Site News on Godlike Nerd

Beating Mike Again

Sun, 26 Feb 2006 10:55:16 +0000

In another vain moment, I rechecked my PageRank at Google. I remembered it being 5/10. I was right. Take that, Mike and his rank of 6.

Edit: Doh. Higher is better. I’m a moron.

I'm Better than Mike

Thu, 23 Feb 2006 22:37:09 +0000

Because Mike wrote today about how his site is ranked 690,887 at Alexa, I had to find out what this site was ranked. Cue up “You’re so Vain” please.

Apparently, I’m much more popular than Mike, sitting pretty at 530,545.

Booya.

FeedFlare Rocks

Sat, 31 Dec 2005 17:30:59 +0000

Heather noticed that I turned on several of the FeedFlare features for my RSS feed. I fall in love with FeedBurner more and more every day.

Email this

Send a link to your item to someone via email.

Email author

Allow subscribers to email you directly. (If there is no email address in your feed, this will be hidden.)

Technorati Cosmos

Display the number of links to your item from blogs, as measured by Technorati. (If there are no links, this will be hidden.)

Photo Gallery Updated to Version 2

Thu, 29 Sep 2005 10:41:06 +0000

A couple weeks ago, Gallery 2 was released. I’ve been using Gallery as my photo gallery software on this site for a long time. I probably would use it a lot more if Flickr weren’t so addictive.

The problem is that Gallery is software and not a service. Therefore, I have to supply the storage space and bandwidth. I do have well over 5 GB of storage space and 120 GB of bandwidth at my disposal (thanks Dreamhost, which recently added unlimited domains to all their plans). I probably couldn’t consume that much space and bandwidth, but when I can upload up to 2 GB per month for $25 a year (note to web services: this is a good price point) and the photos can be dowloaded unlimited times, Flickr wins out.

First Amazon Associates Purchases

Sun, 21 Aug 2005 21:09:04 +0000

I’d like to thank whoever bought Meet the Fockers, Pirates of Silicon Valley, and The Bourne Identity through my Amazon links. I really appreciate it. Hopefully this will be the start of a trend. Living in your own place is a little expensive.

Payola

Mon, 01 Aug 2005 20:20:45 +0000

I pulled the trigger on it. I added Google Ads to Tag Central. I’ve also added a shop section to this site. If you’re looking to buy something I’ve reviewed on the site or anything else from Amazon, please use that page. There is no cost difference to you and I get a percentage of the sale. It’s a great way for you to get some merchandise at a good price generally with free shipping and support the site.

Grokster Linkage

Fri, 29 Jul 2005 17:45:22 +0000

Back when the Supreme Court handed down their decision on Grokster, I made a few quick conclusions based upon some cursory reading I did. I didn’t really expect to get quoted on Computerworld.

Derik DeLong says Grokster assisted in the act of piracy and that it, “Wasn’t just turning a blind eye.”

I need to find a better way to figure when I get linked. It happened over a month ago.

Burned

Wed, 20 Jul 2005 08:57:19 +0000

Some time ago, I used Feedburner to make a new feed for the site. I called it the Superfeed and used their service to add in Flickr photos and del.icio.us bookmarks. However, I found it way too limiting. There were other sources I wanted to add, such as my Netflix notifications and my Ta-da List. While I used it though, I became addicted to their statistics. I could instantly gauge how many people were reading.

43 Places

Wed, 06 Jul 2005 17:32:03 +0000

I recently added a 43 Places page to the site. 43 Places is yet another website that’s under the Robot Co-op umbrella. You can track where you’ve been and where you want to be, something that many people were doing with 43 Things.

However, as it wasn’t designed for destinations, lots of duplicate goals were registered at 43 Things. For example, you might have “See Germany”, “Visit Germany”, “Go to Germany”, and so on. 43 Places is much more exact and allows for places within other places be entered that way (such as having Fenway Park in Boston).

Welcome Winecast Listeners

Wed, 29 Jun 2005 07:22:10 +0000

I went through my list of podcasts last night, transferring them from NetNewsWire to iTunes. One of my absolute favorites is the Winecast. Check it out. Even if you don’t drink a lot of wine or know pretty much nothing, this podcast is a pleasure to listen to. I can’t speak for experienced wine drinkers, but for a novice like me, the show is a godsend. It explains the origins of various wine varieties.

