Saturday, January 20, 2007
Amen!Labels: blogging
Steve 2:42 AM [+] (0) comments
Sunday, January 07, 2007
I'm really liking these new blogger features. Google definitely know what they're doing.In creating a separate page for each entry, as well as adding each new post to the main page, they maximise the number of pages containing content on which to display adsense advertising.
Better yet, in adding the labels, they create pages that are more effective both in terms of targetted advertising, and provide better search results.
The final result being that readers benefit by being able to read all the posts on a given subject, on one page... advertisers benefit by having their ads displayed on pages that are more relevant... blog writers benefit by getting more revenue from better targetted ads, on pages that show up higher in searches.... and obviously, google benefit all round.
Very impressive.
Labels: blogging
Steve 12:44 AM [+] (0) comments
Saturday, December 30, 2006
There we go... all sorted.I'd say it's finished, but it will never be finished. However, (almost) everything that you could see and read while the blog was on tripod is now here.
I say 'almost', as clearly, some things are missing. The octopus is awol, and as I'm now using the integrated comments system provided by blogger, all of the old yaccs comments have gone.
So, apart from new posts, what can you expect, and how come I'm describing these pages as 'Life Story'?
Well... I have diaries dating back to my early teens (with gaps here and there), and as I get time, I'll be typing those up and putting them on here.
No doubt much of that won't make for very interesting reading, but since this blog is effectively a diary, I figure I may as well include those too.
So... the archives list should gradually start extending downwards as well as up.
Elsewhere on this site, I'll be finishing the photo gallery, though that will take quite some time, as I have around 500 photos to put on. Also, I'll be starting work on my Computer and Console Collection pages in the next week or so.
The chatroom, reviews and forum sections aren't likely to be completed particularly soon though, as the workload created by the bits I am working on now is fairly overwhelming, and I simply don't have time yet.
Labels: blogging
Steve 8:34 PM [+] (0) comments
Friday, December 29, 2006
Here we go... at long last.I've started moving my blog across from my old tripod server to my new site, with the new design.
A few photos are likely to be awol for a while while I transfer files across, but hopefully, by the end of today, things should be more or less sorted.
You can probably expect more posts from now on, as while I've been procrastinating for the past few months, I haven't really felt like writing much. This was simply coz I knew I'd have to move everything in the near future, and it really is a pain in the arse.
Labels: blogging
Steve 11:11 AM [+] (0) comments
Saturday, May 27, 2006
This might very well be the final entry in this blog before it moves to the new url.I've been working away on the new site templates, and now need to start adding the actual content. Once I've got the majority of the sections there at least partially completed, I'll transfer this blog across, remove all the content from here, and have it automatically redirect.
Shouldn't be more than a week.
Labels: blogging
Steve 6:45 PM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, December 02, 2003
Why no blog posts?Disillusionment, mostly.
There's plenty I'm pretty fed up with, but since I don't wish to write one of those "my life sucks" blogs, I've chosen not to write anything at all.
So, unless anything worth writing about happens, consider this blog on hiatus.
Labels: blogging
Steve 12:26 AM [+] (0) comments
Sunday, September 21, 2003
Not much going on here at the moment, but I have noticed a couple of interetsing little snippets in online news recently.Typically, I didn't bookmark the news pages, but the basics of one of the stories goes like this...
An internet marketing company has recognised the value of weblogs as a source of realtime market evaluation. What they're doing is setting up a search/database facility that searches through hundreds of thousands of weblogs, looking for attitudes and market trends in what people write... the relevance of a particular blogger's views being ranked by how many links they have. This information is then sold on to marketing and advertising companies.
Now while I'm no great fan of advertising, and hate spam and popups as much as the next guy, I do find it interesting to know that blogging is being taken seriously in such fields. Who knows, one day maybe they'll try to sell us something we actually want, instead of something they want us to want.
The other news article that caught my eye was about my favourite peer to peer file sharing system.
Everyone's heard of kazaa (or kazaa lite if you know what you're doing), winmx and suchlike... and god knows, the RIAA and MPAA sure know about them... but there's another system that's hitting the headlines again, namely bittorrent in conjunction with the top torrent site suprnova.org. It would seem that this is now one of the most popular methods of getting video files of tv shows, especially in europe and the uk, where many shows are either broadcast several months later than in the usa, or aren't broadcast at all.
I have to admit to being a bit worried whenever suprnova and bittorrent get into the news, 'cause being somewhat centralised, based around a specific website, extra publicity usually heralds a mass of ddos attacks that knock the site offline for days on end. On the other hand, unlike other file sharing systems, the more people downloading a file, the faster it goes. Clever stuff indeed.
