ramblings

Phase 2 Part 2

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I am happy to report that almost ten years after I first launched Sevensquared.com and almost six years after I first posted to WGTCTIP2 two major developments have occurred at the same time: I have changed my host (from Buzix to GoDaddy) and my blog’s content management system (from Movable Type to WordPress).   You may have noticed that I have not posted in over a month and wondered, “Why the radio silence?”  Well, backing up and moving all of my site files (as well as my blog with its 750+ posts) was a time consuming though relatively easy process that is finally complete. Sevensquared.com is dead. Long live Sevenquared.com!
These two changes (host and CMS) are big for a number of reasons:
First and foremost, I now have unlimited space and bandwidth (for a lower yearly fee no less) which means that large PDFs, images, music and movies all can be stored and served by my site along with a super stable CMS that I do not have to troubleshoot and/or maintain myself. The next time my blog weathers a comment spam attack, its someone else’s problem, not mine.
Second, its been time for a change for a long while now and I’m excited to finally freshen things up ’round the ole site.  Everything and I mean everything will be getting a redesign and/or refresh (aka a face lift) and right away you will probably notice that my beloved blog looks a bit different.  I have a new font (Georgia) and a new design theme (Thesis – which gets a lot of fan and hate mail on the web – for me thus far it’s what I was hoping for) .  Two current annoyances are that I cannot figure out how to move the next / previous entry navigation to above the post (not below the post where the nav currently resides) and that I need to learn how to code my header so that an image (and not text) appears.  Also,  search engine results will no longer take you to the entry that is indexed as I’ve moved from a static html archive system to a dynamic php based system so I’m looking into how I can resolve this issue.  In the mean time, I’ve added a custom error redirect that will take you the blog’s main page so at least you’re not stuck on a basic 404 error page.
So, look forward to lots of cool stuff happening through the end of the year and the start of 2010.   I cannot wait to see what takes shape.

tech

To All My Fellow Bloggers: Keep Your Day Job

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Fake Steve Jobs, aka Daniel Lyons, has an article in Newsweek this week titled Time to Hang Up the Pajamas in which he states that growing rich by blogging is a high-tech fairy tale.

I learned the hard way: while blogs can do many wonderful things, making huge amounts of money isn’t one of them.

So, if you had dreams of turning your Ninja or Pirate themed blog into a money making machine, keep your day job (if you have one). A few years ago I had a dream of blogging for a living but then I thought about it and realized that posting around 10 times a day, every day time didn’t seem like it would be that much fun. Lyons for instance, after posting 20 times a day for about three years, is walking away “feeling burned out and weighing 20 pounds more than when I started.” Yikes.

science

A Luminous Alien Landscape Fiber Optic Style

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I have no idea why I do not read io9 more often but that is about to change.
For instance, I know how that outside of Cornwall, England lighting designer Bruce Munro has placed his outdoor installation, “Field of Light.” Thousands of fiber optic cables topped with acrylic orbs illuminate the countryside, giving the impression that the field is populated with bioluminescent vegetation from another world. To sum it up in three words, I would call it just plain sick.

io9 is Gawker Media’s blog about all things Sci Fi and their manifesto says in part that,

“The problem is that science fiction doesn’t always seek out the strange new worlds it purports to be cruising for. That’s why we’re plagued by franchises like Star Trek and Superman that return, again and again, to the historical times in which they were born. Superman is still basically an old-fashioned, small-town white boy in an age more suited to postcolonial urban hero-mutants; and Star Trek is a prisoner of the Cold War, rehashing old conflicts and stereotypes.

io9 is from an uncharted region in futurist culture. Our idea of science fiction includes things like Ron Moore’s Battlestar Galactica TV series, the architecture of Frank Gehry, and the writing of Michael Chabon. These creators don’t cater to fanboys with trivia obsessions, and neither does io9.

Heady words but after checking out their last few posts, I have to say that I am seriously not spending nearly enough time on this site.

humor

"Telling Cute Animals What's What" since October, 2008

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I checked out Fuck You, Penguin a blog where BZA “tells cute animals what’s what” about 15 minutes ago and still am smiling. Any place where I can read a post titled “Panda accomplices fully liable” which contains the copy below is a place for me.

“Attention people who have access to Pandas. YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT KIND OF POWER YOU POSSESS. You are like a child that stumbles upon one of the rings from lord of the rings, only instead of a ring it is a FUCKING PANDA. Keep all pandas away from toys and other human objects like cars, hats, and exercise machines. If not, you will be held fully responsible for the damage they inflict.
Oh yeah, and fuck you, Panda.”

Love it. Happy Friday.
Via Ben

politics

Wanna Talk About It?

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Did you watch the debate tonight? I did. I watched it on CNN’s HD channel and got to see six analyst scorecards on the side of my screen scoring the “fight.” Five out of six thought Biden had more positive points than Palin. I was also emailing back and forth with my buddy who is involved with the Obama campaign throughout and followed the live blogging on both the NYT site and Andrew Sullivan’s site. Surround sound!
Overall, I agree with everyone’s (i.e. NYT, MSNBC, Andrew Sullivan, NYT and CNN) reaction. Palin did a decent job. Biden did a better one.
There were no game changers tonight. Overall, Biden did not make any gaffes and had the emotional moment of the evening when he choked up about being a single parent. Palin helped herself more than John McCain. While no Republican now wants to kick her off the ticket, she definitely did not convince America that McCain is the better choice than Obama. In fact, everyone will be talking about the bailout tomorrow and not even this debate. Not good for McCain’s chances.
Election Day is now almost one month away and one cool election related web site is FiveThirtyEight which is run by Nate Silver, a super stats guru. 538 equals the number of electoral votes that are up for grabs and right now Nate is calling it 331 – 206 for Obama.
I think the best moment of the night was when Biden schooled Palin on the Constitution. He gave her the “Article One Smackdown” and invoked the dreaded word “Cheney” when the Veep question came up which really will resonate with a lot of people. Her response was wishy washy. Biden’s was fast and firm.

