Category: Metablogging

Dear gentle reader: this blog has been operating continuously since I was a teenager. The writing below is at least a decade old. In that time every molecule of my body has been replaced, along with many foolish ideas and flighty beliefs. I want to keep some of those things public out of an honesty and humility I owe the world. I trust you to carry that context with you.

August 8, 2004 /

The Interweb journals ostensibly written by the characters of Achewood are funny, but I think it’s odd that half the humor in them relies on the fact that they don’t read each other’s blogs.

June 18, 2004 /

After a bit of a scuffle with NewsBruiser 2.4.1, I’ve upgraded this thing and made it work again, and I’m very happy with it. I try to suppress my fervor for certain computer concepts or programs, because I get really annoyed by other evangelists of similar concepts or programs, but sometimes I just have to gush about NewsBruiser.

I’ve ended up using a lot of different web journaling utilities, and NewsBruiser is completely the best, hands down, period. It’s fast and massively customizable. It’s free, not just to download, but to develop and hack. It has every type of syndication feed in existence, and lets you apply custom licensing to everything you write. It can provide links to specific years, months, days, entries, and words within an entry. It can import from anything, including flat HTML–even broken flat HTML. It has an intelligent comment-spam filter, and–in my opinion, most significantly–a powerful, integrated search engine that doesn’t rely on Google crawlers.

Name one other piece of blogging software that does all of that. Come on, I dare you.

June 2, 2004 /

Fixed my about page. It’s sleek and powerful now, like a lion, or a submarine.

I have not fixed my “blogroll,” which is ridiculously long and makes the page scroll forever. I only found out it was a “blogroll” the other day. I just thought it was a list of peeps I read.

April 24, 2004 /

This morning, there was a kid two floors down screaming about helicopters for a good solid hour. Also, there were a bunch of helicopters. It was that kind of morning.

(Note: the preceding paragraph exists only to make sure that on April 24th, 2005, the first “Today in History” entry won’t be so obviously referencing the second one.)

A year ago, apparently, I was gasping with horror that I’d left the same cam pic up for a week; now I’m noticing that it’s practically May and I’ve only taken like ten all year. I don’t think I’m all that short on ideas; it’s just that since I no longer have to hit the NFD front page to make sure an entry has posted right, I hardly ever see it and ergo don’t get sick of it. This is really an advantage–remember, NewsBruiser Makes Everything Better–but I don’t want to let all my content feeds get neglected. I need to take more. Anybody want a plastic mullet portrait?

I really need to get around to what I’ve been planning to do since fall 2002, which is put up a navigable IdiotCam© archive and, while I’m at it, enable time-lapse cam posts into the future. I might as well hack together an RSS feed while I’m at it. Yet another project for the summer.

April 7, 2004 /

Hey, this is the first time I’ve posted every day of the week since December. I want a cookie.

March 30, 2004 /

Oh, and Dreamhost sent out an announcement last night saying that the downtime / slowdown was caused by a DDOS attack. I guess I believe them, but I don’t understand why NFD shows up while the front page completely refuses to load. Did they somehow break PHP?

March 29, 2004 /

Grr. I like the fact that I have an insanely cheap deal with Dreamhost, but apparently the site’s been really slow lately, and until about ten minutes ago it was completely dead. If it doesn’t stay up, my apologies. If it looks like the downtime is enough for me to consider switching hosts, you can check my LJ for updates. Bleagh.

I should thank Aleeezon for very kindly putting me up this weekend, post-bacchanal. Will’s wedding was nice. Nobody fell down. And now back to the sweet, simple work that is failing my classes.

March 25, 2004 /

For some reason (most likely NewsBruiser’s ping of weblogs.com), NFD got listed at Blogweb.org. Sensing an opportunity for aggrandizement, I helpfully updated the listing, placing myself correctly in the elite category of XBOX/YANNI. Now I’ll just sit back and watch the hits pour in!

March 24, 2004 /

Hey, heads up. In case you syndicate NFD via its RSS feed, you should be aware that the feed address has changed (as linked right there). But then, of course, if you do read this thing only by syndication, you… won’t ever get this message. Um.

A lot of addresses have changed, actually, including the permalink format, but Leonard somehow managed not to break backward compatibility with old links. So they’ll still work, and the original NFD Lite permalinks (which redirect to the original NB permalinks) will still work, but the whole situation is just getting increasingly meta. One of these days the whole thing’s gonna go critical. Metacritical!