Hellz yeah, biznatch — West Coast Bloggers, REPREZENT!
Or something like that.
Do we get our own gang signs now?
(via Boing Boing)
iTunes: “1/3 of a Nation” by Bytet from the album First Bite (1993, 5:13).
Blog
Site updates and anything else related to the technology of blogging and my site(s).
Adsense down?
Google’s Adsense appears to be down at the moment, which is causing loading problems for my weblog. Apologies to all if it’s hitting you, but there’s not a thing I can do about it except wait for them to get things together.
iTunes: “Unravel” by Björk from the album Homogenic (1997, 3:17).
Seattle Metroblogging
Last month, I linked to the Metroblogging project: a series of city-specific weblogs. At the time, Seattle was in the “coming soon” list…well, folks, Seattle.Metroblogging is now live.
And what do you know — there’s a familiar name in the contributing authors list.
Mine, in fact.
So far I’ve just tossed one post up, but more will come in the future. Feel free to stop by and check in every so often!
iTunes: “Sit Down” by James from the album Alterno-Daze: 90’s Natural Selection (1995, 4:07).
Unintended consequences
A few months ago, I was contacted by a writer for a national magazine who wanted to interview me regarding my fallout with Microsoft. Turns out that the magazine he writes for was planning a story on some of the things that can suddenly and unexpectedly go wrong when weblogging (such as blogging yourself right out of a job). I was one of a few different webloggers interviewed for the story, and we spent about two days doing the interview in two phone sessions. It seemed to go pretty well, though at times I wondered if my story was a little on the boring side — no book offers, movie deals, incredible job offers or anything along those lines, just the incident itself and then life proceeded more or less as it normally does.
In any case, the interview was fun to do, and I was looking forward to eventually having my story (and possibly my photo) pop up on newsstands across America. Unfortunately, at the time the Powers That Be eventually decided that there wasn’t quite enough material (not just with me, but with all the other webloggers that were interviewed) for a full feature, and the story was shelved.
However, it appears that it’s possible that not all is lost. I got an e-mail yesterday from the reporter who interviewed me letting me know that there is an attempt being made to resurrect the story! To do so, though, they’re looking for more material — and here’s where you all come in, if you’re able and willing.
They’d like to expand the scope of the story to go beyond just employment difficulties, and include stories from people who have suddenly found their relationships affected by their weblogs. Here’s the note I got from the reporter:
Hey! The editors…are trying to ressurect our blogging story. So I just wanted to let you know that all hope has not been lost.
BUT, we’re desperately trying to find other “My Blog Ruined My Life” stories, esp. ones that have more to do with relationships than employment.
Can you please recommend any major blogging sites where I should look, or to contact their administrators, or, if you can tap into your readers and ask them if they’ve ever had a romantic/dating blowout w/ someone because of their blog — that’d be helpful.
Now, as I put this post together, I realize that this may strike some people as being rather sordid and muckraking — and, to be honest, for all I know it may be. However, at the time I was interviewed, that was not at all the impression I got from the gentleman who interviewed me. Yes, we were talking about some very unfortunate events in my life for a story about weblogging which focused on the problems that weblogs could cause, but at the time, I didn’t get the feeling that it was going to be overly sensationalistic in nature. It’s entirely possible that with the change of focus of the article, the tone may change as well — which, admittedly, would be something of a shame.
I’d hate to eventually find out that the final story focused solely on the “dark side” of weblogging, painting a picture of webloggers as a legion of sad, jobless and loveless souls pouring their hopes, dreams and inspirations out through their keyboards and onto the web in a desperate attempt to find justification and company in the few kindred souls that might end up poring over their writings in the wee hours of the morning, the wan light of the monitor washing over their skin as they avoid the troubling dreams that they know await them when they fall asleep.
(Whee — I like that. But anyway…)
Of course, I’m merely an interviewee, and as such, won’t really know what the final article will be like until it finally sees the light of day and hits the newsstands. But, really, I’d like to see the story come out, and so I turn to you, my loyal readers. If you know of any good resources or any potential interview subjects that may be willing to tell their stories, I’d love to hear about them so that I could pass them on to the reporter.
