WombatNation

Okay, so maybe it’s not as interesting or as flamboyant as a torn rotator cuff, but it appears that the popping sounds (accompanied at different times by no pain, slight pain, or severe pain) in my shoulder are due to bicipital tendinitis (which is also, but less commonly, spelled tendonitis), or possibly even bursitis.

If the problem is bicipital tendinitis, the recovery period is estimated at 6-8 weeks. My injury occurred about six weeks ago, but I waited a week and a half before seeing a doctor and I didn’t see a physical therapist until two weeks after the injury. It’s definitely getting much better, but I now wish I had started the physical therapy a lot sooner. My shoulder feels much better than it did two weeks ago, but my range of motion is still limited and the tendon still pops on occasion.

Based on one article I read, the popping of the tendon could be the result of the tendon slipping out of the bicipital groove. This groove is the spot where the long head of the biceps tendon passes between the two tubercles at the top of the humerus. When I move my right arm too far to the left or above my head (especially when accompanied by bending my elbow or gripping with my hand) I can feel some tension develop in the front part of my shoulder. When I return my arm to its normal position, I can feel and hear a pop as the tendon apparently drops back into the bicipital groove. I’m not a doctor, of course, but the tendon slipping out of the groove sounds like a believable explanation. It certainly matches up well with what I’m feeling in my shoulder.

Of course, it’s possible that the problem is a combination of bursitis and bicipital tendinitis. If the bursa sac that sits between the tendon and the bone is swollen, I can definitely understand how the tendon might create a popping sensation as it glides over the swollen bursa.

I’m really surprised by how much Six Apart is planning to charge for Movable Type 3.0, especially when you consider that the only significant new feature (comment management) is offset by new limitations on the number of authors, blogs, and CPUs (UpdateSix Apart has removed the CPU limit from the license, claiming it was a mistake). The cheapest version is $100, with a $70 introductory price. I can get a $45 discount off the price due to a donation I made for a previous version, but that still leaves me paying another $25 for not much more, and arguably even less.

Fortunately for me, they will offer a free version that will meet most of my needs. I’ve never needed support from them, I don’t need their help with an install (see my MT install notes if you need help installing MT on a shared server at DreamHost), I don’t use any of their fee-based services, I don’t use it commercially, I’m the only author, and I have only two blogs. I use the second blog to test out major changes before I roll them out on my public blog. While my blog currently qualifies to appear the “Recently Updated List” because of my past donation, giving up that feature is no big deal to me.

I think this is a case where the really is such a thing as bad publicity. They’ve managed to piss off many of their most faithful and passionate supporters.

Obviously I don’t mind paying money for good software, as I gave them money before when I really didn’t have to. However, I do mind paying a lot more than what something is worth to me and I mind onerous new restrictions.

Well, in the short term I will probably upgrade to 2.661 and then maybe to the free version of 3.0, though I wonder if that time would be better spent checking out tools like Blosxom, PyBlosxom, WordPress, or TextPattern. I started blogging with Radio, but got frustrated with all the bugs, the lack of documentation, and the lack of support for Linux. Also, at $40 a year, Radio isn’t likely to be much cheaper than MT in the long run.

I had previously advocating the use of Movable Type for blogging at work, but the price to get started has turned it into a major purchase. I was already facing an uphill challenge just to get people excited about it. Also, I was planning to use MT to set up a blog for a non-profit organization I volunteer for. Although it’s an environmental organization, I doubt that qualifies as an “educational institution”. Even then, you need to write them for pricing. I think this is a road I don’t want to head down.

A new review of the Treo 600 showed up on the O’Reilly Network site recently. This review is especially useful if you:

• Live in Canada
• Own a Treo 180 and are thinking about upgrading
• Want to sync your Treo to a Mac
• And/or are looking for a broad description, with screenshots, of the basic features of the Treo 600

Overall, I think the review does a pretty good job of describing the basics of the Treo 600. I like that he included a bunch of anecdotes about oddities, problems, or cool features that he happened on. A lot of reviews that I read are almost indistinguishable from corporate press releases.

My wife recently ordered a 160GB add-on drive kit from weaKnees for our Hughes HDVR2 DirecTiVo and we installed it last Thursday night. It was a quick and easy install, though the only way we could tell the drive had been properly recognized was to wait until we had recorded enough additional programs to go beyond the 35 hour limit of the original 40 GB drive. Our DirecTiVo now can now store 155 hours of recordings, since the 160 GB drive can hold 120 hours.

It would be nice if the TiVo told you how much drive space was left. The only way to get it to display that info is to enable Backdoors mode. Unfortunately, enabling Backdoors mode on a series 2 TiVo with OS version 3.1 or later is really time consuming. If you have a DirecTiVo that is not hacked to enable the USB ports (which is also a massive pain), you have to remove the master drive from the TiVo as part of enabling Backdoors mode.

I highly recommend The Next Fifty Years: Science in the First Half of the Twenty-First Century, especially to anyone in high school or college who is interested in or is already majoring in science or engineering and is looking for an area to specialize in which will experience rapid growth over the next fifty years. It’s a great read for the rest of you, too.

The book is split into two parts, “The Future – In Theory” and “The Future – In Practice”, comprising 25 short essays by prominent scientists. It’s well suited for bedtime reading, since each essay can be easily read independently. That was definitely a good thing for me, as I read it slowly over a span of about a year and a half.

The Next Fifty Years was edited by John Brockman, who runs a fascinating website and intellectual forum called Edge. A couple months ago, I picked up Brockman’s newest book, The New Humanists: science at the edge (available from Barnes&Noble, who also published the book). Given my current book backlog, I’ll be lucky to even start it in a year and a half.