Showing posts with label blog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blog. Show all posts

8.26.2009

Fixing broken links

Yesterday I felt like crap after getting little sleep for the past two nights, so I called in sick. So the day shouldn't be a total loss, I spent some time perusing my old blog posts for inspiration, and discovered that all the images were missing from the first year or so of posts. Seems I had hosted the images on my own web space at Cox (I seem to recall that back Blogger didn't support uploading images from a Mac), and at some point in the intervening years that web space had gotten turned off for lack of usage.

Well, not to worry; I still had the images on my laptop (because they dated back to 2005 or early 2006, they weren't lost in my recent hard drive meltdown). So I edited each post with a missing image and uploaded the replacements directly into Blogger. Not that I imagine I have droves of new readers wondering why there are all those broken image links in four-year-old posts, but I hate unmaintained websites. While I was at it I fixed a few typos I noticed, and even added a few appropriate new tags to some of those old posts (like "procrastination", which is such a recurring theme I can't believe I never used the tag prior to a week ago).

Oh, and I did actually cull a few ideas for new posts. :-)

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8.16.2009

Once more, with feeling

OK, having been extremely remiss for the past, er, nine months or so, I'm going to once again make a stab at reviving this blog. You'd think I could manage at least a few lines a day, wouldn't you? It's not like I don't have anything to write about; I frequently think of things I could blog about, but procrastination wins out.

For those of you who only ever hear any news about me from my blog (assuming there's anyone out there who hasn't long since given up checking it, which is a pretty wild assumption on my part, I know), here's a smattering of the events (if you can call them that) in my life since that last long-ago post, in no particular order:

  • Managed to keep working at that job I finally landed last October – hey, I made it past that hell week in January when I keep getting laid off!
  • Completed my ASP.NET class in the fall; went on to take Web Server Administration in the spring; and just registered for Systems Design & Analysis for the fall.
  • Put some extra shelves (which have been cluttering up the garage for, oh, nearly six years now) in some of my kitchen cabinets.
  • Replaced the GFCI outlet out on my deck (its failure is a small story in itself).
  • Ended up having to get a rental car for a week after all when the collision repairs took a wee bit longer than anticipated (another story there worthy of a blog post, even nine months later).
  • Sold a few hundred dollars worth of stuff on eBay.
  • Bought a few hundred dollars worth of stuff on eBay.
  • Finally got that damned colonoscopy, only seven months late.
  • Got two teeth crowned that the dentist has been badgering me about for the last three years.
  • Added two more dietary supplements, on doctor's orders, to my already extensive list of prescription and OTC drugs.
  • Lost two years worth of email and other stuff when my hard drive decided to lie down and die.
  • Had to have major work done on my car (steering/suspension/front brake repairs) so it'd pass inspection.
  • Had to call Roto-Rooter when my washing machine's drain cycle backed up into the bathroom instead of going down the drain.
As you may have noted, a number of these "events" were of the expensive sort, so the fact that I still have my job (and my paycheck) is rather a good thing. Though I have to say, working as a government contractor has been quite a new and different experience for me. It ain't nothing like working in industry, academia, or what I'll call "normal" (for lack of a better term) small business, which up until last October had been the extent of my career.

So. Let's see if I can manage to keep blogging with some semblance of regularity. A daily post is probably to much to hope for, but surely I can find some happy medium between "daily" and "every few months".

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3.05.2008

Now you see it, now you don't

Or, more accurately: now you don't see it, now you do. The full text of the post, that is. As I indicated yesterday, I have implemented a "post summaries" feature that lets me post just a lead-in paragraph on the front page, with a "Read more" link to take you to the full post.

And here's "the rest of the story". Nice for keeping spoilers under wraps (should I ever have anything to spoil).

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3.04.2008

Hinterspace: The Widescreen Edition

So, what with having some extra time on my hands (that whole unemployment thing), I've been browsing some blogs devoted to Blogger templates with an eye to updating Hinterspace. And this is the preliminary result.

I was happy enough with the basic Rounders 3 template and color scheme, but I've been feeling a bit cramped in what is a rather outdated width (740px).