Netflix Feed Problems, Sort Of

Fri, 03 Jun 2005 18:56:40 +0000

So I alluded to some problems I was having when combining Planet d00dism and Netflix‘s activity RSS feeds. However, based upon how the planet site currently looks, I overestimated the the effect that the deficiency in their feeds would pose.

You may notice that the first entries of Netflix are in a big clump. Obivously, all those movies didn’t go out and leave at the same time. This appears to have happened because Netflix doesn’t use the optional pubDate field of the RSS 2.0 format.

Planet d00dism

Thu, 02 Jun 2005 21:30:30 +0000

After thinking a lot about how to implement my own Erikkregator, Marshall recommended RSSMix. Now, that was an excellent suggestion. However, that only solves the problem of the RSS feed. I wanted to have a webpage to go along with it though.

At that point, if I was going to be programming with an RSS parsing library, I might as well be mixing my own RSS feed. That sounded extremely painful though. That’s why I was glad to come across a slick piece of software called Planet.

Want a Jabber Screenname?

Fri, 13 May 2005 18:14:49 +0000

Tiger users can user Jabber usernames with iChat AV 3.0. What’s the point of that? Well, AOL can’t listen in on you for one. Second, it’s decentralized. Should AOL go belly up, we’d all be fairly screwed. With Jabber, a single service provider can go down or disappear and everyone else can keep jabbering.

Jabber also allows for chat gateways. For example, you can talk to MSN users through it. Melvin Rivera has written an excellent tutorial to get this set up.

OK, I Lied

Wed, 04 May 2005 06:59:54 +0000

I promised a feature review last night and between a not so great commute, reinstalling software, and upgrading the Pismo, I never got around to playing with Spotlight, nevermind take screenshots or write it up.

In fact, I barely had time to catch House. I’d promise to get around to it tonight, but I have a softball game, some email regarding getting my own place to reply to, and a W-9 to fill out.

Cancellation Satisfaction

Tue, 26 Apr 2005 20:23:43 +0000

The transition from iPowerweb to Dreamhost is complete. I got an email from iPowerweb telling me that they were happy to renew my subscription to their service for another year. Well, considering I’d already migrated the site I thought that might be a little silly. I had to call them and let them know that they were fired.

As I sat there on the phone listening to muzak, I went over how this conversation would go in my head. I figured that they might ask why and I thought that I’d just mention all my issues from last summer. I’m not an unreasonable person, but after having to explain to their brain dead staff half a dozen times that my problem was not an inherent problem in WordPress or any of the plugins I was using with it. If their attitude was going to be that the problem was that I didn’t use their provided software, I knew I’d be having a problem.

Migrating Host

Thu, 14 Apr 2005 23:06:19 +0000

The transition is nearly complete. The weblog transition is done, now the other parts of the site must be fixed.

Apologies

Fri, 01 Apr 2005 00:37:20 +0000

I will not be doing any lame April Fools Jokes on this site today. Sorry.

The Management

Tag Central Update: Smugmug

Sun, 27 Mar 2005 16:32:12 +0000

I got an email from Don MacAskill, CEO and Chief Geek (his words, not mine ;)) over at Smugmug. He informed that they are working on feeds for their content, which is absolutely terrific. I’ll be able to add more pictures and eliminate my little lack of inline-block support problem.

As a little side-note, Don was also very friendly in his email, so anyone passionate about sharing their photos should check out their service.

Tag Central

Mon, 21 Mar 2005 09:11:25 +0000

I’ve started work on the Tag Central project I talked about previously. It currently uses the various RSS feeds that the suppported sites spit out. Unfortunately, this also means no Technorati tags. Unless I’m totally out of my mind, they don’t supply easily accessed RSS feeds.

Right now, I’m not using a database, but instead just using the standard file based caching built into MagpieRSS which is processing all the feeds for me. Space may become an issue if this site becomes popular. I’d hate to not cache, but as I’m not getting paid for this yet, I can’t afford to use gigantic amounts of space.

