Most boring site on the web

Moi? Abandoned Blogs

Ohh... for about a year now I've been part of the 125.6 million blogs that hadn't been updated in 120 days:

According to a 2008 survey by Technorati, which runs a search engine for blogs, only 7.4 million out of the 133 million blogs the company tracks had been updated in the past 120 days. That translates to 95 percent of blogs being essentially abandoned, left to lie fallow on the Web, where they become public remnants of a dream -- or at least an ambition -- unfulfilled.

Reading the article, most of these people had pretty lofty dreams for their blogs. I, on the other hand, don't care if anyone reads this site. Sometimes I just want to publish! So why did I take a break?

Mr. Jalichandra of Technorati -- a blogger himself -- also points out that some retired bloggers have merely found new platforms. “Some of that activity has gone to Facebook and MySpace, and obviously Twitter is a new phenomenon,” he said.

That is a nice point. I didn't really stop blogging for long. As Nate pointed out, I started doing "micro-blogging" with my Facebook status updates. And recently I've been experimenting with Twitter.

But the truth is that sometimes blogging is hard. Some days I just have nothing to say, and trying to find something for the day's post became tedious. Especially during the election cycle. I'm not going to blame it for my absence, but I did burn out on discussing Hill-dog, Barry, and the Maverick all the time. Or, at the very least, them being the dominant topic on the internet.

Lately, however, I've found myself wanting to post larger entries again. Things more than 140 characters. I wrote a couple notes on Facebook, but that's unsatisfying. So here I am. And here I'll stay... as long as the muse is with me.

Hmmm...

Have I caught the blogging bug again? Time will tell I suppose. Certainly, I've spent some time playing with templates!

Still Alive

Yeah, I was sick. I had so little energy on Tuesday that I slept for close to 18 hours. I'd wake up, read something for an hour, and then pass out. Repeat. I was fighting to keep my eyes open, sometimes even just long enough to finish my tea.

But the good news is that with all that rest (and turning my heat way up) my fever broke and I've been out and about. Unfortunately, my sore throat has decided to hang around a little longer.

No idea what I had, and no one at work has come down with it yet either. How did I, someone who doesn't do anything, fall ill so quickly? It's a mystery!

Blogging more tomorrow... I hope. I've been busy trying to wrap a project up. And today we (finally) downloaded Leopard. Steve wants to play.

Let Us...

... blog up a storm!

(Stay tuned)

Looking for a Redesign

In only a couple days I will be in Denver, but I'm itching to start a big project: a redesign of my blog.

I've been thinking about it for awhile. The current design has served me well, but it's getting a little stale. Austin Heller's post about Wordpress vs. MovableType got me thinking even more, and hunting around.

I like his design -- it's very crisp -- but there are too many graphics for me. My eye has been on kottke also. Then I ran across happy notes, and I love it! But it's too minimal, and I don't know how I can fit some things in without ruining the balance of the site.

There are a couple goals I have:

• The banner image is probably going. The idea was to rotate it, but I've never changed it. Truth is, I'm a little too lazy.
• Post author must be near the top to help eliminate confusion in the occasional instances where someone else posts an entry.
• Recent comments must stay somewhere easily visible, but recent posts can go.
• I'd like to make the content area larger than 430px, but almost all my images are sized to that. So it can't be too much larger.

Any thoughts? Mock ups? I just know this is going to eat up time that would be better spent elsewhere.

Technology Fridays?

I like to make technology posts. Posts about hardware, software, programming languages, etc. Geeky things.

But I don't want to make my blog a technology themed blog. This morning, I had an idea: how about queueing all my tech posts until Friday?

I'm going to try it and we'll see what happens. Stay tuned for today's edition...

Light On Blogging

I know, I know. But I gotta couple posts lined up for tonight. So stay turned. For those of you who care, here are my excuses:

• Chicago: went up over the weekend to visit my sister.
• Harry Potter: like, duh. Post on the last book later.
• TypePad Outage: there was a big power failure at a major SF datacenter. I wanted to make the Harry Potter post last night, but TypePad was down for most the evening.

Like I said, a couple short posts now, then the Harry Potter later (I hope).

Oooh... a Post

My blog has been neglected this week. Mostly because of work, allergies, and a hangover on Friday. But I couldn't miss today's post...

Because it's Mother's Day? No, something more important. It's my Blogoversary!

That's right; today my blog is three years old. And in those three years there have been 1,315 posts with 2,742 comments (present post not included). Hopefully there will be many more years to come.

I know, "No one cares." But I do this meta-wankery every year. Normally blogging, hopefully, resumes tomorrow.

Timestamps This Week

Just a small notice.

For the next week the post timestamps are going to be off. An hour behind, to be exact. That's because while I'm in Denver I'll be an hour behind. It just feels wierd making my post for Saturday and having it show up on the blog as Sunday.

Anyway, I'm doing the back dating manually, which means that comments will appear in central time as always. On to the blog posting!

How Time Flies

The last couple of days have been extremely busy for me. At work I've been involved in one of those projects. Monday night I stayed really late trying to get just something that would work. I'm stripping all the AppleScript from NetRestore Helper, if you were curious. Somewhere it's causing us serious problems on OS X 10.4.8 (but only for i386). I can't find the problem, so I do what I usually do: rewrite until things work.

Last night was an event at Krannert, and after I hung out with Pat Kim and Nate. We were at WalMart until nearly midnight, so I was just exhausted when I got home.

Tonight mom was in town, so we went out to dinner. In... 30 minutes I'm going over to Nate's so that I can watch the latest South Park (and socialize, of course).

So that leaves no time for blogging. Again. Till tomorrow!