Rye Cake

2011-07-08T07:35:00.002-04:00

Using the new, simpler blogger posting interface. It would work in Belltowernews.com for some reason.

=30=

Having Trouble With Android & Blogger

2011-04-17T11:29:00.001-04:00

This applies only my Android to post directly seems to have hit a snag. We came back here to Rye Cake to work it out.

-30-

We're back up!

2010-04-28T17:11:00.001-04:00

That didn't take as long as we thought it would. We've simplified how the oldest of the Famous Grazing blogs presents itself. There should be no more problems with loading it in RSS.
-30-

Sharing Google Reader with Ping.fm - Duck!

2010-04-22T18:11:00.001-04:00

This was probably a rash decision, but I have set the Share button on Google Reader to share using Ping.fm's new feature that does just that. Now, I will test it by sharing something and then seeing to where it is posted. This may happen just once, so don't look forward to my sharing all of the useful to arcane information I think worthy of sharing when I browse through the hundreds of blogs I have Google Reader browse. -30-

Off for Chemo #2

2010-03-04T05:53:00.001-05:00

We are leaving at O-Dark thirty on our way to Dana Farber in Boston for our second of six rounds of Chemotherapy. Film at eleven. Well, maybe not film, but we'll try to remember to fill in the details.
-30-

Interesting Things

2010-03-01T08:08:00.001-05:00

The "interesting" thing this morning is I am starting to shed like a dog in Summer. I know it's only March, but at least there is a hope the weather will turn warm enough for me not to have what I've come to call the cancer hats. I lean toward baseball caps myself. Now, perhaps, I'll have an excuse to wear one indoors. This is something my Marine Corps training will have a hard time with.
-30-

If You're Following the Adventure...

2010-02-28T21:24:00.001-05:00

The chemo #2 is on Thursday. The hair really started coming out today. Not in hand fulls but in amounts that can be noticed. I think a haircut on Friday may be in order. -30-

This is, For Now, the Last Ping.FM Post

2010-02-28T18:41:00.001-05:00

As with most geeks, tinkering, tweaking & Configuring is what we like the best. We do believe we have corrected the double posting issue by creating a new group in Ping.FM. This will be the post that tells us if that is true.
Of course, this does nothing for the defeat of the US hockey team this evening, but we need to do something for distraction.
-30-

There Was No Joy in Mudville!

2010-02-28T17:59:00.001-05:00

Instead of shouts of jubilation, we heard, "Oh well..." The loudest sound were the three dots ...
I would not want to be on a Canadian street for the next few hours, days perhaps. I have a feeling they will drop their famous native polite bearing and consume massive amounts of Moulson's and Seagram's S e

Pinging Again

2010-02-28T17:25:00.001-05:00

We've reset the passwords for the blogs associated with Ping.fm. This is our test message to confirm all of the associated blogs are receiving what is the equivalent to a mass mailing.

ScribeFire has been updated

2009-12-06T20:32:00.001-05:00

ScribeFire has been updated to version 3.42 as a fix to a security threat and enhance its interaction with Zemanta
-30-

Created a Trigger for Belltower

2009-01-10T11:59:00.001-05:00

To avoid confusion with the other Famous Grazing blogs, we've created a
custom Ping.fm "trigger."

If we understand the instructions, then this entry should go solely to
Belltowernews.com and its backup blogger site at
Rye Cake.

-30-

I Tried, I Really Did.

2009-01-10T10:38:00.002-05:00

When I attempted to post a photo inside an email to ping.fm so that it would appear in only a Blog entry in Belltowernews, using the "trigger" @bl, it didn't work.

For some reason, it posted only this link:

http://ping.fm/p/2hEZd - photo ping.fm

As well, it posted this link to every service, including Twitter, that we linked to Ping.fm.

It didn't post the picture, I had to go into Blogger.com to manually add it to this entry.