I’m sure that the venerable LiveJournal is a veritable fount of such stories, but I’m not active enough with LJ to know where too look or which communities to poke into. There’s also the web at large and the multitude of TypePad, Movable Type, WordPress, Blogger, and other assorted weblogging/journaling tools, but I don’t know of any stories that fit the bill off the top of my head.
So — anyone have some good pointers?
Update: I just sent the following to the reporter, expressing some of my concerns with the apparent new direction the article may be taking. Hopefully I’m not shooting myself in the foot and editing myself right out of the article with this, but the more I thought about it, the more it started to concern me.
I do have one concern, though, which I touch upon in my post (and which, admittedly, could be entirely unfounded…or even if it’s not, it may not be something you have any control over). At the time you interviewed me, I never got the impression that this was going to be an overly sensationalistic story, though it was dealing with some unfortunate circumstances. However, expanding the scope to include relationship issues, coupled with the “my blog ruined my life” concept — well, I now worry a bit that the story may end up painting a rather unflattering portrait of weblogs and webloggers in general.
While weblogs are becoming more known and more popular, there is still a large segment of the general population that sees them as nothing more than online journals for angst-ridden teenagers to whine to the world (often doing so with absolutely atrocious and nearly unreadable grammar, slang, and ”leet-speak’). One of the reasons your story interested me when you first contacted me (at a time when, to be honest, I was getting rather tired of rehashing the events around my dismissal) was that I got the impression that it was going to look at both the bad and the good of the situation and the aftermath, both for myself and for the other webloggers being contacted for the article. Now, though, I’m a little less sure of the tack that the final article will be taking.
Of course, I’m quite aware that I may be reading too much into what you sent me (and even if I’m not, it may be out of your hands). All in all, I’m just hoping for a good article, and wanted to let you know of some of my concerns. However it turns out, good luck with the current round of searching, and should I get any worthwhile pointers from the post on my site, I’ll pass them your way.
Apple’s getting into weblogging
Very interesting tidbit of information about the server version of OS X 10.4/Tiger in Apple’s preview pages: they’re including a ‘weblog server’ based on the blojsom project, which in itself is based on the blosxom weblogging software.
A new Weblog server in Tiger Server makes it easy to publish, distribute and syndicate web-based content. The Weblog server provides users with calendar-based navigation and customizable themes, is fully compatible with Safari RSS and enables posting entries using built-in web-based functionality or with weblog clients that support XML-RPC or the ATOM API. The Weblog Server, based on the popular open source project “Blojsom,” works with Open Directory for user accounts and authentication.
iTunes: “Gorgeous (Suspiria)” by Gene Loves Jezebel from the album World’s Greatest Club Collection, The (1998, 4:36).
Server issues
This doesn’t affect this particular site at all, but in case Dad or Kirsten check in, there seem to be issues with the djwudi.com/hanscomfamily.com/geekmuffin.com/interalia.org server at the moment. Phil and I are trying to work on it and find out what the issue is — whatever it is, it popped up sometime during the night, when neither he nor I were doing anything with the machine. No current ETA on when we’ll be back up and running, though we’re trying to bring it back up as soon as possible.
Update: Still down, still no ETA, and I need to get out of the house for a bit. I’ll get more info up when I can.
This also means that any e-mail sent to my [\@michaelhanscom.com]{.citation cites=”michaelhanscom.com”} address will not get to me at the moment. Please use one of my other e-mail addresses if you have one of them and need to get ahold of me.
Just so I don’t lose track or forget about what we tried so far, a quick copy-and-paste of the work so far:
Phil: el problemo, senor
Michael: what’s up?
Phil: i think something has run awry in my crontab
Phil: and is chewing up way too many resources
Phil: on the webserver.Michael: aah, is that what’s going on
Michael: i just had to restart it – it wasn’t responding to anything when I woke up, except pingsPhil: i suspect you’ll find tons of sa-learn processes
Michael: no ssh or httpd calls would answer
Michael: is it down again now?Phil: i got ssh to work verrrrrry slowly.
