Blogging

Time for a new look

It is time for a new look around here. Nothing amazing just a great theme or another. Expect some ongoing changes while it gets settled.

Something to do while watching the Tour 'de France. A sad day indeed. A likely podium in Paris with two Discovery Team riders is great but would have been better had it not been clouded by the auspicious withdrawl of other teams. The Discovery Channel Team riding in their last tour for this sponsor will likely win the team competition as well and while the teams eliminated have not been close contenders for the race it still taints the victory. The good news is the controls seem to be working. The really sad news is when someone expelled for lying to their team invokes the name of Lance Armstrong in their own defense.

"In the news" or recent reads on Drupal sites

Some months back I started the "Points of Interest" item at the left. It is basically a linkblog and provides a way to make pointers for things that might be interesting to readers for which I'm not going to take the time for a full post. The setup is quite simple.

Google Reader

Google ReaderIn my case it started with Google Reader. I had begun using it as my primary RSS reader and found the "Share" feature to be handy. Even handier is that the items that have been shared are put into their own RSS feed. Click on "Shared Items" in Google Reader and you've got the URL handy. To begin with I created a feed in the Drupal Aggregator to create a subscription to Google Reader's Shared Items that I called "Recent Reads".

Blogging on board

Tonight a quick trip back to Reno. The pilot just announced a delay while we wait for a connecting flight. We'll be sitting at the gate for 15 minutes. Since we didn't push back, however, I still have McCarran's wonderful free wireless connection right here in 11A. Nice.

One reason to blog

When I first heard the story of a fraud being perpetrated using a "horseback ride" I started blogging about it. I went in search of other sources online and found newspapers pointed to a previous scam that was similar to the current version. When I contacted those papers they stood by the stories they had written and didn't do anything about the evidence they'd been duped. It was then I thought that this scam should end now. It should never be repeated. It should not be possible for anybody to not know about the fraud or the scam artist behind it. A comment here this weekend suggests it has worked, at least once. A great day for blogging.

Sometimes the blogosphere is silly

Of course the blogosphere is silly. It is a reflection of our culture and others. There are uninformed and unthinking people everywhere. I read a bit today on an Review Journal article about the pet food contamination. In the article the importer responsible for importing the contaminated wheat gluten says "ChemNutra has sufficient insurance to pay for any judgments stemming from lawsuits filed by pet owners and others." A blogger commenting on this said they hoped the company didn't have enough insurance and would be forced out of business. Perhaps vengeance and the mob-mentality  make some feel  powerful and as though a wrong has been set right.  The comment, however, suggests that the pet owners who have already lost so much should now suffer the injustice of not even being compensated for their loss in any way.

Uncluttering with Google Analytics

[Google Analytics Image] When I started developing websites, blogs and online tools more than I decade ago the value of log files hit me right away. Because these could be useful someday they have followed me around for some time. Google recently made some changes that enhanced their already great Google Analytics product.

There are without a doubt alternatives but each of these involves running and managing additional programs on the server. Another advantage is the way Google Analytics works with Google AdSense (see affiliate link below) which helps keep this site's hosting bill paid for. Along with the realization that the log files from sites that have been inactive for years aren't ever really going to be very useful. The sites that were online in 1995 to compete with them are just a different lot and there's little hat can't be better judged by a couple of weeks of Google Analytics to look at the sites.

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