The bottom line for this morning's effort was, not to try to post photos using Ping.fm but restrict its use, for now, to updates. It's VERY good at that.
-30-

Second Attempt at Posting Picture With Ping.fm

2009-01-10T10:26:00.001-05:00

This time we'll post a smaller photo with
constraints.
-30-
from
Wikmedia Commons

Or Will this be the Heading?

2009-01-10T10:14:00.001-05:00

There is some lack of clarity in the Ping.fm online documentation regarding
blogging via email. By posting this message solely to
Belltowernews.com that question should be answered for me.

The other question is the embedding of links. That question will be
answered by the last number of this message.

The final question of the morning is the embedding of pictures:

The original of
this picture was 3008 in width. I "constrained" it to 300. In Posterous, the picture would
remain at its default site and center on its own line. I have set the
picture to be inline to the right.

In doing all this, I am comparing Posterous with Ping.fm only in the
way email postings are accepted into the blogger.com format.

In other ways, each of the services have their own unique offerings
where having one should not exclude the use of the other. A tools is
best used for the task assigned but can always be used for something
similar, when needed.

-30-

2009-01-09T22:15:00.001-05:00

Blood pressure lowered with Lavender by Dinah Shore is now upgraded listening to Driving While Blind by ZZ Top-Can't stop tapping my foot!!!

Recently It's Been From Posterous

2009-01-09T21:55:00.001-05:00

Now the next few entries will be coming from http://www.ping.fm. With a little exploration you can find so many ways to post information to your blogs, microblogs and social networking sites.

A problem I've not found a way around coming from the Ping.fm Dashboard is no HTML editing. I am sure there is a way around this. If there is, I WILL find it. Or it's back to Liverwriter!!
-30-

2009-01-09T21:41:00.001-05:00

Listening to Dinah Shore sing Lavender Blue on iPod Classic is a very nice way to lower your blood pressure. Dilly-dilly..-30-

Brett Somers Obit.

2007-09-24T19:47:00.001-04:00

The actress Brett Somers died on 9/17. She is best remember as being the caustic wit on the Match Game. She was a woman I found very comforting to watch. There didn't seem to be anything false about her. With cable TV running the Match Game in an endless loop, she won't be missed. Sympathy for her children...
-30-

Just Another Day

2007-09-19T00:29:00.002-04:00

It has been a typical work day and there was pizza for dinner. We watched Eureka, laughed and are now ready for bed. The Yankees won, the Red Sox lost. A typical night in New England.

-30-

OOO 2.3 Update

2007-09-17T20:00:00.001-04:00

What I remember most about Open Office was the length of time it took to load. This seemed true of most anything coming out of Sun with a Java base. I just installed the new 2.3 version. It loaded very quickly after the obligatory registration bit in the beginning. What disturbed me was the constant interruptions from the firewall.

This program seemed to be in constant communication with the people at Sun. I am very curious as to what they are saying to each other.

The AutoCorrect seems to have a problem if you don't capitalize a word that should be so. I will look in to the documentation about that one.

There was a quick mention of extensions on the installation page. I was too eager to get to the installation to see what that is all about. Perhaps after the family goes to bed I'll go back and see.

-30-

Creating Lables

2007-09-16T18:31:00.000-04:00

This is being posted from inside Blogger to create labels.
=30=

This is Qumana

2007-09-16T18:30:00.001-04:00

Rye Cake has been an abandoned blog since June. We were doing most of our work at Belltowernews.com and GrazingPortal. GrazingPress= needed a new server after sgtret.net was stolen from us.

Now some of the work seems to be coming back together.

The blog editor Qumana is being tested on the inanimate blogs to see how it works on the various platforms.

-30-

Tags: Qumana, Blogger, editor, Technology

Powered by Qumana

This is Qumana

2007-09-16T18:25:00.001-04:00

|Rye Cake has been an abandoned blog since June. We were doing most of our work at Belltowernews.com and GrazingPortal. GrazingPress= needed a new server after sgtret.net was stolen from us. Now some of the work seems to be coming back together. The blog editor Qumana is being tested on the inanimate blogs to see how it works on the various platforms.