Phil: No responses again now.Michael: hrm
Michael: well, yeah, something’s borked – the UI is frozen
Michael: gonna restart it againPhil: gah.
Phil: let me know when you restart it, i’ll ssh in and nuke my crontab before anything launches.Michael: k
Michael: okay, login window is up
Michael: give it a shotPhil: i’m in
Phil: gonna watch top and see what launches.Michael: :nods
Phil: other than a lot of sendmail and procmail processes, nothing seems to be wigging out.
Michael: took out whatever it was that was having an issue? or it just doesn’t seem to be “issuing” right now?
Phil: i took out what i -think- was causing it. no idea if that was it or not.
Phil: but i recall something similar happening last time i tried to make a cron job for sa-learn.Michael: okay
Michael: what’s sa-learn?Phil: SpamAssassin’s Bayesian filter learning tool.
Phil: It’s the “learn this now, dammit” tool.Michael: ah, okay
Phil: i’m still getting some false negatives that it should’ve caught.
Phil: um.
Phil: i don’t think that was it. i’m not getting any responses on ssh again.Michael: yeah – the UI’s frozen again
Michael: wierdPhil: goddamnit. what is going on?
Phil: i know i haven’t actually changed anything…Michael: maybe it’s the machine? (though I hate to suggest that)
Michael: restarting againPhil: well, we’ll see; i sincerely hope that’s not it.
Michael: you and me both
Michael: (and kirsten and dad too, I’d bet)Phil: is it acting funny? fans any louder than usual?
Michael: doesn’t seem to be
Michael: i just sits in the corner and hums happily to itself (shrugs)
Michael: as opposed to Marvin, who sits in the corner and hums dismally to himselfPhil: no, i’d wager something is getting overloaded.
Phil: i don’t know what, though. hmmmm.Michael: could I be getting hit by an attack of some sort, I wonder?
Phil: hmmm.
Michael: god_damn_ that thing takes a while to start up…lol
Phil: there’s a way to test that.
Michael: it’d have to be a pretty good attack to completely lock it up, though
Phil: during the brief time i can get on i’ll try to install snort.
Michael: it’s up
Phil: can’t get it to respond to ssh even now.
Michael: huh
Phil: n/m
Phil: there we goMichael: okay
Phil: sshd probably wasn’t up yet
Michael: i’m logged in, have top -u 15 running in a term window
Phil: should see a wget process.
Michael: if it locks up, hopefully it’ll give me an idea of what the issue might be (maybe)
Phil: hopefully.
Michael: right now it’s mostly just top at the top of top (whee)
Michael: i’ve seen ssh, gzip, and tar pop up occasionally, but the drop right back down againPhil: those were me.
Michael: i’ve got my eye on you, young man…lol
Michael: imapd just hit thetop – bouncing between 10 and 25%Phil: probably mail trying to connect.
Michael: and…freeze
Michael: dammit
Michael: the last thing at the top was just imapd at only 10%Phil: yeah, i noticed. hmm.
Phil: i’m going to nuke my entire crontab. nothing should be launching, but that doesn’t mean nothing is.Michael: i’m pretty sure mine’s empty…very sure, in fact
Michael: okies, restartingPhil: and /etc/crontab just has system stuff in it.
Michael: back up
Phil: yep. i’m in.
Phil: ah HA
Phil: apache2 is starting.Michael: ?
Michael: i was about to run a permissions check/repair, just for grins and giggles…
Michael: oh, waitPhil: if you still want to, go for it
Michael: apache2?
Michael: didn’t you kill that?Phil: yes.
Phil: precisely my point. i thought i did too.Michael: hmm
Michael: i wonder why it’s starting…and why it hasn’t been a problem until now
Michael: wowPhil: OK, I need to go find the startup item for apache2 and slay it.
Michael: it’s fixing a lot of permissions
Phil: oh man, wait
Phil: that was NOT a good idea.Michael: uhoh
Phil: any custom permissions I had set on my website are gonna be borked
Michael: oh shit
Phil: well, we’ll find out soon enough.
