FFFFound.com looked like the ticket, but you have to be invited to participate and even then it looked like a bit of a pile. Then I figured that Tumblr might just be the ticket. I’ve heard nothing but rave reviews about the service and how easy it is, so I figured I’d give it a whirl.

Suffice to say that I wasn’t all that impressed. Granted, I’m a bit old school and tend to post everything in HTML anyway, most of the bells and whistles of posting photos, etc. where kind of meh. I loved the way the blog looked, but being unable to post because of a service outage was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Besides, what I discovered was that posting to Tumblr was no different than posting to my blog — so why not just do that?!?

So, I swept up some of the dust and cobwebs, switched the theme to Modernist 2.0 and plan to move the two posts I did on Tumblr over to mashby.com

In other words…

Things have been very busy at the company I work for EarthChannel so I haven’t been blogging like I would like to… The community web site I tried to launch last year PEG Channels has been a failure… EarthChannel really needs a blog to help tell our story and put a voice on the company so I’ve been thinking a lot about what that would look like and sound like… I really like how Griffin Technologies has handled their social marketing… we had some crazy flooding here in Nashville. Holly and I are fine, the office and house were no worse for the wear but a lot of the places I love have been damaged severely… I want to delete my Facebook account and feel like I should do the same with Twitter… Mike Rohde’s illustrations are in a New York Times Best Seller and there’s a really nice interview with him about sketchnotes and how the his involvement with REWORK came to be… there’s a lot of news about Flash and HTML5 which impacts my business and I have a lot of thoughts on the matter… I like Steve Job’s letter and thought it hit on some key points that I agree with… I bought Holly an iPad and she really likes it… Been thinking a lot about minimalism and simplicity and doing more with less, so I haven’t bought an iPad, but I still wish I had one… I miss the community that we had with the Nashville Palm Users Group and I haven’t found anything to fill that hole. I’m tempted to jump head first into something, but don’t want to overcommit to a huge time suck… I wish I had a podcast still, but I don’t want to do the work, can’t I just talk? I’m good at that… went to Baton Rouge and hung out with “the guys” and had a fantastic time with them… flash sucks… I love my I7 27″ iMac… coming from Louisiana it boggles my mind to think that only 13.53″ of rain fell here in Tennessee over a two-day period. I’ve seen 12″ fall in an hour in Baton Rouge. However, when you realize that 13.53″ inches represents two months worth of rain I suppose that gives some perspective… I’ve got to stop drinking diet coke and get back on my diet… I’ve got to get back to work.

New Photos
For starters, I updated the random photos that appear in the upper right corner of every page with MY photos and not just the stock photos that came with the theme. There should be around 10 images that include photos of Gracie, Holly, me and various vacation photos. It’s just a small touch, but it makes the site a little more personal.

Lifestream
One of the things that bothers me with all the meta data that we toss about through various online services, such as Twitter, is that it’s just lost in the ether… net. You know what I mean. Unless you happen to subscribe to my Twitter feed, you’re not going to be aware that I’m posting there. Well, now there’s a solution – it’s called Lifestreaming.

Thanks to a handy little WordPress plugin called Wp-Lifestream, I can now catch all those little bits and put them all in a list. You can find a short list on the sidebar on the home page and a more complete list under the Lifestream page.

It may be a bit too much transparency in my life, but I’m giving it a shot to see. Right now I think it’s kinda cool to be able to share what I’m bookmarking, listening to, or commenting elsewhere. What do you think?

Anyway, if you run into any issues with the blog, please let me know!

This happened to my good buddy Mike Rohde with an article that he did on Yoplait yogurt. He wrote a quick article about an idea he had regarding their packaging and next thing you know, he’s in the top 4 on Google if you do a search for yogurt packaging.

As for me, my hotspots have been Grandpa’s Pine Tar Soap (currently slipped to page 2) and National Brand 43-571 (page 1) because of an entry I wrote concerning my love affair with paper. However, in looking at my Google Analytics this week, I found that the bulk of the traffic to my blog comes from an entry entitled “Having A Hard Head Can Sometimes Pay Off“. Doing a search for “Axiom and Garageband” turned up the reason why — I’m the #1 result.

