The Geeks Blog

Though Mat seems to be surprised that I still have stuff to say here after e full post each morning, I must say his site is one hell a lot more info filled, and interesting. I feel, a lot of the time, like I am only passing the news on, with very little actual content that originates from my grey matter. I compare this to many of the Daynote's members site's and I wonder what the hell I am doing here. Their sites have content and respected opinions and mine only has one guy passing on the news. <sigh> Maybe it is just my deflated sense of personal opinion.

The Doc Searls Weblog, long a great site for insightful opinions and links to sites with opinions the world needed to know, has become, sadly, a shadow of it's former self of only few days ago. On Tuesday Doc said that due to many circumstances, like work being put aside in favor of blogging, and his feeling of being repetitious, that he is not going to blog like he used to. I had hoped it was a heat of the moment decision, taken back shortly thereafter, but today's shows I am mistaken. I hope Doc can find a renewed sense of purpose and need. Doc's has been one of the few blogs I make sure to read before all others, even my own brother's. His site will be a sadly missed part of my daily routine.

On a more positive note, congrats go out to Dave Winer, who won an award at the 2001 Wired Rave Awards. I warn you about visiting that link, it is a very slow loading site, even on Cable. For an awards site that "were chosen by WIRED readers and celebrate the people, the products and the Web sites that represent the best in technology." Sadly their site represents what is very wrong about much of the sites out there, they are set for the broadband users, not the dialup's.

Welcome visitors from Weblogs.com. Feel free to check out the Hacks of an Abnormal Geek, changed most days between 4 and 6 AM Central Standard Time, though it does occasionally change at other times as I see fit. Most day time posts will be here. Feel free to bookmark the Current Hack.

Very good to see Jim Kershner back to posting. Much has apparently happened since he went offline and I am sure many are glad to see him back. Good luck with the job hunting.

Chris Pirillo, of LockerGnome and Call for Help on Tech TV, is looking for Blogger's input for an article he writes for CPU(Computer Power User, not Central Processing Unit) which will be a rebuttal of the inflammatory article I mentioned before about Blogging. His question is: "To counteract Dvorak's stance on blogs, I've decided to dedicate next month's CPU article to blogging software. What's your favorite blogging tool, and why? Do you know of some obscure (downloadable) blog utility? Please blast your chatter post haste. I'm finishing the article tonight and would love to use your quote(s)."

Here's my response: "I use Blogger, but only because my current host is a hindrance when it comes to anything outside their sphere of influence. When I move to my new host, and my blog to it's own domain, I will be using Moveable Type. It has a lot of promise, but a less restrictive License and perhaps even GPL'ing the software, would make it much more friendly to the owner of the new server. Right now the closed source is the only reason I am not 100% sure I can use it." It is not likely my comments will have any impact on Chris's article, but my opinion is still there. Please go and voice your own.

You recall when you said under the old code here, it seemed like part of the code would load, giving the background, then it seemed to take forever for anything else to happen? Well, I now am having problems loading your site. It loads the top bar, and then seems to just sit there, and 1 or so minutes later it finishes loading. The first couple of times I thought it was just my connection, but all other pages load fine.

Megan Morrone, the web producer of The Screen Savers, is now a blogger. I repeat, the Megan Morrone Blog is live!! I think the rather large post she read on the show could be shrunken a little, and I am hesitant to believe she will continue blogging, but check it out. Now you can all actually go to her blog, and not just to my site. I am not sure what i think about her choice of blog creation path(Radio Userland) but it is good to see her take to the blogging trend. I figure I will give her a month to see how much of a presence she has, and then I will decide to add her to the blog roll.

So, I am the Infamous Geek am I, Mike? Well, you are pretty famous as I have found out. A couple of friends recently questioned me about whether I am the Geek they keep hearing about on your site. Apparently they are some of the many blog lurkers that we all get so much of. One is a friend who I just saw the other day who I had no idea was a blog fan, and who did not know that I was into blogging. I guess it didn't hit the person to follow the copious amounts of links from your site to mine.

Mike has a few new features he spent the lonely weekend working on, including a work around RSS Feed, really cool Forums, as well as both an email subscription service for his blog posts and tying out a couple of freeware news aggregators and writing a review of both. Talk about being busy!

I have to thank Mike for being one of my biggest supporters during my away time, and being one of my biggest fans. I don't really know what he sees in this lowly blog, but I sure thank him for all his help, advice and support. This, I swear, has to be the absolute best thing about the blogging community. Between Mike and Keith, I can count on any screw being mentioned and any problem solved as quick as can be.

Ok, bad Franglais. Anyway, thanks to Mike for helping me figure out how the comments system works. Turns out they email me with every comment, which could be a good thing, and that being a free user I was able to actually have comments by non registered users. See, the problem was that I was not sure what was possible as Live Journal has no ;list of what is limited on free users, or comparing the two in a clearly defined way. On that point, I will ask you all to sign your comments if you leave them, because I would really rather not have to guess by IP, which I add I do log. Thanks to you all, and to Mike especially. Glad to be back in the community, of sorts.

Ok, well I know I had no problem signing on to the MSN Messenger Network, but apparently at least my mother and sister could not. I saw when I woke up that my mother was online earlier and thought perhaps she was just offline for a little bit, but surprising few of my contacts were online at all today. I use Trillian, so that might explain why I could get on but they couldn't though knowing Microsoft and their competition resistant ways I would have expected it would be me not those actually using the MSN client. Looks like I am going to have to be back from the Gym earlier then I had planned because my mother is going to pick me up around noon to go to her place to wash my laundry(the machines in my building suck badly). On that note I have to head off to bed. See you all tomorrow.

So, here's is my review of My Thoughts.

I got the pleasure and joy to review the blog called My Thoughts. This is very interesting blog, from a young lady named Jenn.I was thoroughly pleased to read it, and found out a lot about her and her life, though I would have liked to have had maybe some pictures to make things a little clearer. among other things I read about her new boyfriend, her family, her church life and all of her friends.

I also learnt about how much she loves blogging, a common and pleasing theme throughout the community. Her archives show how she enjoys her life overall, but there are a few pieces that remain unaddressed from the perspective of those who are not close personal friends, which is something the writer needs to learn. Blogging is a worldwide trend and as her blog grows and she links out, people will link in, causing her audience to grow significantly beyond the normal ones of friends and family.

In the month or so that the blog has been around, she has grown as a blogger and leant the one key aspect of the blogging community, which is that it is links to each other that keep us together as a community. to read her archives and read her most recent posts is to see the progression of her as a writer and I must say it can go nowhere but up from here. She holds a lot of promise and when she learns to loosen up and not hold as much back in all respects, she will be in her zone.

She stops herself when the reader wants to hear more, she holds back facts the reader needs to make sense of posts. With a little help she has improved the layout to provide an email link, and I think her blog is now essentially perfect in layout. Her theme is one of flame and fire, and it looks good on her. A few tweak might be helpful, though time consuming, and it is nice to see she is interested and able to take tips with grace and a little humor.

As far as special features go, I think there are a few things missing. I would have really enjoyed being able to comment on the posts I read, and until recently an email link was hard to find. I understand that using Blog*Spot limits what a person can do in many instances, but I hope that the author is able to find a host sometime that will allow her to stretch her wings and soar.

Overall I would encourage anyone who thinks life is hard to read this blog. She has shown it is possible to overcome self esteem issues, physical hurdles and erroneous code, and has come out the other end of the tunnel with a dam ned good blog. I have a list. this is a list of blogs I read every single day, sometimes more then once to see if there is a new post. This has joined it. That means it is in the top 105 of the blogs I read, and I read a lot of them.

It is a good thing to see AIH is back up and running. The site went down more then a month ago, and after what I can only assume is a whole lot of work and trouble, the site is back up. Thank god, Dilbert and apparently newcomer Grisson. Three cheers and many beer's to you all.

I am informed by Christine that she is working fast and furious(well, ok, she is at work, but other's are) to get the Blogomania site and it's customers back up. It appears some lucky people are still able to see the Blogomania customers, and have graciously volunteered to move as much data as possible off of the rotten VeoWeb server's. Pathetically I note that VeoWebv's site is sitting pretty. Bastards! Anyway, Christine says that the weekend is pry a little longer then it will take, but assuming all those who want to stay inform her ASAP things look like propagation will be the only hitch, at least for their own forums.