Michael: it seemed to be doing a lot in the /System/Library/Perl/ directory
Michael: trying to stop it now
Michael: spinning rainbow cursor at the momentPhil: frozen again
Phil: from CL too
Phil: so apparently apache2 is not the problem, but it is a problem.Michael: grrr
Michael: hmmm – the UI isn’t completely frozen
Michael: if I move the mouse, the cursor will jump to another point on the screen after a few seconds
Michael: still, it’s quite unuseablePhil: probably the permissions check is taking a lot of cpu time.
Michael: gonna reboot again
Michael: christ, this is annoying…lolPhil: tell me about it.
Phil: i want my email!Michael: lol
Michael: if all else fails, there’s always the possibility of a reinstall
Michael: which, admittedly, could suck
Michael: system install, getting MT up and running again, making sure the websites don’t break, etc. etc., yadda yaddaPhil: Do an archive & install, then.
Phil: (If you have the disk space.)Michael: :nods definitely
Michael: i do, there’s still gigs free
Michael: not the way I was planning on spending my saturday, thoughPhil: nor I.
Michael: if I do have to do that…think it’s worth putting panther on, rather than jaguar?
Michael: i’d have to figure out the new mail system (postfix instead of sendmail, right?)
Michael: hmPhil: if only for the fact that you’d have to configure postfix, i’m gonna say no
Michael: ah
Michael: okay
Michael: yeah – “starting apache 2 web server” is part of the startup window messages
Michael: and, we’re up again
Michael: holy shit – we’re locked up again
Michael: okay, the fact that that’s getting faster does not bode wellPhil: i noticed.
Michael: goddammit
Michael: y’know, if it was cloudy, i might not mind as much, but it’s a gorgeous day out there…lol
Michael: up
Michael: according to the apache2 control panel, it’s not running
Michael: even though the startup message was in the startup routinePhil: ridiculous.
Michael: fuck – locked up
Michael: well, locking up
Michael: in the process
Michael: tried to load the sharing control panel
Michael: spinning rainbow cursor of deathPhil: this is bloody odd.
Phil: something has gone horribly wrong between yesterday afternoon and today.
Phil: i haven’t been around to do anything.Michael: and i haven’t touched it
Phil: when it starts up, go to the apple menu, check about this mac, and see if anything on the amount of RAM or CPU speed looks unusual.
Michael: up
Michael: 640Mb ram…trying to remember if that’s rightPhil: yes.
Michael: yeah, that’s right
Phil: maxed out for this architecture
Michael: lol
Michael: brainless
Michael: hm
Michael: console log has some conflicts listedPhil: do tell.
Michael: login window could not find image named ‘bang’
Phil: ….?
Michael: :shrugs
Michael: some startup items failed to launch due to conflicts
Michael: dammit…do I have ichat on that machine? lolPhil: probably.
Michael: fuck, not that it matters
Michael: i’m losing the UI again
Michael: it just keeps slogging down, slower and slower
Michael: until it doesn’t respondPhil: i noticed…. so weird.
Phil: incidentally, the apache2 item should now start apacheMichael: lol okay
Michael: it’s working, it’s just responding like XP installed on a 286
Michael: making glaciers look positively snappy, in other words
Michael: i don’t get it
Michael: okay – restarting it, but i’ve unplugged it from the network
Michael: going to see if that makes a difference at all (though I’m not sure why it would)Phil: we’ll find out.
Phil: if that does it, you’re getting DOS’ed.Michael: not thinking it’s a DOS or a hack or anything, simply because it’s behind my firewall, so huge amounts of traffic on my line should affect my connectivity/speed on this ‘puter, too
Phil: not if they specifically attacked the webserver by IP address or name.
Phil: well, some slowness, maybe.
Phil: but the webserver would see the majority of it.
Phil: …your windows box isn’t on the network, is it?Michael: nope
Michael: well, yes, but it’s off
Michael: and on the few times I start it up, the first thing I do is apply any recent security updates
Michael: it’s as up to date as it can be without doing a daily security update check
Michael: okay, this isn’t goodPhil: eh, if it’s off, it doesn’t concern us.