Steve 2:18 AM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, September 04, 2003
I just finished reading Dead Air by Iain Banks. Brilliant book, though I'd expect no less form the best british writer out there at the mo. Two days to read a novel... that's something of a record for me, as I'm not a fast reader by any stretch of the imagination, I just couldn't put it down.Comments are still down, and likely to remain down untill the 8th at the very earliest. Oddly, I'm finding it rather liberating, blogging without comments. It's rather like going back to the very start, when I had no readers whatsoever, didn't care what anyone stumbling across my ramblings thought, and knowing that even if anyone did read it, they couldn't respond other than via email.
So, I won't be going in search of a new comments system. If yaccs gets it's act together and starts functioning again, all well and good, but if it doesn't, I don't care. I'll remain commentless and maybe get back to the purity of what blogging once was for me.
I think in truth I've become entirely jaded with blogging as a phenomenon.... the blogging scene. I used to read twenty or so blogs daily, even twice daily... clicking through them excpectantly to see what was going on in this odd little corner of unreality. I felt some kind of attachment to the people I read. These days... well, I still like these people, in as much as it's possible to know anyone from reading a few choice lines every day or so.... but for the most part, I just don't care that much any more.
Hmm... multiple deletes.... too much stuff that sounds negative, when really it's just a whole load of indifference. Time to sit back and take stock, decide what's important and what's not. This blog will continue, and perhaps be better for my not actually caring too much any more about how it's percieved. Self promotion after a time becomes just another chore. Lots of websites, high online profile... what a pain in the arse.
Steve 11:05 PM [+] (0) comments
Monday, September 01, 2003
**Grumble grumble** ... comments are still down.... **grumble**....How annoying. If they aren't up and running by the end of the week, I'll go find a new comments system that actually works for more than 5 minutes a month. I know they're free, but damnit! What's the point of having a free service if it never works?
Steve 5:50 PM [+] (0) comments
Wednesday, July 09, 2003
Whoops. Tehcnical difficulties with the comments script.It's not showing up when people have commented, which is why I haven't replied to anyone's comments.
Sorry folks, I'm not ignoring you all, I just didn't realise anyone had said anything. Truth is, I wasn't even sure anyone read this thing any more. It's nice to know that's not the case :-)
Labels: blogging
Steve 7:38 PM [+] (0) comments
Saturday, June 14, 2003
It has not escaped my attention that this blog has become incredibly boring of late.Truth is, I've not had anything much that I've either felt like writing, or that I can write about without getting into trouble, so I've just said nothing. I know this hasn't gone unnoticed, as my readership has dropped off to almost nothing... but that's fine. To be even more truthful, I've become entirely bored with writing this thing, not to mention a whole load of other online passtimes.
That's not to say I'm bored with the net, far from it... just different things are holding my attention more than the things I've been doing over the past couple fo years. Things may change, as I've always had a tendancy to drift away from and back to various passtimes, just for the moment don't be surprised to see less of me here, in my chatroom, or whatever.
Labels: blogging
Steve 11:20 PM [+] (0) comments
Wednesday, June 04, 2003
A few links have gone from the side bar.Sadly, Brian has quit blogging for the moment, but may be back, and Cori's moving her blog to a so far unknown location, so new links will go up as and when.
Speaking of Cori, I had the great pleasure of seeing her in action in the chatroom I frequent a lot lately. Now I rather take pride in my ability to deal with lamers, but she was absolutely devastating. Most impressive.
Labels: blogging
Steve 4:33 AM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, May 06, 2003
I need to blog, but other than helping Brigitte fold sheets, and then realising it's all being caught on webcam, there's absolutely nothing to report.I'm not bored by any means, as chatting online always keeps me happily occupied, but for you, dear reader, it's gotta be like watching paint dry. There's some nice colours down at Homebase if you're interested.
Labels: blogging
Steve 7:13 PM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, May 01, 2003
Most readers of my blog are probably blissfully unaware of the slanging match that's been going on in another area of blogdom. I haven't spoken about it here, mainly 'cause I don't have anything useful to add to the argument.To cut to the chase though, Eric got himself into a big fight through what could be called badly chosen wording, things got all out of hand... and I'm not gonna go into the details.
Anyways, the point of this post is that Eric is/may be calling it quits and leaving blogdom, and I just wanted to say something about that here, since comments are unavailable on his blog right now.
What exactly is it I want to say?
About what's happened there recently... absolutely nothing. About Eric though... I've followed his blog on and off for around a year now, spoken to him in batchat on occasion and it has to be said, despite his outspoken and (allegedly) troublesome nature, he's a thoroughly decent guy. His judgement may be flawed on occasion (but then who's isn't?) and he may be your worst nightmare if you get into a fight with him, but at the end of the day, I like Eric, and if he quits blogging, he'll be missed by me and many others.
Labels: blogging
Steve 11:38 PM [+] (0) comments
Monday, April 07, 2003
I could be wrong, but it looks as if blogger IS publishing posts... just that it's taking about 5 mins after hitting publish before the post actually appears on the blog. That rather sucks, but I guess it's better than nothing.Labels: blogging
Steve 7:45 PM [+] (0) comments
Blogger's really starting to frustrate me.
