the Village Knittiot

Wow! Things sure look different around here, nes pas?

Since I fired up the Village back in November, I have been hobbling along with some content management software that Mr. Knittiot (my own personal TechnoGod) managed to make function in a blog-like manner.

But, it wasn’t exactly a smooth process. Not because the software wasn’t awesome, but because it was meant to handle so much more than a simple blog. When I wanted to post a new entry, I had to code links and images using my good friend HTML, which often made writing an entry seem like a much larger task than just jotting down a few words and hitting “Publish.” Also, there were the comments, which I didn’t like from the start and thought were less than intuitive. Even so, I had a blog. So all was good…

Then, last week I was reading through someone’s blog when lo and behold, he happened to mention a little piece of open source blogging software called WordPress. I looked into it, and I knew this was the software for me. Mr. Knittiot spent a few days poking at it, and the result is this. Changes can be expected pretty regularly as I muck about with some of the features, turn things off and on, and in general run around my blog like a little kid hopped up on sugar.

This free software is an example of the remarkable tools available to you thanks to the Open Source and Free Software movements. If you don’t know what Open Source means, learn. If you’ve never been to the Free Software Foundation’s website please do. I mean it. Among other things, this is about accesibility to technology for more than just the priviledged few who can afford to pay hundreds and thousands of dollars for technology and its benefits and opportunities. More than that, it is about a thriving creative community. It’s about technology as a concept not just an abstract tool.

I have been using Open Office (which replaced the entire Microsoft Office suite for me, which I couldn’t afford) for about 6 months, I also have Gimp installed (Photoshop substitute), and last week I realized it was silly to be using Microsoft’s web browser when I could be using a secure browser like Firefox instead. So I installed that. It rocks. You may also have noticed before the link on this site to Creative Commons. They are kind of the Open Source answer to copyrights, allowing for gray areas when it comes to your creative works. Recognizing that creativity builds off of a creative community, and that art inspires art, yet understanding that my creations are still my creations, it allows me to specify in what ways anything I create can be used. Today, I am taking the ultimate plunge and installing Linux on my laptop (with help of household TechnoGod, of course — though he assures me that he is only going to stand there while I do it myself, because it is just that easy).

*steps off soap box* Okay, just had to get that out there.

Speaking of Mr. Knittiot, he did manage (we think) to keep all the registered users of the old site, as well as their comments. If, for some reason, you cannot log in to this site (there�s a link down and to your right for that), please request a new password. If you don�t get a new password within ten minutes, please send an email to webmaster [at] pjsattic [dot] com and Mr. K will see what he can do!

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 20th, 2005 at 7:45 am and is filed under this Random Life, this Techie Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.