Blog

Status Update

So, a little update on where stuff is.

I have the counter working on all the pages I have so far. I also am applying a Creative Commons license to the site, and likely the blog when I figure out how.

The website template is coming along. It sucks because my coding abilities are more than what I would ever need (except php, still working on that) but my creative skills on layout, graphics, and color schemes are not what I would like them to be. Ohh well.

I will create a my own template for wordpress eventually, like I said above though, not great on php yet, nor do I know all of WPs own little codes.

On the blog, you need to enter an email address and name to comment. It will then send it to me for approval. Once you are approved once, you may comment all you want without additional approval. If you want to use a fake email, I don’t care. Just remember it so you don’t need constant re-approval.

So, by the current plan, I will not make any other posts here until September 1st, so go back to the other blog until then, or August 29th anyway. I may make another status update here I guess. I will continue working on the template, then get up a new main page, followed by some info pages and then the gallery. My iblog posts will not be moved until August 30th at the earliest. May be longer depending on what else I am doing. I don’t want to transfer them now only to need to do a second transfer of posts made between now and month end.

OK, that is all I suppose. Off to see if I can reset the post count, since this isn’t really the 3rd post like it’s telling me (there was a default 1st post that I deleted).

nick

Emu Feel Funny

Let’s see. Jenn and I went to the fair tonight. The livestock auction was going, so she got really excited about that. We went through the animal barns, then walked around and there were 2 petting zoos. Emu, camel, sheep, goats, cows, chicks, rabbits, donkey, and those humpback cow looking things.

The back entrance is re-roofed, sided, and will be insulated tomorrow. The fence is also coming along.

Notice the link above to the new blog, that’s where I going. Work is progressing OK for now.

That’s probably it. I can’t think of anything else anyway.

nick

I just wanted to know if you wanted another seaman on your poop deck?

Backyard Blues

Well, my Uncle is back, arrived this morning, and he isn’t happy. The back entrance has not gone as well as it should, so today we tore off the week old roof and are fixing all the problems we have had. Scott, Todd G, Tim, My Uncle, and I were all on it, then my Dad came and we got ready to do fencing tomorrow. Oh, it will be fun.

For whatever reason, over the past few weeks one of my pages has become WAY too popular. It is titled “I am Bored”, and has moved up to #4 on a Yahoo search for that phrase, out of over 37,500,000 pages. The strangest thing is, it’s a post from January 2004, but wasn’t popular at all till about a month ago. I am considering changing the name, but maybe not.

I reformatted and reinstalled OS X Thursday night. It had bugs in it from some things I had been doing, so I felt it needed it. I was backing up everything to CDs anyway, so I had most of the hard part done (I backup less often than I should, but more than I used to, before my 7600 died).

Check out this Wikipedia article on .coms, including the list of 75 oldest still operating ones. I really like Wikipedia, you should browse around.

So, after contemplation, I have come up with September 1st as a likely moving date, for 3 reasons:

1) It is over 3 weeks away, plenty of time to work stuff out, and let everyone know.

2) It means 300th entry goes in new blog, presuming my normal schedule and 1 new poll before then.

3) You may remember my last move, 2 years ago Sept 3rd, hence repeating the saga of moving at the onset of September (hopefully I not moving again in 2 more years).

Also, yes, I have decided, and the new site is already on it’s way. Link will be in next post.

nick

You don’t have any mail! Our servers are feeling unloved.

First Post!

My first post in WordPress. Too bad I’m going to delete it in a a week or two. Oh well. I have some issues right now. It doen’t look like what I was promised. Which sucks.

I will figure it out.

OK, I got it fixed some.

Seems WP is not fully Safariable, but it’s Safari’s fault. Maybe will be fixed soon?

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

I don’t like how it insets like 3 lines after a quicktag. It means I have to go down and delte three lines I shouldn’t have had to. No better than iBlog putting a space after every link.

Ohh well, I can always stay on iBlog if I decide I absolutely HATE this, or at least find it the greater of 2 evils. I need to leave .Mac though, I just can’t afford it.

Decisions Decisions

Well, let’s see.

