Blogging

Blog Comment Span No More

by

This News.com article talks about what Google is doing to stop people from comment spamming blog’s in order to boost their own sites listings on Google. Looks like they will offer an HTML tag that will stop spydering links on a site. That way if you run a site you can tell google when your links stop, and when comment type links start. This is perfect for comment spam on blogs like this one.

The article mentions that Six Apart (the very nice operators of the Typepad service I use) will immediately implement this new tag on all their hosted blogs. Does that mean that people will stop spamming my comments? If spamming my comments doesn’t do anything for a persons google ranking, I hope it will stop. I know in the short term it wont stop, but I can wish can’t I?

Web Hosting Dilemma

by

I currently host my blog at Typepad. I have been very happy so far except for one technical limitation (i will go into that later). I host my regular (old) site and photo album site on my friend Miguel’s server. The problem is due to space constraints a few months back I don’t have the full site up there. My email is hosted elsewhere (also free).

My issue is I am at the mercy of others because of the “free” status of my service. I am looking at cheap hosting options. I have been thinking about it for a month or so. I am not sure if what I gain is worth $5-8 a month. Granted that is cheap, but free is cheaper. Because of how Typepad had me setup my domain name it also poses some issues. Most web hosting companies require you (or REALLY like it if you) use their DNS servers so they can setup all the records for your account properly. Because of Typepad requiring me to point an A record for www.Scott.ac to it prevents me from using my main domain I use (i use Scott.ac for everything including mail) to any web hosting company. I can get mail configured but it requires non standard setup from any provider. I would have to select another of my domains to use as the primary domain name. That is not so bad, but any “non-standard” setup’s worry me. Anything that requires custom configuration is asking for things to go wrong.

Jayson and I had the idea of splitting a server over at godaddy.com. For $40 a month (20 per person) you get a decent sounding setup. Granted it is a virtual server, but I have no issues with that. I am pushing VMWare with my company so why would I have issues with VMWare for my use. I am still pondering my options.

Knowing myself as I do I will dither a while longer and then make a spur of the moment decision that will not take into account most of the research I have done over the past month or so!

Free DNS And Bad Cable Modem’s

by

Today I stumbled upon a free provider of DNS. I have seen a few before, but they have been really slow or unreliable. This one so far looks good. It is called xname.org. They were a snap to setup, and so far they seem to be working. My problem (until now) has been that I like godaddy.com, but they do not provide DNS for domains I register unless I pay a fee. If I want DNS included in my annual domain name fee I can continue to use Register.com but they are over 3 times as much as Godaddy. Other than the DNS options there is no real difference to me what registrar I use. So would you pay 3x the amount for just DNS? I don’t want to. If I had 1 domain name maybe I would pay. In fact I pay for dynamic DNS hosting of my Scott.ac domain. I just don’t want to pay for all the other domains I own. I have like 10 of them. If xname works I have no reason to continue using Register.com for any domain names. Other options for me would be to have friends host my DNS, etc. I just like being able to make changes to my zone files when I want to. And every so often I do make changes.

Another issue I came across today was that my cable modem provider RCN does not allow inbound access to port 80. That means I cannot host a website on my machine at home even if I wanted to. And I kind of wanted to. Miguel lets me host a site on his server, but until recently he did not have much space on it. I had a ton of photos that I wanted to host. I guess I will just have to use his box for it, or pay for hosting. Since I am paying for the blog (and I think it is worth the money) I don’t want to pay for web hosting when I have all the tools at my disposal to do hosting. If I had less morals I would just put up a web server in my companies DMZ and use that as my webserver, but I won’t. Dam morals!

Monday morning I have to get Miguel to fix some configuration issues on my site on his box so I can once again host a site on his box, or I need to find a cheap web hosting company. There are several out there that look good. I just need to do some research.

Get Into The Holiday Mood

by

I found some crazy stuff online. Check out the Gingerbread laptop. Or the Gingerbread desktop. Both functional and tasty.

Other fun links, but not related to the holidays are Gretchen’s new goofy site. And if you are wondering that is not really G-Dog! G-Dog is not that hot, so she put that picture up there:)

Today was a goofy day. I got tons more of weird funny links that Jayson and Danny found, but I need to figure out where I am going to dinner, so I will get back to this at some other time…

Blog Requests

by

The moron’s at work (you guys did complain that I was too nice to you) are now making requests about what I write about. All I can say is that no one controls me. I will talk about what I dam well please. Now with that said, they did come up with good topics to discuss. I just cannot remember what they said. For most people at work, when they talk I hear the peanuts parent voice’s sounds.

It still freaks me out that Kai does searches on this blog to find entries about him. What he doesn’t know is that I have the secret blog where I bitch about him. Now as for Brian, I love brian (not in that way, but not that anything is wrong with that). I won’t speak ill of my boy BG!!! That kid is on the ball. He just needs to learn how to fill out Fedex insurance forms, and he will be all set. Brian if you are reading this, don’t read too much into this. I will still make life difficult:) I need some hobbies!

Blog Cleanup

by

Last weekend I spent some time cleaning up this site. I went back and broke out allot of entries into more categories than work and personal. I also cleaned up the allow comments or not to allow comments options on my older posts. Now I hope not to get stupid comments from casinos or other spam comments.

By now I have had my Typepad site up for a little over 2 months. I think I am happy with how the site came out. I have refined the layout enough that I won’t tinker with it all the time anymore. The only think I don’t like is the color pallet. The original one I had I liked better. The problem is I cannot remember how I got to that color scheme. These are the stupid things I fret over in my free time:)

The MOB, or Lack of!

by

I know recently I have been lacking on the photo blog entries. I know I have the phone in my pocket all the time. I don’t know why I just take it out and snap photos more often. When I remember I am usually waiting on the subway platform. Yes that is why you see so many pics of the subway. One answer could be because the camera on my Treo sucks so bad. Hopefully the new one will be better. I will attempt to take more pictures. One thing that is a problem is I haven’t been doing super exciting things that people may find interesting in pictures.

Weblog Design Time

by

I once again tweaked the design of this site. I hated that the body of my posts were so narrow an area. I have a 20″ flat screen at home and when I look at the site it was always so narrow. The border was huge. I found a way to make it “fluid” so it scales right on the resolution a person uses. I love the Typepad templates regarding site design. I also changed the name of the site. See a future post as to why. I am trying to be more creative with the name. Probably not working, but at least I made an effort.

There Goes My Google Rankings

by

When I had my site hosted on my friends linux box I had some nice google rankings on some searches. I was surprised at how my site ranked sometimes. Well that is all gone now. When I changed my site address (used to start with blog. and now it is the normal www.) and I moved providers to Typepad several things happened that cost me the rankings. All of this doesn’t really matter. It is of passing interest to me. I still find it funny that anyone reads this. I am not sure what is weirder, people I know regularly reading it, or people I don’t know reading it?

Now with my new site URL and ip address I am hopeful the google searches will eventually come back.

Ecto Back Online

by

I figured out my problem with my offline blog editor ecto. I had to totally blow away any reference to ecto on my individual profile. I learned this by setting up a new profile and had ecto work just fine. Now I feel kind of dumb having put a question on their message boards, but why did this happen???

I am just happy I am online again. Now I hope my memory holds up and I remember what I wanted to write about all week. On the bright side I downloaded the newer version of the software and it has some cool and not so cool new features.