Phil: what?Michael: the box doesn’t seem to be restarting
Phil: …
Michael: i’m going to unplug it and let it sit for a few minutes
Phil: well, that’s not good.
Michael: given that this started happening when neither of us were doing anything on the box, and the fact that it seems to be a gradual thing – works fine for a bit, then gradually gets slower – and that it seems to be happening sooner on each reboot, and that it doesn’t want to reboot now…
Michael: i’m really starting to worry that it’s a hardware issuePhil: that’s not good.
Michael: which, realistically, is a possibility – this little G3 was used when I got it, and it’s been running as a server 24/7 for, oh, probably around four or five years now
Michael: the three years since i’ve been in seattle, plus a year or two in anchorage
Michael: it would suck if that’s the case, though
Michael: i don’t have the funds for a replacement
Michael: and i could move things onto the G5, but i’ve liked having a server separate from my work machinePhil: Yeah, I can definitely understand that… I was gonna ask about that.
Michael: it’s an option, though, should the g3 not come back
Phil: Do you still have the hardware diagnostic CD somewhere for the g3?
Michael: i don’t think I ever had one
Phil: must be a new thing.
Michael: :nods
Michael: either that, or I just didn’t get it with the machinePhil: well, we have an hour and twelve minutes to figure something out.
Michael: 1:12? lol
Phil: I’m going out to the Irish festival at that point.
Michael: aah
Michael: yeah, I want to get out of the house at some point
Michael: shame to waste a perfectly good kilt dayPhil: amen. if I had a utilikilt i’d wear it today.
Michael: you should do it, man
Michael: not that you’d have it today, but still
Phil: yeah, i know. well, hey, my birthday’s coming up in a few months… we’ll see
Michael: excellent
Michael: okay, bootingPhil: OK, it freezes up, you need to restart in single-user mode and run fsck to see if there are disk errors.
Phil: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2004011205473937&query=fsckMichael: and I do that…how, again? lol
Phil: click the link
Michael: I did
Michael: The specific sequence of how to do this varies depending on what version of OS X you’re running. Go to Apple Support for specific instuctions.Phil: it’s still detached from the network, right?
Michael: yeah
Phil: OK, let me find something that doesn’t suck i just noticed “check/fix the filesystem”
Michael: lol
Phil: i think you need to hold down S while booting.
Michael: gaaa…doesn’t seem to be booting
Michael: got the startup chime, nothing elsePhil: oh, maaaaan. that’s not good.
Phil: actually, though.
Phil: that might be a sign of a disk error caused by the forced reboots.
Phil: we had the exact same thing happen with a G4 at work.Michael: :nods it got in last time, and I did a manual (correct) restart
Phil: iMovie froze, the finder crashed and wouldn’t restart, and everything rainbowed.
Phil: I’m going to suggest an archive and install.Michael: :nods that’s what i’m thinking (grr)
Michael: i’ll deal with that later, thoughPhil: just remember to hold down C as you turn it on with the jaguar disk in the driver (or panther; if you want, i can look up postfix guides while you wait)
Phil: kMichael: right now…i’m a little annoyed, hungry, and want outside lol
Michael: i may do panther…it’s got enough under-the-hood upgrades that it might be a good idea
Michael: just take a little poking around to get postfix upPhil: and really, from what i recall, setting up postfix wasn’t hard at all.
Phil: i did it at WWDC the day i installed panther.Michael: as long as the websites survive, i’ll be satisfied
Phil: i think the config files made more sense to human beings
Michael: that’s my big worry, really
Michael: i’d hate to end up nuking everyone’s sites (again)Phil: i do too. y’know, if all else fails, stick the HD into the G5. I assume it has an expansion slot for a second HD.
Michael: yeah, but I can’t just drop the drive in
Michael: different drive specs
Michael: serial ATA on the G5Phil: oh, fuck, that’s right. dammit.
Michael: i’d need to drop the old drive(s) into ATA cases
Phil: if nothing else, even if the machine won’t boot, our data is still there.
Michael: yeah
Phil: you’re good, webmaster. go get food and sunshine; i’ll be doing the same myself shortly.