After losing control of my template for a month or so, I'm now finding it increasingly difficult to make the thing post anything at all, on top of which archives are no longer being saved to my server. The april archive simply doesn't exist.
Grrr!
I'm testing the w.bloggar blogging software to see if anything improves, though I'm not too hopeful, as the issues appear to be with blogger's servers themselves.
If things stay like this, I may end up looking for an alternative blogging system.
Steve 1:05 PM [+] (0) comments
Wednesday, April 02, 2003
Woo!Finally, I have control of my template again. For the past couple of weeks blogger hasn't been letting me alter it. To quote a horrible creature, "[arryana]: no control over the universe is... horror to a demigod."
The Benway Radio link's in there now, and I've removed a couple of dead links. More updates to come, as and when I get the time/can be bothered.
Labels: blogging
Steve 2:41 PM [+] (0) comments
Monday, March 31, 2003
There seems to be an ammount of debate in blogdom about whether to blog on the war or not.I guess I'm not entirely comfortable blogging about it since it's started, partly because anything I say here won't be news anyway, but also because my opinions now the fighting has started are getting rather more extreme than even I expected.
I'm frustrated by the media coverage with reporters and news readers making dumb and unfounded statements and asking the most stupid questions. I'm aggravated by the obvious lies being told by the Iraqi authorities, and I'm amazed at the naivety of anyone who can't see that the Iraqis absolutely WILL slaughter their own civillians just so they can say we did it.
There's a very ugly logic to much that's happening over there.
Sure there's no uprising in the towns and cities... it'd be like having a conservative government (they suck, for those who aren't sure) in London and having the French invade us to depose that govt. Would I rise up against the conservatives? Hell no! I'd go kick French butt.
Sure the Iraqis are using civillians as human shields, not to mention every other cowardly and underhanded tactic possible. So what's surprising about that? If you're a 7 stone weakling and some 6 foot musclebound asshole picks a fight with you, you kick him in the nuts. It ain't honourable, but it's about the only chance you have to even the odds.
Blah blah blah... I could go on, but I think you get the picture. War's ugly and we aren't gonna walk away from this smelling of roses. The Iraqis won't thank us for this even when Saddam is removed, and the whole of the middle east will hate us. Chances are there'll be civil war there when we finally pull out, but fuck it... if you're gonna do a thing there's no sense in being half hearted about it. Saddam's an evil bastard who's only concern is keeping power at any expense. He needs taking out, and if doing that's gonna be ugly, so be it.
I guess what bothers me about this war more than anything isn't the senseless loss of life... (disgusting example of how self obsessed I am) it's that it's made me look at myself in a different way... how I view the inhabitants of another culture. I look at the behaviour of the Iraqis themselves and the arguments and attitude of all the other arab nations, and all I find myself thinking is "uncivilised, stupid, fucking savages."
I remember being in my teens, being a peace loving, tollerant kid who honestly believed you could solve any problem by simply talking it through logically. I was idealistic, and couldn't understand how anyone could hate anyone else just because they viewed the world differently.
I liked that person.
He's long gone, and that's sad.
Bomb the shit out of the fuckers.
*Shudder*
R.I.P civilised world, civilised people, civilised me.
Steve 11:11 AM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, March 25, 2003
*Sigh*For reasons that are completely beyond me, I'm unable to alter my template.
I go into the template editing screen, edit the code, save it, hit publish, and... nothing. It doesn't change. The most I get is a little [more info] link that points to the blogger trouble-shooting page, but that's it.
I've checked all of my html, as this was suggested as a problem on the help pages, but since most of it was done in dreamwaver, there shouldn't be any errors.
Bummer.
Labels: blogging
Steve 6:13 AM [+] (0) comments
Saturday, February 22, 2003
More tinkering.First off, I dare say you've already heard the audio addition.
Secondly, I noticed the loading of the webcam into the iframe at the top was slowing down the loading of the rest of the page, so I've added a dummy page where the cam goes, which then redirects to the webcam after 10 seconds. This should hopefully be long enough for the rest of the blog to load. It works fine on dsl, though I can't be sure if it's a long enough delay for dialup. Obviously the sample file slows things down a little, though it's not too huge... 17k or so.
Also, I've added a link to unload the webcam altogether, as there may be some people who don't wanna watch me sitting here, or who have bandwidth issues. Web design philosophy dictates that the cam should really be a 'click to view' feature, but what the heck, I want people to see it, so now you have to click to not view... hehehe. Narcisism at it's finest.
Finally, the wiggling tentacle tips... they were Brigitte's idea :-)
Labels: blogging
Steve 7:25 PM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, February 18, 2003
It's been reported here, there, and everywhere, but in case you missed it, Pyra Labs, owners of Blogger has been sold to google. Pyra co-founder Evan Williams talks about it here. See the general response so far on slashdot.Personally, I think it's good news. Google rocks, Blogger rocks, but suffers with load issues. I've no doubt Google will do a great job, whatever it decides to do with Blogger, and yes, it's almost certain to remain free, so don't even give that one a thought.