I can access the site now by IP, so I know it is back up, but it is only a matter of propagation. Christine assures me that the forums will probably be up tonight, to help facilitate the discussion among customers. I am also told that the propagation will be done ASAP, though it really depends on the DNS servers on the web. I just hope VeoWeb does not pull DNS theft by continually reasserting itself as the primary DNS. I have seen bitter hosts do this before, but after 22 hours and not a word, they have no room to be the injured party.

The newly launched Ask It Here is pretty much dead. Anyone going to the main page is redirected to a page saying "Access is denied. Internal error:The request failed with HTTP status 404: Not Found." and unless I am blocked by IP, the site is dead. Might I add that Netcraft shows they are using Windows 2000 and IIS 5.0. Guys, just ask Microsoft's web admin how well that works. I hope the site is back to fully functional soon enough.

My bad. I am not sure if the following is being experienced by normal users, but I was trying to set up a blog for myself, Dave and Christina to share ideas for a Project Dave has an idea for, but since I set it up last night I have has nothing but trouble. I keep getting a 503 error. It appears to be fixed now, but there have been varying levels of screwed up over the last 12 or more hours. For instance, hen I first signed up, none of my blogs showed up on the right like they usually do. Two red blogger B's and they both had no text beside them and only pointed to Blogger Pro. Now the accoutnI set up shows as non existent, and when I try to create a new blog over that one, I get a message that the user name is taken. Go figure.

I am really happy to see that Blogomania has moved to Hosting Matters, the same host of the wise Mr. Devens, for their host. Based upon the descriptions of Christine, these people have gone to really great length's to ear her business, even supporting her overnight. When you have a host that is still answering questions on an emergency basis until 6:30 AM, you know it is a really good host. I hope to be set up with them by the end of tomorrow, so this may be one of the last few posts here. I'll let you know when things change, and provide a link back while this is up.

Ok, I am not sure if such a thing exits but I was wondering if there is a site that has different MT templates. I have nothing against the MT default, but it is boring to me. I would prefer something that I can customize to look a little more like the one I had back with Blogger, but in reality I know this is pry not possible. In essence, I want the Archive template and Index template to be the same, and be a three column one where I can put my two side table into. I was thinking of 'borrowing' Chris's template, but I got the impression he is getting annoyed with that. I gotta head out for a bit, so please comment while I am out and let me know where things stand.

So, I had to stop by the MTS store in the Shops of Winnipeg Square, and assuming that no one there had ever checked this blog on the open access computer there(beautiful screen, Like 22" or so. *droool*) and I was a little pleased to see that geekblog.net resolved at a Moveable Type powered blog. That's right, MTS users, or some of them, see this blog for what it now is, not what it once was.

Ok, doing an nslookup I get the new location, but a ping goes to the old place. As well, when I try to open it in the browser it still shows the old one. Maybe a quick log off will fix this, but in all likelihood I think a full reboot is the only solution. I think the problem is in the caching system that Shaw uses to facilitate quick loading. More soon. [Update: Nope. Logoff failed to let me access the new page, and same with a complete reboot. Not sure what to do next to ensure the move actually propogated. Hmmmm...]

Ok, so I have been looking for a place to get a new look. I have nothing against the default template, but I have still not found one that follows my idea. I asked in the Blogomania forums, figuring these people have probably found things I have yet to find. Well, I got one answer, BlogPlates which led me to this site, which has pages of templates. Sadly my idea was to have user submitted templates, not just those designed by one person. I scoured the BlogPlates site, but found no place for people to deposit their own templates for the different supported packages(Blogger, Moveable Type and GreyMatter). Maybe I will just have to do one myself. site that is, I still can't figure out what the MT templates need.

So, Dave is slowly working towards a full fledged site. As he puts it, articles on everything from Flash to Mysticism. It has a blog like feature(the center area), and some really cool flash and photoshop elements. He is really showing how good he is by this site. Much better in design and appearance then the Flash Blog, and I hope much easirer to use. I will happily offer him space here, but only if he keeps it low cost. Happily he seems to be looking towards a blog hosting deal from Blogomania, or it looked like that from his questions earlier.

Ok, so I mentioned to Al(the director here at Job Works) that the site said Coming Soon, and that I would be interested in designing it. He invited me into his office and I found out they did have one of those really cool, really high end sites that does all flash and such. They want one that is not so bandwidth intensive. See, they found a lot of people didn't have Flash(obviously there was not a non flash alternative) and those that did found the site too hard to load. Understandable by any measure. So I am expecting to walk out of here with a CD copy of the old site, and I said I would try to have a proposal by the end of the week or Monday. I have emailed Dave and brought this up and if I had been able to recall Christina's I would have done the same for her. Instead, I will post this piece to both my blog and the blog I have set up for the three of us. Hopefully the two of them check often or tonight at least.

I am not sure what I want to do with the site, as I am not used to companies wanting low bandwidth only sites, but I cannot imagine the site costing all that much. I expect little graphics work, but a fair bit of coding. They want a basic info page and a page with a list of the programs they offer. That shouldn't be all that hard. I am thinking of $2,000 or less. No more then $3,000. I expect at least a $500 retainer if they go ahead with it. This will cover my bills for the month or so I figure it will take in my spare time. What do you all think?

I was watching CFH tonight and they have, in the month of April, a technology quiz for a prize every weekday. Well, today's was announced as 'Cheyenne, who(this about the time I was turning the TV up to see if I heard right) is a huge Gnome fan and is better known as Gnome Girl'. I cursed in glee and congratulated her in thought for getting only CFH, the show hosted by her favorite personality. She was asked, under the category of PC Hardware, "Cathode Ray Tube, or CRT, is used in what piece of PC Hardware?" If you guessed, like she did, that it is used in the Monitor, you are right. You win nothing, but she won a cope of Jasc's Print Shop Pro.

You could tell she was ecstatic to be on the air, after having her daughter wished a happy B-Day a week or two ago, and I have no doubt when I read her blog tomorrow she will be hugely excited and post in many capital sentences. Her URL was also muttered on the air, so there is no doubt that her site has become swamped and it is also possible that HM may have had issues. The TSS hosts call it 'The ScreenSaver's Effect', but I think it is in fact the TTV effect.

The awesome thing? I may have also received a decent amount of traffic as she has blog rolled me, and Geek Blog is a noticeable name. Oh, and Chey? Only you(and maybe Gretchen) could get away with calling Chris Pirillo 'babe' on the air. It was cool to hear you on the air and I was proud of and for you. Now, for that netcam...

Did anyone notice when Chris added me as a Gnome Click? I don't even know, but I know it was in the last 24 hours. I have already received 4 referrals from him, and this, I think, had opened me to a whole new market. This would be like getting a big glowing reference form Leo Laporte, or someone like that. One of the big wig's of blogging. I am now in the company of such blogger's as Cat, Cheyenne and Mike on that coveted list. I feel... honored. Whooooo hoooooo!

By the way, to all of those I read regularly(some are listed at the side) I will be back to regular reading soon I hope. I am missing your blog's just as much as I hope you all are missing my visits. See you all in the referrer logs soon. Oh, and the /Me/ at this is me, and should only be me. It is basically a page for me to look at referrer's, comments, and store links off my computer where I don't need to worry about the BlogChat window. I like it, but I usually have the Host window open already.

Now that I am getting referral's from Mr. Pirillo, I want to clean the code up on the blog. I also organized the order of the links and as soon as I am able I will happily copy those changes to the blog, to make it look better and cleaner. As of 6 AM this morning I had 6 referral's from Chris, so I assume that he must have only added me last night. Either way it was not a link that has been there for long, though I am happy it is there.

I don't expect to get a newsletter mention, but I am happy to see the blog getting some more widespread press. I just can't for the life of me figure out why the blog roll happened at this point. I cannot think of anything other then the discussions with Randy that might have brought my blog to the attention of Chris. The funniest thing about that is that Randy himself, as of 4 PM today, had not added me, though to be fair he did just finish an upgrade to MT 2.0.