-30-

Tags: Qumana, Blogger, editor, Technology

Powered by Qumana

We Only Have One Day

2007-06-17T14:02:00.001-04:00

We only have one day off this week, but it is a glorious day. We just returned from a nice picnic at the Rich Folks house. Once a year they open their estate for us poor folk to visit. Some take umbrage at this. I say, if I only get the one day it's one more than those who don't take advantage.

A well know Town Politician didn't make it because he died last night. I had said good night to him a few weeks ago after a town meeting, but didn't know it would be the last time I saw him. He had lost a lot of weight, but I attributed it to his being healthier.

Impressions can be SO wrong. =30=
Powered by ScribeFire.

Haloween Party

2006-10-29T17:11:00.000-05:00

Before We Do Belltower News

2006-08-23T18:13:00.000-04:00

We’ve decided to change Rye Cake using the new Blogger Beta Web Design Tool before we try it on Bell Tower News.

=30=

Work Work WORK!!!!

2006-05-04T18:48:00.000-04:00

I am not allowed to complain about anything at home any more. So I will complain here.
Work!
There, I am glad I got it out of my system. I feel much better.
=30=

powered by performancing firefox

TWiT 51: Digg This

2006-04-24T18:45:00.000-04:00

Kevin Rose explains how digg works in this TWiT epsidoe. For all you people of digg community, this podcast episode will answer quite a lot of questions. It's definitely worth checking out (and subscribe to TWiT podcasts!)
========
To distract me from the pumping pain of today’s redux root canal through the gums, I spent the afternoon adding footprint messages to all of the surviving Famous Grazing Blogs and listening Kevin go on about digg. I am glad I listened to it because now the site makes MUCH more sense to me.
=3O=

read more | digg story

2006-04-14T08:48:00.000-04:00

I have a simple wireless router in an isolated area but still I get the error message there is an IP in conflict. If this message gets posted, I will not worry about that for now. I am more worried about The new version of Firefox, which Firefox installed on its own. I am sure, somewhere along the road of setup, I gave it permission to do that. The promblem is, RoboForm, upon which I am totally dependent, is not working with this newest version, which is only .001 above the last. It usually takes a few days for the two to sinq, but a person can go through withdrawal in that short a time. This is especially true if it's a weekend with no substantial social obligation. =3O=

Need to Write

2005-12-18T18:55:00.000-05:00

As with most Bloggers, this need to write often accompanies a lack of subject.

We lead our ordinary lives in very ordinary ways and think most, if not all of it, to be so mundane as to be of no interest to the reading public. Then you visit places considered exotic to us and find it all to be totally amazing.

Stay a few weeks, hang out in cafes with the locals, become adopted by them as an honorary paison, sit and dis the tourists, eventually you find what was exotic when you arrived is now commonplace.

In Morocco, this happened to me in a short time. My high school french became the local patois, the small amount of Arabic I have picked up in my professional life assumed the local accent and jargon. I was soon sitting alone in the cafe, ordering food in a combined French and Arabic the locals speak.

Then we returned to the US via JFK. There the locals seemed exotic. Well, to speak to the truth, in NYC, most locals are. Our cab driver wore a deep red turban, the man who served us breakfast was from Athens, the bell boy from Azerbaijan, and the hotel clerk from Brazil. All tried and true New Yorkers.

Back in Boston, it took a while to start saying things like wicked and cah without feeling out of place. So, no matter where I have lived, or how soon it took me to adapt, eventually, it all became mundane and uninteresting, to a degree, for me. Ergo, being the center of the known universe and all, it must be the same for anyone reading anything I’ve ever written.

To make a list of places I have lived for more that six months at time: New Jersey, New York, South and then North Carolina, Southern California, Central Park, Northern California, Vermont and Massachusetts. The farthest east, of Boston that is, I have been is Morocco. The farthest west, from the same point, is Thailand. The furthest north I have ever been is Nova Scotia and the furthest south is Barbados.