Labels: blogging
Steve 10:50 AM [+] (0) comments
Monday, February 03, 2003
Not a lot's happened today that I can tell you about. 'That I can tell you about' being the more relevant part of that statement. Actually, even if I could, it wouldn't mean anything to anyone who reads this anyway. Suffice to say, a long time and very good friend of mine phoned me today with some pleasant, not to mention surprising news.So now I'm sitting here thinking "I must blog... I must blog", but nothing blogworthy comes to mind.
See, normally I could just make something up, totally outragous stories of my continuing campaign of domination as an undercover world dictator, but with the climate being as it is lately, that just wouldn't be funny. Hmm. Odd that. Being politically incorrect purely for the hell of it has always been a favoured approach of mine, but when the rest of the world gets in on the act, it takes all of the fun out of it. Perhaps I should sue for compensation, though maybe an open letter would suffice...
"Dear world,
Please stop being such a total bastard.
No one takes any notice of me now when I make outragous and inapropriate comments, and this takes all the fun out of it. I believe your actions to be wholely inconsiderate and show no regard whatsoever for my personal amusement.
If this causes you any inconvenience, much like yourself, I couldn't give a damn. Stop it at once.
Regards...
Benway"
Labels: blogging
Steve 7:17 PM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, January 23, 2003
Seems there's a big hoohaa again this year about the bloggie awards. Much talk of vote rigging, conspiracies among the judges and high profile candidates pulling out.Ho-hum. You can't have it both ways folks. Last year there was an uproar because Wil Wheaton won damn near everything due to him being famous and getting lots of votes. This year the judges had a larger say in the results and again you think it's not fair.
Hah! There's always gonna be someone screaming "fix" when their fave blog doesn't get nominated.
For the record, I was nominted, though clearly didn't even get close to being a finalist, and I only knew about it when I saw a few hits coming in from a page on the bloggies site that I couldn't access. Doesn't bother me at all that I didn't get anywhere, 'cause I'm thrilled to bits that anyone likes my blog enough to even nominate it.
Maybe some people are just in it for the hits, like... obviously the final nominees and winners are gonna get huge hits, but hey, if you wanna get noticed, write a better blog, and then put in the time and effort to publicise the thing. The question should also be asked, what are you blogging for anyway? Surely not to win some online award? It's all about self expression isn't it? Having a say on whatever you feel like?
I feel quite embarrassed to be even writing about the thing, it's so insignificant, but hey, it's early, and I don't have anything more interesting to write about yet.
Give me more time... I will write a better blog, I promise.... maybe.
Labels: blogging
Steve 11:00 AM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, January 21, 2003
Funny how 10:37am on a tuesday morning seems to be a time of day that precludes the writing of a good blog entry. Probably because I've only just got out of bed and nothing's happened yet worth writing about. It may also be because I'm hungry, not having had breakfast and all that. Does coffee count as breakfast?The question should probably be asked though, why write a blog entry before anything noteworthy has had a chance of occurring? I can answer that in one word. Procrastination. It's either do this, or go into town for the weekly visit to the bank. Oh... and I was kinda hoping one of you nice people would nip down to the shop for me to buy food for the cat.
Labels: blogging
Steve 10:48 AM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, January 02, 2003
Some minor changes to the sidebar. I've removed the 'Chatroom Bloggers' section, and placed the only remaining active blog, ie arry into the main blog links section. The chatroom itself has pretty much died, so I guess I'm not surprised that the others aren't blogging much, but I've got you all bookmarked, so if you should start writing again, I'll put the links back. The same goes for a couple of others I've delinked. It's nothing personal, I just don't like having links to dead blogs.Labels: blogging
Steve 5:58 AM [+] (0) comments
Wednesday, December 18, 2002
After reading -e-'s intentions (later retracted) to quit the blog world, his reasons, and the comments made by various people, it got me thinking about a few things. Before I go on, this isn't about -e-, or anyone who commented... just that his post got me thinking. For the record, I'm very glad he's chosen to stick around.So what am I thinking? Well... I guess it's part observation, and part prediction.
There seem to be a number of paralels between the blog world as it is now, and cb radio (yeah, I do still have a number of rigs stashed away in a cupboard). When cb started, it was a trucker thing, at least it was in the uk, with just a few home bases used by people who chatted with the truckers. Then it became legalised, and soon after, massively popular... everyone and his dog had a cb. It wasn't long before the old hands who'd been there from the start began complaining about all the newcomers who didn't know shit and were ruining the whole scene. Many was the time you'd hear such remarks as "You're not a real breaker... you've only been on channel for a couple of years. I was here before it was even legal, so show me a bit of respect." and suchlike. Sometimes it was a valid point, sometimes not. Even an old hand can talk shit, but that's beside the point... the situation is similar.