The article dealt with my trials and tribulations in getting my Axiom 25 to work with GarageBand. It was a project I did almost 2 years ago and one month after the post, I never went back to it. Another case of something I “had to have” only to move onto something else 20-days later.

Regardless of my lack of interest in the subject, clearly there were plenty of people still looking for a solution, finding me and as luck would have it, being met with frustration. Over the past year, I’ve hacked this site every which way and never really completed the process. It goes a little something like this.

1. A client of mine wants to change something with their install of MoveableType.

2. I apply it to this site first to see if it’ll work.

3. It does/doesn’t and then I usually, but not always, revert the site back to the way it was and you can see where this is going.

All these changes affected my Axiom / GarageBand article when they broke the download to the PDF that provided the solution. Doh! So this afternoon, I updated the PDF, checked all the links, fixed the download tool I use to keep track of such things and generally cleaned this up a bit in the process.

So for those of you that found that article only to be met with frustration, I apologize. Hopefully the revised article will be more helpful. As for me, I’m going to be a bit more cognoscent of the long tail of my articles so that they don’t spank me in the butt.

How It All Began
For starters, I decided to upgrade to version 4.1 from version 4.01 of MovableType. I exported my entries and comments, deleted the entire site from the server and then did a clean install and import. Once I was sure everything was running properly, I began adding my plugins back and saw that there was an update for the MT ReCAPTCHA plugin. That’s when I played with fire and decided to upgrade to the new version only to find out it didn’t work.

What Went Wrong
The plugin itself installed just fine and the one big change that I saw what that the public and private key information was stored properly now in the plugin. Previously you had to enter this into the plugin itself, so this was a nice change. There could be other enhancements, but that was the one that I noticed.

So far so good, but as I walked through the rest of the instructions, I ran into a huge snag.

8. Edit Javascipt index template, to remove these lines of code which calls delayShowCaptcha… [snip] …If your install does not have these lines in JavaScript index template, these lines should be in GlobalJavaScript, which is a global system template.

Guess what, there was nothing in the Javascript index template that matched the calls I was looking for. Moreover, there isn’t a GlobalJavaScript template in the default build of 4.1.

Hitting a dead end, I tried rebuilding the site in the hopes that everything would work anyway, but of course it didn’t. No errors, but no display of the ReCAPTCHA code either.

Time For A Rewind
Luckily, I had copies of my templates and the old plugin, so I figured I’d simply revert back to what I had previously. Things didn’t work out that way because in an effort to get the new version working, I’d made changes in the “Blog Settings” as well.

“No problem”, I thought, because I could just pull up Josh Carter’s original reference of how to implement version .01 of the plugin. Unfortunately, it appears that he’s moving his site to TextDrive and that page is no longer available. CRAP!

Doing a Google Search and then pulling up the cached version though did save the day and I was able to get my blog configured properly again. *WHEW*

Plugin Redux
With everything back up and running properly, I decided to indulge in one more whim. I kept the templates and blog settings like they were for .01 and just dropped in the .02 version of the plugin. My hope was that the problem existed with the templates and not the plugin itself, but that didn’t work either.

So as it stands, only the hacked .01 method has successfully worked for me. The new version simply doesn’t work in any way shape or form. Looking in the forums, I see that other people are having trouble with it too, so at least I’m not alone.

Given the fact that Josh’s site is down and that I can’t seem to find the earlier version of the plugin, I’m thinking I might need to create a post specifically on how to get this working as a resource for others. Maybe even go so far as to provide the original plugin. I don’t know. What do you think?

No biggie. I’m not offended or anything, in fact I found it quite funny, but bear in mind that this wasn’t just some random event. According to Google…

AdSense for content automatically crawls the content of your pages and delivers ads (you can choose both text or image ads) that are relevant to your audience and your site content—ads so well-matched, in fact, that your readers will actually find them useful.

