I’m thinking about changing the server-end software I use for blogging. I currently use Greymatter and it is the default option with Gate. I’m thinking about Blosxom, Movable Type, and WordPress. All are free and have the categories, Permalinks, and RSS/Trackback/Pinging capabilities. All these are standard blogging features and I feel left out of the current blogging revolution. Really, I’m kind of upset that I can’t ping Technorati easily without hacking Gate’s servers and learning deep Perl skills. As well, I would love to be able to email blog posts to myself and use a third-party app on my Mac to create and store blog entries. That is my main fear at the moment. I backup my entire blog directory every once in a while, but I would like something easier than plain html files to parse if something goes down.

Matt has gone and used iWeb to spruce up his site. Go and see the new pictures of his son, Carter William.

Yes, you heard it here…after it was all over and done with. Beth and Matt had a son. I’m not sure how it happened. Something to do with budding or some mystical and scientific process, but they procreated…successfully. I would post some pictures, but I only got some low-res copies through email. Perhaps I will relent, but I feel that I deserve some high-res pics of this kid, what with Matt’s cool new camera and all. Perhaps Matt will post some picts of his son in the near future. If you ask me, I’ll forward the email to you though, so no one will be deprived of Shupper goodness.

Searching on baby names, I found a rather impressive site called NameVoyager. Warning: this is Java applet, which looks really cool, but can be slow or non-functional on older machines. If you don’t know, try the link and find out, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. If you put in the name Carter, for example, you will see a low showing until the late 1990s when the popularity shoots up to its current rank of 87 in 2004. Now, I don’t want to be disparaging of Carter William Shupper born on Monday, January 30th at 8:58am weighing in at 6lbs 14oz and 20 3/4 inches long, but it seems to be a little suspicious that this sudden popularity coincides with an emergence of Vince Carter in the 1998/1999 NBA season. Now, Matt is an avid fan of sports, he works for a sports agency, folks. Is it possible he chose the name of his son based on this player? Or did the popularity of the name already influence his decision, at least a little bit? I don’t know. What I do know is that I’m an uncle. And as the kids say, “Woot.”