Anothere paralel was the "I've had it with this thing, I'm closing down and not coming back" type thing. You've heard/seen it in blogland, it was the same on cb. I mean no disrespect to anyone who's uttered such things in blogland... we all have bad days when we just think "stuff it" and end up saying it out loud, only to think better of it later... it's just a way of venting. As a rule though, when I see it/hear it being said, I don't believe it. For whatever reason, the people who leave just leave. No big announcement, they just don't come back. Probably they don't care any more who knows about it and who doesn't... other people's opninions on their leaving are irrelivant, and they just get on with their lives without blogging. To announce it suggest that a person still cares about the thing, and so are less likely to actually leave.
The paralel that I like most though is that of notorious bloggers. Everyone's heard of them... outspoken, opinionated, sometimes offensive, often very entertaining. Some people love them, others hate them, but by god, you can't ignore them... or even if you can, you're still aware that they exist. CB had it's notorious characters too. Very often, they were pushing huge amounts of transmitter power (illegal over here) so EVERYONE could hear them. They'd sit on the breaking channel all day, every day, and if something was on their mind, you couldn't help but hear about it. I suspect it was an ego thing among these people... all of those mega base stations had huge personalities to match their transmitter power. Thing is, though they had their admirers, a lot of people hated them, be it antennae envy or just a personality thing. However, whenever one of those people closed down, be it through choice, or was forced off by the authorities, the cb was a vastly poorer place for it. They may have been loud, and often obnoxious, but they kept the whole cb phenomenon going. They gave people something/someone to talk about, a focal point if you like. The simple truth is, the cb needed them, and in the same way, I think blogging needs outspoken people, those with big egos and personalities to match, who're prepared to stir things up a little. It doesn't matter what their motives are, or whether you like them or not... blogland simply needs them.
So... my prediction. I'm not really saying this WILL happen, but if the paralels run true, it may happen. After a few years, when cb wasn't a new thing any more, all the kids drifted away from it. There were still a lot of people around, and to be honest, I think this was the best period. There were a lot of really good people still using it, but it was no longer fashionable to be on channel, so only those who genuinely enjoyed it used it. You've seen it happen in blogs... a person starts a blog, writes in it every day for a couple of weeks... then it becomes sporadic, and then it stops altogether. It just wasn't as much fun to them as they'd expected.
The next phase was a large scale exodus from the cb, as the internet became more popular. People found a new means of communicating, and only the real die-hard breakers stuck with it. Will that happen here? Maybe. The whole thing's still in the fashionable craze stage at the moment, but you never know what the next big thing will be.
Ironically, the only people who use cb now are truckers, the same group that started the whole thing off. I wonder if that'll happen here... the only people doing it in the end may be a small minority who have a specific reason for doing it. I hope it doesn't go that far, to be honest, as the post craze phase was brilliant in cb-land, before it began to really die.
Labels: blogging
Steve 11:32 PM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, December 17, 2002
Ok, this is probably gonna upset a few people, but it's my opinion, and I'm gonna state it regardless.Is it just me, or are news and social events/politics related blogs utterly boring?
*Chuckles*
Seriously, maybe I'm missing the point, but if I wanted to know what was in the news, or going on in politics at the moment, I'd go check out a news site. I guess where the writer is expressing an opinion of their own on the news, it validates the piece, but to just repeat what's been written elsewhere.... *shrugs*, seems rather a waste of time to me. Just there seems to be an alarming ammount of that kinda blog out there, and it rather makes me wonder, are there so many people who really want to be heard, but have nothing of their own to say?
Labels: blogging
Steve 7:22 PM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, November 21, 2002
Some very generalised observations while compiling The Octopus Files, which may or may not be very accurate.There are very few blogs beginning with V, X, Y and Z.
There are a hell of a lot of blogs starting with A, B and S.
There are more british than american male bloggers in proportion to the number of female brit and american bloggers.
There appear to be significantly more female bloggers in general.
Moveable Type is vastly more popular among american bloggers than among brits, who tend to use blogger, and assorted other blogging tools.
Female blogs appear to be more personal in nature, and often more creative, while men tend to concentrate more on work, news and technology, often largely link based.
The quality of blogs linked from a good quality blog are vastly superior than those from a poor blog, while those from portal sites can range from absolute rubbish, to a few real gems... which kinda makes sense really.
As I said, these observations may be entirely inaccurate, and just reflect the kind of blogs linked to from the kind of blogs I enjoy reading... who knows. Suffice to say, if I had to express a liking for a particular type of blog, it'd be by a female 30ish american using Moveable Type, of a personal nature (no I don't mean pervy... just about her life), and with a sharp sense of humour.
It's quite probably that you can tell the kind of blogs or at least posts, that I like from the type of excerpts I chose while compling the octopus files.
Anyway... enough of that for now. I've got a thumping headache and am gonna go lie down for a bit before Brigitte gets here.