I also noticed that Cheyenne has changed her blog's look, with the top bar being three pictures of, I think, the female star of Alias. I think. It looks like her, though I have not seen those pictures before. I also noticed that Chris mentioned her in that he was watching TTV to wait for the show in which she won. I think he might still be a little happy or shocked at that show. I guess a lot of his diehard fans don't get on the show.

I am also told he mentioned her in his newsletter, in that he had no idea how she came to be a fan. It seems she is also, to a much lesser degree, a fan of mine, and neither of us can figure out how she came to read and link to my blog. I personally expect it was probably due to my short term participation in the LG newsgroups, or perhaps the comments I left on Chris's blog. Either way, she is one I count as one of my biggest supporters.

Let me see. Mike McBride. Keith Devens, Scott, Cheyenne. Chris Pirillo. 5 blogroll's. I am pretty sure there are more, but those are in my world pretty high profile, and all of them provide me with a significant number of referrals. I know that there will likely not be as many from Cheyenne as there will be from Chris(I hope), but I am sure she knows how important each of here referrals are for me. Each person who links, even once, makes my day.

I still wonder why or how I once made it into the Weblogs.com Top 100, which is a list of the top 100 sites linked to by sites that ping it. I know I was there because I got like 20 referrals from it. I keep noticing odd referrals, and have noticed a number of apparent referral doings in there. I mean findanisp.com?? surfnomore.com? No links to me, not a way in hell they could have actually sent someone my way. then there is the people who have come here from netcraft.com after apparently doing a survey on that. I will look into that more tomorrow.

I just got my copy of CPU Magazine, in which Chris Pirillo writes for, and the blog article he was talking about writing a month or so ago is in it. I read it over quickly and it looks to be a decent article, and has a few aspects of the tip I am doing in that it points out a few of the options for starting a blog. He did mention some stuff that I has not known, in that Greymatter is no longer being supported and updated, and also that after about 300 posts Greymatter seizes. This makes me seriously reconsider doing a bit on that particular package for beginning a blog.

I was actually wondering if anyone has opinions on a natural evolution in blogging. Mine was from Blogger to LiveJournal, to Moveable Type, but I know Leo went from Greymatter to MT. It does seem like Ben and Mena have a good thing going in that everyone who can seems to be moving to Moveable Type, their blog software package. So, my question for you all is what progression through the various packages you have taken? Did you try a bunch before deciding on the best? Did you roll your own? Let me know as your views will be big in the blog tip.

I mentioned earlier that Chris had done a blog article, and I still have not read it fully, but after a quick review of it I noticed one problem I have with it. He says that with Moveable Type you need to put together your own web server and run it that way. I would venture a guess that only about 5% of the users of Moveable Type actually run it on their own, self managed server, but instead run it on a web host like Blogomania. this is really the easier way for 90% of those who begin a blog, or move from a service of questionable reliability like Blogger or Live Journal.

This does not sound, to the experienced blog user to be a major problem, but the typical new user who does not have any server setup experience might be scared away by those words and just use a lesser service like Blogger, when their current web host might easily be able to do all that is needed to run Moveable Type. Really, it takes a very short time to get a server Moveable Type ready, maybe 5 minutes using the average Linux or BSD install. so most web hosts should have little problem getting stuff ready for Moveable Type.

My blog has three different area's and still has all of the stuff from when it was Blogger hosted, and you know what? I only use 14 MB for the entire site plus boards, so for most hosts who give 50-150 MB's of storage there is very low overhead for the complete Moveable Type package. you could always offer multiple versions, one for each package. One for Blogger, one for MT, one for Greymatter, one for LiveJournal. All of that would take up relatively little in the end.

Well, it looks like Wired's March issue will have an article on blogging. They now have it available online. From what I have seen it looks pretty indepth, and I am going to do all I can to pick up the issue of Wired. Check it out.

Here's another, though lesser in nature.

Ok, any of you HostingMatter's or Blogomania customers out there have any idea what the new "HotLink Protection" icon with the flame thing is? I have not a clue, and therefore do not know if I should turn it on. As well I am still looking for info on lists, and how much extra ones cost. I have one for TuxTalk, but at this point I am entirely unsure if it will stick around as that depends on the cost.

So, Christina, Dave, and I are working through this site idea. I really wish there was more time, but as I am supposed to be employed soon, I don't feel I have much time to submit a proposal and get a decision. It is nice to have more then one mind meshing together, and I think this will be an excellent starting point for the three of us. I wish I knew what Al will think is a reasonable price, as I don't want to short ourselves or overcharge, because that will likely breed resentment one way or another. I just wish I had more experience with pricing on web site designs. I figure price can be haggled, and if it is low then he will be pleasantly surprised.

Well, I was reading the archives of Scott's Sysblog, to see how right the unmentionable family member was about his sanity, and you know what? He is no more or less sane then half the other geeks I know. I know he is likely to exit the technological maintenance profession he formerly held, but at heart he has to know that he will always be a geek. I know I always will, even after I leave the business for more profitable(I hope) professions. A geek is a geek is a geek. Just as a leopard cannot change it's spots, and a zebra cannot erase it's stripes, a geek cannot ever stop being a geek.

That said, Scott is a very honest blogger more honest then I am willing to be, and for that, be he sane or completely crazy, is a damned good and rare thing to find. Oh, and the sweater looks fine. Sorry to all those I read regularly, which I may be cutting down on for awhile as some blog's are getting too hostile towards my anti violence viewpoint, but I am slowly catching up. I am working my way through my list, found at left. Slowly but surely.

Ok. Last year I did this in response to Dave's, but this year I want to get a hop on this. Should I hold the, realistically, first annual Geek Blog Awards? If you want to suggest a site, please do so. I will be holding nominations vie email or via comments(a post will be made on a monthly basis in regards to this). The email to send to is nominate at geekblog dot net. No categories are set yet, but I would love to bring other blog's into the fold as sponsors. You can assume categories like 'People's Choice Blog of 2002', 'Best Technology Blog', 'New Blog of 2002' and so on. If there are ideas for categories I will gladly accept them. So, nominate and suggest away!

Ok, I love the BlogChat service that Brent is offering up. It rocks beyond belief. But I have yet to find a way to be alerted when a person enters the area or takes a name. This frustrates me because I am used to having at least 20 other things going, and right now I have more then 2000 emails to work through. This means that even more then usual I am not able to keep the blog chat window on top, and this means I have missed every visitor today. I wonder what the use is in having this if no one in there sticks around long enough for me to catch them? I want to chat, but when it is 4 or 5 windows below what I have in view, and all windows are maximized to be easier on my eyes, I wonder how I can make sure I know if someone comes into the chat area. Anyone out there have idea's? I have missed at least 5 chatter's this evening at least, and likely more then that. Grrr. Frustrating let me tell you.

Well, also in chat today I met someone who named himself gods_sounded. Well, I think he got to me by the Megan Morrone Blog, where I said I had a LJ code. He said he has emailed Megan, but she had not gotten back to him, so I gave him the one I had. He is a tech living in Chicago who is also in the job hunt like me, and facing similar responses of under/over qualified. Check out his blog. I may add him in the future, but a lot is in the air on that. I need to see what kind of content he has.

I no longer have an LJ code, as I stated in the post.

Wow. That is all that comes to mind after reading this post by Portia. Amazingly touching writing. I know I could never write like that. That is right up there with Scott's touching post of a few days ago. This has been a great few days for emotional writing.

:scott: made another post of a very touching and personal nature. I am still trying to wrap my head around it, though I know I will never be able to truly imagine what it was like to actually die. I hope I can expect, reasonably, that they will be a new book out shortly about this. It is an amazing story and this is from just two or three posts about it. I don't know Scott very well, but I do know enough to be thankful he is around. Thank you again, Scott, for sharing another piece of yourself.

Well, as many of her fan's know by now, Chey was on CFH tonight. She explained to me why she was on, which I will wait until she mentions on her blog, as I don't want to steal her thunder, and thunderous it is, make no mistake. She was asking about CPu upgrades and the difference between the MHz in CPU's and the MHz in bus speed(i.e. 133 MHz ram is for the 133 Bus Speed). I cannot say more then Roger and Chris did, but it was nice to see her on CFh. I think now that she has been on a couple of times it won't be long before she is running the show. No, really I do think this. I mean she would be able to work daily with Chris, which we all know she would love, and she would be able to have us help her in the direction of the show. I think it is a plan.

