No such thing as bad publicity, and as long as they spell your name right, etc…I received a comment on my GreaterFalls.com site the other day from the morning DJ on a local station; he wants to do an interview about the site. And one of the local news anchors e-mailed me about doing a 2 or 3-part series on local bloggers. Well, since I’ve already conquered other media outlets, I guess it’s time to expand my media empire even further! Actually, since this is Blogtober, the timing couldn’t be better to talk about blogging and encourage others to get involved with blogging (either reading or writing).

Today marks the beginning of Year Seven of “Better Living Thru Blogging!” Holy cow! Do you see any wrinkles or gray hair on this page? Heh. And yes, it’s a bit schmaltzy, but here’s the link to what I posted on my anniversary three years ago — it’s all (mostly) still true, only even Better now. And you’ll notice that my very first entry back in October 2000 was about the approach of cooler temperatures - some things never change!

Thanks, everyone, for making this such a nifty avocation - hobby - obsession - craft - joy - and so on. Without you, this would not be nearly as enjoyable, and arguably not worth the effort.

You may have had some trouble seeing this page within the last 48 hours or so - which was due to my host (Cedant.com) turning off my account due to “abuse of MySQL” apparently. When I told Cedant WTF?, they replied with the following (in the More section). So, acting on the advice of two trusted fellow bloggers, I’ve increased the severity of my SpamKarma 2 installation to see if the problem was caused by spammers gone wild. Cross your fingers - and if you have any insight into any other possible causes, please let me know! (more…)

Ever visited The Ageless Project? It’s a directory of bloggers organized by year of birth. I like browsing through blog directories, such as the Globe of Blogs, and the Ageless project is pretty cool. The person’s year of birth, not the blog’s. There are blogs from folks who were born in the 1920s, in the 1950s, and the 1990s, and all the years in between. You can add your blog, of course, but don’t lie about your age!

I felt a pain in my heart when Bunker Mulligan passed away nearly a year ago; I never met him, but read his blog often, and he was kind enough to visit mine on occasion. And now, again, the same type of pain: Rob, aka “Acidman” of Gut Rumbles, has passed away. Again, never met him, but exchanged comments and even an e-mail or two. Not as much of a shock as when Bunker died, as Rob had detailed his medical problems over the years and many in the ‘Sphere knew that his time would come sooner rather than later. But still: a shock. Vitriolic, verbose, blunt, and crotchety, and a damn fine blogger. RIP, Acidman.

ALSO: Day By Day has paid homage to Rob in today’s edition.

After wrestling with Spam Karma over at Big Sky Blog (and having would-be commenters frustrated by “SQL barf”), and never receiving an API key to activate Akismet, I went in search of another spam-busting tool and found this nifty one: Did You Pass Math? The plug-in requires only one file and then one-click activation; it then adds a very simple math question (such as 2 + 4) to the comment form. If you enter the correct answer, your comment is posted. If you don’t answer - or answer incorrectly - your comment doesn’t get posted. And it doesn’t require any captcha-specific files or fonts! So go ahead - leave a comment here, and let’s see if you passed math class!

My apologies to any of you who have experienced difficulties reading my site the last couple of days…I began tinkering with some new Themes, and some of them didn’t want to play “nice,” and when I thought that they were no longer visible, well…apparently they were, warts and all. So if this site doesn’t look like it normally does, try clicking here to reset the Theme to the default. If the page then loads “blank” then just hit your reload or F5 key. Sorry!

I’ve been at this blogging thing for over 5 years, which makes me something of an old-timer in the ‘Sphere. But Charles…well, Charles is about twice as old as me, in blog-years, which makes him…older? Better? Wiser? Wittier? You betcha. I was lucky enough to discover Dustbury early on, and the dude just keeps getting better. As I once wrote about Dustbury & the genius behind it:

“There’s just something deliciously satisfying about reading something that has actually been thought out in advance, where the words accurately convey not just thought, but also nuance and subtlety.”

Happy 10th Anniversary, Charles. Thanks for the good humor, amazing trivia, and the sprinkling of wisdom. And FWIW, I’ve always enjoyed the bird - cute little feller.

Got one report that my center column - the actual blog entries - are not showing up in IE. Can anyone check it out on their system? It shows up fine in my IE (and FF, natch).

All content on this website is © Copyright 2000-2010 - All Rights Reserved The content on this site may not be reused or republished. Website template powered by VooWeb.com Website Templates

Spocko left a comment on my entry about the movie “Snakes On A Plane” and seemed to think that I was some sort of “viral messenger” for the movie, and that my blog entry and purchase of a SoaP t-shirt were somehow part of a larger campaign to promote the movie. In fact, there is no such campaign that I am aware of. I read a few entries on MetaFilter and Digg and a few other sites several months ago about the movie, and my first reaction was that it was some sort of gag based on the Saturday Night Live sketch. Lo and behold, it turns out to be a real movie (presumably). My interest in it is based on the following: the sketch on SNL was bizarre to the point of being humorous; the concept of snakes on a plane stretched into a movie-length story is oddly intriguing; anything with Sam Jackson gets my attention; and the t-shirt that I bought has such cute, simple graphics that I thought it would be fun to wear. (more…)

*re-post* Heh…I love these image generating sites (found via). Here’s my take on it:

A favor: can you click here and see if my GreaterFalls.com site comes up? I got an e-mail today from someone who said that my site was missing; it shows up when I click through, but I need some reassurance. Thanks. UDPATE: Thanks, everyone — looks like everything is OK — appreciate you taking the time to give me peace of mind!