LaserBlog.com

The local news had this thing about blogs on the 11 o’clock news last night.

I was so sure they’d butcher it, but thankfully they didn’t really butcher the subject.

But they did have to have some OLD FART on (‘cuz it’s, you know, Floriduh) who basically said that if it’s not a fact-driven political blog, it’s “garbage”.

What-EVer.

I’m just glad the local schmokels didn’t ruin it. The story wasn’t too bad. Local news usually sucks.

So then I hit Meetup.com cuz when I first heard about meetup.com it was a bloggers meetup. I thought there was one in this town, but either it disappeared or there never was one. So I set one up… wonder if anyone’ll join.

I was thinking about my blog tonight. Way back in… let me think… I think it was just after I started my first website, when I was still rooming at mom’s… so that was… 96? Or wait… if I was working at TSI at the time, then it was… 98. Idunno, but back around then, I first heard about “blogs”. They sounded like a really neat way to format a website. I sat down one night and thought I’d do one, either on my existing website or convert it. I went to weblogs.com I think it was, and all I saw was a list of other blogs, but for the life of me, at the time, I could not figure out how to START one. Blogger was either not around or not easily found by me. I gave up trying to figure out how to start a blog besides doing it by hand. To think I could have been blogging that far back. I still have a copy of my first website. I remember I put it online around 96 or 98. I loved that old site. It had rants. It had links. It had pix. But it was harder to maintain… add to, cut out old stuff, etc. It had a “new” section at the top, but that stuff had to eventually be moved down, etc.

For the fun of it, I loaded the old site in my browser and took some screenshots. This is my half of the site, and if this were the site itself, you could click on the Canadian flag to see M’s part of the site.

Here’s the screenshot to give you a peek:
http://www.laserblog.com/images/oldsite.jpg

I had this up since 96 or 98 and then in Jan ’03 I decided to do a blog. At first I did it by hand and then shortly after that installed MT and have been using it ever since.

I’ve been thinking about blogging and photography.

When I first started this blog, I did alot of posting photos from that day and commenting on them, and not photography photos necessarily, but just photos from the road of shit that pissed me off. Well, also photography. But anyway, what happened was when the moblog came along, it took away about 50% of the purpose of this blog. I never could really send photos to THIS blog from the cell phone and have them be sized right w/ thumbnails, etc. I think it can be done w/ MT, but it was just easier to get set up w/ textamerica.com and do it that way, no muss, no fuss. But then half of my blogging mind was there instead of here.

Now I think I can send photos from my cell phone to this blog using flickr. But I am not sure if it’s easy, and not sure if I’ll bother.

It’s just funny how over time things, even blogs, change.

That, and the fact that my life is freaking boring, leads to me feeling guilty that my blog is not nearly as active as it has been in the past. Maybe I just need a life.

I know I broke my blog sometime a while back. I wanted to delete some posts so I deleted the files. So now if you (or more likely *I*) went back to an early post and then hit next next next, something would break. But really who wou ld go that far back in my blog. Probably only me. Someday this blog’ll be fun to look back on. But I don’t think the general public cares about much more than what’s on the front page. To fix or not to fix, that is the question. I think I’ll leave it alone. At least for now. I can think of better stuff to do w/ my time.

Like play w/ new puppy or put up the last of the Ireland photos.

I just don’t get it. I’ve been getting these junk blog comments, but not on this blog, on ones that are not and have never been in search engines, and the blog comments are the typical spam type: vague vague vague and then with a spam url. But lately the spam urls don’t even work. Why would someone go thru all the trouble to post a vage, obviously spam comment, and not even post a url that actually goes to the product they are selling? It’s so weird. They’re not genuine comments because they are vague, make statements that are false, like “saw your blog on google” when it’s NOT on google, and post comments that obviously make no sense, like “what a riot!” when talking about how sad I am cuz my cat died, and stuff like that. These people have to do the old “type in this code if you want to comment” thing, yet they waste everyone’s time w/ usesless urls that do not even exist. Too strange.

Holy cow, what is this???

“Laserblog, girl with lasers”
http://blogger.xs4all.nl/suzanne/ That’s not me!

Now, I knew from day one that I was not the only “Laserone”. Even back in ’96 when I first got online, I wasn’t able to get laserone@ either yahoo or hotmail, and often that nick was taken on IRC and other places.

But this is a first, I’ve never seen another laserblog!

I’m a freaking dork!

I kept blogging and unclicking the “allow pings” box when submitting my post, because I was tired of waiting for MT to pink weblogs.com and blo.gs. But all this time that’s not what that box does, what that does is make it so that nobody can TRACKBACK ping.

I’m such a dork.

My last few entries have gotten me thinking. “What if MY blog were to suddenly disappear due to technical problems?” “What if my blog offends somebody?”

CLICK BELOW TO READ MORE…
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Holy shit. This is why I never liked the idea of my blog being based at a website, i.e. blogger, manilla, livejournal… because you never really know when the person/business who runs it decides to just shut it down. I understand he may not be able to afford it, fine, but he doesn’t have to be such a dick about it.

Wired article here.