So here’s the thing. According to Google, at that point in time, I was gay, my content was gay and you know what… my readers must be gay too.

It still makes me laugh.

A high pitched girly one at that.

After digging and digging in the plugin itself, I found the problem and I’m happy to report that it’s been fixed.

Since the first of the year, my focus, or new years resolution if you will, has been to get caught up and after two solid months I’m finally starting to see the light of day. I’m finally starting to see the fruits of my two-month slave labor camp and I’m finally able to begin thinking about writing again.

So does this mean that I’m all caught up and life is back to “normal” again? Far from it. I’m still running to beat the band, but at least I’m past the drum line and running next to the trombones. Still will be another month until I see the flute section, but I’m still running!

The interface has been cleanup a bit and simplifed. They’ve added tags and a few built-in plugins that should make managing the weblog a lot easier. As much as I like the new stuff, you never know if something has gone wonky after an upgrade, so if you run across anything that doesn’t work, or is just a little off, please contact me and let me know about it.

Thanks in advance!

Issue #1: Too Many Blogs
For starters, I have two other blogs that I write on, so often times I just don’t have the bandwidth to write on this one. One is at TV.com and the other is at NPUG. The blog at TV.com really deals with my activity with TV.com and isn’t really all that interesting, unless you’re a member. I’ve thought about combining it with this blog, but do you really want to read about how many points I have as an Editor for “The IT Crowd?” Yeah, I didn’t think so either.

The “Director’s Log” at NPUG is going to be going away though. The idea was to have a place to talk about running a PUG, much like the TV.com blog is about being an Editor at TV.com. Unfortunately, there’s so much work that goes into producing the monthly meetings and maintaining the site, that everything I want to say has already been said. There’s simply too many other areas in which I can and do have a voice that the Director’s Log is a bit redundant – so it’s going away.

Issue #2: Not Enough Time
There’s been a lot going on since the start of the year. I’ve taken on 5 new clients, I’ve started up several new projects, including a new podcast, and there’s been a lot of family stuff thrown in there as well. Unfortunately, I don’t see that there’s ever going to be enough time to devote myself to my blog as much as I would like. So, I’ll just have to make better use of the time that I DO have available.

Issue #3: My Approach Is Too Formal
Everyone has their quirks and I’m certainly not immune to my own idiosyncrasies. When it comes to the blog, I have had a tendency to write articles vs. shorter posts. In fact I’m doing that right now. Instead of a quick post stating that I’m going to change things and doing 3 bullet points, I’m writing a post of 750+ words and this could even be considered a short one :O

In addition, I’ve had this feeling that there always has to be an image associated with each and every post. As you might imagine, having to create and image takes a lot of time, so when I think of writing an article, I also take into consideration that I’m going to have to fire up Photoshop and spend some time creating an image to go with the article. Do I HAVE to have an image with each article? No, of course not, but like I said, this is just one of my quirks. The further ramifications of this “image issue” is that it makes it difficult to post using a Palm OS device, or a friend’s computer if I have to include an image with every post.

So going forward, I’m going to drop my “requirement” of having images with every post and I’m going to try and post shorter and more frequent posts.

Issue #4: That Topic Doesn’t Fit On My Weblog
I’ve had people tell me that my weblog is a bit like a “brain dump,” where anything that’s on my mind get’s posted here. When I first heard that, I took it as a criticism and decided to narrow my focus a bit. I moved TV stuff to TV.com and I was planning on moving Palm OS stuff to the Director’s Log. In addition, there’s been posts that I’ve wanted to make, but felt like they didn’t fit into the categories I’ve created, or was too personal or what not. Well, that’s going to change.

Maybe this weblog is a “brain dump” and you know what? That’s OK. I no longer mind having this blog be a bit more random and off-the-cuff. If it means I post more frequently, then so be it. :

So there you have it. Those are the top four reasons why I haven’t been posting as often as I would like and my ideas of how to fix it. I hope you’ll enjoy the changes.

