i·me·michael

…or, what I learned on my winter vacation.

In Entertainment

Maurice Gibb has died, and the family is allegedly criticizing doctors’ treatment.

Regardless of the disco brush that they are consistently painted with, the Bee Gees wrote some excellent music. Maurice’s passing is another in a string of musical losses.

Detained but not formally charged, Pete Townshend has been released on bail.

In his statement, Pete says, “I am not a paedophile.” The stigma of an allegation of this sort is hard to overcome. Pete is in a no win situation. True or not, alleged paedophile [or pedophile if you’re American] is going to be forever footnoted to his legacy.

Nicole Kidman got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

No drama, just a beautiful woman in a black knit suit and spiked heels.

In Geek News

PHP 4.3.0 is released.

The changelog details the err, umm, changes. I am still trying to get over the changes from 4.2.2, but that’s another story.

Safari, a new bowser for Mac OS X was released

Great, another buggy beta browser released into the wild. I’m happy to see the web community come out in support of the beloved Apple [ed.—in what’s become the meme from hell.], doing all the legwork by pointing out bugs, shortcomings, and improvements, but could you all give it a rest? Apple is toying with you all. Just look at the logo. It screams the words, Bite Me! Wake me when your little pet browser actually works.

In Community News

Carey is back!

And there was much rejoicing. Hey Carey, release the album already, sheesh! And would someone please hire that boy?

Redcricket redesigns.

Dig the design. I’m still not sold on the color scheme. <whine>Change it for me Dan!</whine>

Waferbaby redesigns.

It’s like all orange and stuff. Reminds me a bit of the BBC’s site… only in orange.

Tantek redesigns/restructures into a ordered list of posts.

It’s not my first choice for structure, but it’s certainly valid. When to call a grouping of content a list, or just a structured grouping, is ultimately just a choice. I do like the thinking that went into it though.

JimFormation redesigns and sloughs off irksome CMSs in favour of hand coding.

I thought it might be the start of a trend, but then I remembered we’re all lazy.

stonefishspine switches from pMachine to hand coding to MovableType.

I’m still wondering what prompted the change.

Todd tells the Mac community where to learn about favicons.

Please, don’t do that. It’s so 1999. Favicons considered harmful?

Dean very nearly releases his CMS, Textpattern.

Hundreds drool in anticipation.

Jeffrey Zeldman celebrated a birthday.

Happy Birthday Z!

I’ve been amusing myself with some remixed W3C designs, and some guitar playing, interspersed with plenty of snow shoveling. I am optimistic that this winter thing is just a passing phase.

My only resolution for the new year has been to give up and start over. In that regard, yesterday was a personal rebirthing of sorts. I also resolve to be back here updating regularly. My apologies for the quiescence.

On December 27, this little weblog turned 2.