As I was making my rounds through the various Grazing blogs I am running, it occurred to me that it would be much simpler to settle for one blog and put all of my entries there.
I was in that position with Home Grazing Number One. I called it the support blog for Belltower News, but it was becoming the blog to which I wrote the most.
Then the server crashed and all of the entries went south. That's when I went looking for all of the other methods of blogging. Thingamablog, the input program I was using for Home Grazing, was unstable, w:bloggar worked well enough for the Blogger based Bell Tower News. But I was eager to know what else was out there.
I found pLog and Word Press. I threw up a blog for each. I used blog-city TypePad, Tripod, Bravenet, WebCrimsom, Live Journal, Opera Journal, Apcal, BlogSpirit, ModBlog, MSN Spaces, Multiply, (an odd one,) Xanga, SquareSpace, and probably a few I tried once and gave up.
Most were free and web-based. TypePad and SquareSpace were pay services. pLog, WordPress and Thingamablog were server based and require a server with MySql database support.
The result of this quest has shown us that there are many ways to come to the same result, a blog. None of them are perfect. Each has just one or two things that doesn't make it the default blog. Blogger is the longest lasting of the online blogs. When there was blogger pro, I used that.
WordPress, so far, has given me the most satisfaction for the server based. Thingamablog crashed on me in an earlier version, the blog templates aren't stable, you have to republish the entire blog to bring them back into readable condition. It's link to the RSS news feeder, and your ability to post a news link on your blog is a nice feature.
Then there's Drupal. It seems to be a very popular program for the more serious bloggers. The program's writer left a comment to me on another blog with the promise that the interface will soon be more user friendly. I won't give up on it.
At BlogSpirit, I am using the free version. There is a subscription service here. I am reminded of it occasionally, like just now when it told me to save the entry, and then let me know if I had used the subscription, this would not have been necessary. It's a bit of a nag, but just a bit. I like the way the writing page is set up.
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Saturday, April 30, 2005
Mowed the lawn
It's Saturday and it's going to rain later this afternoon, so we went out to get it all done. This doesn't seem like much of an event. It could be because it wasn't.
It was the first cut of spring. I use a hand powered mower. My neighbors on either side use noisy, obnoxious riding mowers.
We have one, but the noise rattles me. A push mower makes little noise, mulches the grass and makes you work a little. Riding a mower is about the same as a self propelled shopping cart. If you don't need it, why use it? To be less saintly, I will also say the price of gas is too high.
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It was the first cut of spring. I use a hand powered mower. My neighbors on either side use noisy, obnoxious riding mowers.
We have one, but the noise rattles me. A push mower makes little noise, mulches the grass and makes you work a little. Riding a mower is about the same as a self propelled shopping cart. If you don't need it, why use it? To be less saintly, I will also say the price of gas is too high.
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The Old Graphics
This was the original graphic for Home Grazing:
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This was the graphic heading for Belltower News:
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Home Grazing reborn!
A server problem and glitches in the older version of Thingamablog put Homegrazing.com out of business for a while.
I downloaded the newer version of Thingamablog this morning and set it up before leaving for Boston. This evening I was able to tweak it a little here and there to make it look like a presentable weblog.
It is my plan to go into the archives of Belltower News to see if there are any of the older Homegrazing entries. I'll transfer them over to the newer version if found.
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I downloaded the newer version of Thingamablog this morning and set it up before leaving for Boston. This evening I was able to tweak it a little here and there to make it look like a presentable weblog.
It is my plan to go into the archives of Belltower News to see if there are any of the older Homegrazing entries. I'll transfer them over to the newer version if found.
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Wednesday, April 27, 2005
These Things Happen...
Two friends of mine went to visit their mothers this week.
One to Arkansas and one to Manchester, U.K.
Today both of thier mothers died.
It is a coincidence, to be sure. Just something worth noting.
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Monday, April 25, 2005
Not as Bad as All That!
As Mondays go, this one wasn't as horrible as others I've seen. Everyone today seemed to be in a lackadaisical mood, a deadline was overlooked, what would have caused a caustic reaction resulted in mere admonishment, etc.
All in all I know there will be hell to pay tomorrow, when the narcotic of a Spring weekend in New England wears off and we all realized we have a job to do.
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All in all I know there will be hell to pay tomorrow, when the narcotic of a Spring weekend in New England wears off and we all realized we have a job to do.
