***Dave Does the Blog: Comments

Comment: "Bricks and mortar and paper"

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 23:43:23 -0700

Boulder Dude:

Since this page wouldn't load for days...

For David:

The Bookworm

3175 28th St # 2
Boulder, CO 80301
(303) 449-3765

On the west side of the 28th.

Comment: "Bricks and mortar and paper"

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 23:35:52 -0700

Boulder Dude:

Let's see...

I was in either Borders, B&N, or The Boulder Book Store at *least* once a month for the past year. Having lived though the '80s and Reagan's recession, I have a very strong belief that if you do not buy from an indipendent or at the least local store, it *will* go away.

Amazon is only for wish lists, looking up things and/or getting things to folks in remote places, it is not a place to buy from for myself or for folks here in town.

Comment: "Bricks and mortar and paper"

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 16:55:31 -0700

David Newman:

With respect to Doyce's idea, much will hang on the quality of the physical product. I have no idea what print-on-demand books look like these days, but maybe they look great.

And, I forgot about "Book Cove" here in Fort Collins. It's the best bookstore in town in my opinion, but I don't often see things there that I want because their selection is relatively small.

Comment: "Next up -- "We're Going to Manzanar-Land!""

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 14:31:32 -0700

Boulder Dude:

Dave, like I keep telling you, Republicans are evil.

Comment: "Demon Horse revisited"

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 12:07:32 -0700

*** Dave:

Agreed.

Comment: "Technical difficulties"

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 12:06:21 -0700

*** Dave:

Hrm. Thought it would be the underlying modules that were being attacked, which would be the same across all the MT blogs -- but if the attacks are coming through the blog itself (rrg), I can see the advantage of getting this one moved.

Let me see what I can do.

Comment: "Bricks and mortar and paper"

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 11:53:01 -0700

*** Dave:

Doyce wrote at Google Reader:

Comments are broken on Dave's site, so I'll Share-with-note.
Ponder this for the New Model of independently owned bookstores:

1. Small storefront. In fact, if you really want to rock it, almost the whole store is comfortable couches, chairs, and maybe a gaming table in the back. Think Enchanted grounds but with only the dice and board games in inventory.
2. An Espresso printing machine in the back.
3. 1 to 4 Amazon kiosk stands in the front. On those kiosks, you can browse all of amazon, and your choices for buying books include "buy now", "add to wishlist" and "PRINT NOW".
4. If you choose print now, the kiosk is already set up to sent that print order to the Espresso printing machine in the back of the store. The storefront owner gets a cut of the book sale, directly... pretty much the cost of printing, plus the Amazon Associate kick-back.

Pros:
1. The instant gratification of buying a book directly from a store. (One of the few things online retailers can't provide.) BUT...
2. All the vast selection of an online store.
3. No inventory overhead for the storefront, aside from gear for the Espresso printer. Gone are the black-holes of inventory management that crush so many indie book stores and RPG hobby shops.

3 to 5 years from now... I think that's the new Quaint Local Bookstore. The smartest of them will add those chairs and couches and maybe a "Donation bookshelf" along the whole back wall, to create a sense of community and something to be a part of that will change it from a storefront to a gathering place, and ensure success.

Damned if I wouldn't be interested in running such a place, once the technology catches up with my ideas.”

I think that's a pretty viable model, esp. if decent high-speed printing/binding can be made that easy to do (for the "instant gratification" factor).

I think what that still lacks is high-speed "browsing." I can't browse through Amazon as fast or effectively (along some axes) as I can at B&N. If I know what sort of thing I'm looking for ("hey, has Jim Butcher done any new books in the Dresden series?" then Amazon, or a kiosk, is great. If I want to see what's out there in scifi, then it's a lot easier to wander through the SF/Fantasy section. There may be ways that can be made more efficient in an online sort of setup, but "real world" visual browsing will always have some advantages.

That said, economics may well force what you're describing, for the very reasons you describe.

Comment: "Departing from Movable Type?"

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 11:35:09 -0700

*** Dave:

Mutter mutter stupid performance problems causing double comments and failed loads mutter mutter ...

Comment: "Bricks and mortar and paper"

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 10:48:18 -0700

David Newman:

I miss browsing half-price books. There was one in Austin that I went to regularly. At half price or often less, I bought books on a whim that I could never justify at full price.

I like browsing some bookstores. For some reason that I cannot explain, I like Borders better than B&N. There was a bookstore in Austin called Bookstop that I liked. Some small bookstores are fun to browse, others are not. For some reason, Fort Collins does not have a book store I like. The used book stores seem to be mostly romances, which I think is odd for a college town.

Anyone know of any good used bookstores in Boulder?

Comment: "Demon Horse revisited"

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 07:48:39 -0700

BCellers:

i do think it is creepy looking and maybe its placement is a poor idea but i think if you placed it by invesco field people would love it!! it would potray dominance to visiting teams. Rather than puttin off an image of ugliness to tourists who come to colorado to see beauty

Comment: "Technical difficulties"

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 06:58:42 -0700

Stacy:

1. Or not. Just get THIS one over to WP. The others aren't nearly so, er, troublesome.

2. Does them the same way as any other blog platform.

3. Or don't. Leave it in MT.

4. Ha. MT is ten billion times more complicated, though I am Very Disappointed with WP's 2.7 backend. Looks like frickin' MT.

Comment: "Departing from Movable Type?"

