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Sick. Again. Sigh.

It started a week and a half ago with a sore throat. As is normal for me, this became an earache, and then the whole thing dropped down into my chest for a congestion party. Weakness, exhaustion, dizziness. Last Wednesday the doc diagnosed a “non-specific viral infection” (how often have I heard that recently), possibly brought on, and certainly exacerbated by, stress.

Work has been very understanding. In addition to the sick leave I took while I was, well, sick, I’ve also taken a week off to try and get my head back together.

The Crown Inn, HumshaughOn Friday we rented a car and drove down to Northumberland. We found a wonderful little hotel, the Crown Inn in Humshaugh, a few miles out of Hexham. Unfortunately, I woke up on Saturday morning with a rotten headache. I thought it would go away with some breakfast and tea, but it didn’t happen.

Martin and Alex in HexhamWe spent the rest of the day in and around Hexham. Abi assures me that we had a good time, but it’s all a bit of a blur for me. The headache just kept getting worse and worse. Every time I moved my eyes, turned my head, or shifted my posture, I’d be struck down by a vicious pounding right behind my eyes.

Saturday night was awful. Double-doses of paracetamol and ccodeine weren’t helping. Thinking that I might have been dehydrated, I was drinking vast amounts of water. And if I wasn’t just lying on the bed, in the sweltering heat, trying not to toss and turn for fear of the hammering pain, I was getting up every hour to pee. Which, of course, started off the cascade of rippling violence throughout my brain.

By morning I was exhausted, soaking with sweat, still in agony from my head, but now also from my overworked kidneys, and incredibly bored. (I hate it when I’m so ill that I can’t even read.)

Oh, and then I had to drive us back to Edinburgh. Gah.

We made it back and I collapsed. I managed to sleep for a while, but if anything, my head was getting worse. Abi called the emergency doctor service. They reckoned that I was too ill to come to the medical centre, so the on-call doctor came out to see me. She diagnosed an opportunistic bacterial infection in my sinuses. (I hate bacteria. They come in and kick you when you’re down.) So now I’m on antibiotics and some new painkillers, and I’m glad to say that I’m feeling a lot better.

Last night, after the first of the antibiotics had kicked in, and the pressure behind my eyes had relented a little, I almost thought I was fully recovered. But that was probably just because the pain before had been so bad, and any respite felt like nirvana. Now, I’m just back to feeling weak and exhausted again. My head still hurts, just less. I’m still coughing, and still feeling congested, but the phlegm isn’t luminous green any more.

BitesOh yeah, and I’ve got a gum infection behind one of my wisdom teeth, and bizarre, continuously spreading insect bites all over my body. Sigh.

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Attack of the Clones

Star Wars II: Attack of the ClonesFeeling, as I am, sick and sorry for myself, I thought I would slap something mindless and fun on the DVD player and zone out for a while. I made the mistake of watching Attack of the Clones again. I hadn’t seen it since it came out on DVD, and now I remember why: it’s a cock-awful pile of bantha poo.

I could go on and on about the crapness of the script, acting, direction, but it’s all been done before, and frankly, it’s too bad even to waste more energy on lambasting it.

Next up: Speed. Keanu is da man.

Update: Ah, much better. Watching Speed just served to emphasise how completely devoid of originality Clones is. For a film so fantastic, so filled with action, and so bursting with special effects, that’s good trick to pull off.

Next up: Dirty Harry.

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RSS Category feeds

Minor site update: I’ve now created RSS feeds for each entry category on this blog. So, for example, if you’re only interested in my “Techie” posts, you can use an RSS newsreader to subscribe to just that category. You can find the links to each category’s feed by going to the main categories index.

Will this actually be of use to anyone? Dunno. But I had some time on my hands while I was copying some files, and I couldn’t be bothered doing anything more constructive.

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TypePad launches

The folks at TypePad have just announced the launch date for the service: Monday 4th August at 11:59 pm (Pacific Time).

They have also announced the full list of features, and pricing plans. You can get their “Basic” service for $4.95 a month, or $49.50 if you pay a year in advance. The “Plus” service, which is the first price plan that allows you to do Photo albums weighs in at $8.95 a month ($89.50 / year), and the “Pro” service, which gives you full control over all of your page templates, is $14.95 a month ($149.50 / year). All plans give a 30-day free trial, but note the absence of a “free” or “ad-supported” option. Smart.

These prices seem very good to me, especially when you see that they include 50, 100 and 200MB of disk space, and 1, 2 and 3GB of monthly bandwidth respectively. If you were just looking at web hosting providers, those prices would be competitive. When you consider that you’re getting the TypePad managed blogging service included, it’s a bit of a bargain.

I’m now wondering if my previous $145 estimate for the cost of Movable Type Pro might not be a bit on the low side. At $145, it would cost about the same as a year’s subscription to TypePad Pro. Considering that a subscription includes the cost of web space, TypePad sounds like a great deal for light and medium MT users. For these users the “Domain Mapping” feature (Plus and Pro only) will be a particularly important selling point, as it means not having to change your blog’s URL if you migrate to TypePad.

Heavy-duty blogging users may want more customizability than TypePad offers, or the ability to run custom scripts, or they may just prefer to keep tighter control of their own web space, and so they are more likely to want a slice of MT Pro.

I’d probably say that if Six Apart pitch MT Pro at anything less than $145, they will be cannibalizing sales of TypePad subscriptions. Subscriptions provide a reliable income stream, which leads to a more stable business model in a rapidly evolving market (like blogging). On the other hand, the potential user base for TypePad (people who want to blog, but don’t want the hassle) is much larger than the number of enthusiasts who have the time and knowledge to tweak an MT installation on their own servers. So even if MT Pro sales do eat into TypePad subscriptions, it won’t be by a significant percentage.

Also, given that the market for MT Pro consists mostly of individual bloggers rather than business users, there’s the question of how much higher the price can be before it becomes unattractive even to these enthusiasts. $145 is already quite a lot to pay for a piece of software. But enthusiasts can often be relied upon to lay down a lot of cash for good software. Take Photoshop, for example. A brand-new license will set you back $550, and an upgrade is $135. Yet non-corporate users continue to buy it.

My current guess is that they’ll put some kind of multi-tier pricing structure in place. Something like:

  • MT Basic (version 2.x): Free.
  • MT Basic (commercial use): $150
  • MT Pro (upgrade, only for users who have already donated to MT, and may be reduced by the amount of prior donations): $150
  • MT Pro (new license): $200 – $250
  • MT Pro (commercial use): $500+

However, Six Apart have a staff of three right now. With the launch of TypePad, they’re all going to be phenomenally busy. I don’t quite see how they’ll to be able to stage a release of MT Pro anytime soon….