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Sunday, April 24, 2005
Home Grown Links
All of the links on the right are put there by me. Though this blog resides on
Blogger, the template was created by me. If you click on one of the links, the
one who benefits from it, is me, (and the company to which the click is linked. )
The UUA link is there just for the UUA.
The thought of including this tidbit came to me after visiting
our blog on the Lycos Network.
Every kind of possible advertisement, from pop-up to bug crawling, is on that page.
I'm sure it makes them some kind of money, but I know I can't stay there very long.
It is my attempt to keep it all simple here. No surprises. The pay links are to Amazon,
Bravenet and Google. That's it. I wouldn't send you to a link just for the sake of you going
there.
The links are placed in places pertinent to the subject at hand. No more, no less. If
I could, I'd wash your screen while you were visiting.
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Blogger, the template was created by me. If you click on one of the links, the
one who benefits from it, is me, (and the company to which the click is linked. )
The UUA link is there just for the UUA.
The thought of including this tidbit came to me after visiting
our blog on the Lycos Network.
Every kind of possible advertisement, from pop-up to bug crawling, is on that page.
I'm sure it makes them some kind of money, but I know I can't stay there very long.
It is my attempt to keep it all simple here. No surprises. The pay links are to Amazon,
Bravenet and Google. That's it. I wouldn't send you to a link just for the sake of you going
there.
The links are placed in places pertinent to the subject at hand. No more, no less. If
I could, I'd wash your screen while you were visiting.
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Spam is Borg...
I opened a GMail account yesterday, today there were 84 SPAM messages caught in the SPAM filter and two in the Inbox. An email address can barely take a breath before it gets whacked. Where are the prosecutors when you need them.
As an aside to this, the email address I created at ICQ gets very little SPAM. Whether that is because it is a rather complicated address, or ICQ has an aggressive pre-filter setup, I don't know. It is the email address I give out when a form requires it, but I don't plan on engaging in any long conversations with the sender of the form. It's worked out quite well.
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As an aside to this, the email address I created at ICQ gets very little SPAM. Whether that is because it is a rather complicated address, or ICQ has an aggressive pre-filter setup, I don't know. It is the email address I give out when a form requires it, but I don't plan on engaging in any long conversations with the sender of the form. It's worked out quite well.
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The Curse of Google and the NYT (II)
To understand this, you will have had to read the previous post. Be forwarned: this is a Sunday morning, (now afternoon) meandering about habits changing around the reading of the NYT on Sunday morning. It's about as exciting as watching Astro Turf® grow.
Back to the saga: I mentioned the first two virtual piles of the online NYT. The third, the equivilent of storing the Book Review and Magazine for later reading is using Firefox's Bookmark option. I go back to most of the bookmarks about as much as I finally did get to read the articles in the Book Review or Magazine. But, at least they're there.
In a similar fashion to going back to read an older article and finding my wife has found a more practical use for the newsprint, as in recycling is to go to your bookmarks and find the page no longer exists. This would be true if you went to the Homegrazing blog I put up about a year ago. The server went south along with most of the content. I am much better at backing up the data I upload now.
On a good note, two comments were left on the Fieldgrazing blog wherein my comments regarding Drupal drew the attention of the folks at Drupal and a loyal fan. It's good to know all of this tripe I write is read by some, disgruntaled or not.
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Back to the saga: I mentioned the first two virtual piles of the online NYT. The third, the equivilent of storing the Book Review and Magazine for later reading is using Firefox's Bookmark option. I go back to most of the bookmarks about as much as I finally did get to read the articles in the Book Review or Magazine. But, at least they're there.
In a similar fashion to going back to read an older article and finding my wife has found a more practical use for the newsprint, as in recycling is to go to your bookmarks and find the page no longer exists. This would be true if you went to the Homegrazing blog I put up about a year ago. The server went south along with most of the content. I am much better at backing up the data I upload now.
On a good note, two comments were left on the Fieldgrazing blog wherein my comments regarding Drupal drew the attention of the folks at Drupal and a loyal fan. It's good to know all of this tripe I write is read by some, disgruntaled or not.
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The Curse of Google and the NYT
Every Sunday morning I do my best to get through the Sunday New York Times.
I used to do this by lugging the the ten or so pounds of newsprint from my front door to the living room. There I would strategically divide the paper and its content into three piles.
