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$4500 Outrageous Blog Contest

May 1, 2008

Well, I’m not normally one to post something like this, as I usually find it akin to a chain letter. When I get those, I generally respond with: a) derision, b) “idiot”, or c) this web site. But I’m making an exception in this case because The Net Fool has put together a crazy delicious prize package for his contest. Check out the complete prize list below. They all look attractive, but I think I’m partial to the Entrecard package or the custom blog theme. Can you really go wrong with either of those?

To enter, subscribe to their e-mail feed, make a post like this one, or just leave some comments. Good luck!

Full contest details via the Net Fool

Cash

Web Hosting

WordPress Themes & Design

WordPress Scripts & Software

Blog Advertising

Blog Reviews

Subscriptions

  • 2 Year Subscription to GoStats Pro from GoStats
  • 5 One-Year VIP Memberships to CreateBanner.com from Xavier Media
  • Premium Subscription to DotSauce.com from DotSauce

Entrecard Credits

Miscellaneous

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Twitter’s April Fools Joke

April 1, 2008

twitter-april-11.gif

Oh, wait. . .

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Feedburner RSS feed updated + server optimization tip

March 11, 2008

feedburner.gifWell, it appears that the last thing to get updated was the Feedburner feed. Although the cutover from Typepad to WordPress was smooth, with only a few minutes interruption in service, apparently the DNS changes didn’t propagate fully enough to satisfy Feedburner.

If you ever get messages like “The domain does not seem to exist” or “There was a problem retrieving the feed: java.net.UnknownHostException” a possible cause is DNS propagation (I surmise). Feedburner’s help recommends pinging, resynching, validating your feed, and so on, but for me, all it took was a little time — roughly 18 hours.

Which reminds me, I recently wrote an interesting piece on server optimization, specifically preparing for and responding to high traffic. Doing research for that article, I was shocked to find out what a drain on bandwidth and server resources an RSS feed can be. I ran across a large number of cases where it was estimated that anywhere from 20 to 50 percent of the load and bandwidth was due to the constantly polling feed aggregators. Offloading your feeds to a service like Feedburner, or even to another hosting account or server, can have a noticeable impact. I’ll review some other tips that I ran across in the coming week or two.

Thanks for your patience during cutover, and thanks to John and RJ for helping test out the feeds.

Filed Under Housekeeping · 2 Comments  

Blog Ported from TypePad to WordPress

March 10, 2008

If you hadn’t noticed, I ported the blog from TypePad to WordPress over the weekend. I’ve been a WordPress user for a long time, but have been avoiding making this move. It’s not that I had so much content that it would be unbearable, just that I didn’t feel like the hassle. But it was time for a change.

I was expecting quite a few more hiccups during the migration, but it went rather smoothly all-in-all. There were some incompatibilities that had to be cleaned up, and the inevitable theme tweaking, but I’d much prefer to tweak with full control than hack without it! The biggest headaches were rereferencing the images and redirecting the old URL’s.

I’ll write up the experience step-by-step as soon as I verify that everything is working as expected. If you have any problems, or notice and irregularities, broken links, missing images, etc., please post a comment here.

Some things that I expect will need a little more TLC:

  • Page formatting, e.g. line breaks where there shouldn’t be, sizing issues. (due to some hacks I used at Typepad)
  • CSS formatting inconsistencies (hacks again)
  • A few broken internal links; I think I caught all of the external links, but it’ll take a manual review to make sure I haven’t missed any of the internal ones
  • A few hours to one day feed problems. Right now, FeedBurner doesn’t recognize the domain, so until the DNS changes propogate fully, the feed will appear to be down.

Old and new screen captures:

shot-old-joefission-small.gif shot-new-joefission-small.gif

Filed Under Housekeeping · 2 Comments  

I like pants. And other inane things.

February 26, 2008

I like pants.

Jam is good.

Sometimes I stare at the sun.

Ooohhhh. . .bubbles.

Hi doggy. Woof!

Walk to store.

Games are fun.

The ball is blue.

And round.

And bouncy.

Kitty has a rough tongue.

Would you like to play?

Run away!

I read. A lot. Usually at least one book a week. I recently read Tim Ferris’s The Four-hour Workweek. It was great validation. You could say that I’ve been on a mini-retirement for 18 months now.

I save a lot and invest wisely — in that sense I’m very conservative with my money. But I also like to enjoy my career and personal life. So I work hard, and then take time to detox or work on something I enjoy. In that sense I’m very aggressive with my money. It was nice to read a bestseller where someone espouses the same ideals.

Thanks to Amazon’s “you might also like” feature, I also purchased Your Portable Empire.

Pointless drivel. Easily summed up in four to five pages. I sincerely feel dumber for having read it. I kept expecting it to get better, but it got more pointless as the chapter numbers crept higher. I’ve got brain cells trying to shake off the fog as I write this.

Midway through the book, we began to be treated with 1-page chapters — really, 1 page — that said something like “I’m drinking coffee and typing this chapter on my laptop. Ain’t life grand?”

Gee, Kenny, look at my shiny new bike!

So I submit to you my outline for my new book project. If you can help me get it published, I’ll give you half the royalties. I’ll fill in the gaps obviously, but I can’t promise much. Apparently the bar is set very low these days anyway.

Here’s to our good fortunes.

Filed Under Books, Gripes · 2 Comments  

Format Change

February 12, 2008

I’ve gathered some informal feedback and have decided to alter slightly the content of my posts. In general, the detailed, specific posts are found by readers via Google — and many of those readers never return. The more generalized or basic posts are of interest to a broader cross section of regular readers and searchers.

