Christmas was great for Rachel and I. We managed to divide up the time very evenly between both families, and the contrast between both was one of the good things that came out of it. I think this ended up being the geekiest Christmas we've ever had, since we got seven games for the Wii and XBox 360 between the two of us. One of the pleasant surprises for me two nights ago, after we got home, and Rachel went to bed early (she had to get in to work early so she could take off the rest of the week) was that I started figuring out some things about how Movable Type works that had vexed me for a while.

I am a big fan of Movable Type in case you can't tell. I switched to WordPress for a while, wrote some plug-in code and found that I couldn't stand using it. The attitude of some of the developers also played a role in that. I have some details on my project blog (aka, mostly disposable code that I release for those who might have a morbid fascination with it) on a project that I am slowly pursuing with Movable Type. It's goal is to build up a plug-in for Movable Type that allows Movable Type blogs to stop using SiteMeter and other such services. Once you get the hang of the Movable Type APIs, it doesn't seem quite so daunting.

Now, back to Linux again. I installed the proprietary "restricted" drivers for ATI video chipsets, and the performance has improved to the point that I don't have a whole lot of a need to go back to Windows. All I'm doing is writing Perl code for Movable Type and surfing the web, but it's fairly pleasant. It also helps that I am running a nightly build of Firefox 3, not that memory hog Firefox 2. That alone makes a difference on Linux because version 3 is much tighter so far in how it uses resources than version 2. I'd recommend that Windows users download one of the latest installers.

Benazir Bhutto has been killed by a suicide bomber in Pakistan, proving once again that the Islamic world is ready for a peaceful, democratic system of government. We can now fully expect the moderate majority of Pakistan to cooperate with its fine, upstanding police as they prevent any further violence. Already the extremists are on the run, as they get no love or quarter from the common man in the Land of the Pure because this is not how things are done there, let alone in the majority of the Islamic world.

**UPDATE**: There was a well-deserved WTF from Matt Mullenweg when I accidentally linked the "attitude of the WordPress developers" text to the story about the murder of Benazir Bhutto. While there are a number of WordPress users who love WordPress that passionately (and likewise, hate Movable Type that passionately), I would never suggest that the developers have that sort of character.