Well, just as I was working with Brent to get things worked out with my own install of Blog Chat, which I have decided after awhile of beta testing I would like to try to host myself in awhile, the place hosting the entire BlogChat service hosting system seemed to crash. First it was Brent's blog chat on his blog, then it was mine. Sadly things still didn't work as well as I had planned, so I still do not even have my version up and running. I emailed Brent, and by al indications he got it fine, but it appears his email dies shortly thereafter.

So, I am without blog chat completely, and no way to contact Brent to try to figure out the self hosted problem along the way. Additionally, any visitors to my site are not recorded other then by the log file, because the referrer piece at the bottom is not working either. Bah. I hate the net sometimes. Not only did I have to work out the MT hack, thereby getting a slight understanding of perl, but now I am trying to understand PHP. Ok, the blog chat is back up. Yeah. Let's roll.

I am worried. Pirillo.com is not 404'ing, it is just nothing. Anyone know what is up? It is not only Chris's blog, but Gretchen's too. I hope this has nothing to do with the layoffs at TTV, and is simply a server problem. Hmmm. So www.pirillo.com is up. This means it is just the two blogs are down. This does not bode well. [Update: Whew. The site is back up. It also looks like Chris and the rest of the TTV staff were spared. Amen.]

I just wanted to point out that though Megan swears by them, and I despised them, the person I gave my LJ code to, Soundman, has two LJ codes up for offer. If you want one, please comment to this post, or email me, or just check out his blog(if/when it is actually up) and let him know personally. His blog may be sparse but in all fairness, it seems every time he goes to post his blog is down, or he cannot seem to post for one reason or another. He is also looking to sign up with Blogomania, but I am pretty sure the money is an equally hard problem for him, as he does not even have the domain name as I had before I got to Blogomania. check him out and let him know your support.

So, after just releasing a new version of BlogTrack, Jevon is now working on an even better version. Jevon? Did you miss the memo to take a break? I swear it was forwarded to you. It is fine to rest on your laurel's for more then a few days. No. Really. It is. Yeah, I mean it. Step away from the keyboard, get some fresh air. But be sure to bring your shades, cause it tends to be brighter outside then in most computer rooms.

Well, after the more then dissappointing let downs in the past, I am happy to say the group currrently know as The Team, have their first site. This is a great thing to hear, and I sign the papers on Monday.

Well, Portia, the very good friend of :scott: has doe him up a fresh new look to the Sysblog, and I must say it looks stunning. The little picture is neat too. I must say that I am similar to Scott, but I admit I am a geek, I don't just play one.

It appears the long lost Mr. Kershner is back, and gainfully employed for a short while at least. Welcome back, but be warned Mr. Dominik is aiming for you. Just be sure to not let any strays hit here in Winnipeg, ok guys?

I just got a surprising email from an apparent ex geeks list member, Dave McGuire. He writes:

Howdy Blogger. ;)

I need to set up a weblog of sorts (or similar messaging forum type of thing) for a project I'm working on. Can you recommend a decent system that's not written in Perl?

Thanks,
-Dave

Here is my reply, for those who have similar needs:

Long time no read. I read you quit the geeks list for some reason, but have not found anything that would cause that. I am sorry you left, you made the lists infinitely more interesting.

As for blog packages. for those run on an in house server, the only two I have looked into are Greymatter(no longer supported) and Moveable Type, but both are perl based. Another I have looked into is Live Journal, but it is not run on your server unless you pay for a subscription($25 a year) at which time you can embed it via
JavaScript into a page for people to read.

The most popular option for beginners is Blogger, but it is also hosted on another server unless you want to enable FTP. Sadly there is not SSH/SCP option. Lastly, there is Radio, which also can be run on their servers or you can find a way to run it off your own server, but it is only a 30 day trial with a $40 a year price tag after.

As for messaging, I have recently installed the phpBB package and find it to be a decent package which is very robust. It does require a database program and PHP installed.

I hope this rather lengthy but heavily shortened summary is helpful. Let me know if there is anything else I can do. My last recommendation is to go to Freshmeat to see what else is available.

Thanks to :mike: for his help in finding blogs who are supporting and blogging this quiet day. He points to Way Nu, and Doc. I had no idea Doc had blogged it. I even looked. Really, I did, I swear it. doc also wrote a much lengthier and excellent as always article which is on the Linux Journal site. Thanks a lot Mike, and I knew some of my readers would be able to help.

I see that a few of those on my blog roll are on the Blogroll Top 50. :chey:, :randy:, Leo's Angel's, Leo, Cat, :christine:, Doc, Dave and the top three especially. Number 3 is Robyn at BlogBlogBaby, second is Gretchen Pirillo, and #1 is :gnome:. Congrats to those three. It must take a lot to even hit that list, and I want to congratulate all those I know on that list. Maybe one day I will be honored with perhaps a short term place on that list.

The MT Text Replacement Hack is done and uploaded. I will label this as version 0.1 because it does not have the smiley's I had hoped to release with it, but the person who I expect will be the first downloader has promised to help if he can.

A user in the BlogChat just brought up something I had not looked into for the first part of the Blog tutorial. Images in Blog*Spot. I forgot to look into that, but I have now. This page says that you need to find image hosting from another place, because Blog*Spot does not provide image hosting, which likely lowers their costs by a great deal. The average blog page is maybe 10 K. The average image is 100K. See my point? I will look into hosts for your Blog images, and post them here when I find them.

Oh, I hope :mike: doesn't mind my reposting this, but I just laughed for about 10 minutes from this. I posted a comment earlier, in response to the post from Mike about whether the Four Gnomies were anything like the four Horsemen. My comment was:

The four Gnomies are You(Mike), :chey: at Gnome-Girl.com, :randy: at Furo.com and :gnome:, the lead Gnome. I refer to you as that because you are the only four I know who have linked to me who will be at Gnomedex. As for tentative, this is pretty set, only the list of attendees is up in the air. I know I will do all I can do to be there early. I am not sure about everyone else.

Now that is fine, but this was what Mike's wife Angela posted shortly after mine. Prepare to laugh.

I am a pretty liberal wife but Michael I swear if you are involved with bringing about the apocalypse while you are at Gnomedex I will not be a happy woman - no matter what kind of souvenirs you bring home!

Mike's Reply:

Aww come on! Can't I just have a little pestilence? I swear, you're just no fun anymore! :)

Her Reply:

I should think after what you saw last Sunday you would know better than to displease me. DO you want to wind up like the quartet of peepers? I didn't think so.

My comment in closing:

Oh man. I just laughed so hard it literally hurt. That was after Angela's comment. I swear, if I ever get married I hope I have a marriage as funny to watch as you two's. Thank you very much for giving me a great laugh. :-{D>

As I said. Hilarious. They could easily be a comedy team, I tell ya. Sadly I don't think Angela will be at Gnomedex.

After yesterday's outage while :bob: moved over to the server maintained by Greg Lincoln, deemed Rocket, I am at least seeing him back and at the new server. Good to see him back, as I value his posts on a variety of topics, even though I disagreew with many of his views. Now, to catch up.

I have been introduced to a few good blogs as of late, which I wanted to point you all towards. the first is that of Kevin Meltzer, co-author of Writing CGI Applications with Perl. We have talked a few times and Kevin really knows his stuff.

Second is Stuart M. Davis. I can't recall how I met Stuart, or came across his blog, but it is a cool one and I have enjoyed reading the last few entries. I feel for him on so many fronts it is not funny. I know what it feels like to be used, and to be conned into doing people's work for them.

A few others are a really cool Mac blog called Ordinary Life. Not my cup of tea, slice of pie, or type of thing, but it is a decent blog and very informative.

Another one I met through BlogChat was the illustrious Sam of who is the youngest known attendee of Gnomedex at 15. He is also lucky enough to have a sub domain of the TechTVTechies.com domain. His blog is titles BEACHTechie.

Next, Dustin's blog. This guy is the one I mentioned earlier as having informed me about the Gnomedex forums hack. He is another gnomie I look forward to meeting in August.

