March 4th, 2003:

I give up.

That’s right. I give up.

I care so much about how things work that I never get anything done. I want everything to be perfect all the time and if it can’t be perfect then I won’t accept it at all. This method of thought applies to every aspect of my life. All of this time I laughed in their faces because I didn’t care; I was the guy who did things right. What I didn’t realize was that I was also the guy who wasn’t getting anything done.

When I was in high school, everyone else was getting laid while I was saying “I’m sorry but I can’t see you anymore” to one of the most fun, most attractive girls I’d ever dated because I was too worried about hurting Miss Right’s feelings (who turned out to be Miss very very very very wrong).

After high school, all my friends went off to college to earn degrees and enjoy the college life. Meanwhile, since I couldn’t pick the perfect school that was affordable and could still offer me the best education available in the fields of Chemistry and Theater, I settled for Community College to give me time to make up my mind. I did this despite the hundreds (yes… hundreds) of full-ride scholarships I was offered by many very good institutions.

When my place of employment gave raises to the people I supervised despite the fact that I hadn’t received a raise since I began work there two years prior I stayed where I was because I couldn’t find the perfect job. Eventually, I quit because another job basically fell in my lap. Then the tech job market got hot and everyone who was anyone was earning their fame, fortune, and reputation by jumping on board with the fat salaried dot coms. But not me. I stayed where I was at a job that I hated with a company that I couldn’t stand because I couldn’t find a job that offered me exactly what I wanted.

Even now, this very day, instead of pouring my thoughts and words onto these digital pages as I’ve always intended, I offer short links and half-hearted commentary on a very irregular basis because I can’t find the perfect blogging engine.

I am doomed to be mediocre because I insist on perfection in every aspect of my life.

Something has to change.

But it won’t. That’s just it. I’ll never be able to find the perfect mixture between “all” and “nothing”, and it will remain in this medicore state until I do.

I knew someone would do it eventually. Michael V, author of cafelog/b2, has been claiming that b2 would operate on the Smarty template system in its next version since January of last year. However, to date no Smarty enabled b2 release has ever been made. Finally, someone got tired of waiting and did it themselves.

This b2 and Smarty blend seems to operate pretty well. All the templates are editable from the admin interface which maintains the same look and feel as the rest of the interface. Additionally, it allows for multiple blog hosting. I haven’t looked over the code at all so I’m not sure how clean it is. It does, however, still use the ugly default b2 urls.

This is merely a matter of taste but I don’t like the way the templates are implemented. Most of the pages feed off of one template. And each portion of that page gets its look and feel from other templates. While, in practice, I actually use the template system that way, I don’t like it being dictated in that fashion. I prefer the option to nest the templates in any way that I choose. But, like I said, this is just a matter of taste.

Just in the flexibility and ease of use the Smarty adds to b2, this product is at least twice as good as the original. [via freshmeat]