New Sections

Sat, 19 Mar 2005 17:48:41 +0000

Listed under Pages and Site Sections are some new additions to the site.

I’m giving you all the tools to stalk me online. You can see what I’m doing with 43 Things, the music, movies, and games I have in my library, if I’m sitting in front of computer with the webcam, the movies I’m getting from Netflix, an assortment of pictures at Flickr, and now the music I’m listening to at the music section.

Web services at 43 Things, Netflix, and Flickr supply the data in those respective sections. The library is powered by Delicious Library and DeliciWeb. The webcam is powered by EvoCam. Finally, Recent Tunes supplies the data for the music section.

www. is Deprecated

Fri, 04 Mar 2005 18:33:08 +0000

You may or may not notice that all attempts to load any address on this site starting with “www.godlikenerd.com” will now be forwarded to the same address with the “www.” stripped out. I like it that way. It keeps the addresses shorter and it hasn’t been necessary to put that on anything since the middle 90’s.

This is of course explained better at no-www.org. Anybody running their own domain name with the ability to use .htaccess files should check it out.

Tag Central

Thu, 03 Mar 2005 09:18:48 +0000

I’ve already run this idea by a couple people, but I thought I’d write about it so there’s some record that it was my damn idea. If you’ve read someone write about this or actually do it already, let me know in the comments.

Tag, You’re It

Many of you are already familiar with tagging, or folksonomies. Popular services use this categorization/organization paradigm to help users manage their content. For example, there’s del.icio.us for bookmarks, Flickr for pictures, 43 Things for goals, and even Technorati for blog posts such as this one. Some of these services are even beginning to list content from these other services when browsing tagged content.

Spam Stats

Thu, 24 Feb 2005 22:18:01 +0000

The new comment spam plug-in automatically tracks caught spam statistics. Before that I used WP-Blacklist, which worked pretty well. Now for the shocking data. It caught over 2900 spam comments (doesn’t include spam trackbacks). With that number recorded, I will now delete them as the mail notifications of them take up 2.9 MB. Yikes.

Changed Anti-spam Packages

Sat, 19 Feb 2005 20:30:59 +0000

I was using Kitten’s Spaminator to supplant WordPress’s built-in spam fighting abilities, but unfortunately, it was being far too aggressive. It said that Katie‘s recent comment was spam. It said the referrer was bad (it wasn’t). It also thought that the lack of email or URL was bad. Those three things were enough to label her post as spam. Not good. I had to retire the plugin from this site. If you tried to post and got rejected because of that, my apologies.

Theme Update

Sat, 19 Feb 2005 18:05:35 +0000

I’ve almost got the site’s theme to the point where I’m ready to start distributing it. There are still a few rough spots I’m sure, so please let me know any weird things going on.

Once I’m totally satisfied, I’ll be making the theme available through one of the site’s about pages.

43 Things Supports WordPress

Thu, 17 Feb 2005 09:29:05 +0000

Robot Co-op announced today that they are supporting WordPress blogs (adding to Blogger, LiveJournal, Movable Type, and Type Pad). As of this entry post time, it was still rough. The description texts are still not filled out right (making it apparent that they simply use the same method as for Movable Type, hardly a surprise), but I assume it works. This should be have been trivial for them to do (as all the major blogging packages use XML-RPC and Movable Type APIs).

Speed Improvements

Wed, 16 Feb 2005 12:02:46 +0000

Between upgrading to WordPress 1.5, adopting a new page layout, moving Scott and Bob’s blog data into a separate database, and rebuilding my blog database, I’ve reduced the page generation time from well over a second (sometimes close to two seconds) to a mere third of a second (for the main page).

It should feel like the entire site is flying now. Things may bog down as I customize, but it was still a nice little surprise.

Upgrade Complete

Tue, 15 Feb 2005 22:28:51 +0000

Don’t worry. I will not be leaving it as it looks now. It’s a work in progress. I just didn’t want to screw around installing WordPress a thousand times.

Anyway, please litter this entry with recommendations. I already have a picture in mind for the top, so don’t worry about that. Everything else is fair game though!

WordPress 1.5 Released!