Next up is a few people I have met in the #lockergnome IRC channel the last few hours. they are some really cool people in there, and a lot of them know a lot. Yes, there is the usual flirtations and chumminess that makes one feel like an outsider when entering, but they are happy to welcome newcomers, and are happy to include others in the ongoing conversations.

The first of them is by Christina Istre, who is from, apparently Philadelphia or the surrounding area, and is a very cool blogger. Second, Nikalyn, who is a cute(:D) sounding chatter and blogger. I really enjoyed watching the banter between her and the next blogger.

the last is the flirtation target of the second #lockergnome chatter, who calls himself Dilandou. Though these last two look a lot alike, it is just because of the exact same software and template being used, not laziness. I think.

Well, :brian: announced today that he and his wife will be moving in a short time to Maryland, due to her employer's strong hinting and requests that they do so. I am told that land prices are cheaper there, and the tech market may also be a little better there. I wish Brian and Marcia the best and I hope they find things a little better in their new location.

So, I am looking at Leo's blog, and how much he is loved by his readers and how much the voice their opinions, when a post about the pathetic response from a higher up at TTV got 17 comments. I look at Megan's blog, and see an earthquake earned her 45 comments. I came to realize something. I need to get on TechTV. this is my mid year resolution.

Ok, so I know that there is not usually a mid year resolution, only a new year one, but I think a mid year one may have better luck, if that is possible. I resolved I would stay smoke free and I did that, but that was a new year. I am making a resolution to get on TechTV, but have no serious hope of this. Maybe if I get a mention on CFH or TSS it will be good enough. Hmmm.

I have decided that I need one of these two, or both, to get the necessary critical mass required to at least get me the requisite mass to get me to Gnomedex. Hmmm. Maybe if :chey: gives me an on air mention when out in San Fran next week... ohhhh Cheyenne, my biggest supporter and bestest friend...

God, I love it when Scoble interviews his son about movies. This time the interview was about Attack of the Clones, and by all reviews he liked it. I would try to do one of those with Cody, but as you many of you read, my sister has banished me from seeing him anymore because of my horrible influence on him(he says as he tries to ignore the swearing and other crap his nieces and nephew get at home). Besides, Cody hates being mentioned on here in any way, except mentions that he is spending the night or stuff.

Awesome. Appreciated. Those are the two first words that come to mind when I got an email just now from Dave Markowitz, Daynoter, who informed me he found my site through some ego surfing(always a good action I think) and that he has linked to it tonight. I was both blown away and grateful.

Dave is a good writer, though not a book writer(that I know of) like :bob: or Tom, and I have enjoyed reading articles of his since Shawn pointed me to his article on setting up a home network. I would link to it but the link I have from last November now brings up a 404. Either way, it was an excellent article, trust me on that.

Check out his site, and let him know who sent you, and Dave? If you read this, can I join in the chorus of suggestions for a couple code changes with your template, like noticeable separators between the links "Hardware Log Links" and links to each day of the week? Maybe even a current post page would be helpful. Maybe? :-{D>

Umm, anyone know Sam? Anyone know his email, or how to contact him via email?? See, his comments are dead, and I only noticed this because I am interested in borrowing the script he uses for the last x number of referrals. I was hoping to hack it a little so it would show up like the last 10 referral script I use that goes to Yaywastaken for it's data, in that it would show the page title referring and linking to the page.

I am not sure how Yaywastaken does this matching as I cannot seem to find a piece of code in the normal logs that would point to how one can get the page title from normal referral info, and I can only assume this is a reverse lookup type of code. I figured if I could get the right info from the person who wrote that, and a little ingenuity, I might be able to get it set up and working right. So, the basis of this is if anyone can get ahold of Sam, please let him know he needs to do a code audit to see where the problem is.

Well, the June Bloggy award voting is now open and it looks like Sam is nominated for nearly every award. :gnome: is also prominent, as well as several very good blog's. I am not nominated, and would rather not be. I still don't see this blog as deserving any kind of awards or special attention, which is why I have not added any blog posts to the Subscriber section, which is yet to have a subscriber, I might add.

Oh well, yet another failed attempt. As well, the message boards have no posts, and thus I will be shutting one of the two options down. I had tried to let you all decide between phpBB and the host supplied boards, but obviously you all don't want either, so I will shit at least one down and leave my own favorite look up, for awhile at least.

Ok, I am listening to the Online Tonight from the 18th, and in the last hour of the day he was talking to Michael Gay of KRON4-TV in San Francisco, who wanted to set up the station's web site to allow people to start and run blog's from their site. Basically, they would be a free blog host for those in the Bay Area. While there are many questions, like what exactly would happen if they had a blog hosted by them have some very controversial and even illegal material?

The best thing would be that they put up a statement that each person is responsible for their own content and while the station will not take anyone's blog down, they will not link to a post or blog that is controversial. They also need to figure out where they are going to host it. I, personally, would love to have a major media outlet, national or international if possible, become a banner free(this is an important part) blog host.

I have no problem with the idea, but it would be important to make sure that the blogger's have the rights to their own content, that they set clear guidelines as to who is responsible for what and what right's each user has. As long as things work well, and things are clear, I would see no reason why a major media outlet couldn't become a community leader and blog host in one fell swoop.

Hmm. So, I signed up for the Blog Meetup, in Winnipeg, on the 18th. That's fine. I expected to be the only one there, as there are no blogger's in the city that I know of. Well, they recently set up some places to hold it.

The Fyxx Espresso Bar, 93 Albert Street, Winnipeg, MB
King's Head Pub, 120 King, Winnipeg, MB
The Fyxx Espresso Bar, 310 Broadway, Winnipeg, MB

the odd thing about this is I am still the only one signed up to go. So my question is how they picked places? Did they simply look in the yellow pages? The list of places sounds like they knew where to look. Can anyone answer these questions? Are there more Winnipeg based blogger's?

My heartiest congratulations go out to :gnome:, who won two bloggy awards he was nominated for, Most Posts and Blog of the Month, while coming in second for the Best Design award. Congrats also to Sam who came in a respectable 2nd in Most Posts and Most humorous. You both did really well. The nominations for July are now open, so get yours in while it's early. Nominations close on the 15th, with voting on until the end of the month.

Well, let's see. I have now done three full installs and one upgrade of Moveable Type. I did mine, I did the one for the MT tutorial I have written, and I now did one for a new friend, and a new Blogomania customer. I will link to his blog as soon as he has everything spick and span, and all prettied up. This time I am very proud to announce, I did the entire install without consulting the documentation even once, and only needed to ask the user to do one thing I could not do from my side of things. It went smoothly, with everything done within 15 minutes. Smooth as silk.

Well, I am finally done putting up all my posts. It only took 2 days to catch up too! I counted about 40 posts in the 4 days offline now, which is a good pace, though most of that was Race posts. The name of the reporter who contacted me is Carolin Vesely, and she simply said I should contact her when I am back online full time. I really look forward to helping her out, and hope this can lead to a more fruitful relationship between this site and myself, and the press. I mean Blogging is big, and a lot of papers have written about it, so it is only logical this cities primary publication would do so as well. I have a few tech news posts to make, then I am off to home. Working the next two days, gotta go clean Hargrave tomorrow night, and have the service and reception for my grandfather Friday, so if you don't hear anything Thursday, see you on Saturday with another bunch of posts.

Well, I know a good number of geek's. I know even more blogger's. Some of the two groups members are the same. Therefore, I announce the Geek Blog's webring, which is planned as a group of blogger's who want to share links. I think some of those I read who would fit into this category are :jim:, :mike:, :josh:, and :brad:. If you want to join, feel free to, and while the ring site is blank, there will soon be a site detailing what the ring is about and what can be expected from member's. The rules will be pretty simply(no porn, no warez or H4X0r talk), but will be monitored.

I was looking at the info for the local blog meetup, and noticed they had links to other meetup's, from Buffy, to Star Trek, from Weezer to web Design. The Meetup's page for Winnipeg has a list of dozen's of meetup's, so maybe your city has a good number of other Meetup's. I am on for the Star Trek, Buffy, Web Design, Weblogger, and LJ, though I think Weblogger and LJ should all be one. I get the feeling a lot of the 80+ LJ registered Meetup users are either a group of friends or a bad joke. I don't think there are 20 blogger's in this city, never mind 80 people paying for LJ.