I have been thinking about moving. No, not my person, but my blog / site. I have reasons for staying, reasons for leaving, reasons against what I have now, and reasons for what I want to have. I even have a poll for you to help me decide. So, let’s get started, shall we?

First and foremost, is cost. My .Mac subscription is nice, I get an email address, 250MB of space, a cool automatic web page builder, free copy of Virex, Back-Up space and software, and some other stuff. Problem is it costs me $99 a year. Other problem is it’s a mac, there are no viruses to protect against, and I make my own web pages. So we are down to backup, server space, and email. Well, free email accounts are easy to get, I have a Yahoo, Hotmail, GMail, Excite, Netscape, Delta, and probably more somewhere, and can get another in about 2 minutes. Backup is nice, but I seldom take anything from the server, just put backups to it. I use my iPod as a hard drive, and CDs all the time to back stuff up, and that’s what I actually retrieve from. The one thing I would miss most, is that I can access my bookmarks anywhere, just go to the site, click a link, and I have a window with all my bookmarks right there, on any computer. Yahoo is making something like this available though, so I might be OK.

So, Server space. I found Nearly Free Speech.net. They charge $1 per gigabyte of data stored per month, and $0.01 per megabyte of data transfered. That means my 5.4MB of monthly transfer (an estimate, but I think is pretty close), and 25MB of data will cost me about $0.26/month, or $3.06 per year. Thats almost 97% off! Even if I went WAY up, from 300 to 3000 visits a month, I would only be at $3.63 a year. Or, if my site grew (which it always does, but this is extreme) from about 25MB to 250MB, it would take me to $30.06. Now, as you can see, space will be my concern, but thats still only about a 3rd of what I pay now, and for the same amount of space. I would need to put 700MB on the server to match what I pay now. Sounds like a deal, huh?

So, next issue is iBlog. Yeah, it was better than Blogger, but it has it’s issues. For one, I kinda settled for iBlog. My .Mac account doesn’t allow php, which is what most blogware uses. That’s why I need a FreeFind search bar, a SiteMeter counter, and a Haloscan comment system. Good php blogware has this either built in, or available as php apps that I can add to the server, rather than relying on some other guys server. (By the way, php is a scripting language for servers, it’s similar HTML or JavaScript, just different, and more powerful.) Next, is the fact that since I started with iBlog, what, almost 2 years ago now (Sept 1, 2003), I have been promised a version 2, with all these new features. Yet, here I am with v. 1.4.3, because 1.4.4 is too buggy. Nice.

Over the time I have had iBlog, I have looked at alternatives, like BlogWaveStudio, Tangelo, and RapidWeaver, but they are all still .Mac, no php, need other companies and more usernames and more reliance on other servers for comments and counters type Blogware. But now, no, if I am going to save myself a heapload of money and move to a server, and it supports php, why not look at GOOD Blogware, POWERFUL Blogware. Yes, that’s what I shall do.

My first instinct was for the Blogware I wanted 2 years ago, MovableType. Now, back then, MT was free, and was a good choice. But since then, WordPress has come along and matured. It’s open source, free (yes, I know, I can get MT free, but I get no support, and I may need it), and very customizable IF I learn php, which I probably will.

So, I can move to a server that will cost me less, and lets me keep iBlog or move to a more powerful Blogware, add my own service apps like a wicked cool tracker that kicks what I have now’s ass, and yet I am hesitating? I have my reasons.

First of all, it means a new address. That means I need to let all of you, and all those that used to read the blog know that I moved, meaning a big top-entry post, and emails, and such and such. Then, I come to the hard part. If I switch Blogware, I loose my old posts until I redo them all. I did this once, when I moved from Blogger, but I only had 4 months worth then, now I have 26 months to convert. Plus, all comments would be lost. This means paying $10 to Haloscan for Premium membership, exporting all my old comments, and retyping them as you into the newly transfered post, making sure they all go to the right post etc… Is it worth saving $97 a year? Yeah, probably.

Then, though, that new address thing hit me. Yeay, I would have a cool address like nslyax.nfshost.com or something equally no better than what I have now. What if I wanted something actually cool though? Not just sarcastically cool, but actually geek cool, my own domain. Yes, at $3ish a year, I could afford a domain, and it would only be another $15.75 a year for registration and hosting. That means you could go to blog.hooji.net (hooji.com was taken, but has expired, but was then bought by advertisers that just have redirects on it, and will be available late 2006, but I don’t want to wait) and view the blog. Now that’s cool.

