Blog post #1004

Well, gosh, I'd planned a party and everything... and I missed the occasion. Blog post #1000 was a quote du jour a week and a half ago.

Oh, well. Go read Kewbism or Oglaf and have a good time today!

Blog post #1004

Blog post #957

No, I don't have a lot to say (except that I'm going to go back to work in a second). But I'd been noticing that I was getting up towards my 1000th post. I did a count of the draft posts (which get figured into the Blogger total posts number) and this is #957.

I realize that this sounds like "The Simpsons' 138th Episode" show, but, if nothing else, it's a quick marker for me to count from as I approach #1000.

Blog post #957

Post #193!

At the risk of self-referencing, I just realized that this post is the 193rd post this year. This is not like the Simpson's 138th Episode Spectactular, but is actually a bit of a milestone. I'd promised myself that I was going to be more active this year on the blog, particularly after having gone to SxSW and realizing that I needed to join the 21st century in a big way. So this post is one more than I posted in the entirety of 2005, the year I started this and the previous record-holder for number of blog posts.

That was all; do carry on....

Post #193!

52 weeks to awesome!

Ealasaid's latest blog post talks about a personal development program she's been doing from The Freak Revolution called 52 Weeks to Awesome program. Their comment about the program is this:

Imagine what your life would be like if you were totally awesome. What would you do? What would your typical Tuesday be like? How would you feel? How many of your dreams could you turn into reality?

You go on 52 1-week "missions," each of which take about an hour.

The cost for this? $52, a buck a week.

It sounds really interesting.

52 weeks to awesome!

How to make a schadenfreude pie

John Scalzi is a wonderful writer, the newly elected president of SFWA, and the man behind one of the oldest blogs in existence, Whatever. (He even has a book of selected blog posts and some really great responses entitled Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded.) 

A friend of mine (cackling over how The Last Airbender seems to be going down in 3-D flames), pointed out John Scalzi's illustrated recipe for a schadenfreude pie.

How to make a schadenfreude pie

The original drawings for Pac-Man!

In what may be the start of a trend, I'm posting a link to yet another blog's post. This one shows the original drawings for Pac-Man by Toru Iwatani.

The original drawings for Pac-Man!

Blog's been updated with labels

I have been working on things in the background to get the blog posts updated with labels. I've worked through all 760-some posts and I've added labels to just about everything. In the course of this, I've been able to:

• correct a few typos and missing words
• re-read about cats that aren't here anymore (sniff!)
• remember any number of things that had happened in the last 6 years (which is why I wrote them down)
• look at maybe a dozen posts that I started and never finished and are still saved as drafts, some of which may get finished
• updated a few posts that had additional information
• changed everything to Verdana for easier reading
• admire my writing again (humility has never been a strength of mine and, damnit, I like what I have to say here)

I have the labels listed on the right side, currently with the "cloud" format, where the number of occurrences for a given label is indicated by the size of the label. The biggest are funny, me, and websites. (Go figure....)

Blog's been updated with labels

Adding labels to the blog

I've added labels to about half the blog posts. There are 750 blog posts, though, so this is taking a while. I'm also experimenting with the blog label display format. I can sort alphabetically or by frequency of usage and list things hierarchically or in a cloud. Anyone care to venture an opinion on what's most useful? 

I'd thought there was some change in the focus of the blog but I'm not sure that there has been, at least not as much as I'd thought. I've done the first hundred blog posts and the most recent couple hundred blog posts and they're not as different as I'd been recalling. The more recent ones are occasionally more political, but it's not like there's a huge delta in the types of posts.

I have been able to fix a few broken links and some typos here and there. And I've re-read a lot of things and missed my cat Bernie.

It's a good blog. I like what I've posted.

Adding labels to the blog

Achieving a goal for this blog this year

I'd wanted to get this blog to be more active this year, as the quantity of posts had dropped considerably from the last two years. When I posted the quote a moment ago, I realized that the number of posts this year was already well above last year's posts and we're barely past the halfway point of the year, too! Oh, a lot of these are cocktail peanuts of information, little tiny blog posts that are just idle trivia to brighten the day, but I'm pleased nevertheless that I'm keeping up with the blog and it's not a complete tombstone.