I finally saw the Reciproll links I have down near the bottom of the Blogrolling links, after seemingly going forever only seeing the Daynotes links, and once seeing part of the Gnome list. No, I still don't know why, but I digress. I finally saw the Reciproll links, and found a few new additions, including Matt G, and what is only described as steidler.net. I don't know who this is, as all I get is a 502 Gateway error, but I suspect it is the site of Tony Steidler-Dennison, author of the Penguin Shell newsletter from LockerGnome. If so, I would love to know how Tony came across this little piece of the net, and thank him, and Matt, for the link. I see others there that appear new, but sadly I have not the ability to see their rolls so I can discern their level of linkage, but thanks to you all.

Ok, I know I blogged this before, but I can't figure out what the hitch is. The problem is load times. I click on the link to :mike:'s blog, and it is literally like dial up where I can go grab a cup of coffee, or a bit to eat, and come back and it may be just loading. I did a ping of his site, and got really nice sub 100ms ping times, but for some reason the content itself is taking forever. It cannot be the problems with BlogRolling, as no other blogrolling using sites take this long, but it shouldn't take this long. Does anyone else notice really slow load times on his Blogger Pro blog? I thought it was for the same reason as mine was loading slow, and that was the ASP Comments, but I saw another blog that used them which had better load times. I dunno, maybe it is just me...

Well, as many of you know already, Megan Morrone announced her new blog spot today, as JumpingMonekeys.com. Clearly by her first few posts she is very excited about the new baby, and maybe now Dave will finally believe it and give up trying to deny that she is expecting. I am actually surprised to read she is in her second trimester. I just guessed that she would be showing more by now. I guess we will see more clearly on Thursday when she hosts. As far as her blog, it looks very nice, and I am happy to see she got it up. She mentioned it, and that it was in Leo's book, so she expected to have it up by the time the book was out, and I wish her the best.

Ok, so I note that :josh: has blogged his plan to strip down his PC, sell the parts off on eBay, and move to a Mac. I will naturally assume that this Mac will be the 17" iMac, but I am just happy to see he is dropping the x86 platform. I mean I like Linux, and AMD is a good chip maker, but the Mac is a really cool platform and is moving closer and closer to standardized hardware like IDE drives. It still costs a lot to repair, as well as the cost for the OS, but it is still a much better option then Windows, and you can, or should, still be able to run Linux on it if you want, though don't quote me on this one. Congrats to Josh in this very decisive more, and I expect pictures of each step, from before stripping, to pieces on the table, including the new Mac when you get it.

ok, so I take note that the most comprehensive coverage I have seen on Lockergnome is when Tony got his new Sharp Zaurus. Now, for the #1 link for tech newsletters, I think this is a little, well, odd. Therefore, since :gm: now has the online archive of the Sid Chism Windows Newsletters, I am going to discuss the idea of us doing a weekly(or so) Handheld/Mobile(perhaps including cell phones, as the PDA and Cell markets are beginning to converge) newsletter for GeekMeltdown. For now this would be a newsletter hosted on this domain, as we do not have lists on the :gm: domain, though I plan to move that to the proper domain when we have them.

As I said this is only an idea, but I think it would be a good add on to the site, and would fill a needed market for the web. I have to check with :jim: on this, but I think it is a good idea. What do you all think? Good idea? Bad one? Would you like to read a Mobile Newsletter? Do you have(freeware) software you just can't live without that you want to pass on? Do you have a tip for your favorite handheld or mobile device? Well, in anticipation for this, please feel free to email me your info, and you will get credited if this things gets off the ground. I look forward to your tips!

You may note I have a deskcam. I have decided to use it for good, in that I will be posting a link, along with an image of the site, before I go to bed each night, and it will remain until I get up. This will look like the image right now, in that it will be a picture of the site, with the URL in big letters for all to read even in that small window. Tonight's is Sitsofe's blog, the guy who has been helping me get my CSS and HTML working right. After some discussion, we have figured out he came to my attention though a posting about Mozilla not rendering my blog right, which I posted in the :bnb: newsletter/blog which he got through the Amphetadesk RSS aggregator. I am happy to have met him, so check out his blog. A smart guy, let me tell you.

So, I went by Wired's site for my regular daily news check, just seeing if anything good was happening, and I minimized the page, while going to look at other sites and so on. Well, about 209 seconds later, I couldn't surf anymore. First my browser died, then Trillian stopped responding. I quickly saved my spot in Diablo II, and took to rebooting my computer so I could once again surf and such. After everything rebooted I went back to Wired, but this time I didn't minimize it, and I must say, I don't like the design. It seems like it was done to allow for more ad space, and it just looks cluttered. I much preferred the other layout, when at the worst the only ads were one big box ad and nothing else. Now it looks like all the pages have ads, often many ads per page. Disgusting!

Ok, I am not bitching of lack of visitors, not with 11,000+ last month. I am though, upset that I was not credited for my email that was put in the Penguin Shell issue for the 9th. I sent an email about the irony of Tony using the same monitor as I have for his low grade test machine, while I use mine for the best system I have. I know, I shouldn't complain, I have been gnomed a lot more then most readers, but I would have liked to get credit for my email, not just a blank name. Oh well, I will live and go on. Either way, the point of my email is that video card is not the only thing you need to take into consideration when you choose a Linux system, as a video card and monitor that look fine under Windows do not always look good under Linux.

Well, not quite Broadway, but this article(also here) starts with this blog, and says some really cool things about it. Yes, CodeMeister is broken, and sure, I could have been a little more non geek sensitive. Sorry. The author, Jenny Sinclair, seems to write a regular column on blogs, and from the ones I have had a chance to check out, she does an excellent job. I guess, simply due to my feeling that my lists are far underused, I will point you, my regular readers, and all of the new ones reading from the article, to the Geek Blog's list. This is for bloggers of all kinds, using all tools, not only geek's like those in that list. Check it out, start a thread. Oh, as an aside, blog note. Do not press CTRL+F5 in Opera when you have a post half done. Bad Geek!

Well, in a fit of total irony, I find that as I began to write about the fact that Blogger was hacked again, for the second time in less then a year, I find my site, and al the other :blogo: ones, are down. I am not sure why this is, but I hope it is unrelated to my problems getting a hold of the administration of :blogo:. Ok, well, it looks like it is back up now. I assume this was a mere temporary server issue. I have posted in the blogger hacked thread, and will say it here again. I offer my services and familiarity with Moveable Type to anyone who wishes to install it on their sites, and will not ask, but will also not turn down, remuneration or donations of hardware that readers have extra.

I was still a blogger user when the site was hacked back then, and while I was not really a major blogger, I was still pissed off, and it was not improved by the fact that Ev was out of town on holidays and had to bring it back up with only occasional use of a computer at Kinko's. This time he outage was lessened, but it still happens more then is comfortable. Yes, bad security practices can lead to breaches anywhere, but seeing as Blogger Pro users were also hit, it is clear that even those who pay are not safe from such breaches. I would rather pay someone who's job is web hosting, and not blog tools, and leave the blog tools to those who know how to do it securely. If my host is hacked, they are on the hook, but I also keep a backup. you cannot do that with Blogger. Can you?

Well, if you use GoDaddy, or essentially any other registrar, you will likely get a warning soon letting you know that there is another registration scam going on, this time run by a company called Internet Support Group, who, like Network Solutions, is sending out deceptive domain expiration notices. These are worded to give the impression that not responding will somehow break the law, or lose their domain, and when you renew with them you will pay a high price, $70 for two years of a .biz for instance. If you receive one of these, you should contact your registrar immediately, and forward them a copy of the notice you receive. Under no circumstances should you use this service to renew your domain name.

Well, I see my friend from over the pond, Sitsofe, had not only found a job, but had an offer for another while visiting his alma matter in Swansea. I know he has been looking for awhile, and it has been rough on him not having work for so long, as I have been in the same situation. I am happy to see he is back on his feet, and as Dodi would say, back in his element. I just hope this improves his online time, not worsens it. I mean if he moves closer to the school, theoretically he should be able to hook into some fatter pipes, right? Either way, Sitsofe, congrats.