As I look at a globe, there is still a lot of real estate for me to cover to be considered a sophisticated world traveler. I want to go to Tierra del Fuego and Alaska, I want to visit St. Petersburg and Bombay. That should take care of most of the real estate I need to see and say, ’‘I’ve been.‘‘

Alaska is the only state of The Union I have not visited. I have been to Canada many times, but never further north, on the West Coast than the island of Victoria and the city of Vancouver. (Vancouver is much like NYC, exotic by its population alone. It is certainly not Toronto.)

So, Alaska is top on the list. I have seen the Lonely Planet, aka Trekkers, show on Alaska, even know the creatures I despise most on this planet live there in abundance. I still want to visit.

In the house in which I now live and own, reside 8 people. Three are family and five are extended guests. One is from Cuba by way of Mexico. Two others are from Cambodia and Vietnam. The last not ‘from’ calls Brazil her home. The last of the five is exotic only in that he grew up in Queens, a hinterland of NYC to Manhattanites.

I suppose there could be something interesting to write about them. The guest who just left called Kenya her home. There are stories there, but I would be speaking out of turn to tell them.

The late father of my oldest friend was from a part of northeastern Europe that over the past 200 years has been part of Poland, Germany, Austria, Russia and Poland and Germany, and Russia, etc. He joined a freighter in Riga, jumped overboard in Hackensack, swam to Ellis Island and got in line with legitimate immigrants, was given a new name and sent to Hoboken for a train ride out west. He got on the wrong train and ended up in Manhattan’s Pennsylvania Station.

For some strange reason, being a stranger in a strange land, he thought Pennsylvania Station was in Pennsylvania. He was not aware of the American habit of naming places for where they are going rather than for where they are.

In Manhattan, he met a woman from Montreal. They married and had two sons. He became a book seller, trader, collector while his wife worked in the Garment Trade. When died, leaving her with two school aged sons, she moved up in the union hierarchy. She was a saint and was considered so highly, not only by me, but her neighbors that, on her passing, the street upon which she lived for sixty some odd years was named in her honor.

Now that’s interesting. I get up in the morning, eat breakfast, drive to work, work, drive home, eat dinner, watch TV, read the news on line and go to bed, if needed, repeat. I go to church on Sunday and pay my taxes. I could go Walter Mitty and invent exotic corners to this life, but in truth it is about as ordinary as one can imagine.

Nothing I did up to around thirty-five could be considered ordinary. It took me three years of extensive physical therapy to recover from the first thirty five, or so, years. Since then, I have done all I can to be as ordinary as possible. It must be said, I am being quite successful in my ordinariness.

For those not born into it, there is extensive work involved. It helps to marry into ordinariness, but it is not required if the spouse is just as interested in become ordinary as well. It does take two to be routine.

My aging fingers are beginning to hurt. I think we’ll make this chapter one and be done with it.
Don’t hold your breath for chapter two. I will do my best to produce it, but you can just do so much with so little.

=30=

Man TEST-Layout 1

2005-11-15T10:16:00.000-05:00

A Quiet Night Here.

2005-11-01T07:46:00.000-05:00

Halloween went well. Friends were going to hire Security Services for the evening. Fortunatley, this is a quiet street with few Trick or Treaters wandering about.
=30=

flowers

2005-09-09T14:06:00.000-04:00

Posted by: sgtret on Buzznet

Test buzznet upload

Wisdom Passed On

2005-08-14T16:08:00.000-04:00

=30=

Sometimes it’s Easier to Write When..

2005-08-11T05:34:00.000-04:00

Sometimes it’s easier to write when you think no one is reading what you write. Then you get an email complaining about your erratic postings. Even though you think most of what you’ve written is petty, complaining, or just mindless rambling, it’s a shock to think that people make it part of their daily routine to read it.

Jeneane Sessum mentioned this in her blog. I discovered it when doing one of my NEXT BLOG wanderings in blogger.

Another blogger selection I was reading almost daily was Boogie Street. Then in November of last year he announced he was going cold turkey and though not taking it down, he was no longer making any entries. He came back in January of this year to post a photo of a found child from the tsunami that his southeast asia.