Good gawd it takes FOREVER to do a “rebuild all files” in MT now. I realized yesterday that some of my templates were missing the “enter this code to comment” thingy. I tried to copy/paste it in but a rebuild of indexes didn’t show it. So I’m doing a rebuild-all and it’s taking forever!!! I bet when it’s done it’ll be all messed up. I gotsta go to bed. I’m tired and cranky. G’nite. W/ all the recent crap re. MT and MT being a pain in the *ss, I may have to start looking into blogging alternatives.

I understand the creators of MT wanting to make more money off their incredibly popular, well-written software. But to go from free to such HIGH PRICES!? Are they nuts? For the number of MT blogs that I use, I’d need to pay $99.95 to $149.95 regular price. That’s insane! That’s too far of a jump.

Not all bloggers who have multiple blogs are commercial! (and being commercial doesn’t always mean that there is alot of money laying around, duh.) I have this blog, plus two mt photoblogs, plus another small mt blog for family members, and one on the site that I maintain for my deceased brother. If I ever wanted to add even one more mt-based photoblog I’d be in the over-$150 range!

They’re shooting themselves in the foot. Regular blog blokes can’t and wont’ shell out that much. So people will either stay at the current version of MT, or move to different blogging tool, and there are some GREAT new alternatives to MT nowadays. Mt makes blogging easy, but it’s not the greatest thing since sliced bread I can tell ya! It’s a bitch to set up and a bitch to get any plug-ins installed. I’m quite a computer geek but I can’t do it without the help of my computer-GENIUS better half. Yes, posting is easy and nice, but that’s TOO MUCH money.

I’d pay $50 for a “license” that allows ten blogs. No way am I paying $150 (or the $119 intro price).

* New Pricing Scheme
* Announcement
* Slashdot article

I was perusin’ the entries at PhotoFriday.com and there are alot of good photos, and alot of well-designed photoblogs. I really like the tiny flash graphic at the top of this blog:
http://www.myprofile.ne.jp/siho-kokoro+blog
Play w/ the fishie.

Crap. Every time I use Dreamweaver MX it crashes my machine. It doesn’t matter WHICH computer I use. It happens ever time. I’m so sick of it.

And it’s the only program I have (suggestions???) that I can really SEE tables and CSS layout. I usually like to work in the html code but sometimes I have to SEE what’s going on w/ a WYSIWYG editor, but I can’t. Dreamweaver MX crashes every time. F*ck!

I canNOT figure out this one css bug. ACK! ACK! ACK!

I love this blog: ljcfyi.com
She always has kewl finds on there, like the plastic soldier bowl.

I need to go to bed.

I forgot to approve the last few comments that people posted. But I approved them just now. Sorry if your comments took a long time to show up. Didn’t mean to leave them unapproved. Just busy/tired.

Off to help mom move. Will probably only have time for moblogging.

and how am I spending my Saturday night?

It all started when I figured I’d make a photoblog for certain photos. Most of my photography can be seen by going through the category links on the right sidebar. But I wanted to make a photoblog-style photoblog for certain types of photos: photos entered in contests or themed photo projects.

I really like some of the photoblogs I’ve seen, and the best are MT generated.

I thought of just using a textamerica moblog, but I just paid money to make my main moblog ad-free, and so now if I make a seperate one for just a photoblog, it’ll have ads. And that just seems dumb since I just paid good money to remove ads, so why add a section to my site that has ads?

So I figured I’d try my hand at an MT (moveable type) photoblog here at laserblog.com. MT gives me a headache (all those tags and they don’t always do what I want them to) and as Christine says, “ CSS makes my eyes bleed“.

I searched google for some guildes and they all talk about stuff I’m not sure about like MT extras, and then alot of the photoblogs that I like seem to use PHP.

So when faced w/ a technical challenge, I like to tackle it, so here I am w/ my CSS book and my new PHP book.

I guess I’m all blogged out from Friday. Not much to say. It’s the weekend and we are tearing the house apart re-organizing and cleaning… building new computer desk and shelves which’ll make cleaning the family room easier (a home for all computer stuff and other crap laying around)… I tore apart the pantry which’ll make cleaning the kitchen easier (room in the pantry means groceries can acutally be put away). Stayed up ’till 5am lastnight working on the house and watching TechTv.

You read this kind of post and you wonder, is this post for real or is this person just trying to shock the world w/ a ficticious post? If it’s real, is anybody helping her?

The thing that I don’t get about the article I mentioned below, is that these high-school kids seem to think it matters where their blog is hosted. One had an “isolated” blog at blurty.com, then moved to livejournal.com where most of his schoolmates were, and then ultimately moved to Xanga.com “to branch out” because livejournal attracts a certain crowd.

I don’t get it. I mean, is there some sort of networking going on on these sites that I’m not seeing? Why does it matter where your blog? I have an MT blog hosted at my own webspace using a custom domain. Does that make me an uber-loner? Is that necessarily bad? I don’t think anyone reads this reguarly, so maybe I am making some sort of mistake. I get alot of passers-by from Google, people looking for specific stuff. Sorry to disappoint them. But I don’t have a regular readership (that I know of). Maybe one or two.