Michael: fuck – and i’m using michaelhanscom.com for most of my e-mail right now, too…lol
Michael: argh
Michael: ah, well
Michael: it’ll wait for a day
Michael: or a few hours, or whatever
Michael: anyway…i’m wandering – enjoy the irishfestPhil: will do. later man
Update: Everything’s back up again. Phil tracked it down to a cron job that had piled a few thousand e-mail messages into his inbox, which caused everything to choke. Inbox is empty, cron is smacked back into submission, and all’s well that ends well.
iTunes: “Three Wishes” by Waters, Roger from the album Amused to Death (1992, 6:50).
Metroblogging
A potentially interesting and useful new regional groupblog project: Metroblogging.
event listings to general rants, photos to reviews – metblogs are a hyper-local look at what’s going on in the city. a group of regional bloggers give each site a new perspective on daily life. less calendar listing, more friendly advice.
Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco are live; Atlanta, Boston, DC, Miami, Orange County, Seattle, Dublin, London, Tokyo and Toronto are currently on the ‘coming soon’ list; and they’re looking for local writers.
Could be good, could be little more than a regional LiveJournal community with a set list of contributors (though I hope it grows beyond that). We’ll just have to see as they grow and evolve.
Back when I lived in Anchorage and was webmaster for the Gig’s Music Theatre site, I toyed for a while with creating a similar site for Anchorage, keeping track of events, venues, bands, hangouts, and the like (in fact, there’s actually some slight evidence of the project, in a request for a photo of Anchorage to use for a header graphic in the Schedule/News section of the Gig’s site). Unfortunately, at the time my technical skills weren’t up to what I had in mind, and the project ended up falling by the wayside. Metroblogging looks to be fairly similar to what I had in mind at the time, so I’m definitely interested in keeping an eye out on this one.
Years ahead of everybody else, and nobody will ever know. That’s me! ;)
(via Boing Boing)
iTunes: “Higher State of Consciousness (Original Tweekin’ Acid Funk)” by Wink from the album Higher State of Consciousness (’96 Remixes) (1996, 6:16).
Winer goes off the deep end
Rather amazing, the things you miss when you disappear for a few days.
Over the weekend, Dave Winer suddenly decided that due to a number of factors, he could no longer support the weblogs that he, along with Userland Software, had been hosting for free under the weblogs.com domain. Rather than do something reasonable, like contact the people about to be affected by the change to warn them or give them time to archive their posts in preparation for a move to a new hosting solution, he simply pulled the plug, replacing the affected sites with a tersely-worded notice:
This site is for people with sites that used to be hosted at weblogs.com.
- I can’t afford to host these sites. I don’t want to start a site hosting business. These are firm, non-negotiable statements.
- There are several commercial Manila hosting companies, including weblogger.com. Thomas Creedon maintains a transcribed Dave’s audio post, which (to me) really doesn’t do that much to clear things up.
What blows my mind about this is not that Winer/Userland decided to stop providing free hosting services — that’s certainly within his/their right, and to a certain extent, you should expect to get what you pay for. However, his methodology here was flat-out ridiculous, as is his proposed “solution”. I have no idea just how many weblogs.com sites were affected by this, but I’m sure that nobody was pleased to see their weblog just suddenly up and disappear, with no method of retrieval beyond kissing Winer’s ass (he started off the comment thread for the announcement with “Personal comments, ad hominems, will be deleted. And no negotiating or whining.”) and hoping that he gets their site exported sometime in the near future (just what sort of timeframe might people be looking at here, anyway? “Sometime after July 1” leaves a lot of wiggle room) so that all their past writings don’t just disappear.
It’s difficult for me to even conceive of doing something like this. While I don’t host anywhere near the number of sites that weblogs.com did (whatever that number might be), I do host a few friends sites for free, and I can’t imagine simply pulling the plug on their sites. Not only is it an amazingly callous thing to do, but the guilt alone would have me up at night — and that’s just for three other people!