Ok, so our friend Sitsofe has been noticeably post free, so I emailed him and he is good, just does not have his computer at his new working location yet. He assures me we should see something new soon. In other news, Matty G has moved his blog. He has a cool tribute to his host(:jim:) and the installer(Me) on the old location, and while I thought Mattsblog.com was a good url, you can now find the Mind of Matty G at lampostmedia.com/blog. Best advised to update your blog links and so forth. Meanwhile, Marybeth, over at Life After Borg, is talking about shutting it down for an anonymous one. Tres mysterious. I have found the other one, but due to her not wanting to post the link, I won't either. Either way, I hope that she enjoys blogging, wherever it is.

Ok, so the voting has opened for the 2003 Bloggies, and something has come to my attention. I have not read a lot foe those blogs. I was only able to honestly vote for about 45% of the categories, and some of those were hard to recall what the blog I was aware of was like and whether it deserved an award. Not surprisingly, and I might and quite thankfully, I am not nominated, but then again I am not a meme spreader, and I refuse to suck up to those who read this. That said, now that I am a 'professional blogger' in some people's eyes, I wouldn't mind the kind of recognition that goes with the title. Maybe next year I will get a mention or something. I just think I need to get my name out.

The news was good for CNN which has looked really bad when this site became popular and began to be used by people to anonymously slander and spread lies about others. The site was shut down the other day with the simple message 'Note: Please head over to http://www.spo0fed.com/ for more information...'. The link goes to site that has a lot of pop up's, so I will spare you be telling you it shows a press release that essentially says that they apologize the CNN for the bad PR it got, and to anyone who felt they were hurt by stories others had posted.

Well, just days after I upgraded his install of Movable Type, Brad has decided that he is unable to blog for the time being, I assume because school, fatherhood and life are getting in the way. I can only assume the same departure goes for the attempt to get him on as a writer for GeekMeltdown. I will sorely miss Brad, and hope that school and life go well for him in the time when he is not blogging to let us all know what's up. Good luck bud.

A week or so Wired reported that independent war correspondent Christopher Allbritton, a former New York Daily News reporter, had decided to take his blog, Back to Iraq 2.0, to Iraq with him, not having any doubt war would happen. I felt this story worthwhile of mention today. "Allbritton says he wants to cover the humanitarian effects the likely U.S.-Iraq war will have on civilians in Iraqi Kurdistan, which is protected by a U.S.-imposed no-fly zone over northern Iraq." II have not had a chance to read it much, but it will be a good place to check out as things progress over there.

So, as I wait for my laundry to be done, I figured I'd go through the news from the blogosphere, just as a way to see who's doing what. Matt has recently quit one of 2 jobs, and has assured me it will allow for more time to write for :gm:. :gnome: is getting used to the new lack of daily workspace, and describing the dressing down that seems to be a gradual process that should result in nothing left by the end of this week. :jim: is just getting the snow we received the other day, and I am currently negotiating to have him stick with :gm: while I try to get another site up for more inflammatory content like my antiwar article.

:brad: is still MIA, and did mention another location when his blog was back up, but it has been lost in OS stuff on Zeus. :mike: is good, being a great info source as always, while Mary Beth and Sits are AFB(Away from Blog), and it seems MB is not going to be back to hers. Darci is ranting about Asian crooks and hugging her Titanium iBook(I would too), Leo is asking for antispam assistance, and Megan is blogging about the upcoming baby, and the experience of pregnancy. I haven;t read Evan or Doc since the Google buyout of Blogger, but I hope to catch up on those on Tuesday. Oh, I almost forgot, Mike is leaving as a Gnome writer as of this weekend's issue.

The blog world was rocked by of it's first scandals when the owner of war blog site The Agonist, Sean-Paul Kelley, admitted that the majority of content he has provided about the war on his blog is stolen directly by him from the U.S.-Iraq War.com a paid news service put out by Austin, Texas, commercial intelligence company Stratfor. The dishonesty was revealed by a blogger called General Roy, also a subscriber to the service, and Dan Petty, a Stratfor newsletter subscriber and undergraduate at the University of Illinois at Champaign, also added to it with pointing out how Kelley does not attribute the material correctly. Wired's article on the deception mentions that Stratfor has agreed to allow Kelley to post only 2 items form the service per day, and it seems The Agonist has far less content than one would have seen a few weeks ago, and all of it is attributed.

So, what does this mean for bloggers? Well, our credibility in the mainstream media, like CNN, MSNBC and other networks both TV and radio, is hurt. This person was asked onto many TV and radio shows for his knowledge of how the war was going, and all he was doing was copying someone else's paid service, taking cash from their company by making that many fewer visitors. Personally I am not surprised, this was bound to happen as the demand on bloggers increased and grew to the point of people having to remain on the cutting edge any way they can. Now the community has to recover. I am certain that many people who have blogged about this guy's site have removed such links, and Kelley will really need to work hard to regain the trust of his readers. We will make it, I know the community can do it.

Mike mentioned yesterday that a blogger I enjoyed reading from, Beth Goza, who works at Microsoft, and had removed her blog because of some heavy duty mocking and shameful treatment, has brought her blog back up at a new location, same look and the same kind of content as before. This is good to hear, and it is nice to know she was unwilling to let the losers win and keep her down. I have no doubt the same people will do the same thing again, but I hope this time Beth is able to overcome them and ignore their actions and immaturity.

So, I was just reading Mike's blog, and he posted this, in reference to Scoble's revelation(by link to this at Scripting.com) that he is going from NEC to work at The Beast. While his position seems to be up in the air though described by Winer as 'technical evangelist for a new product in development' while Robert says this about his new job 'I'm part of the team that's responsible for building Windows'. Either way, I will congratulate him on the new position, and hope and pray the evil it seems is contagious there does not spread. I may be over stating this, but the actions of Microsoft since I became a close watcher have shown it is not wholly unjustified.

About a month ago, I reported a story from The Register who said that the San Francisco Chronicle reporter Harry Norr had been suspended for participating in and getting arrested at a peace march in the streets o SF. Well, yesterday the paper fired Norr. The reasons seem linked to the protest, for which he took a sick day, but the article on The Reg made suggestions it may be related to long standing disagreements with the paper's management over a variety of things like his pro palestinian views and thoughts on Intel's arab based fabrication facility. The paper, in a Reuters interview, refused to give a reason for the firing.

Over fears that blogging will adversely affect his writing, famed author William Gibson, author of Neuromancer, Johnny Neumonic and many other books popular to cyberpunks and geeks alike, has announced he will be quitting the blogging world in order to spare the creativity for his next book, Pattern Recognition. I know I have several times found I had little creativity left for writing articles after I had done significant amounts of blogging. His blog was well read and often quoted amongst many in my blog sphere, and I just hope that the new book is worth giving up his many readers and fans online who have looked forward to his many ramblings and thoughts.

In what many consider to be proof that blogs have true power and their power is inescapable even in the middle east. "Iranian Sina Motallebi has been held by the authorities on, so far, unspecified charges and now fellow web users are banding together to press for his release. An online petition has been set up calling for the release of Mr Motallebi and for a halt to harassment of journalists by the Iranian Government." The fact that the blogging world could get together and speak out against this injustice is a good sign that it is possible to unite such a group, and that it is over this particular problem is an even better one. When one blogger is effectively shut up, the rest of us cannot be far behind.

In a long and winding tale, a blogger who calls herself Isabella V. has chronicled on the Flight Risk blog the adventure of being a wealthy socialite on the run to avoid an arranged marriage, and claims to be pursued by private investigators and the long arm of her families reach. The story is one connected to The Agonist's Sean-Paul Kelley, which was recently found to have plagiarized much of his war time content from another site, which has led to many suspicions he is trying to find an angle to garner more readers and publicity for himself, and the case made is not unbelievable. The blog is highly linked(can I get some?) and much discussion is ongoing as to the veracity of the blog, but it is a good read none the less.