I found that many newer blogs have gone with something over 900 pixels wide in order to gain a wider content area and wider or multiple sidebars. There's even versions of Rounders 3 with left and right sidebars already out there (on third-party sites, not Blogger), but I decided widening both the post area and the sidebar was better looking. Also added the official Dilbert widget and the LibraryThing widget.

The reason I characterize this as a "preliminary" result is that I intend to make part of the sidebar into two columns, implement a hack that will allow for post summaries on the main page with a "Read more" link to the post page, and various other nifty tweaks I ran across in my research.

Hope y'all like the modest update. :-)

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12.26.2006

Ramblings and rantings

Following an intensive push to tag all my old posts, I have determined that this blog is largely about:

  • ramblings
  • rants
  • the joys of home ownership
  • work
  • photos
Interspersed with a fair number of posts about strangeness, the weather, customer service, quotations, and The Company.

All in hinterspace, of course.

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12.25.2006

Merry Christmas and a happy new blog

Contrary to popular belief, I have not (a) died, (b) fled the country, or (c) abandoned my blog. In fact, I gave my blog an upgrade for Christmas, complete with tags. Well, the tagging isn't complete by a long shot (I'm still trying to figure out what the heck this blog is about), but I'm workin' on it.

Anyway, Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

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10.02.2005

dnvnpmb, dammit!

Well, I finally gave up and turned on the Turing-test word verification. Sorry to have to ask y'all to type in unpronounceable stuff like "dnvnpmb" before you can post a comment, but I'm irritated by blogspam trying to get me to go to some site that purports to be about both scrapbooking conventions and men's health related topics. (The screen name of "Enlargement" might be an indication of which of those topics predominates.)

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7.12.2005

The horror...

Thanks to DrHeimlich for the tipoff to this T-shirt site. Like him, I have more D-shirts (no, that's not a typo) than I can possibly wear out in my lifetime, but I can still be tempted by gems like this:

T-ShirtHumor.com

Maybe one of these days, when I find a job...

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6.22.2005

"Smart" ads

I confess to a certain fascination with the ads that Google AdSense picks to complement my blog pages. Sometimes they're so "smart" it's a bit spooky. I just found this one on my home page:

NMR Magnet Sales
Oxford – Spectro Spin - Varian Ranging from 100 - 600 Mhz
www.mrr.com
I can only assume this must be loosely related to my post about interviewing for a chemistry job. A previous ad (which I failed to copy) was specifically about answering interview questions. I'd love to know how the software makes associations. I mean, I can see it coming up with general "job-hunting" or "interview"-related sites, but this was much more specific to the post content. And that post didn't say anything about NMR at all, but it's the only one that could be the source.

Do you suppose blogging about the ad service will result in an ad about the service?

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6.15.2005

New Avatar

Finally went over to Dookyweb and made me a new avatar. What do you think? I couldn't get the hair quite right -- they have short hair (which all look pretty much like guys' hair) and "long hair" additions that are a bit too long. Nothing really in between. Oh, well, if I wait another month or so my hair will be long enough to match.

Mkae -- you said once you had made a Major Rakal avatar for me but I don't believe I ever got it. Do you still have a copy by any chance?

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5.07.2005

Blogger timewarp?

Does anyone know why Blogger posts are timestamped with the time you start writing the post, rather than the time it is posted? I know you can change the timestamp manually, but it seems like when it says "posted by Major Rakal @ 4:27 pm", that should be the actual posting time, without having to fiddle with it.

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5.06.2005

I made the font a tiny bit larger...

How does it look? I figure if I had trouble reading it, others might too.

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4.30.2005

Random Romulan Ramblings

And so it begins...

Aefvadh to Hinterspace, all y'all! To blog or not to blog, that's a damn good question. Hadn't really considered it at all until I discovered that just about everyone I know is blogging away already. Is that a good reason to start my own? Do I have anything worth saying -- or worth reading, for that matter? Do I have the time to blog? Has my brain turned to mush after three months of job-hunting following my "transitioning out" of my former employment? Why are the leaves on the overgrown hollies in my front yard covered with black goo? What's that in the recycled wonton soup container in the back of my fridge?

There are some things it's best not to know.

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