Tue, 15 Feb 2005 08:30:23 +0000

I know all of you haven’t been waiting like I have been for this, but the fine folks over at WordPress have finished work on WordPress 1.5 “Strayhorn.” This means that I’ll be taking the site down later. I’m not sure if it will be tonight, tomorrow, or sometime later this week. First, I need to finish at least one new theme. I’ve already started working on it on my test blog. It’s a modification of the fabulous Kubrick. When I’m done, I’ll be letting Michael know that I borrowed from him (though I tried to limit that as much as possible).

A Quick Note about Protected Entries

Mon, 14 Feb 2005 14:05:15 +0000

From time to time, I’ll be putting up protected entries (such as the other post today). If you want to read it, contact me.

This is mostly a measure to keep some of my more personal stories away from the general public that’s probably here simply for my tech analysis. Don’t feel intimidated about asking. I’ll give you the password most likely.

DIRECTV Is a Bunch of Scumbags

Thu, 23 Dec 2004 22:31:30 +0000

I’ve been fighting comment spam for a long time now. The majority of those sites are selling prescription drugs to fight erectile disfunction and poker sites. I long for the days when spam was ads for pornography. At least I could get some use out of that. But I digress.

These spamming sites have been mostly no name, fly-by-night outfits that don’t have a reputation to maintain. They don’t care that the public at large hates them. They make some quick profit and then die as a company.

First Post with the Brand New MarsEdit 1.0

Fri, 10 Dec 2004 23:16:29 +0000

The blog editing software I’ve been using for a while now, MarsEdit, has finally gone 1.0. I consider it the second most essential software I use on my site (right after WordPress). It works with a variety of blogging packages, so if you use a Mac and blog, you need to check it out.

Congratulations Brent. I look forward to future development of this software.

WordPress 1.3 Update

Wed, 08 Dec 2004 22:45:56 +0000

Much like most of the WordPress community, I’ve been waiting with baited breath for the release of 1.3. I’d all but forgotten about it until I recently discovered Blogsome in an attempt to get Dana into a quality blogging package.

Blogsome is a little known free blogging site. And it’s run with WordPress 1.3 software. They even give you your own subdomain name in the format: yourname.blogsome.com. How sweet is that?

At any rate, seeing the new features in 1.3 resparked my interest. I know it’s only a matter of time before it’s released (and hopefully soon). As such, I’ve put up a testing installation. It’s going to be in a state of flux as far as format and looks go, but the content will be static as I simply copied the data from this 1.2.1 installation into a new database for testing.

The Supplement is now Del.icio.us Powered

Fri, 26 Nov 2004 17:01:40 +0000

After struggling with Bloglines rather limited blog interface (which did make linking fairly easy), I’ve decided to give it up and go to del.icio.us to host those links and data. I couldn’t pull the list directly into the main site with direct links to the real things I was linking to. To top it off, they never even responded to my questions about fixing their blogroll publishing (which features completely incorrect structure.

Rob's Blog Debuts

Mon, 01 Nov 2004 19:35:36 +0000

I’ve set my good friend up with a blog on this site. Keep an eye out for exciting changes. He’s always got something going.

Now Presenting: The d00dism Forums

Mon, 01 Nov 2004 18:46:13 +0000

I figure a lot more people will visit if they can do more than just comment on my babbling.

So go do it up in the forums. I even made a politics forum for people to fight. If you have anymore ideas, drop me a line.

Comment Spam Gone Bezerk

Thu, 28 Oct 2004 21:07:45 +0000

No sooner than Peter Cohen mentions getting more than 11,000 comment spams than I realize that I had been hit. I previously had less than five spam comments. I now had about 50. Ugh.

Luckily, setting WordPress to moderate comments with more than 3 links in it did the trick. Considering the success he had with MT-Blacklist and MovableType, I thought it was time I got WPBlacklist which is the equivalent for WordPress. Installation was quick and easy.

New Themes

Wed, 27 Oct 2004 21:09:47 +0000

Check out the new styles. I’ve made “blue” the default, but I’m partial to orange myself.

Satisfaction

Mon, 25 Oct 2004 14:39:55 +0000

I think I may finally get satisfaction from my webhost.

