Tech

Tech-focused ramblings. Computers, blogs, and whatever else fits.

Four Years

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The actual day isn’t until tomorrow, but as I’m not planning on doing much in the way of weblogging on Thanksgiving day, I figured I’d go ahead and toss this up ahead of time. While I’d been keeping hand-updated websites since ’95 or so, November 25th, 2000 marked my first foray into using a software engine to keep track of the random rambling I occasional put up on my website, starting me stumbling into the world of weblogging.

Four years it’s been since then.

Semi-randomly chosen highlights follow…

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2004 Weblog Awards

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Nominations are now open for the 2004 Weblog Awards.

I’m not sayin’. I’m just sayin’. ;)

Categories I might be eligible for, if I were nominated: Best Overall Blog (not going to happen), Best Blog Design (again, not going to happen), Best of the Top 100-250 Blogs or Best of the Top 2500-3500 Blogs (as ranked by the Blogging Ecosystem, where I’m currently ranked as either [#215][] [Large Mammal] or [#2525][] [Adorable Little Rodent] depending on how the URL is written — and I don’t think I’m popular enough to grab a win in either of these categories, either).

Still, it’s fun to dream, right?

iTunes “Funky Music” by Utah Saints from the album Two (2001, 3:36).

New Reads

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Thanks to tdavid‘s creation of an easy-to-import OPML file of Wednesday’s Meetup attendees, I’ve just added a good number of local webloggers — essentially, everyone who was at the meetup and has an RSS feed available — to my daily reads.

I’ve noticed from time to time just how few local writers I’ve had in my daily reading list, this should be a nice change.

Until I take the time to update the blogroll here, the curious can peek at my current reads through my Bloglines page.

Weblogger’s Meetup

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Just got back a bit ago from this month’s Seattle Weblogger’s Meetup.

Weblogger's Meetup

Roundabout 20-something people in attendance, of whom I knew three or so beforehand. A full list of attendees can be found at 8 Bit Joystick. Nice evening, lots of chatting.

Now I’m tired, though, and will be heading to bed before too terribly long.

iTunes “Chickasuarus” by Pigface from the album Preaching to the Perverted (2001, 5:04).

Googlebomb Spam Attack

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Looks like someone’s come up with a new, not-really-all-that-clever use for comment spam: using it to attempt to Googlebomb someone that they’re ticked off at.

The following showed up in my inbox three times, with three different IP addresses:

IP Address: 202.175.26.151
Name: Whiny Communist Bitch
Email Address: commie\@mamamusings.net
URL: http://www.mamamusings.net

Comment:

I just can’t shut my pie hole.

Normally, that’d be a sure sign of the standard comment spam, but I was pretty sure that mamamusings.net was another weblogger, so I headed over to be sure, and to give her the details.

Turns out that she already knows, which is good.

Heartening to know we can all be so mature, isn’t it? Didn’t “commie” go out of vogue as an insult a couple decades ago, anyway?

iTunes “Honey” by Amos, Tori from the album More Pink – The B-Sides (1994, 3:49).

From the vaults

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I’ve been playing with HTML for quite a few years now. Every so often over the years, I’ve actually been bright enough to make a quick copy of my website and archive it. Tonight, in a mad burst of misplaced nostalgia, I pulled them all out of the digital dustbin and have put them back online. As an added bonus, this allowed me to put some really old entries into my archives, from the pre-“blogging” days when I was just hand-coding pages and updating them as I saw fit. My archives date back to 1995 now!

Curious enough to check out just how my design and web skills have evolved over the years? Feel free to wander through. Some links will work, some won’t — caveat emptor and all that.

  • February 27, 1996: Yup, you read that right — 1996. We’re talking seriously old-school here (“Netscape 2.0 Enhanced”, even). Looks best if you shrink the width of your browser window to just a bit wider than the graphics, as this was back when 640×480 was in wide useage. Check out that announcements page, too — reverse chronological order, date and time stamped…blogging before anyone knew what blogging was (eat your heart out, Dave Winer)!

  • February 14, 1997: One year later, and things have improved dramatically. This basic design would last through the next three archives, and while it’s a bit broken now, I still like the general idea. Featured one of the first incarnations of a Gigs Music Theatre site, though it’s just a single page here.