This week there have been two stories about bloggers in foreign lands making big waves. The first story is of Raed, a blogger from Iraq whose blog was one of the most read as the run up to war began, and whose silence had many of his readers worried for his safety and security. Raed this wee returned to his blog with two months worth of posts that were offline created and just updated. Good to see he is ok. The second story is a little more complicated, one of an Irish blogger who used his blog and his opinions to bring the Irish domain registry out into the light from the secrecy and hidden practices it once practiced. Antoin O'Lachtnain is the blogger, and his fight has been rewarded by bringing to light how the company that runs the registry there into the light, but the company, IEDR, has 8 weeks to appeal the decision in court.

I was just reading the BlogShares press releases that were put out by blog owners today, and I must say one idea posted about is really making me think. The post is from the owner of the Aboutitall.com blog dedicated to the idea. The idea is this: "I propose a blogwide Photoblog your Life day on September 11th. Take your camera with you. Take pictures. Show the world your life. Show the world your daily delights. Show the world that we choose life, happiness and freedom." This seems to be meant for American's to show the world they want peace, happiness, freedom and the rest of the amazing things this world has to offer.

Maybe it's just me getting over re-watching the West Wing season finale of this past spring, but I propose an amendment. I think everyone should, to show the reason they love their world. Photoblog, or Fotolog your life, and post it. I am taking part of this weekend, three days of it at least between the post catch up, to put up some of my pictures of the city I get on my walks around, and I will also spend time with Cody while he is in town visiting me and my parent's just walking around, and getting cool pictures. Those who read my Fotolog(view? read?) regularly will know I have posted pics of places for the most part, but I am going to try to get decent pictures of people this weekend. Sadly, I am working Tuesday, which is Canada Day, but I don't start until like 2, so I have plenty of time to get in on the fun, and hopefully will be off in time for Canada Fireworks, which will I hope cap off round one of this.

I plan to amend/extend/alter this to the following: Blog your life [i]everyday[/i]. I know, many of us do this already, after all blogging life is the whole idea of blog maintenance, but I want to extend this beyond photo's as many do not own camera's, and I want to push it over the edge of a seeming pro American message. I want to hear and view the works of bloggers from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, China, Hong Kong, and more. I propose a Group blog, or something like it, that will be dedicated to pointing to those blogging life, blogging the bad and the good, and showing it for the world to see. I want to see pictures of real life, and I plan to take my upcoming 3 day weekend to begin this in force. My 9 year old nephew Cody is in town and I want to show him how to treasure life, admire the mundane and enjoy life. Whew. Ok, thoughts?

I wanted to point to a post made by another #lockergnome regular on his blog, this time the user Lumpy. He wrote what I thought was an amazing opinion piece on his blog Lump's Lunantic Rants and Rabid Ravings about the RIAA, and their recent and possible future moves against the consumers. They say the true test of a man is how much he agrees with you, and while Lumpy and I disagree on many things, this is one where we agree entirely. I doubt the RIAA will go after Apple, as they do have licenses to the songs they sell, but he does make good points of why the RIAA should become a great deal more progressive, and not nearly as hostile to progress and innovation, as well as how they will shrivel and die if they do not.

I am deeply saddened to note I will soon need to remove a blogger from my roll on the side. I found out about many things from Darci, and she has been a conduit to so much info on Kevin Mitnick, and the true hacker lifestyle. Her blog showed me the way to the Free Lamo folks, many of whom are good friends of hers, and even a person who has come back here and let me know her thoughts on my comments on topics she knows far more than me about. In her blog closure post on the Labmistress.com boards she explained why, and she has good reasons, as well as where former blog readers can go for updates and such, if they still choose to. Sadly, my participation will be minimal, as I already moderate on 2 boards, as well as my many other duties, but I will be sure to check in.

While Evan Williams seems to have shrunken into the shadows of the blogging world, the tool that he and three others created such a short time ago is still one of the most used blogging tools. CNet talked to Evan, and he has a lot of interesting things to say. I am not sure if I agree to his comparison to GeoCities pages, as most bloggers I read are highly technical and far beyond the dull witted pages made on the GeoCities service. GeoCities never created something new, it just brought the software tools to a web interface. Evan does make a good point in that media interest in blogs does increase when a heavily blogged event happens, the flash-point of blogging being, in my opinion, September 11th. It is a good article, and shows that Evan still know the community well.

I have never been a fan of Yahoo, finding their site to be far too full of crap and crowded with junk, but I am finding myself in the need to access the Yahoo Groups section of the site, and find them utterly inaccessible to me. I have tried several groups.yahoo.com links, and none work, but I can still access Yahoo.com itself. I have searched for news, and found some really recent articles that mention Yahoo Groups, but nothing about a closure of the section of the site. Even the Groups link from the Yahoo front page gets me a 404. I am not sure if it is Shaw's screwy DND system, maybe they are blocking the whole URL or a specific server, but it is beginning to be really annoying. Even a web based proxy like SafeWeb has brought me nothing in the search engines. Help?

You will note that below is a link to MORE, which I rarely use. The text there is the content of an email I sent to CNet/News.com.com's link error address due to the link from an article posted there on October 31st that was on the idea of Microsoft buying, or wanting to buy Google. Yes, it is in draft right now, but I was planning to catch up a bit tonight. I still have a few articles on the topic, but I am really frustrated that both the site on that day, and their search feature shows the article as well, but this code: meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;URL=http://news.search.com/search?q=Microsoft+or+and+or+MSFT&message=expired" causes me to only get sent to a search page, even though the page is still on the site. Not a happy person today am I.

The sky is falling. Hell hath frozen over. The world is at it's end. The reason I know this? John C. Dvorak is getting a blog. That is right. The eternal doubter, the official naysayer of technology, the one who can be counted on to doubt everything, the grumpy old man of tech, is getting a blog, and one hosted by none other than the Lockergnome himself, Chris Pirillo. I have no doubt we will soon see Michael Jackson admit he is a pedophile, Rush Limbaugh decide to leave media, and CNN will go to one hour a day. Microsoft will soon, I am sure, open source Windows and start being a fair and just company. The predictions right now are that the first post he makes, though, will be how bogus this whole blog thing is. Any bets? Thanks to Aine for the tip.

Mike McBride linked to this post about blog lies. I figured I would give my own answers. You will need to go there to read the points.

1. I don't, cause I am not.
2. Only as far as paying the bills goes, but see #6 for more.
3. I don't even read my closest friends blogs on a regular basis.
4. Nope, 2001. God. over 4 years I have been at this...
5. Only so far as promoting my writing and technology skills.
6. Nope, I use it to try and pay the bills.
7. Doesn't matter to me what terms people use.
8. I think I would probably be in the later part of the alphabet, x, y, or maybe z...
9. Nah, I just respect his work.
10. Geek chick? Awesome!

Ok folks, the comment spam over here has just gotten to be amazingly thick, to the point that I am not even sure if any real person has commented since Lumpy about a month ago. Therefore, I am moving to a new site for my blog. The Geeks Blog is to be found by combining the bold words and adding a dot com, and it will be the new location for my blog. It's using the new Movable Type 3.33, and will have more restrictive commenting. If you want to comment, and have your comment show up within 3 months, I recommend TypeKey.

This install will no longer accept any comments unless you use that. I will not be going through comment spam any more over there, than I do now, which is to say once every 3 months. I know a few of you do use that, and I thank you. For those that do not, and you know who you are, I would recommend that step. It's not hard, and does give you access to a not insignificant portion of the blogging community.

For those of you who are listeners to my podcasts, I plan, in the new year, to bring both of them back. The WoW podcast will have a new name, All Things Azeroth, and be at that corresponding dot com site. Canadian Geek Podcast will remain at it's current location. However, there is a slight issue that needs to be taken care of before both of those can get back into full time production as they were before, or however they will be when they reach full production.

I need to have surgery in the month of January, and also need to see about rectifying the unemployed situation I am currently in. I will be going in for a relatively minor surgery to remove my Gall Bladder. I have had several attacks so far, and 2 of which I believe ended me in the hospital in a great deal of pain. It's time for it to go, and for my eating habits to change. I am not sure when at this point, but the meeting with the surgeon in mid December gave me the impression that it will be over and done with by the end of January. No need to be concerned, but my blogging may take a hit around then, or it may have a spurt during my recovery. I guess it depends on pain levels and my doctors orders regarding how I can position my body. We'll have to see. Either way, this is your Geek blog update, see you on the flip blog.