I could start a livejournal, but how many blogs does a person need? I love this blog, I really have no need to start another one.

Hmm.

This article about blogging uses this phrase: “generation of compulsive self-chroniclers”. Although their definition says “a fleet of juvenile Marcel Prousts gone wild”, and I’m not juvenile (at least not so in age), I think that’s a great phrase to describe myself, especially considering my moblog.

And then yesterday I saw this gizmo:
Microsoft Gadget Keeps Record of Your Life
(via slashdot)
… and I thought it was mighty neat! I would want to have control over where the info went, etc., but it might be the ultimate moblogging tool, or blogging companion, or something.

Compulsive self-chronicaler. Yeah, that’s me.

Anyway, u should check out that article about blogging, it’s pretty good.

I was reading this story and I found it a bit… weird. I think it’s flawed.
“Study: Very few bloggers on Net”
This “study” finds that there are really not alot of bloggers and most don’t update regularly. Get this:

“The Pew Internet and American Life Project, in a study released Sunday, found that somewhere between 2 percent and 7 percent of adult Internet users in the United States actually keep their own blogs.” “The study was largely based on random telephone surveys of 1,555 Internet users taken from March 12 to May 20, 2003.”

Ok, for one, if June Cleaver answers the phone and says “no dear, I don’t blog“, whose to say that her two kids Beaver and Wally don’t? Wally and Beaver could be college students. Also, if the phone rings, whose to say that the person who answers is the head of a family household? It could be an apartment shared by 3 twenty-something-ers who all keep blogs.

And also, most people who are tech-savvy enough to blog are tech-savvy enough not to talk to telemarketers: the use the zapper, sign up for state-level no-call lists, use caller ID, and slam up the phone when they do mistakenly find themselves talking to a telemarketer.

So, I think this study is flawed, and merely shows that 2-7 percent of bloggers were caught by telemarketers.

(Yeah, I know they’re “tele-surveyers” or whatever, but “telemarketers” is a generic term now.)

Ack! I typo’d in this entry. I listed ICQ twice, but one is Yahoo Messenger. The one in red is Yahoo Messenger. I’ll fix that later tonight, off to dinner now, though!

UPDATE: OK, it’s fixed. The “IM me!” link @ the top of the page has correct info now. It’s a pop-up, by the way.

I started this blog using my nickname, looking for anonymity, but knowing that many would read it. I could be candid, but since it was my nickname, that would be ok. But I screwed up and now a few people from RL (“real life”) know of this blog. I don’t care that they read it. The particular people who DO read it, I’m fine if they read it. But I worry that future scew-ups on my part, or archving on the web would allow others to find this and connect it w/ me. I have nothing to hide. It’s just, you know, you whine about a client, then they find your blog and get mad. People have lost jobs over their blogs. The IRS looks for people’s blogs. (true!!!)

Also, because this is a blog that I’d like to keep long-term, I’ve avoided certain topics, such as religion. CLICK BELOW TO READ THE REST…
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I think this is funny.

I went to the library the other night and found two blogging books. I don’t need a blogging book, but I figured it’d be nice to skim them, so I brought them home.

The one, “Blog On” by T. Stauffer cracked me up. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fine book. But the author emphasizes how important content is. “If you don’t have content, nobody comes back.”

So then I go to the blog for the book: www.blogonbook.com and find that the blog has not been updated in 4 months! I figure I’ll leave a “where are you?” comment but when you click on “comment”, you get an error. And there is no email-contact for the guy.

I mean, why is it that those who don’t know, write the book?

I was just thinking, “gee, I think I missed the birthday of this blog.” So I looked at the first page and sure enough, I did. But I’m not surprised. It was January 10th, a very very bad day for me. So, no wonder I missed the birthday of my blog.
Well, Happy Birthday, blog.

Apparently, weblogs.com thinks I’m addicted to blogging. The MT auto-ping responded:

“Ping ‘http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2′ failed: Ping error: Thanks for the ping, however we can only accept one ping every half-hour. It’s cool that you’re updating so often, however, if I may be so bold as to offer some advice — take a break, you’ll enjoy li”

It got cut off so I don’t know what it went on to say, but that’s funny.

I already had installed the Comment Queue so that when you left a comment, I had to review it before the comment showed up (to hand-filter out spam and harassment).

Now I’ve also added a non-OCRable code image, and you have to enter that code into the comment form before you can submit your comment. This deters automated blog-comment-surfing spambots.

Disclaimer – This blog is an artistic outlet for me, I vent, I rant, I get nasty. Because you don’t really know me IRL, that’s fine. But if you think you know me, you will get the wrong idea by relying on this blog as a sole means of assessing what I am really like. This is MY blog, this is MY house, if you don’t like the scenery, then leave.

Ok.
After a brief overhaul, I am back.
I know you didn’t miss me, but that’s ok, I blog for myself, and I have fun.
The overhaul is structural, and minor aesthetic changes may be yet to come.
If you missed me, post a comment below. I have a suspicion that nobody even noticed that I was gone. That’s ok. This blog is a pet project of mine and I enjoy every minute of it.
Bite me.
Happy Friday.
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