  • April 21, 1997: A few months later. A little less content, as I started to focus on expanding the Gig’s page. Design is the same (and is still slightly broken in modern browsers).

  • March 30, 1998: Another year goes by, and things are still pretty static. The design is the same (though by this point, it works in modern browsers). The Gig’s page has evolved into a full-fledged site by this point, though.

  • August 5, 2002: Whoops! Four years went by with no archiving. I’ve been kicking myself for this of late, as I was doing some hand-coded “blogging” back then that I don’t have copies of anymore. Still, at least I have this. By this point, the design has changed majorly, and I was using MovableType to handle my weblogging.

My lord I’ve been doing this for a long time.

iTunes “Kat-A-Mandu” by Poems for Laila from the album Katamandu (1992, 5:11).

Delicious Library

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Ars Technica has a great review of Delicious Library, the new book/movie/music/game cataloguing software from Delicious Monster. I’ve downloaded the demo and have started to poke around with it…so far, quite enjoying what I see.

The second page of the review does a wonderful job of going into just why we Mac people are Mac people, and how nice it can be to get software also made by and for Mac people.

There is simply a “climate of excellence” on the Mac platform. Any developer that does not live up to community standards is looked down upon, or even shunned. Commercial, open source, freeware, shareware, it doesn’t matter: pay attention to detail, or else.

Windows users, think about what your typical download and installation experience is like. How many dialogs are you presented with? What do the file names and icons look like? Do you have to run an installer? What kind of manual clean-up is required afterwards?

Linux users, when you look at the carefully laid out disk image contents in the screenshot and links above, think about how far “desktop Linux” has to come before it can even begin to think about details like how single-icon drag-installed applications are arranged in their disk image windows.

Yes, I know, all of this is “pointless” and “dumb” because looks are meaningless. It’s the software that counts—the code, the bits, not the packaging, right? And so we come to an important difference between Mac enthusiasts and other computer users. Mac users understand that the packaging counts too (and are willing to pay for it). Happily, you get a lot of nice things “for free” on the Mac platform these days: composited windows, large icons, rich disk image and application bundle standards, etc.

So very true.

IQ redux

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Almost a month ago, I signed up for the free StatCounter statistics tracking service, and I’ve been checking in every few days to see what kind of traffic I’m getting on my site.

From the 11th to the 31st of October, I’d been averaging around 1,333 page loads per day, with 1,090 unique visitors, 1,022 first-time visitors, and 68 returning visitors (keep in mind, those are all averages). Not anywhere near the top of the ‘net, but not terribly shabby, either.

Then, over the past few days, I’ve suddenly been watching my traffic start to spike, topping out (so far) yesterday at 2,757 page loads…

Graph Daily Summary

A little curious about what was causing the spike, I checked out my referrers and search terms. Turns out that the majority of the spike is caused by people searching for information on how states voted combined with the state’s average IQ, which first started going around the ‘net back in May regarding the 2000 elections. The table that was flying around the ‘net was later declared a hoax, but apparently the meme is still fairly popular, and a lot of people have been landing on my post because of that.

Turns out that someone has actually updated the table for the 2004 election — though they’re using the same data for the IQ, so I’m sure the table is just as faulty for this election as it was for the 2000 election. As it still seems to be amusing people, though, I added a quick update to my original post noting the new table (and calling attention to the fact that it’s a hoax, though most people probably won’t care about that), and in the meantime, I’ll just enjoy the upswing in traffic.

iTunes “Tripnotized Vol. 1 (Part 1) (full mix)” by Various Artists from the album Tripnotized Vol. 1 (full mix) (1995, 1:11:25).

Wishlist: Bank transaction RSS feed

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Just something that popped into my head.

I want a daily update from my bank via authenticated RSS feed.

Something like:

Account holder: Michael Hanscom
Account: XXXXXXX

Today’s transactions:

>

>

>

>

>

Party Amount Balance
Broadway QFC ($5.78) $385.73
Pike & Broadway ATM ($20.00) $365.73
Direct Deposit $783.56 $1149.29

Thank you for banking with Your Local Bank! Promotional copy, yadda yadda, whatever.

Are there any banks (especially in the Seattle area) that offer this as part of their online banking? If not, any idea how this could be suggested or promoted? Alternatively, are there any reasons why this couldn’t be managed securely?