Labels: blogging
Steve 2:35 PM [+] (0) comments
Monday, November 18, 2002
Going through all these blogs is giving me something of an inferiority complex. Some of them are so good, it kinda makes me feel my own little offerning here is quite pathetic, dull and boring. Oh well. Back to work anyway.Labels: blogging
Steve 9:10 AM [+] (0) comments
Wednesday, October 30, 2002
I guess I have no real grounds to complain about the yaccs commenting system, since it's completely free, but just lately it's become so totally unreliable, and causes this and many other blogs to take an age to load, that I'll very shortly be moving over to a different system. Hopefully, I'll be able to work it so that I won't lose the comments that've been recorded in the archive... just a matter of setting up the new comments on the first day of the next month. I understand the problem with yaccs... it's pretty much free, funding is limited, and the more users they get, the less reliable it'll become... the funding isn't available for them to upgrade. It's a pity, 'cause this is likely to be the fate of many similar free online tools and facilities.Labels: blogging
Steve 11:11 PM [+] (0) comments
Wednesday, October 02, 2002
Ugh!I've felt better.
Went to bed last night with a headache, and woke up today feeling lousy. No headache as such, just a numb brain, and feeling generally rough, though with no specific symptoms. Ah well.
I've noticed some interesting things while checking the stats for this blog. My overall regular readership is way down, so I guess I'm just being a bit too boring for people or something, but hits from search engines have risen dramatically. Not really a very good trade off though, 'cause visitors from search engines generally aren't going to find what they're looking for, and don't tend to stop and read. I know why traffic from s/e's is up though... it's the site map I included a couple of months back. Your typical blogger template uses java script to access the archives, and most of the s/e's can't/don't follow those links, so adding a page with standard html links to the archives, and then linking to that from the main page gives them access to all of the archives, and hence more visitors. Don't know what I'm talking about? Check the sidebar over on the left. A bit below the archives you'll see a link to the site map. Click on it. Having said that, you can't do that with a standard blogspot account. You need hosting and ftp access to add such a page.
Steve 8:44 PM [+] (0) comments
Saturday, September 21, 2002
I'm being lazy today.Was supposed to go into town to pick up a battery charger, into wolverton to get a mop-head and other domestic bits and pieces, do laundry, and god knows what else. Did I do it? Nah. Settled for taking out the rubbish before the kitchen got into an overflowing state again, had a bath, and settled down to do very little.
It's a rather unusual mindset to be in, though most people already know I'm laziness personified. I find that when Brigitte's here, we're very wrapped up in each other, so practical stuff isn't a factor, and when she isn't, I'm so wrapped up thinking about her that practical stuff still isn't a factor. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining for a moment.... I'm loving every moment. It's just not something I'm used to.
From a blogging perspective, I'm trying not to do the "We did this, and this, and this and this together, and it's all so nice" thing. I mean... we do, and it is, just that I've seen a few blogs like that, and from the readers perspective, it's dull, and I don't wanna go down that road. Just let me assure you, from where I'm sitting, things are very far from dull :-)
Labels: blogging
Steve 7:31 PM [+] (0) comments
Saturday, September 07, 2002
And the link list keeps growing. Blog of the day is Kara... Beyond Your Peripheral Vision. Musician, artist, writer, etc... reminds me of me, just way cuter.So anyway.. this has got me thinking about my link list. It's probably about time I put them into some kind of order. As it is, they're reverse chronological... oldest first, but the only person who'd ever know that is me. I guess I could put them in order of faves higher up... it'd certainly be easier for me, as some I read more than others (though I do check each one every day), but that'd risk upsetting people, like "Hey, my blog rocks. Why am I below so and so?" That only really leaves alphabetical order, but... I dunno... that's kinda boring, and since people always seem to start at the top, and rarely reach the bottom, it favours those higher up the alphabet... or chronological order, which makes no sense to anyone but me again.
Oh sod it... it can stay as it is.
Labels: blogging
Steve 5:08 AM [+] (0) comments
Saturday, August 31, 2002
.......er....this is where I'm supposed to write something interesting, right?
er....
sorry, I can't come to my blog right now... or something, please leave a message after the tone.
Oh.
There isn't a tone. Look, just pretend or something.
Actually, if you pretend there's a really interesting and meaningful post here, that'd be pretty cool, and save me having to make something up.
My life's boring, ok?
Labels: blogging
Steve 10:51 PM [+] (0) comments
Friday, August 23, 2002
I find I'm in two minds about this 'Blog Hot or Not' thing. (The link's down near the bottom of the sidebar.)It's probably just that I'm a little disgruntled at getting such a low score... but I do wonder if a lot of people are just looking for sensationalist material, sex and whatever, and when they don't find it, give a crappy rating, and move on to the next one. On the upside though, I do seem to have a whole lot of new regular readers. Up untill recently, I knew pretty much exactly who my readers were... mostly it was a few of the people I link to, and some of my friends from the chatroom. I could look at the hostnames on the tracking and know who they were. Now though... there's a whole bundle of new regular hostnames, and I've no idea who they are. That's gotta be a good thing. :-)
Labels: blogging
Steve 1:13 AM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, August 20, 2002
More new pics on pages 4 and 5 of the Photo AlbumSeems there's more shit going down out there in blogworld. *shrugs* I couldn't care less. I've found a way that suits me, and find myself quite unconcerned with whatever's going on elsewhere. I read the blogs I link to, and maybe comment once in a while if I feel like it... but involved? Nah... I've always been on the fringes, and like it here.
