary blog CMS.

Anybody got any thoughts or ideas?

Some of us from the bike shop went over to Independent Fabrications, a custom bike-frame manufacturer, for a tour this morning. We’re lucky to have one of the country’s high-end, highest-quality custom frame builders right here in the Boston area.Totally awesome.They showed us all the stages of building custom titanium, steel, carbon, and mixed frames. Design, tube cutting, tacking, welding, brazing, painting, and finishing. These are beautiful bicycles they’ve got going there.

Now, if I only had $2000 to spare.

Ah, McSweeney’s.  What would we do without you?

Parallels between my living through two years of middle school and the two terms of the Bush presidency

One of the reasons I continue to believe in God, insofar as I have any
will in the matter, is because there are human events that seem to make
more sense in that light.  One of the reasons I believe in the
Christian story of God is because it posits God’s direct sharing in our
lives through the mystery of the Incarnation; that enfleshing allows
God to get under our skin, if you’ll allow a pun.

And I think that James Tramel’s story
may provide a small signifier of the presence of God in our
world.  Working through other people, he’s a different man, one
who cares about others and who has given his life to them through the
experience of helping to end a life and losing his own as a result.

I am now officially All But Dissertation.

Two more years to go, I hope.

I’m here in Berkeley, for a conference related to my dissertation research. It was four younger scholars, moderated by a senior faculty member in the sociology department at Berkeley.

What was great about was that it got me a bit out of the bubble of my friends and committee at Harvard. They’ve been enormously helpful of late, but the Berkeley group of people travel outside those circles and haven’t seen what I’m up to of late, so the aspects they notice are different.

It’s also nice to have a bit of validation that what I’m doing is worthwhile and that my ideas aren’t completely cracked or crazy. People found my basic model persuasive and possibly useful.

Anyway, I walked away from it all feeling quite positive, buoyed, and ready to get a bit more work done. Six days to the prospectus conference….

Or at least a little bit tamed.

I hate Powerpoint. It’s mind-numbing. I generally think that it’s good for showing graphics and technical notes like equations. Other than that, it should just die.

But I then ran across particletree.com’s article on how to make the experience a bit more effective, and I’m only now ready to injure the program.