There are some problems currently being experienced by the apache servers at this time. Our admins are working on upgrading them to avoid these problems in the future. We apologize for the inconveniences caused by this and your site should be working shortly.

I’ll know that they’ll finished these upgrades when the upper right hand corner of my web page stops giving the fsockopen error message (which I had to implant). Hopefully the upgrade will also improve some speed issues as my page takes well over a second to be generated now (just a little sluggish).

Site Breakage, Link from Macsurfer, and Pictures!

Sun, 24 Oct 2004 17:08:32 +0000

My server is acting wonky again. I’ve sent my fourth request for service to my webhost. This is a downward spiral. If anyone knows of a good cheap host with support for PHP, MySQL, Perl scripts, Python scripts, etc. (basically the works), please drop me a line. This is getting out of hand.

On a happier note, unbeknownst to me, my website has been linked to by MacSurfer. In particular, my entry on Jef Raskin has been picked out (which I did not expect when I wrote it). That would explain the exceedingly large number of comments I’ve been getting (including some rather angry/vengeful ones, go me). If I can get this kind of response simply by saying I wouldn’t want someone at a party, I might pass out if I try to think about how many hits I’ll get by actually criticizing someone in a meaningful way.

Fixed Again

Mon, 18 Oct 2004 09:48:06 +0000

In what is becoming a bi-weekly tradition for this site, I’ve gotten my website fixed again.

The real question is how long will it hold up. It’s rather frustrating for me as this website has become my main hobby and any time I think I’m beginning to make headway in some kind of readership, the site goes down. What’s worse is that I’m paying for this service. This is the first time that I actually went out and bought hosting for this purpose and I’m getting worse results than I got on free hosts. It’s unacceptable.

Website Broken: Third Time is the Charm?

Sun, 17 Oct 2004 21:21:21 +0000

I give up.

I tried to check my football picks to see how I’m doing this week, only to be greeted with the “No data” error. Super.

I tried to get my host to do what they did last time to fix it and instead, I got the brilliant response that my website was working and that pinging it worked. This is after I referenced the old incident number where they actually figured out the problem.

My Theme Will Be Bundled with NetNewsWire

Wed, 13 Oct 2004 21:38:28 +0000

I can’t quite explain how excited I am, but Brent Simmons likes my NetNewsWire theme and will be including it with NetNewsWire. I’m quite thrilled and didn’t expect it to be worthy of that honor. At any rate, I’ll be referring to it as Autumn from now on.

d00dism Supplement

Fri, 08 Oct 2004 09:47:38 +0000

I’m using my Bloglines account to host a supplemental blog which is going to be clippings that aren’t worthy of the front page.

Upgraded to WordPress 1.2.1

Thu, 07 Oct 2004 11:33:00 +0000

The wonderful people over at WordPress have updated the latest version to 1.2.1 to address some security concerns among other things.

My upgrade seems to have been successful.

I'm #2!

Mon, 04 Oct 2004 16:33:34 +0000

This site has successfully reached the number two slot in Google’s search engine when looking for “Derik“.

Of course, this still makes me a girly man in comparison to Derik Farnsworth – IFBB Professional Bodybuilder (who is #1 ~~sadly~~).

Some day my muscle bound friend….

Get Yo Google Cache

Tue, 28 Sep 2004 22:33:58 +0000

Thanks to Python and Google supplied SOAP API’s, you can now access the Google cache for any site here. I’m only allowed a thousand access per day, so if this gets popular, it may stop working later in the day.

Enjoy!

How the Site Was Fixed

Fri, 24 Sep 2004 21:15:57 +0000

From my webhost:

Â It is an error that we are working on and fixing. But the current fix out be to restart apache. This error is rare and shouldn’t rear it’s head again. Thanks for patience. There you have it. If you are having trouble with WordPress sending back zero-sized replies/no data/connection reset by peer, then you may need to restart Apache. I’ll write more when I find out more.

Fixed! Again!

Tue, 21 Sep 2004 20:57:18 +0000

The real question is for how long. I am noting this because again, it’s proof that WordPress works fine and great.

Now I’m waiting for the explanation.

Want Proof That I'm Not Crazy?