So, I have till October 1st to decide (I think) as that is when my .Mac expires. It would certainly but a lot of work. I may just move iblog to the new server, but that still means comment transferring, and whenever I moved to WordPress I would need to retransfer. I may switch to WP and leave the domain alone for a while. I don’t know. Leave me your opinion, and i will think it all over.

Addendum:

In the 2 days I have thought it over (it was really wracking my brain Wednesday afternoon, I couldn’t wait) I think I have came to the conclusion that with a $5 minimum, I wouldn’t loose much by at least trying it out. No domain or anything for a while, just a trial run. Still though, let me know in the poll, comments, whatever.

nick

It’s conjugal visit day, and you know how I like doing a chick in the can.

If I Knew, I Would Tell You

OK, so I don’t know yet. I was supposed to find out about the job today, but I didn’t. Apparently, “She’ll be back Wednesday” does not mean “she will be back in the office on Wednesday”, but only that “she will be back, not necessarily anywhere useful, on Wednesday, and when she will be in the office is anyone’s guess”. Yeah, exactly.

I have more pics up, and have changed large images to 800×600. I will begin scanning in some pics soon I think. If you have any problems with the 800×600 thing, say so.

I need to go for a bike ride while it’s cool out. Granted, today was almost too cool, having not reached the 70s till around noon. This weather is freaking nuts.

Jenn got a new couch. After me sitting and sleeping on it for like 7 years, Jenn using as a couch for a year, and being moved 3x, the futon gave up. She bought a new couch at Value City yesterday, and we picked it up today.

OK, that’s all I got.

nick

News Wrap-Up

So, a lot of stuff thrown out in the last week or so, so here’s a wrap-up of everything.

I am over 90% sure I have a job with Northwest. Will know for sure everything on Wednesday, will let you know then.

The back entrance is near done. It is fully enclosed, including sheeting, roof shingles, windows, and door. Siding and drywall, and some loose ends, and the patio next.

A new poll is up, and as it hints, so are some pics. I have 2 galleries, one from last week in Minneapolis, and one from camping in June. Will post more after this poll.

I told you to watch Tour de France, but now it’s too late. It’s over. Wait till next year.

Jenn and I went fishing Friday night. Nothing as is now the norm. Oh well. Water temp was really warm.

That was some storm this morning. We think a surge fried our oven, it keeps beeping an error F9 message.

Think that’s it.

Click “Pics” up top to see the pics, and vote for your prefered size.

nick

giggidy giggidy giggidy!

Five Thousand!

Yeay! Five thousand visitors! Yeay!

OK, so not really. Probably closer to 10 visitors 500 times. But still. It’s more than you got.

So, after about 10 hours of thinking it was Scott, I double checked and through a goof by SiteMeter improperly listing Win XP and Firefox, noticed it was Jenn’s IP. So, Jenn was 5000, thus winning the prize for being 5000, and for correctly guessing in the poll.

New poll next time by the way.

I have 2 new shirts and a new pair of shorts courtesy of Jenn. Thank you again.

The back entrance is going a bit slower than I hoped. Hopefully we can gain some on it this weekend.

I have been trying to clean my room some. It’s, uhm, going.

I think that’s it. See you Thursday.

nick

When asked what would happen if a freighter hit the Mackinac bridge, the designing engineer said “The boat would sink, with a great loss of life no doubt”.

Behind

So, I finally have the new poll, 2 blogs after I promised it, and still haven’t gotten up the pictures I promised. In all honesty though, it has been way too hot to do much.

The back entrance blocks should be done tomorrow, and filled with sand Monday, for concrete Tuesday. Then we can put in some temporary steps, pour the bottom landing concrete, more steps, and walls, then a roof, then the patio, and then final grading, then grass and final landscaping. Yeah, were almost done.

Tomorrow night Jenn and I are going to the Foreigner concert and maybe St. Stans afterward.

I think that is all.

nick

Of all the things I have lost, I miss my mind the most.