I currently use WordPress to publish this site of mine, and I’ve been pretty happy with it for a long time. I’ve thought of using it for other sites but I’ve always thought I had to figure out some work-arounds to get it to function as an actual website (as opposed to a blog). I did some Google searching and I came across two things that I thought were pretty interesting.

The first was a new CMS system called Graffiti. I looked into it some and checked out some videos. Graffiti is made to be a very simple CMS system. Content Made Simple, as it redefines the acronym. (CMS generally stands for Content Management System.) I downloaded it and I think I might play around with it some.

While I was looking through that I discovered a blogging software developed by Microsoft called Windows Live Writer, which I’m using to write this very post. The nice thing about it is that it can be set up to synchronize with blogs you’ve already set up online, which is pretty cool. It’s an offline application, so I don’t have to worry about a post magically disappearing when I hit the publish button. It even copies the style of the site, so it looks like I’m writing right into it.

Just now I was looking into plugins available for Live Writer, and they’ve got some decent things. I discovered Windows Live, too, which has all kinds of nifty features. I think it’s Windows’s version of .Mac.

Anyhoo, work today was again busy but not too overwhelming. Amanda and I had a nice boring evening of running out to get cat food and watching a little TV. We watched The Soup from last week, which we’d put off for fear of learning something about Lost that we didn’t need to know yet. It was a really funny episode.

Amanda went to bed. I thought about playing some Mass Effect afterwards, but it was getting a bit late and I got carried away a bit in all the stuff I mentioned above.

I talked to Mike Davino on the phone for the first time today. Mike runs SPMSportspage.com, the site I’ve been talking to about taking sports pictures for. He got credentials for me to go to a UNCW men’s basketball game tomorrow, so I’m pretty excited about that. Between that and watching Duke play Boston College tomorrow, it’s going to be a big basketball day.

Amanda will be thrilled. She knows I’m going to the UNCW game of course, but I don’t know if she realizes there’s a Duke game on too. Fortunately, there’s plenty of time between the two, so maybe we can go take the dogs for a walk on the beach for a bit.

Zach Dotsey
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