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 05:49:11 -0700

*** Dave:

I've already read through that article (with appropriate caveats) and taken notes; you're correct, there's some good (if identified as outdated) data there. Thanks, Kelson.

Comment: "Departing from Movable Type?"

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 05:40:16 -0700

*** Dave:

I've already read through that article (with appropriate caveats) and taken notes; you're correct, there's some good (if identified as outdated) data there. Thanks, Kelson.

Comment: "Departing from Movable Type?"

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 22:13:22 -0700

Kelson:

I've been quite happy with WordPress for years, now, and I know it has a very flexible import/export capability. It'll import Movable Type blogs from the mt-export.txt file.

You can also set it to use the same link structure as the old blog, even tacking .html on the end of it, so in theory you can avoid the problem of broken links.

As far as trackbacks go, WP does support them, but it also supports pingbacks, which it does completely automatically.

This article is a little outdated, but should prove useful:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Importing_from_Movable_Type_to_WordPress

Comment: "Religion, morality, and civics"

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 18:51:51 -0700

David Newman:

***Dave, I think there are two problems with your analysis.

First, while you are correct to note that individuals vote, not organizations, individuals are more or less subservient to organizations to which they belong, and some organizations end up with groupthink. So I think that part of the problem does lie with organizations of various kinds, including organized religion to the extent that such organizations tell or encourage their members to vote in certain ways. For example, the Church of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) seems to have made a big push to get their members to take a political stand on Prop 8 in California, and their membership was subservient enough to do it.

Second, I don't agree that everyone has the degree of respect for the values of liberty and freedom of conscience that your argument relies on. I think different people are willing to impose what they think is right on others to different degrees. Even those who have the highest possible respect for liberty and freedom of choice should recognize that it is possible to take them too far. For example, I don't think that the belief that slavery is acceptable should be respected or allowed to play a role in our society. While I think the population of the United States tends to have greater respect for liberty and freedom of conscience than some other countries, I don't think it's uniformly strong, and I think some religions encourage their followers to think that some of their religious values are of greater importance than liberty and freedom of conscience. That, I think, tends to lead to violations of the separation of church and state, which I value very highly.

I think that there is a tremendous tension within truly pluralistic societies. On the one hand, a pluralistic society must resepect liberty and freedom of conscience by definition. Social support for pluralism puts pressure on government to be small rather than large because the more a government does, the more it may act in ways contrary to the beliefs of some of its citizens. On the other hand, when the views in a pluralistic society are very diverse, this principle may to lead to a government that does too little, or even nothing. Due to the factors I noted above, groups may try to pressure government to restrict others' freedoms by honoring those values they believe are more important than liberty and freedom of conscience. This puts pressure on government to be large rather than small, because each interest group is pressuring government to act on it's key issues. If a pluralistic society is to succeed, it must not go too far in either direction, and members of that society must be able to reconcile themselves with that.

Recent politics reminds me of Lincoln's line: "a house divided against itself cannot stand", and I worry that many members of our society have become so partisan that they can no longer reconcile themselves with a pluralistic society that does not do everything they think it should.

Comment: "I get the most amusing (or irritating) emails"

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 17:07:54 -0700

*** Dave:

I have no problems with what churches do for the community. I belong to a church, and we do a lot of outreach and helping, especially during difficult times.

But that doesn't mean I think anyone -- the Jewish folks down the street, the atheist guy I exchange email with, my Catholic parents, heck, even other Episcopalians -- should be forking over their federal tax dollars to maintain the roof of my parish church, or repave the parking lot, or help us expand our facility.

And I don't feel that someone else who thinks the same way is discriminating against my religious faith.

Note, incidentally, that this provision in the stimulus package has nothing to do with local churches. It is about institutions of higher education getting grant money, and what they can or can't spend it on. They can't build new stadiums. They can't expand the campus chapel. Etc. I think those are all quite proper restrictions.

If I use hyperbole in expressing my disdain for the AFA message, it's because I think it's either dishonest (by distorting what's being proposed) or hyperbolic itself. Plus it shows a poor understanding of the First Amendment.

Comment: "Departing from Movable Type?"

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 16:55:08 -0700

*** Dave:

I don't kid myself that my blog is crept through in depth by anyone out there ... except me. I actually do go digging through old posts a fair amount. I joke that my blog is my extended memory ... but there's a lot of truth to that.

I knew you were on EE, Les, which is why I didn't automatically declare myself for WP. I'm doing some research right now.

I have found that there are a number of ways to do conversions of MT to WP and retain the original link info to the old post URLs -- which I will definitely endeavor to do that way rather than keeping the old posts out there.

Comment: "Departing from Movable Type?"

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 16:34:34 -0700

Les:

I did that when I first moved over to EE as well, but I think those files are long gone after a couple of server moves. Not sure what happens when you click on internal links on really old entries now. I honestly haven't worried about it too much. With as many entries as I have not too many people jump around in the archive all that much.

Comment: "I get the most amusing (or irritating) emails"

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 16:18:21 -0700

Barry:

I honestly only glanced over your comments regarding the email going around. Wow. I thought there was disdain in the language of the email until I read your own comments.

I always find it amusing how when there's a "time of need" or resources needed in a community, government, all the way down to local will cry out for help from churches and programs they might have.

and there's people like you who will rip on them.

Comment: "Departing from Movable Type?"

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 16:14:53 -0700

Tim Hall:

I managed to preserve all my old links by creating a great big .htaccess file in my root directory which redirected every single permalink. But I had about 1500 posts, and you have ten times that many.