music

A SpOOOnful of Sugar

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Lately I have been joining all sorts of music sites, like Last.fm and Imeem, because I am obsessed with not just sticking to my status quo. I gotta tell you though, it’s tough finding good new stuff. First off, the radio aside from 101 RXP sucks and only plays either crap or songs I already have heard ten to a hundred times. Second, I don’t have as much time as I used to to just troll around online looking for gems on e-Music or somewhere in the Amazon / iTunes catalog nether regions. None of the sites I’ve joined do a good job of recommending new music.
So, I was pretty jazzed when I heard about a new music site called SpOOOnful. It has a pretty simple concept which is perfectly suited for my way of life right now. They send out a free weekly email newsletter that:

“introduces you to one great new artist or band at a time. You’ll get a preview of what they sound like as well as links to buy a track, a whole album, even get out to a show. We hope to turn you on to some new sounds from across many genres including indie rock, singer-songwriter, dance/ electronica, hip-hop, and jam.

The best part of this site is that they say they will “never accept money for our editorial opinions and we’re not affiliated with any record label. Most importantly, we’re going to keep it simple and easy.”
e-Music sends me a newsletter and while I read it, it’s all over the place – a classic case of too much information. SpOOOnful on the otherhand is focused and already paying benefits as its very first newsletter turned me on to Santogold whose song L.E.S. Artistes has been keeping me grooving for a week now.
Yes, the three capital O’s in the name reek of Web 2.0 nonsense and yes, I’m just dying for looming “Uma meet Oprah, Oprah – Uma” moment when SpOOOnful recommends something by Spoon. That being said, I’m really looking forward to seeing what is dished up as time goes by and I feel that overall if you care about music, this site is definitely for you. As the Tick says:

tech

Social Network Built For Two

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If you have not heard of Ze Frank, well, you haven’t been paying attention to the blogosphere because he is one of the most “famous” bloggers out there. Frank won a 2002 Webby Award for Best Personal Websit, in 2005, he was featured in Time Magazine’s “50 Coolest Websites” and Frank spoke at the TED Conference in 2004 and 2005.
While I know of him, I never check out his site. That being said, someone today sent me a little ditty he wrote and produced titled Social Network for Two which is just catchy, techie and nerdy enough for me to post. Happy Friday!

tech

Mob Rule at Digg Nation

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Digg, which is a user driven social content website, faced a user revolt that it couldn’t contain or control over the past two days. Long story short, some users started posting some quasi-legal / illegal information about how to get around HD-DVD encryption. Digg management, fearing a lawsuit, deleted the posts. More posts came with the same info. More posts were deleted. Their CEO posted to the Digg blog and said,

“We’ve been notified by the owners of this intellectual property that they believe the posting of the encryption key infringes their intellectual property rights. In order to respect these rights and to comply with the law, we have removed postings of the key that have been brought to our attention.”

That only go the users even more fired up and they rose up to make sure that EVERY single post was about this topic. As this is how the site works (users post information that they find interesting – like how delicious does bookmarks – and other users then link to it, comment, etc), management couldn’t do anything except either suspend EVERY active account or take the site down, neither of which were viable options in their opinion.
So, today co-founder Kevin Rose posted on the Digg blog, effectively capitulating to the mob’s demands: He wrote,

But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be. If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.

Let this be a lesson to any community based / social networking type site out there, especially if your audience is comprised of IT gurus. You live by the sword, you die by the sword. I love it!
Read more after the jump.
To say what happened today on Digg was a “user revolt” is an understatement. The Digg team deleted a story that linked to the decryption key for HD DVDs after receiving a take down demand and all hell broke loose. More stories appeared and were deleted, and users posting the stories were suspended.
That just got the Digg community fired up, and soon the entire Digg home page was filled with stories containing the decryption key. The users had taken control of the site, and unless Digg went into wholesale deletion mode and suspended a large portion of their users, there was absolutely nothing they could do to stop it.
Digg CEO Jay Adelson responded on the Digg blog earlier this afternoon but it was clear he did not yet understand the chaos that was coming. The post only added fuel to the fire. Just now, co-founder Kevin Rose posted yet again on the Digg blog, effectively capitulating to the mob’s demands: He says,

But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be. If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.

Until today, it seems, even Digg didn’t fully understand the power of its community to determine what is “news.” I think the community made their point crystal clear.
Vive La Revolution.

tech

Comments are Shut Down Until Further Notice

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The spam barrage continues. I hope that by taking down the comments feature for a few days, the spambots will leave my little blog alone and I’ll be able to add comments back to my site. In the mean time, I am experimenting with a couple of different comment verification systems. I know that I’ve received less than 200 comments since my blog has been up but its not the amount, its the idea that someone can publicly respond to what I wrote. Now, I’ve had to change this because of fucking spammers. I hope every last comment spammer dies a gruesome death.

tech

Under Spam Attack

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My site is currently under a crazy comment spam attack. I have received over 1000 spam comments in the last 24 hours and if this continues, I am going to have to disable the comment feature which would fucking blow. All comment spammers should die a horrible death. As a short haired blond crazy woman named Susan Powter once said, “Stop the insanity!”