Tue, 21 Sep 2004 18:01:17 +0000

After another series of exchanges with my webhost, I’ve reduced one of the problems I’ve been having to a single PHP command.

This should connect to NOAA, disconnect, print a success statement, and finish gracefully. The source can be seen here although you may need to use your browser’s “view source” command.

PHP or Apache hangs on this simple code. If anyone has seen this before, please comment.

Help Me, I'm Losing My Mind

Mon, 20 Sep 2004 09:56:21 +0000

Jon, if you’re still reading my site, I seem to still need your help. Please comment or email me directly at ddelong !at! gmail dot com.

I will take any and all help. One very small section of WordPress’s PHP code seems to be messing up and I can’t diagnose why.

Thank you.

My Blog Was Broken Again

Sun, 19 Sep 2004 18:47:26 +0000

After days of troubleshooting a couple weeks ago, I got my Blog fixed. Apparently, my host is having a relapse. I won’t be able to do much until I get it fixed, so stand by.

sigh

Contest: How to Improve This Site

Tue, 14 Sep 2004 21:39:12 +0000

I’ll give a Gmail invite to the person with the best idea on how to improve my site here. In the case that there are several really great ideas, I may give out a couple.

Valid types of ideas are:

Adding a WordPress plugin of some sort to my blog here.
Adding a new section of content.
Something original.

And… Go.

The Last Broken Site Update

Thu, 09 Sep 2004 19:31:35 +0000

At least, I hope this is.

After finding a couple test entries successfully entered in my test installation, I tried it on my own and I confirmed posting works again. Well, that to me said that the problem was fixed. I added my weather plugin back and guess what. That’s right, it worked and it didn’t break the site.

Remember this day, because this is normal operation and proof positive that WordPress works and the code isn’t broken.

It's Fixed?

Thu, 09 Sep 2004 15:14:29 +0000

I just tried posting with the web interface and it looks like things are back to normal.

Experienced PHP Programmer Needed

Wed, 08 Sep 2004 19:58:43 +0000

I’m trying to track down the problem with my weblog that recently cropped up. My host’s support staff have largely pointed the finger back at me. I’d love to isolate the problem myself either to fix it or have a firm place to point my own finger. If you know PHP and how to debug, send me an email or comment (as long as the comments are still working).

Update: Now attempts to post result in thirty copies. I can’t win. At least I can still post with my external editor.

The Long Road to Recovery

Wed, 08 Sep 2004 12:32:46 +0000

Last night, I put in a completely isolated new installation of WordPress in. I made a new database, didn’t change anything but the configuration files necessary to point at the database. WordPress still shit the bed when trying to post new entries. All I can say is, at least they still go through.

I’m waiting help from my host and hopefully I’ll get things back in working order soon (especially since I’d like to put my weather plug in back).

Weather Plugin Broke The Site

Tue, 07 Sep 2004 14:21:35 +0000

Earlier today, the weather plugin (which told you the weather in nearby Worcester) broke my blog earlier today. As of yet, I don’t know how or why, but needless to say, hunting it down wasn’t easy or fun. I nearly gave my host some crap which wasn’t their fault. Arg!

Update: Apparently more is going on than just with the weather plugin because attempting to post this returned document empty errors. Why must things break on me?

Notice Any Changes?

Sat, 04 Sep 2004 14:33:26 +0000

The last few days, I’ve been playing with the CSS that renders the site for me. I’ve now given the weblog a page-like look (notice the border on all sides). Normally, that bugs the crap out of me on websites, but I’ve tried to keep it a small border to make things look nicer. I’ve also removed the numbering of the comments and gave them dashed line separators.

Next up is to add a logo of some kind (and a favicon because I’m sure all of you are tired at looking at the generic icon for this site). I’ll have to try my hand at designing them both myself as no one offered to help this artistically stupid programmer.

Calling all Artists

Fri, 13 Aug 2004 21:46:48 +0000

After continued use of NetNewsWire, one thing has become painfully clear to me. I need a logo for my site. This isn’t just for the front page, but so I have a favicon because until I do, my site is going to look second rate.

I have zero artistic talent, nor do I have any idea what would look good for my site. I need help. I’m begging. Any artists or graphic designers interested? Leave a comment or send me an email at webmaster [at] godlikenerd [dot] com.