The first pile would be what I would attempt to read this morning and later in the day.
The second pile would include the New York Times Magazine and Books in Review and whatever other sections through which I may want to browse some time in the near future.
The third pile would go immediately into the recycle bin. This, of course was the largest.
Then I started reading the NYT on my laptop. This seemed so much easier, not to mention good for trees. Good for trees, maybe. Easier, yes and no.
The yes parts are mostly obvious. Let me go for the negative aspects:
Google.
I just read an article on self publishing.
It mentions several areas visitable on the internet. Thankfully, the NYT has a haphazard policy of including hyperlinks in their articles. I could see why. They don't want the read to change channels. However, those of us addicted to Google and Yahoo just go off to either of the two and look up the connection anyway.
The one hyperlink in the article, to the Books in Print-Professional site probably paid the NYT to be included in the article. I know I almost always go to any hyperlink they include, so it's probably a good investment.
At first, I would Google every little thing that I might find of interest. Then I found myself taking an enormous amount of time to read the smallest of articles. I now use a pile method for googling similar to my previous bulk paper method:
If I find a topic I believe I need to see to enhance the meaning of the article, I Google it into a tab on the same Firefox window. If it may be something I will find interesting later, I Google it to a new window and minimize the window. (Ooops! off to church. See part 2)
I used to do this by lugging the the ten or so pounds of newsprint from my front door to the living room. There I would strategically divide the paper and its content into three piles.
The first pile would be what I would attempt to read this morning and later in the day.
The second pile would include the New York Times Magazine and Books in Review and whatever other sections through which I may want to browse some time in the near future.
The third pile would go immediately into the recycle bin. This, of course was the largest.
Then I started reading the NYT on my laptop. This seemed so much easier, not to mention good for trees. Good for trees, maybe. Easier, yes and no.
The yes parts are mostly obvious. Let me go for the negative aspects:
Google.
I just read an article on self publishing.
It mentions several areas visitable on the internet. Thankfully, the NYT has a haphazard policy of including hyperlinks in their articles. I could see why. They don't want the read to change channels. However, those of us addicted to Google and Yahoo just go off to either of the two and look up the connection anyway.
The one hyperlink in the article, to the Books in Print-Professional site probably paid the NYT to be included in the article. I know I almost always go to any hyperlink they include, so it's probably a good investment.
At first, I would Google every little thing that I might find of interest. Then I found myself taking an enormous amount of time to read the smallest of articles. I now use a pile method for googling similar to my previous bulk paper method:
If I find a topic I believe I need to see to enhance the meaning of the article, I Google it into a tab on the same Firefox window. If it may be something I will find interesting later, I Google it to a new window and minimize the window. (Ooops! off to church. See part 2)
Saturday, April 23, 2005
GIMP
On the further recommendation from The Weblog Handbook, I have downloaded the graphics editor GIMP. GIMP was first designed for use on MAC based machines, but has been retooled to work on PC'sPhotoshop and I have never been the best of friends. I act intuitively. Photoshop is for people who found learning the piano easy when they were six. I struggled with the plastic recorder and gave up music.
Back to the point! I started up gimp, opened a file and turned it into the log for the next blog I create, Butterflies Grazing. I don't know where I will put it, but at least now I have a logo.
Spell checker would be a good ad-on for blogSpirit.
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Ghost Grazing has been created on the spirtBlog online blog site. It seemed the apt title.
The posting interface is very simple. Unlike Blog-City and Live Journal, you don't have to go through several menus to post an entry. Posting is what this is all about in the end. I don't need to be notified of new features, or be taken though the profile creation steps.
Just let me post!
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The posting interface is very simple. Unlike Blog-City and Live Journal, you don't have to go through several menus to post an entry. Posting is what this is all about in the end. I don't need to be notified of new features, or be taken though the profile creation steps.
Just let me post!
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Another Online Blog!!
Going through the information found on the Weblog Compendium hosting page, I found another blog online site, similar to blog-city but not so full of itself. It's called BlogSpirit.
Using their simple interface I have created another Grazing blog called ghostgrazing.
Having discovered Word Press and pLog blog creation software, I have found it harder and harder to get to the online created blogs. Buy it's hard not to create one when a new offer appears. I will try to make a better effort at keeping the online blogs active.
