I’m beginning to sound like a giant, broken record here. Still tired, still not ready to deploy the new web site, so on and so forth.

After significant wavering, I’ve elected to use Movable Type to power my next-generation blog (the other system I was seriously considering? Blosxom—which is far more simple). My greatest fear about Movable Type comes from entrusting my posts to a MySQL database; how do I get them back out if I decide that a “real” web site isn’t worth the cost?

After more thought, though, I realized that I could just save the HTML output by the system; aside from being less nicely formatted, it’s quite similar to what I already have for my past blogs. Now that I’ve actually got Movable Type installed (though not entirely customized), I’m seeing firsthand how slick its interface really is—I can see why many people use it.

…

Project Shinji-Dogg was pretty much a dismal failure. Brian and I had earlier discussed the mismatch between the message of Evangelion (individuals unable to really connect with each other) and the medium we were imposing on it (watching it in a large group of people); that mismatch turned out to be fatal.

Out of the decent number of people who showed up (I’m too tired to try and piece it out right now, but it was more than you could count on one hand), only three actually watched all of Eva through: Kevin (who was also making a massive origami ball), Joel, and myself. The others bailed at various times to go shopping or play cards. The early episodes featured a good amount of witty banter from the crowd, as we had all seen Eva before, but the wit died down as the hours passed and people’s attentions turned elsewhere.

[6/22 Update: Brian feels it worth mentioning that most of the crew did regroup for the End of Evangelion. I’m not so sure that it is. (Brent mutters something about fair-weather something-or-others.)]

The trip itself wasn’t a complete waste: I, at least, had fun seeing people, and John M.C.ed with his iPod on the way up and back. Yes—last night was the first time in ages that I heard Black Sabbath’s Iron Man. It had been far too long.