For the most part, I avoid these general posts because I assume that they’ve already been written about ad nauseam — apparently this is a bad assumption. So expect coverage to be focused on the same types of topics, but also expect the average level of complexity to decrease somewhat.

If I’m missing the mark, or if you don’t agree, let me hear about it.

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I bricked my TiVo (TiVo sucks)

January 28, 2008

I’ve been a TiVo user for quite some years now, starting with the Series 1 and moving to a Series 2. To me, it’s just an appliance. I turn the TV on, it works. I don’t feel compelled to upgrade to any new version or even a networked version. A year ago, I turned the onscreen guide subscription off. I was just watching too much TV. Simple enough. I also unplugged the TiVo from the home phone line.

Last month, that line was plugged back in, and the next day I was treated with a slick new TiVo UI, obviously downloaded overnight. And, the killer feature: my TiVo can no longer be used to record TV. My digital video recorder no longer records digital video. How absurd is that? After doing some research, I learned that this is common (and commonly known) in newer Series 2 and later TiVos. And I just don’t get it.

I paid for the box — the recorder itself. I didn’t get a discount, and I never agreed to purchase the onscreen guide in perpetuity. In a fair world, it seems that if the hardware is capable of recording, and I paid for the hardware, I should be permitted to record. But TiVo feels that even though I paid for the hardware, the price of admission must also include the guide subscription.

What perplexes me the most is that TiVo has always been close with their customer base. Contrast that to wireless carriers. I can’t think of any more adversial customer relationship that the average person has with any of their providers. Yet, even wireless carriers give you a free phone (or a subsidy) in exchange for purchasing their service. You’re not required to purchase a phone outright, and then also pay the carrier charges. What’s the rationale behind TiVo bricking a box I paid for just because I no longer want to use their service?

I was eyeing up a Series 3 to go along with a new TV, but I argue with my wallet, and this bricked TiVo is my last. I’m jumping ship. But where to go? My cable operator? Windows Media Center? Who cares, as long as it’s not TiVo.

All I want to do is punch that fat television and rip his damn antennae off. His stupid grin openly mocks me. Bastard.

Filed Under Consumer Electronics, Gripes · 8 Comments  

Rumors of my death. . .

December 24, 2006

“The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” But I am working on something pretty special.

Two to three more months before an announcement, but if anyone is interested in doing some alpha testing, please let me know. Web site and mobile phone testing (Nokia Series 60 and Sony-Ericsson Platform 5 and above for now). There’s some schwag and a few other service perks involved.

And in honor of the holidays, here are the lyrics to one of my favorite holiday songs:

You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch.
You really are a heel.
You’re as cuddly as a cactus,
You’re as charming as an eel.
Mr. Grinch.

You’re a bad banana
With a greasy black peel.

You’re a monster, Mr. Grinch.
Your heart’s an empty hole.
Your brain is full of spiders,
You’ve got garlic in your soul.
Mr. Grinch.

I wouldn’t touch you, with a
thirty-nine-and-a-half foot pole.

You’re a vile one, Mr. Grinch.
You have termites in your smile.
You have all the tender sweetness
Of a seasick crocodile.
Mr. Grinch.

Given the choice between the two of you
I’d take the seasick crockodile.

You’re a foul one, Mr. Grinch.
You’re a nasty, wasty skunk.
Your heart is full of unwashed socks
Your soul is full of gunk.
Mr. Grinch.

The three words that best describe you,
are, and I quote: “Stink. Stank. Stunk.”

You’re a rotter, Mr. Grinch.
You’re the king of sinful sots.
Your heart’s a dead tomato splot
With moldy purple spots,
Mr. Grinch.

Your soul is an apalling dump heap overflowing
with the most disgraceful assortment of deplorable
rubbish imaginable,
Mangled up in tangled up knots.

You nauseate me, Mr. Grinch.
With a nauseaus super-naus.
You’re a crooked jerky jockey
And you drive a crooked horse.
Mr. Grinch.

You’re a three decker saurkraut and toadstool
sandwich
With arsenic sauce.

“You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” ~ Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss). Pronounced “soyce,” btw.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Filed Under Housekeeping · 2 Comments  

The Tipping Point

July 25, 2006

I generally don’t use this blog to post daily musings. And by
generally, I mean never. I didn’t even mention last week’s incident involving
cheese, bananas, and a Walmart checkout line. I have to break that code
of conduct; I suspect because I’ve reached the tipping point.

Do you remember the first time you saw the phrase “Building a better
-something- one -something- at a time? For instance, “Building a better
Web, One Client at a time.” Ugh. It was mildly clever the first time
you heard it. Maybe. The second time or third sightings didn’t sting
that much. Good taglines are hard to come by after all. Then you saw it
again and again. Years pass, and you’ve forgotten all about this
hideous phrase, until one day it blindsides you.

I never suspected to read this phrase again, yet, inexplicably, there it is. Someone didn’t get the memo.

Link: Career Builders Blog. Check out the fantastically cheesy, dated tagline.

As an aside, how would like to have the last name “Mediocre?” Ouch.

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Feed Updated

April 27, 2006

Just got back from holiday, and had a note waiting for me regarding feed status. Appears that one of the feeds has not been updating recently. I made a few changes, but I’m not sure if they’ll resolve the problem.

If you saw sporadic posts prior to my holiday, rather than daily updates, you might want to try unsubscribing and resubscribing to the feed.

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