Oh, yeah...the blog!

Tuesday, September 11, 2007 • 10:06:07 PM EDT

Damn, it looks like it's been a month since I last posted. Time to pull my socks up, it looks:

1) CBS likes me, they really, really like me. I've been on twice more since the last time I posted. With the Hat Trick under my belt, I am now free to just barge straight onto the Letterman set near the end of Dave's monologue, much like how Bob Hope used to stroll into the studio and interrupt Carson. "Just pick a theme song," the Mayor of CBS told me. "Oh, and 'Tainted Love' is already taken so don't even ask."

I'll be on at least a couple more times before the end of the year and if I keep coming up with ideas that they like, then I keep getting free Amtrak tickets to New York. By my sixth or seventh trip, I might even figure out what to do when it's 8 AM, my TV appearance is over with, and now I've got 9 hours before my train home and I've been up since 5 AM with only three hours' sleep.

2) Work continues to be extremely and excrementally Worky. The book about the unreleased software product is like pulling teeth, but the iPhone book is picking up steam and has started to become fun.

3) By the end of the year, YellowText will be no more. At least not in its current form. I've spent months looking at alternative content management systems, I've been spanked hard by some of them, and now — as Star Jones would say — "after praying on it and thinking about how much I can't stand to have Rosie O'Donnell steal the spotlight from me next season" I've decided that it's time to retire CWOBber.

I've set up WordPress on a server and even in "just screwing around with it" mode I'm really excited about what I can do with it. It's a swell combination of power and simplicity and while there most certainly are plenty of things that a newbie like me needs to learn, it's the good kind of work…the kind where you're convinced that the effort you put in will translate into (a) a prettier, more powerful, and more useful site, and (b) becoming a little less dumb. These are both very good things.

In truth, I was sold the first time I spotted a bit of wooly writing on one of my sample blog posts and was able to correct it with just a couple of clicks. I mean, Good God. But I do have long-range plans for a site that conglomerates all of my work into one big wobbly pile of unique clickthroughs and it's titanically clear that my little community-theater production ain't gonna get the job done, not the way I see it.

Last weekend, in fact, I opened up the little OmniOutliner document where I've been keeping track of the features I intended to add to CWOBber. I've been maintaining this list for a few years. It's like flypaper; when something lands on it, it never leaves because most of the features I want — editing posts, supporting comments, calendars and categories — require a massive change in architecture.

My test site is actually live and online as we speak. But it's very much in beta; I'm keeping it up because it's kind of interesting to blog about the process of learning this new CMS and I think it might be valuable some day.

Don't even try to figure out the URL because you'll never work it out in a million billion kajillion years, holy cats is it impossible to guess.

Rest assured that if I ever do switch over to The Blog Of Enduring Mystery as my primary blog, I'll make an announcement here so y'all can load up the truck, Jed Clampett-style. But do keep in mind that things are still greatly in flux and if you do find the BoEM I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't spread around the URL. I'm not sure that the urls are set in stone and I'll probably have Feedburner host the RSS feeds, for a great many sensible reasons. So any bookmarks or subscriptions you create in 2007 might not work in 2008.

Meanwhile, here's some video of one of my better appearances over the summer. Yes, the phones were all real:

Boy, the words "live network television" have a magic effect upon tech companies. "I need a half a dozen identical working phones," I said to T-Mobile. "I'm going on the CBS Early Show with a series of tests that will, in all likelihood, destroy every last one of them."

Annnnd a couple of days later I was loading $600 worth of phones into a pair of cargo shorts and tossing 'em in the washing machine. God Bless America.

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