A weblog by Smaran Dayal

One of the many podcasts I listen to regularly is CNET’s “podcast of indeterminate length”, Buzz Out Loud. The great thing about it is that they encourage listeners to join in the discussion by sending in audio comments. Well, that’s what I did over the weekend. No big deal, but I do like being on a podcast I listen to. I got the ultimate kick a few months ago, listening to my interview on net@nite on my drive to college. So anyway, check out episode 692 for an interjection by me on Warner Music’s proposed “piracy tax”.

Not long ago, I posted about how I’d tried Textpattern and liked it. Well, I’ve recently being playing around with a handful of content management systems, and I thought I’ll show you another one I tried before I take it down.

I installed Gelato, a tumblelog engine, at scrap.smarandayal.com (update: it’s no longer online as of 12/4/08) and used it for a week or so. I doubt the issues I had with it were to do with the server my sites are hosted on, “Dasani” on Dreamhost, but pictures and audio files kept disappearing and I constantly got blank boxes where there should have been posts. So, I gave up on it. Tumblr, despite it’s occasional down times, is a far more robust and reliable engine that I’ve grown to like and have been using for almost a year for my tumblelog.

Hopefully, given time, Gelato will get better, more reliable and usable. But right now, it just isn’t.

Update: Incidentally, I came across a cool-looking ‘microblog’ CMS called Asaph. I later installed it and used it for a short while. I like it a lot. I would use it on log.smaran.in, if it supported more post formats. As of now, it only supports link and image posts.

I watched the 2007 film Atonement today. It’s one of the better films I’ve seen recently. On the other end of the spectrum I would place Transformers, which was, aside from the special effects, possibly the most awful film I’ve ever seen.

Eastern Promises was another good one. Michael Clayton and There Will Be Blood not so much. Hitman was awesome. I thought it was true to the games.