But then, I’m not Dave. Good thing, too, I’d say — I’d hate to have engendered such fear in people that they’re afraid to say anything bad about me…
Some bloggers contacted for comments for this story said they didn’t want to make disparaging comments about Winer’s actions, for fear he wouldn’t provide them copies of their blogs.
“People have been really afraid to discuss this,” said a New York blogger who asked that his name be withheld. “There’s a lot of concern that any nasty comments will result in Dave not getting around to making a copy of your blog. I think a lot of the politeness and ‘We love you, Dave!’ sentiments that you’re seeing in some Web posts is just pure paranoia.”
The biggest lessons to learn from this? I see three.
- Back up regularly. Make sure that the online copies aren’t the only copies of your work. Never hurts to be safe.
- If at all possible, host on your own server. Don’t trust your work to a third party — no matter how trustworthy they may seem, there’s always the chance that something might go badly in the future.
- Of course, I say this while I post my entire website to TypePad — a third party — and as I act as a third party for the friends that I host on my server. Hypocrisy is the greatest luxury, after all. ;)
- And lastly…Dave’s being an ass.
iTunes: “Mr. Johnson Takes A Bow” by 12 Rounds from the album My Big Hero (1998, 4:03).
Blogger Anon-O-Con
Many thanks to Pops (The Two Hour Lunch) for setting up this Saturday’s Blogger Anon-O-Con down at the waterfront. Got to hang out and chat with Pops, Richard (Tikun Olam), Mike (Dumb Blogs Have More Fun), Anita (Anita’s LOL), Ted (Ted Leung on the Air) and Julie Leung (Seedlings and Sprouts), Chip (The Binary Circumstance), Receptionista (Hammer and Peg), Staci (Daymented), and Myk (Life, it is a travesty), along with Pops’ counterpart Mom, their own Mr. Man, the Leung’s children, and Prairie. All in all, not a bad gathering in the least!
Apparently my Utilikilt was something of a hit, seeing as Mom is now suggesting that Pops should get one of his own — and what do you know, Pops found out that UK is having a Father’s Day Sale.
Utilikilts’ First Annual Father’s Day Extravaganza is open to all Utilikiltarian Fathers, Dads and Papas! Any father who make a purchase of a new Utilikilt between Mon June 14 — Fri June 18th during regular business hours 9:A-6:P PST may deduct your age from the price of any Utilikilt of your choice (limitations and restrictions apply).
Sounds like a good deal to me, though being childless (and in no hurry to change that status), I’ll have to sit this particular sale out…
iTunes: “Mr. Pitiful” by Commitments, The from the album Commitments, The (1991, 2:11).
VisitorVille
Apache log file analysis plus SimCity equals VisitorVille, a program that displays your website as a city, with traffic represented by people moving from building to building (page to page), and arriving via bus (referrers and search engines).
Visitors come to your web site from other sites (referrers). Some of these referrers are search engines. In VisitorVille, referrers are depicted as buses. And web pages on your site are depicted as buildings. When a new visitor arrives, a bus delivers them to a building. To move between buildings, visitors either walk, take a cab or — if you have designated them as a VIP — a limousine. VIPs also fly in by helicopter.
When you have many visitors on your web site, it begins to resemble midtown Manhattan, and it’s hard to get your eyes off the screen! Buildings resize and illuminate dynamically based on the number of people inside, their relative popularity, and how many visitors exited through them. Buses, taxis, and limos race around the streets; pedestrians walk across crosswalks; helicopters ply the air. It’s all very real, because it’s reflecting something that’s also very real: Your visitors are human beings, and they exhibit human behavior. They are not abstractions, and with VisitorVille you no longer have to think of them as such!
As goofball as it sounds, after spending some time perusing their website, I have to admit that this is a really cool idea. Unfortunately, it’s a really cool idea whose client software only runs on Windows. Such a shame…
(via Wired)
iTunes: “Part 2 (Bomb the Bass/Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five/The Charlatans/Prodigy/Jane’s Addiction/Tim Dog feat. KRS-One)” by Howlett, Liam from the album Prodigy pres. The Dirtchamber Sessions Vol. 1 (1999, 6:44).