Seems to me, people will either fight, or they won't fight, and it's up to the reader whether they join in, stay out of it, continue reading, stop reading.. whatever. Shit happens.
Labels: blogging
Steve 8:53 PM [+] (0) comments
Monday, August 19, 2002
Here's a cool site for people who're interested in putting pics on their blogs but don't have their own web hosts, and aren't familiar with html.VillagePhotos.com offer free hosting, or a paid for service. Free users are limited to 5 megs of bandwidth per day, though if you make sure your pics aren't too big, that shouldn't be a problem.
It's a little confusing at first, but easy once you figure the layout and where things are hidden. Just to make it easy, here's a basic run-through of how to get pics onto your blog with them:
1: Sign up.
2: Log in.
3: Go down to the "Photo Albums" box on the left and click on "Photos"
4: In the same "Photo Albums" box, click on "Upload Images"
5: Click on one of the "Browse" buttons to locate the image on your pc and then click on "Upload"
6: Click the link marked "click here to continue"
7: You'll now see your pic on the page with some info under it. Click on the underlined row of numbers under the pic.
8: Amongst a load of other stuff, you'll see this line... "HTML IMG tag to insert this image into existing HTML pages:", underneath that, you'll see some green text. Copy and paste that green text into your blog where you want your pic to appear, and then publish your blog.
A handy feature that appears on that same page can be found near the bottom, which allows you to resize and alter the compression on your pics, though I'd recommend doing this with a graphics editing program before uploading. It's handy though if you don't have such software.
Remember, you're limited to 5 megs of bandwidth per day, so if you have one 10k image being displayed on your blog, you can have up to around 500 viewers before you hit the limit. More pics = fewer possible views, so it's just simple maths to work out how many pics you can include, or how big they can be, depending on how many readers you have.
Hopefully this'll help a few people, as I know a few people wanting to add pics to their blogs, but don't know how to go about it, and this site makes it about as easy as it can get.
Have fun :-)
Steve 1:19 PM [+] (0) comments
Wednesday, July 31, 2002
Since moving this blog from the blogspot server over to tripod, traffic has been quite slow, about half of what I was getting before. Now, some of this is simply because a lot of people don't like popups, and I don't blame them. Some is because the search engines have been quite slow in indexing this site, and some is because not everyone has seen fit to update links to here. This isn't a complaint... just an observation. Anyway, I've done something about it. The blog on the blogspot server now redirects to here. I didn't do this sooner, because that would've meant that people couldn't read the old archives if they'd wanted to, so what I've done is transfer all of the archives, every single file on the old blog in fact, over here. See the 'Old Archive' links down there on the left? That's the blogspot blog.Labels: blogging
Steve 9:36 AM [+] (0) comments
Monday, July 22, 2002
Oh yes, just for the fun of it, I've entered The Guardian Best British Blog competition. I'm not sure if I'm doing that as an ironic statement or not, as this blog doesn't have much going for it, except for a rather funky design... unless you like obnoxious egomaniacs who can neither spell nor type. Whatever, I couldn't resist.Wish me luck :)
Labels: blogging
Steve 7:50 PM [+] (0) comments
Wednesday, July 17, 2002
Hmmm.I've been looking at this blogchalk thing, and let me tell you, it's not all it's cracked up to be.
Let me give you some free information regarding google, from someone who's done a lot of research into the matter. Google does indeed ignore the keywords meta tag, but it most certainly does pay a lot of attention to the description tag, and even more to the actual title tag.
Having looked at the stuff blogchalking would have you add, the only people who stand to really gain any benefit from thousands of people adding their codes is blogchalking themselves. I'm not saying it's a scam as such, but the effectiveness of what they would have you add to your blog would be minimal to your own traffic, while the effect of all those people adding blogchalk to their keywords, and a link to thier site would be immense... and do notice, they do have advertising on their site.
If you want to find out how to effectively increase traffic to your blog, from people searching for keywords YOU think are relevant, go take a look at THIS section of one of my websites. It covers pretty much everything you could want to know about effective positioning on search engines.
And before you say "Oh, so he doesn't want us to help them out, but is happy for us to increase his traffic"... I'm not asking you to alter your meta tags or alter links that will boost my own traffic. It's free information with no hidden catches. The only downside to this accurate and useful information I'm offering you is that you have to actually think in order to make use of it. Are you up to it? Oh decisions decision... fill out an easy form that won't really help you much, but will sure help someone else, or engage your brain for a few minutes, in order to understand how things REALLY work, and then make effective use of it.