Achieving a goal for this blog this year

More than 500 posts

No, this doesn't really prove anything, but I noticed that I'm now a smidgen over 500 posts on this blog. I guess it says that there's a lot of stuff about me for the devoted fans. Particularly if you like stories about cats and writing.

More than 500 posts

It's not too late for me to up the average

I just took a look at my blog count. I've averaged one post every 3-4 days for the three years since I started this blog, but this year has really been pretty sucky. I've only managed 52 posts (including this one) all year, and that's mostly in the last few months. Bleah. Well, I've been feeling like blogging a lot laterly and I've certainly found things to say, so maybe I'll be up to snuff soon. I'm sure I'll have all kinds of news from the holidays, too.

It's not too late for me to up the average

Added a MySpace account

I added a MySpace account to the list of things I'm signed up with simply so that I'm easier to access. It's not a big deal and it mostly points back to this blog, although I do have a direct link to my Flickr account in the profile as well.

I've also got a LiveJournal account that's been around for quite a while, again, mostly so I can say "Hi" to friends on LiveJournal without the hassle of signing on as a guest and so on.

Added a MySpace account

By the way....

That last post was post #300. It proves that I've had a lot to say at times over the last 18 months.

By the way....

I'm back from the shadows again!

Just wanted to drop a quick note to say that we made it home safely and I have a suitcase full of sports shirts to wash. And I'm going to enjoy a hot bath, something that you don't get in a basic ship's cabin.

Updates on St. Maarten, Nassau, and the trip home await, along with uploading a bunch more photos. And this time, tying them into the blog 'cause we're now at cable modem speed. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

I'm back from the shadows again!

If you're reading this...

...please take a moment right now to share my blog with a friend. You can tell 'em whatever you like about it, but please ask them to come take a look at it. I'm having fun with this and I'd love to have more people stopping by and (dare I say it?) even make comments. :)

If you're reading this...

Nifty blogging tool

I heard about a nifty blogging tool for Firefox 1.5 users (which ought to be all of you).  It's called Deepest Sender and it's a downloadable extension that gives you a complete blogging front end to work with for four or five different blogs.  Now, I grant you that most blogs have some kind of JavaScript front end that lets you do simple character and paragraph enhancements, but this tool supports multiple blogs (on multiple locations) and has a slightly wider range of formatting tools than are available on Blogger.com at the moment.  It's none too shabby. I urge you to try it out.

Nifty blogging tool

St. Drogo, redux

Back in April, I wrote a blog entry about St. Drogo. I'd not heard of St. Drogo before, but he's an interesting saint and his purview includes coffee shops, so he's of distinct interest to me.

Little did I know that there was such an interest in St. Drogo! A surprising number of the hits on this blog are from people who are searching in Google or other search engines for references to him... and they find my blog entry.

What is it about St. Drogo that people find so interesting? Is it just that he's associated with coffee shops or is it some other connection?

St. Drogo, redux

My 103rd entry!

Well, I'd planned on marking my centenary entry to this blog. I counted the blog entries a couple weeks ago and saw that I was getting close so I made a mental note to do something about it. Unfortunately, my 100th entry was three entries ago. ~sigh~ Okay, so this is my 103rd entry. That's a prime number (there's a smidgen of coolness) and it's the 4th of July (there's a bit more). I'm searching for other things that are cool and/or significant about this particular entry and I can't think of any.

I'm really having a nice day, even though nothing much is happening: the writing's going better and I'm getting a grip on a project that's been pesty. Susan is off at a barbecue and then probably going off to see fireworks with a bunch of friends, so it's just me and the cats and drinking pots of tea and listening in the background to the Science Fiction channel's weekend-long "Twilight Zone" marathon, which counts as Really Good TV in my book.

It all could be an awful lot worse, for which many thanks.

My 103rd entry!

Blogger messed up, but they're back now

My blog--and the blogs of a lot of other people--were down for a few hours. As you can see, we're all back now.

Blogger messed up, but they're back now

An Irish blessing

This came from friends in Atlanta:

May you always walk in sunshine. May you never want for more.

May Irish angels rest their wings right beside your door.

And, as promised, I wanted to let you know that I've enabled blogrolling. The links will vary. I think I've got it on random cycle at the moment for want of anything better.

An Irish blessing