Dang, haven't blogged for almost a week. That means I've either been pounding down the brewskies (blogging and brewskies don't mix, you know) or my late night geek sessions are full of diligence and verve with no time to talk. Well, it happens that I'm deep in the latter, unable (or unwilling) to find my way out of the
CS 2.1 SDK Amusement Park as I migrate my CS 2.0 blog to CS 2.1.
I'll detail those updates in separate posts. All I'll say now is that I'm grateful to Ben Tiedt for
his directions in migrating CS 2.0 Themes to CS 2.1. My 2.1 site will be very similar to my existing site, which was the plan, and Ben's instructions were a huge timesaver. Secondly, I'm on a minimalist kick with this version of dbvt.com, displaying post titles across the board instead of excerpts or full-text (unless viewing the actual post, of course) and am removing all but essential menu items and sidebar controls.
One thing I'm very happy about is that for the first time in mod'ing a new CS release I have not touched the source. At all. And the goal is to not touch it. If I think I have to touch the source for a mod, then the mod doesn't need to get done!
I guess I should be feeling the heat of not having migrated to CS 2.1 yet, since everyone I KNOW is already using it, but hey, Community Server upgrades are special. I've blogged before about
my ritual of moving from one version to another. A podcast from Neil Gershenfeld of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms on
his experiences with the MIT Fab Lab helped me add a couple of bullet points to why the upgrade cycle (and using Community Server itself) is so important to me.
Neil described how his Fab Lab could create highly sophisticated and personalized machines for a single person. Our blogs are like that, a sophisticated and highly personalized expression of a single person. Community Server allows us to personalize our blog as extensively as we want, and we're not just talking about themes and skinning.
The second thing Gershenfeld said that made me feel okay about needing to get each new version of CS "just right" before putting it online is what he said about the Personal Empowerment that creations from the lab give to their creators. We don't need Community Server to experience the Personal Empowerment of blogging, but having an environment like Community Server that's so customizable and can be tailored to our own personalities reinforces that sense of empowerment. "Yeah, that's my blog, dude."
In other words, I haven't been blogging because I'm still upgrading my site.
Heh!
[tags: Community Server]