The author of Boogie Street calls himself Mr. Zip. He and I corresponded over one or two things regarding his art and the display of it on other web sites. He seemed a civilized human being.

Now it’s time for me to get back to reading the news before going off to work for the man.
=30=

We’re back

2005-08-10T05:50:00.000-04:00

The Famous Grazing Series is still alive. We took most of the summer off, but are just starting to get back in gear.

=30=

I’m back

2005-08-07T10:38:00.000-04:00

Now that Bell Tower News is back up, the entries to all of the blogs will probably increase. I am still studying for the certification test, but I have found making blog entries a good respite from the heavy reading.

Of course it would be nice if I had something profound to say, perhaps about the three week vacation the Korean talks are taking, or the crash of the Italian airliner right on top of the one in Canada, but that’s not what this entry is all about. It’s just to say, “I’m back!”
=30=

Read the news today, oh boy..

2005-06-12T09:35:00.000-04:00

It was the tradition on Sunday mornings to break the Sunday NYT into its various parts, triage the parts and proceed to be informed.

Sunday mornings are now taken up with scanning the headlines of the various RSS and Atom feeds, going online to the NYT, Guardian, Scotsman, Yahoo! News, Google News. This is followed by opening Thingamablog and scanning the Tech News feeds.

The good side of this is my fingers don‘t have the weekly ink smudge, but my brain is certainly assaulted with information.

Reading papers online, papers I would‘ve had to go to the international newsstand in Times Sq. to get before, broadens the reporting on things in the US:

This morning The Scotsman had articles on McCain‘s plans of the 2008 presidential race. It was well written, insightful and from a non-committed point of view. This is refreshing.

Then there was the article on the airline the C`I`A is using to ferry its agents and customers around the world. I would say that article had a slightly paranoid slant, but that is common outside of this country, where they dont understand it really is no more than an extension of a Yale Fraternity.

There was another mocking article about the MoD losing a multi-million dollar unmanned submarine only to have it found by a Scottish lobster fisherman. At first the MoD refused to admit to its ownership of the vessel. This they flipped when it was pointed out to them the hull of the boat had MoD printed all over it.

When the ponied up to owning it, The Scotsman reported, the fisherman wouldn‘t give it back to them until they paid him for the expense of hauling back to port and getting it out of the water. They refused, so the wily Scottish fisherman hid it.

The Tyson Surrender and the Jackson trial were reported with the usual relish papers have for reporting the downfall of American Celebrities and the royal family with its many branches.

Bits and pieces of the tech news found to be interesting will be reported at Home Grazing.
=30=

Firefox

2005-06-11T10:16:00.000-04:00

If you go back a few months or so in this blog you will see several articles about Opera web browser and how much better it is that Internet Explorer. It still beats IE hands down, but...

There’s Firefox.

As a shareware/freeware junkie, I try everything for a few days and only incorporate the software into my routine when I find it either increases the speed, lessens the typing or increases the fun. Otherwise, I delete it. If you don’t do that you will soon find your hardrive overwhelmed. This is especially so for programs that assume you want them to start everytime you reboot your program.

Ooops, off soapbox, back on topic, Firefox.

With it’s themes and extensions, Firefox is extremely personalizable. (there’s a word SpellCatcherPLUS
didn’t like.) I tried a download manager extension for 15 days, it reminded me of this in fifteen days. I found it didn’t add to the plate in comparison with the default download manager. I when to the Extensions menu choice, deselected it and it was gone. That simple.

For Opera , not so simple. Opera is customizable to a point, but the ease of customization isn’t at all as simple as Firefox.
. As with any software designed to do a similar job, the similarities will always be greater in number than those features that make each program unique. The focus in comparison shouldn’t be on the bells and whistles, it should be on those features they share.

Starting quickly has always been one of Opera selling points. In this it is better than Firefox.
only if you have loaded Firefox down with a heavy theme and a truckload of extensions. Out of the box, it is as quick if not quicker starting up.