Various Improvements to the Blog

Thu, 12 Aug 2004 08:40:49 +0000

I’ve added several key improvements to my blog. The first is the set-up of permalinks. Now instead of http://godlikenerd.com/index.php?some=arguments&here=1&etc=2, URL’s for the articles follow this format http://godlikenerd.com/weblog/year/month/day/article-name/ which is certainly much more readble. It should also be a very transparent change for users.

I’ve also added a local (to me) weather indicator to the right (which I thought was a nice addition). This was made possible through WordPress’s plug-in system. Readers may have also noticed the acronym plug-in which makes common acronyms such as USB and CSS show their full text in a tooltip (hover your pointer over the dash-underlined word). I’ve also added a plugin which will automatically turn URL’s into links.

WordPressing the FAQ

Fri, 06 Aug 2004 20:45:10 +0000

After seeing how strong the muliple users feature of WordPress is and how easily it can make it for users to post, I think I’ll be turning the OS X Forum FAQ into a blog. This will have the advantages of being easily updated (even without my attention), allow for individual posting, keep the pages small and fast loading, as well as add a search engine.

I’ll be posting a notice onto Macworld’s site calling attention to this entry. I want comments, lots of them. All opinions are important to me.

Migration complete!

Tue, 03 Aug 2004 09:22:59 +0000

The good new is that WordPress is a million times easier to install than MovableType. I also like its interface much better. The bad news is that its documentation, or at least the organization of the documentation is lacking.

At any rate, I also moved my weblog to the root of the domain, so I’ve made a pointer from the old directory. I just hope that users that were using an RSS client to read my site will notice that the feed has moved as well (it’s linked on this page).

Goodbye MovableType, Hello WordPress!

Mon, 02 Aug 2004 20:24:38 +0000

Following confirmation from Ranchero software that NetNewsWire does indeed work with WordPress, I’ve decided to move to it. Partly was to keep current and partly because of some of its features are compelling.

I won’t be making any more entries until the migration is complete. I’ll also be making my blog the front page for my domain. Stay tuned!

Blogging Software

Mon, 02 Aug 2004 10:19:29 +0000

I’ve been using MovableType to run my blog here and it’s been working great.

However, MovableType 3.0 and up are no longer free. For now, the current version of MovableType I’m using is sufficient, but I’m concerned about long term viability.

The guys over at Unsanity have moved to WordPress, which seems pretty nice as well.

Does anyone have any recommendations for Blogging choices? Keep in mind, I’d like to continue to have the option to publish using NetNewsWire, which does limit the options a bit (WordPress may be out of the running because of this). My host does supply Blogger software as part of their package as well.

Pictures Added

Mon, 19 Jul 2004 08:37:23 +0000

I’ve added pictures to my review of Radtech’s ScreenSavRz as well as my entry about my new futon. I took the pictures a little bit high-res so I’ll have to scale them down. Unfortunately, adding the pictures as part of the extended entry seems to be only a half-way solution as looking at June archived will bring up every entry in its entirity, including those pictures.

I wanted to avoid uploading the pictures using MovableType’s built-in web upload because it’s slow in pretty much every browser, but there seems to be no way to get MovableType to recognize pictures you’ve uploaded manually.

What Content Do You Look For?

Fri, 16 Jul 2004 19:45:46 +0000

Now that I have my own domain, it’s time I did something with it. While hosting the OS X Forum FAQ for Macworld and my blog are nice, I feel like I need more.

I could have a forum, but I’m not sure how much I really need one, especially since I wouldn’t host Mac topics.

I could have polls, but I’m not sure if that’s real content on its own.

Once a Day

Tue, 29 Jun 2004 09:39:23 +0000

Once of my favorite websites is RailHead Design. It’s become a daily stop because, well, it’s updated every day (at least during the week). I’m resolving myself to having the same discipline (though my entries tend to be a bit longer than Maury’s). Starting today and happening every day unless I go on vacation, I will be adding at least one new entry.

I’ll probably borrow (ok, steal) from sources such as Obscure Store, Fark, and Maccentral to fill the void on days when I have nothing good or interesting to say.