The problem here is the time it takes to configure a blog entirely under your control, give or take a borrowed theme here and there. When you put your own blog on a hosting server you can't blame the whims of the online blog's set up and caretakers. It's yours and yours alone.
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Using their simple interface I have created another Grazing blog called ghostgrazing.
Having discovered Word Press and pLog blog creation software, I have found it harder and harder to get to the online created blogs. Buy it's hard not to create one when a new offer appears. I will try to make a better effort at keeping the online blogs active.
The problem here is the time it takes to configure a blog entirely under your control, give or take a borrowed theme here and there. When you put your own blog on a hosting server you can't blame the whims of the online blog's set up and caretakers. It's yours and yours alone.
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Friday, April 22, 2005
Drupal no where near as easy to set up as WordPress and pLog.
In the Super Downloader section of CNet, the author with the enormous ego recommended Drupal as a wonderful server-side blogger-website software. All of the blurbs accompanying Drupal agree. I found it no where near as easy to set up as WordPress and pLog.
There is too much MySql set up for the average user. Even with the assistance of a third party database creator, recommended by Everybody, it was a royal pain in the tuckus.
Because of this, I have decided, for now, to put Drupal on the back-burner and stay with w::bloggar for here at Belltower News and ModBlog, and use WordPress and pLog for my proprietary blogs.
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There is too much MySql set up for the average user. Even with the assistance of a third party database creator, recommended by Everybody, it was a royal pain in the tuckus.
Because of this, I have decided, for now, to put Drupal on the back-burner and stay with w::bloggar for here at Belltower News and ModBlog, and use WordPress and pLog for my proprietary blogs.
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Wednesday, April 20, 2005
What's with all the Opera 8 stuff?
Okay, here's the thing, I was a big fan of Opera Browser. So much so, I even paid for it.
Then I got online banking and the bank was too stupid to make their interface compatible with the unique way Opera looked at the www. So, being one of those rare computer users with a love/hate relationship with those big guys in Washington, the State, not the Capital. I looked at ALL of the other browser choices out there.
I settled for Slimbrowser for a while, but knew it was merely window dressing for the Windows Explorer engine, I kept looking. I liked Netscape, but found it to bee too cumbersome in it's attempt to be all and everything. Then the folks at Mozilla came up with Firefox and Thunderbird. With names like that, how could they go wrong?
Very much like before, it was the bank.... For some still unknown reason, Firefox refuses to recognize that I have logged off the account and keeps causing me to call the bank to reset my password. I would worry about saying this in the public forum of a blog if there was every any money in this account past the day after I get paid.
The point to all this is when SnapfilesPro sent me an email notification of Opera 8, I had to go and see if it would interface with my bank. Lo and as they say behold! it did!.
Here's a tip: If you want to find out about the changes in the newest version of Opera, go to this site and take the Flash tutorial. It won't take long and I can almost guarantee, you will find out something you didn't know the unique browser did.
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Then I got online banking and the bank was too stupid to make their interface compatible with the unique way Opera looked at the www. So, being one of those rare computer users with a love/hate relationship with those big guys in Washington, the State, not the Capital. I looked at ALL of the other browser choices out there.
I settled for Slimbrowser for a while, but knew it was merely window dressing for the Windows Explorer engine, I kept looking. I liked Netscape, but found it to bee too cumbersome in it's attempt to be all and everything. Then the folks at Mozilla came up with Firefox and Thunderbird. With names like that, how could they go wrong?
Very much like before, it was the bank.... For some still unknown reason, Firefox refuses to recognize that I have logged off the account and keeps causing me to call the bank to reset my password. I would worry about saying this in the public forum of a blog if there was every any money in this account past the day after I get paid.
The point to all this is when SnapfilesPro sent me an email notification of Opera 8, I had to go and see if it would interface with my bank. Lo and as they say behold! it did!.
Here's a tip: If you want to find out about the changes in the newest version of Opera, go to this site and take the Flash tutorial. It won't take long and I can almost guarantee, you will find out something you didn't know the unique browser did.
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Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Opera 8 has been released
In case you live in a vacuum, you should know that Opera 8 has been released. I was lured away from opera by Mozilla Firefox. But, Firefox started to get into a pissing match with online bank software. When I went back to Opera 7, the two sang in perfect harmony. Now that I've upgraded to Opera 8, I am afraid to see how they do. I'll let you know tomorrow.
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