Time to go to the beach. Try them both, then choose Firefox.
because there are no adverts attached in the free version, in fact there is only a free version.
=30=

Blogger is Free Service - Back Up, Back Up!

2005-06-05T09:16:00.000-04:00

After reading this article at Wired.com, I went to my Blogger page and said I really need to do something to back this up.

There are several years worth of mindless ramblings there that some student of the crazed minds of bloggers may want to examine in latter years. Then I thought, most of this is crap. The only thing I wouldnt want to lose are the graphics. I lost a good deal of them when a server crashed on me last year.

Now I know well enough to store them at GMail, oops, another free service...

Oh well, I guess when we put down our thoughts in a storage media that consists basically of rust glued to plastic and the whims of magnetism, we really cant expect anything close to immortality.

There is always the cuneiform on marble option...
=30=

A Celebratory Dilemma

2005-06-04T09:43:00.000-04:00

It is a dilemma when news arrives that is good news, to a point. There was the distinct possibility that it could have been great news, but doesn’t qualify. On the other side of the stick, it could have equally been bad or even very bad news.

An extreme example would be lottery news. You could have got all seven numbers and won 150 millions of dollars. But you only had six and won $100,000.00. The $100,000.00 is good news, but it wasn’t the very good news it could have been. The opposite side of that stick would be if you lost the ticket. The bad news would be you lost a ticket worth $100,000.00. The very bad news would be you lost the ticket worth the full amount of the prize.

Nothing that extreme has happened here. After initial elation the realization of what could have happened has set in, putting a slight dampening on the celebratory mood.

Don’t ask for the details, they would only bore you.
=30=

You Would Thing There's Be More

2005-05-28T17:32:00.000-04:00

Most of the blogging software that I have been installing of late does not come with a spellchecker, the way this, Thingamablog and w::bloggar do. In fact, I have been making entries, cutting them and pasting them into either bloggar or Thingamablog for spell checking.

I could have done it in Word, but I ususally have either of the two blog editors up and running and MS programs take almost as long to load as Adobe. Now, even though I am writing this in Thingamablog, the spellchecker I currently am running, Spell Catcher Plus seems to be adopting itself to my typing style.

This is a good thing.

I may keep it, I may not. That is the way with trial software. I also may have already paid for this. I will have to go and check my records but I think I may have evaluated it in a DOS version a long time ago. The interface looks familiar.
-30-

Leo LaPortes 2003 Technology Almanac, still up to date.

2005-05-17T23:29:00.000-04:00

I was cleaning up the pile of books that have gathered in layers by the side of the bed. I found my 2003 copy of Leo Laporte's 2003 Technology Manual. Out of curiosity, I went the the chapter on blogging. In he mentions several interesting items; the one about the developer of Grey matter, Noah Grey and the condition that caused him to find Blogging a suitable way with which to communicate with the world.

ON the Monday, November 17, 2003 almanac Leo mentions several links. I wondered, all of a little less than two years later how many of the sites are still active. The first mentioned was glassdog.com. That's still there.

Then he mentions NoahGrey.com. It is a site worth visiting. Read the biography and don't miss this picture of a cat.

There are a few more paragraphs about NoahGrey. This is followed by a TIP OF THE DAY, which involves going to blogdex.media.mit.edu to see the a blog index mapping the entire blog related universe.

That's still there. There's an article on the opening page regarding the "Piano Man" from the BBC. I heard about him on the radio coming home. I hope he is for real, and if so, he is either from another planet or a loving caring family comes forth to support him.

Didn't find the index Leo mentions, but it looks like a fairly full site, I am sure it's in there somewhere.

The last blog related link mentioned on the page has to do with something called: "Cyberian. He is recommending you go to cyberian.tripop.com/blog.htm to download whatever it is found to where this link leads. NOPE, that's not there anymore.

Because that one no longer existed, Ill give you the first one from the next page, still about blogs: evhead.

The point I am trying to make here, is that even though the is the ancient 2004 Technology Almanac, most of the information is still up to date. imagine how way ahead of things are in his current volume
=30=.