However, you never know if something has gone wonky after an upgrade, so if you run across anything that doesn’t work, or is just a little off, please contact me and let me know about it.

Thanks in advance!

I’ve removed the plugin since MT-Blacklist is working so well at moderating comments, so there’s really no need for the extra layer of protection.

While I was making changes, I also installed the MT Moderate plugin so that trackbacks will be moderated by default as well. Trackback SPAM seems to be the biggest plague for MovableType right now and most of my friends have turned off Trackbacks all together. I’ve been tempted to do the same, but every now and again I do get a valid ping, so I hate to kill them all together. Now that the Trackbacks are moderated and don’t actually appear on the site automatically will help a lot and make the cleanup not so urgent.

While on the subject, I have high hopes for Brad Choate’s new plugin SpamLookup. It looks to be the successor to MT Blacklist and once it’s out of beta I’ll give her a test. I’m just leery installing the beta version at this point, even though Jay Allen gave it high marks. I’m no Jay Allen, so if something goes wrong, I don’t know that I could fix it with ease, so I’ll wait until a full version is released.

Well, that’s about it, I just wanted to let everyone know that the comments issue has been fixed and give a quick update on some of the other fixes. So post away!

01 = WhatPulse
02 = AveDesk (freebie)
03 = Trillian (Raena Armitage)
04 = Google Desktop (Merlin)
05 = HotSync Manager (Raena Armitage)
06 = Rainlendar
07 = WinPT (Merlin)
08 = UltraMon
09 = Palm Desktop Alarm Manager (Merlin)
10 = Windows XP Network Status (Merlin)
11 = NoIP (Merlin)
12 = StyleXP (gfox)
13 = AVG AntiVirus (Raena Armitage)
14 = Windows XP Volume Control (Raena Armitage)
15 = Picasa2 (Raena Armitage)
16 = Gmail Notifier (Merlin)

Thank you to everyone that participated!

To lend a little help, I’ll give everyone #2, which is AveDesk. It was a little bit obscure, so I thought a little help was in order. So here’s all the right answers thus far with credit to the person that provided the correct answer.

01 =
02 = AveDesk (freebie)
03 = Trillian (Raena Armitage)
04 = Google Desktop (Merlin)
05 = HotSync Manager (Raena Armitage)
06 =
07 = WinPT (Merlin)
08 =
09 = Palm Desktop Alarm Manager (Merlin)
10 = Windows XP Network Status (Merlin)
11 = NoIP (Merlin)
12 = StyleXP (gfox)
13 = AVG AntiVirus (Raena Armitage)
14 = Windows XP Volume Control (Raena Armitage)
15 = Picasa2 (Raena Armitage)
16 = Gmail Notifier (Merlin)

This leaves only 3 more to guess!

Update: In the comments, gfox guessed number 12 correctly, so I updated the list. I also put links to the programs as well in the list so you can find the software should you want to try it.

Feel free to guess as many times as you like, but all guesses must be posted as a comment to this article. Of course others can take your guesses and combine them with their own, but it’s all in good fun.

Happy guessing!

I made all these changes primarily due to reading the SixApart article “Six Apart Guide to Comment Spam.” If you run a weblog and are sick of comment and trackback SPAM, then this is definitely worth a read. Adding the plugins was very easy and after I test the waters with MT-DBSL, I’ll probably install either Phil Ringnalda’s Real Comment Throttle, or James Seng’s MT-Bayesian. Heck, I might just install both, however I’ll take it step-by-step to see just how well one small step does before I take another.

For those of you that don’t run your own weblogs, then you may not be aware of just how bad comment and trackback SPAM can be. Just picture your personal web site being bombarded with hundreds of fake comments all pointing to “sites of ill repute.” Each time a comment is posted an e-mail is sent to your inbox, so not only do you have 100′s of e-mails to delete, but then you have 100′s of comments to delete as well. And guess what? The more popular your site is, the worse the problem can be. The plugins I’ve listed already certainly help stem the flood, but nothing so far has provided a 100% solution.