Labels: blogging
Steve 12:27 PM [+] (0) comments
Saturday, July 13, 2002
I guess out of boredom I'm going to be a little controversial for a moment.The fight elsewhere in blogland, and the one I had here (well, on my old blog) has had me thinking a little. Don't worry, I'm not starting something here, picking on anyone or criticising anyone's actions... just looking at my own perspective and thinking aloud to see what comes out.
The conclusion I've come to (though it's only a provisional conclusion, 'cause I'm still thinking on it), and not entirely relevant to happeniings elsewhere at all, is that political correctness isn't necesaraly a good thing.
How do I come to this conclusion? Well, political correctness demands tollerance, which in the short term is all well and good, but suppose over the long term you find yourself tollerating a situation, person, whatever... just something that niggles you. After a time that niggle eats away at you, till you just can't hold it in any longer and wind up exploding, having a barny, screaming and raging... whatever, it gets messy and unpleasant.
So, suppose you throw that political correctness out of the window and from the word go say "Nope, I don't like this situation/person/whatever" and just shut the door. Maybe a quick "sod off, you annoy me." It's certainly not polite, but it's short, sharp, does the job, and saves the build up of bad feelings. I dunno, maybe that's an over simplistic view, as there are certainly situations where political correctness is necesary, but on the interpersonal level... *drifts off into indecisive musing*
Hmm... actually, here's an example of how being politically incorrect has very obviously improved the atmosphere in my chatroom. This absolutely will offend some people, but that's the nature of being politically incorrect. For a while, the room was open to absolutely everyone, or at least, anyone could get in... whether or not they fitted or were booted out was another matter. After a time though, it became very obvious that people from *whispers* france, just didn't fit. They annoyed everyone in the room. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying all french people are assholes, merely that cultural differences made them incompatible with the regular inhabitants of the room. Anyway, after the numerous arguments and fights that broke out, I eventually blocked anyone with .fr in their hostname from entering the room. See what I mean though? It's something I'd have frowned upon if I heard about it happening elsewhere, but it worked. No more fights.
As an asside, though blocking the french from my room may sound pretty extreme, it's not nearly as bad as it could be. If I were to block people from every single country that I personally have difficulty in getting on with, I'd have to include spain, switzerland, germany, canada, india, various arabian states.... ummm... oh to hell with it, I just dislike everyone, unless I like them.
*Sits back and waits to get flamed*
Just to clarify again, this is NOT intended as a comment on happenings either here or elsewhere, and isn't intended as 'Benway's advice on how to conduct your actions'. It's just something that comes to mind while musing on the whole thing.
Labels: blogging
Steve 8:09 PM [+] (0) comments
Do you have any idea how hard it is to write a blog that approaches anything even slightly resembling an interesting read, when you don't have a life to speak of? Let me tell you, it's hard. My day today consisted of get up, watch tv, nap, burn compilation mp3 cd, watch more tv, eat a bit, watch more tv.
From my perspective, it was a pleasant and relaxing day, free from annoying hassles, but that sure doesn't make for interesting reading material. Oh well.
On an entirely different subject, even years after he departed from public view, I HATE Vanilla Ice. He's raped my memory. What am I talking about? Under Pressure, the Queen/Bowie collaboration. I love that song and recently added it to this Bowie compilation I've been doing, but now, every time that tune starts, all I hear is Ice Ice fucking baby! Argh!!!
Labels: blogging
Steve 7:06 PM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, June 27, 2002
So here we are, the big unveiling of the new look Benway weblog. All that’s needed now is a bottle of champagne to crack open against the side.Why have I changed it, and why the move to tripod? There are several reasons.
On the purely aesthetic level, the old blog was too obviously just a modified standard tempate, albeit one that had been transformed into something very different. As a creative person though, and as someone who likes to consider himself a half way decent web designer, that simply wasn’t good enough.
Also, this new look is rather more in keeping with my character, having something of a darker, almost gothic feel to it, yet being somewhat overstated, representing my very tongue in cheek egocentricity. What it’s supposedly saying is, while I take my creative output very seriously (be that music, art, writing, websites or whatever) and do like to think it’s pretty good, I don’t take myself as a person that seriously at all, but enjoy hamming it up, exaggerating a my ego out of all proportion. Some people get it, some don’t, but hey, it’s fun.
As for the move to tripod, though there is the downside of those annoying popups, I no longer have to worry about the 100k per month limit imposed by blogger (did they actually enforce that?), or the rather too frequent server downtime. Also it makes life much easier for me, having all the images and sub-pages stored on the same server instead of scattered all over the place, not to mention the ability to use server side includes and a cgi bin (assuming I find a use for that) which is something that wasn’t available on the blogspot server, or the other web servers I was using.
Love it or hate it then, the new look Benway Weblog is here. Now if I can just think of something interesting to say….
Labels: blogging
Steve 5:17 PM [+] (0) comments
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