Drupal

2005-05-15T18:28:00.000-04:00

Okay, I read the installation instructions in detail, created a new
MYSql database at brdk.net called drupal, loaded the drupal database
instructions on it and finally got what looks like a version of a blog
up at http://www.brdk.net/drupal. Still not sure what I am doing, but
with few more weeks and translation of the user manual, I might get
something up that resembles this Thingamablog set up.

It is only the stubborn part of me that is working on this. The
personal note from Drupal's main developer which said in effect that he
would try to make it so that even an idiot like me could get it up, has
caused me to put more effort into it than I am yet to be convinced it is
worth.

We shall see.
=30=

2005-05-14T10:13:00.000-04:00

Dragon's Grazing

Used the b2evolution blog creation software.
=30=

--

A new Famouts Grazing Blog

2005-05-14T09:40:00.000-04:00

...
Dragon's Grazing
=30=

2005-04-30T16:29:00.000-04:00

As I was making my rounds through the various Grazing blogs I am running, it occurred to me that it would be much simpler to settle for one blog and put all of my entries there.

I was in that position with Home Grazing Number One. I called it the support blog for Belltower News, but it was becoming the blog to which I wrote the most.

Then the server crashed and all of the entries went south. That's when I went looking for all of the other methods of blogging. Thingamablog, the input program I was using for Home Grazing, was unstable, w:bloggar worked well enough for the Blogger based Bell Tower News. But I was eager to know what else was out there.

I found pLog and Word Press. I threw up a blog for each. I used blog-city TypePad, Tripod, Bravenet, WebCrimsom, Live Journal, Opera Journal, Apcal, BlogSpirit, ModBlog, MSN Spaces, Multiply, (an odd one,) Xanga, SquareSpace, and probably a few I tried once and gave up.

Most were free and web-based. TypePad and SquareSpace were pay services. pLog, WordPress and Thingamablog were server based and require a server with MySql database support.

The result of this quest has shown us that there are many ways to come to the same result, a blog. None of them are perfect. Each has just one or two things that doesn't make it the default blog. Blogger is the longest lasting of the online blogs. When there was blogger pro, I used that.

WordPress, so far, has given me the most satisfaction for the server based. Thingamablog crashed on me in an earlier version, the blog templates aren't stable, you have to republish the entire blog to bring them back into readable condition. It's link to the RSS news feeder, and your ability to post a news link on your blog is a nice feature.

Then there's Drupal. It seems to be a very popular program for the more serious bloggers. The program's writer left a comment to me on another blog with the promise that the interface will soon be more user friendly. I won't give up on it.

At BlogSpirit, I am using the free version. There is a subscription service here. I am reminded of it occasionally, like just now when it told me to save the entry, and then let me know if I had used the subscription, this would not have been necessary. It's a bit of a nag, but just a bit. I like the way the writing page is set up.

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Put Up the Google Adsense

2005-04-23T23:41:00.000-04:00

You should find in in the left column
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1:03:58 PM

2005-03-06T13:04:00.000-05:00

This morning I was reading about the potential drought that will
hit London this Spring. Then I looked out of the window, down the
driveway at the three foot high walls of snow on either side.

I wondered what the London people would do to have three foot
high walls of snow lining their streets and filling the parks.

Having lived in big cities, I know they'd do nothing but complain.
When you live in the countryside, you look at that snow and wonder
how much it will charge the local underground aquifer, and how
that will effect the look of things in the Spring, and the availability
of water in the Summer.

Then you come back to today and wonder how the snow predicted for
the next few days will effect the ride into work. We are not farmers, we
are just city-folk living in the country.

I am reading an enchanting book at the moment. I will review it in the
next blog. Now it's off to teach on Sunday morning.
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2005-02-25T17:48:00.000-05:00

In case your thought I was kidding about the snow on the car...

It's a Start

2005-02-08T20:14:00.000-05:00

This blog was started as a guinea pig for trying out the endless
variety of blog templates availabe out there.
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