I’ve often wondered why these scumbags (aka link spammers) go to so much trouble to make my life miserable. With the protection I have in place, no comment SPAM is actually published. In other words, my readers will never see it. So why go to all the trouble? Granted, I know that it’s just a script that’s actually doing the publishing, but still, what’s it all about. Well, The Register published an article this week that answers all my questions. It’s entitled, Interview with a link spammer. After reading the article, I still loathe and despise these crap bags, but at least I now know WHY these weasels do what they do.

Last but not least, if you run into any problems using this web site, please let me know. I’ve made enough changes that something could have gone haywire along the way and I could use your help if you find something. Either post a comment to this thread, or use the Contact Form to e-mail me.

In looking over all the pretty bar and line graphs, a couple of interesting things poped out at me:

Total number of page views:
» Increased by 665%

Total number of unique visitors:
» Increased by 403%

Total number of articles posted:
» Decreased by -60%

So what does all this mean? Well, this means that readership of the site in 2004 increased six-fold, but I published half as much. :s

A couple of other little tidbits of note:

Most Popular Entry:
» Climbing Mt. Validation
» 1219 page views

Most Popular Category
» Natchez Trace Travelogue
» 1746 page views

Most Popular Category In Main Weblog:
» Technology
» 967 page views

These last numbers are based on the pageviews in the database and not hard numbers. I’d have to REALLY crunch some numbers to get the actualy numbers. That would require a TON of input and I think I’ve gone on long enough with this business dont you? :p

If you’d like to see the full report, simply select the link below for an Adobe Acrobat Presentation:

mashby.com 2004 Statistics (46k)

Let me know what you think by posting a comment below! You know how webloggers LOVE comments.

But I could use some help.

Please fee free to post as many comments as you like to help me test the system. You do not need a TypeKey in order to post, but if you have one, please feel free to use it. I don’t care so much what you post as long as you try the comment system and let me know if you run into any problems. I want to keep the comment system as open and friendly as possible, while still trying to limiting SPAM as much as possible.

New Feeds
In other news, I’ve revamped the syndication feeds that I offer. There are now have 3 feeds in RSS 2.0 and Atom format:
   » Main Weblog – RSS 2.0 | Atom
   » Photos – RSS | Atom
   » Travelogue – RSS | Atom

The moblog is still in whatever RSS format TextAmerica offers and that will eventually fold into the photos section at some point.

Google Ads
Last but not least, I’ve incorporated Google’s AdSense into the weblog. I’ve tried to make them as unobtrusive as possible, so hopefully you won’t mind them too much. I know that I’m not going to make a lot of money off of them, but it would be nice if they could help cover the hosting costs for the weblog. Given the ad rates though, it may generate $5 if I’m lucky, so feel free to click on as many ads as you like.

Well, that’s about it! Whenever I make changes to the site, I always like to document it by posting and entry on what’s changed in case any one is looking for something that’s no longer there.

Oh and if you noticed the “[updated]” notifications in the right navigation, that’s because I updated the smileys, not because there’s new content. Sorry. :s

Status Of Series Entries
There are two “series” that I started that I haven’t yet completed. There’s the Grazing Across Louisiana series and the The Matrix Saga. I’ve received comments from many people asking where the next installments are to each of these series. Rest assured that I haven’t forgotten about them. The reason there haven’t been any new posts in these series is that they take a long time to write. Each remaining entry has been started and I work on them as time allows, so thank you for being patient and for letting me know that you appreciate them. That means a lot to me.

Quoted In The Paper
I’ve been meaning to post this, but it just didn’t fit as an entry all by itself. Anyway, I was quoted in a local paper here in Nashville, called the City Paper. It’s a daily publication that “is a civic-minded, public-spirited newspaper devoted to exploring issues relevant to Nashville readers.” I was contacted to comment on some recent announcements made by PalmGear and you can read the article at this link.