Category Archives: Site Announcements

One Last Shot

Well, early Sunday I’ll be boarding an Amtrak train to Philadelphia where I’ll spend two days filling out forms and getting tons of information thrown at me. Then me and the 60 others in my group will file onto a bus which will take us to JFK airport in New York City. We’ll make our way onto a Delta airliner and take off for Istanbul, Turkey. Once we arrive, we’ll hang out at the airport for a few hours, then get on a Turkish Airways redeye to Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Once we get there, at this point, I have no idea what will happen.

As you can imagine, this is a nervous time for me. I’m wondering who the others in my group will be, where exactaly in Uzbekistan I’ll be placed, what my host family will be like, and tons of other more minor worries. But I’m not worried that I am worried. My high school swimming coach, for whom I have great respect, said, “It’s normal to have butterflies in your stomach, but you’ve got to make them fly in formation.” So I’m gonna go on that advice and be nervous, but be in control.

Tonight I went to see Foreign Aids at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge. It was a truly great one man show. The guy is a South African performer who does costumes and personas (many of which are female.) He would morph from one to the other brilliantly. The common theme was the AIDS epidemic that is ravaging his country and the fact that the government is not addressing the issue. He told us (between the fanciful stories of his sophisticate alter egos) of how he goes to school across the country teaching about AIDS by talking about sex. It was funny, and he obviously made his presentations to the kids funny, but you could tell there was a great urgency to his message… safe sex or death. Using the themes of ignorance, timidity and fear, he cleverly connects his country’s reluctance to deal with Apartheid as similar to this current crisis. I’ve always thought it takes a very talented person to do a one man show well, so this was quite a treat.

I’ll be packing like a madman tomorrow – currently I have my stuff all over the place. But I think I have everything I need. BTW, I have a new photo gallery, and you may soon see some posts by a guest author. Plenty of surprises in the pipe although WD will be halfway around the world. I hope to keep everyone informed of both the humorous and maddening aspects of my journey, and provide plenty of photos providing I can get a decent internet connection every now and then.

So off off to Uzbekistan – off to a new challenge – and hopefully a great new chapter in my life.

Thank You

A sincere thank you to everyone who helped make my little trip possible. It was truly a pleasure to spend time with you, as you have meant so much to me over the past few years. Although I’ll miss you all, thoughts of the good times should sustain me. And to those who I was not able to see but who sent their kind words, much appreciated. It’s a bummer when we are hours away rather than minutes.

I’ll try to write a few posts this week before I head out to Philidelphia, PA for my staging on Sunday the 16th. Thanks to an extremely generous offer by Kellen, I will have a laptop with me for the trip. Now, how freequently I will have internet access is another matter entirely. But, I do plan to keep the blog updated and post new pictures as I take them. I hope you will all keep in touch through this website. The “Contact” section, now part of the top menu bar, will be updated with ways to be in touch and an email contact form.

Yet Another Tech Shift

I’ve decided to move away from Movable Type after having that system for all of one week. Simply, it was too confusing and too slow. Chris clued me in to WordPress, which I am now using. The benefit of this system is that it is written in PHP, a sleaker and more powerful language than Pearl (or at least so I’m lead to beleive.) The brilliance of this system is that it does not necessitate lengthy site rebuilds. Furthermore the linking is very intuitive, and there exists a large online community of developers and people to offer support. It’s also, frankly, less corporate. So again, I’m asking you to bear with me as I iron out some kinks in the formatting and get categories set up. I promise that barring any major meltdowns, I’ll stick with this system so that I can concentrate on the many points of outrage, question and beauty that surround us.

Oooh, you so special.

Okay, I seem to have things running pretty well here. I installed a SubCategories plugin which ended up leading me in an ugly direction. So, for the time being, there are no categories 🙂 But I’m going to look more deeply into the built-in system that MT offers. I’ve designed the blog to look very similar to its previous incarnation.

On the front page, there will be about 8 entries listed. To get to the individual post’s archive page, use either the menu at the left, or click on the Date in the “Posted by Matt at DATE” area at the bottom of the post. To the right of this is the Comments tag, which will show how many comments have been made. If no comments have been made and you click on it, you will be taken to the comment section of the post’s individual archive page. If comments have been made, you will be taken to that post’s first comment – simply scroll down to add your own comment after reading the others.

Regarding comments. I currently have them set up to allow anon posts. You can also sign in to a TypeKey identity for posting to this blog. To do so, click on the words “log in” where it says “If you have a TypeKey identity, you can sign in to use it here.” Hopefully the comments will be able to remain open like this. If the spam levels get too high, I’ll look in to other alternatives. I do recomend the TypeKey service, though.

I have disabled the TrackBack option, because I’m not sure I like that feature – I find it clutters and distracts from sites. Though if there are requests (doubtful) I can enable them.

The three unfinished areas are: Category System – Search – Comment Preview. If you use the search or comment preview function, you will see a default Movable Type template. This is happening because, as .cgi pages, I’m unable to use includes, which give the rest of the blog its look and feel. If anyone wants to help me out with this, I have plenty of Cadbury chocolate for you.

Lastly, I’ve enabled the Extended Entry feature. To test it out, click on the link “Continue reading ” below:
Continue reading →