First, something that's been on my mind for a few days now. The future of this site, Bitscape's Lounge.

As anyone who follows these ramblings regularly knows, I've been working on and off for the past couple months on a totally redesigned version of this site, totally free of any of the original code it currently uses. The new version has a completely different interface, look and feel, and about a bazillion new features. All the most important stuff is either implemented in the test version, or I have a clear idea of what I want it to be, but just haven't coded it yet. I'm sure that given a few more man-weeks, I could have it up and working smoothly.

The problem is that I'm starting to have second thoughts. The truth is, I like this version pretty well, at least as far as the look and feel goes. (The codebase itself is a different story.) I like the three column layout for ramblings, movielog, and links. I also like my little html-file-inside-a-table feature, buggy as some parts of it may be. I like the simple, bland entry forms for ramblings and movielog (although the links interface could be improved) that nobody in the world except me ever sees, except on rare occasions when someone happens to look over my shoulder while I'm posting updates.

Do I really want to make a new version? Would my time be better spent cleaning up the current codebase, migrating the data to postgres with minimal changes to the table structure, and making it more amenable to little changes such as joining webrings and generating rdf files? The idea of just throwing away everything I've poured blood, sweat, and tears into for nearly a year makes me sad. :( Heck, some of the code from the days when I didn't even quite understand perl parameter passing is still running.

OTOH, I also like the new stuff a lot. Public user comments would be cool, Slashdotian though the idea may be. And I'd really like to see how my envisioned hotpoints system for thread ordering would work in practice. Plus the myriad of different topic types, augmenting the idea of a movielog with reviews of other media, such as tv, Xena fanfic, and books. The lyric of the day is something I'd really like to go through with. I also want a chance to take the funky little html table tricks for a spin, along with the corresponding hierarchy of html component and container modules which are (in my humblest opinion) both elegant and easy to use.

One possibility would be to make an optional spaghetti.pl frontend for the new codebase. It would look very much like the current page, but use the new data. Of course, incorperating features like threaded comments into the current interface style would be cumbersome at best. It just isn't designed for it. I dunno. It's stuff to think about. Moving on...

Next order of business: The Anti-Movielog.

Yes, that's right. My Anti-Movielog is the next planned addition to this already existing beast of perl code. In it, I will record what movies I would most likely have seen were it not for the egregious atrocities committed in recent times by the MPAA.

Of coures, sometimes it's hard to predict exactly what movies one would have seen when it didn't actually take place. Spur of the moment trips, cancellations, etc can change the way events turn out, but generally, the movies I plan to see, the ones I'm really interested in, I do. I have decided to alter this, at least until the MPAA et al change their tune dramatically.

By change their tune dramatically, I mean stop the petty lawsuits against people who have done no wrong but to post source code to which the MPAA has no claim, stop arresting Norwegian teenagers and their parents who have committed no crimes except to discover how devices they owned operate, stop seizing computers of said teenagers, and issue a public apology to the Linux community and the Internet at large. (Fat chance that last one will happen, I know.)

Does this mean I will no longer see any movies or keep a movielog? No. I may occasionally go to the theatre and watch a mainstream movie due to weak-mindedness, social pressure, or if it's something I really must see, such as Star Wars: Episode II or the sequel to The Matrix. When that happens, I'll make a movielog entry as normal.

There might also be entries for independent films, should I be so resourceful as to discover local places where such things can be seen. It could be really neat to discover this part of the movie making culture which up until now, I have largely been ignorant of.

What exactly will go in the Anti-Movielog? Well, unless you're Bob Dole, you don't critique movies without seeing them (specifically, movies such an Natural Born Killers. See 1996 presidential campaign.), so there won't be any stars to assign. It's also a little hard to make intelligent comments.

What I'll probably end up doing is to make a brief statement about what appealing qualities the movie might have had that made me want to see it. (Maybe a description of the trailer, or a recap of a review which made it look interesting.) My comments will also probably consist of informing people of what I'm spending the money on instead. That will likely consist of some other form of entertainment, yet to be determined. I may also decide to give some of it to a worthy cause. I'm still not sure about all the details yet.

If my projections are correct, it shouldn't be too much trouble to hack this together. I can probably have it ready by this weekend, in time for Scream 3, a likely candidate for the first Anti-Movielog entry.

Oh, one other note. It will be possible to have the same movie as an entry in both the Movielog and the Anti-Movielog. If I decide to skip a movie in the first run theatres, it goes in the Anti-Movielog. If I later decide to go see it at a Super Saver (hence giving the bastards some, but not nearly as much money to terrorize hackers the world over; a lesser evil) it goes in the Movielog too.

That's the plan, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.