Apathetic Thursday

Inspired by another blog, I thought it might be a neat idea to post the links to the blogs I read, as to spread the news of new blogs to others. This was actually quite a task to round up these blogs, because with my reinstall for Leopard I had no bookmarks left, so I went around and found all the blogs that I like to read or occasionally visit or best yet, things I would like to read in the future.

I then compiled the entire list into Vienna, a free RSS reader, and then inscribed them into this post.

I didn’t want to stop with blogs though, so I also went on to list the podcasts I currently subscribe too as well.

In no particular order, here they are.

Blogs:

• http://bobnation.org/ - A blog by my a good friend.
• http://daringfireball.net/ - John Gruber’s site, usually a good place for news and comments.
  
• http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/ - I love Fake Steve.
• http://xkcd.com/ - Great comic strip, if you like math, technology and relationships.
  
• http://apatheticthursday.net (Yes, my own website is my homepage… I am that vain… …but it’s such a lovely site!)
• http://www.tedwinder.org/ - A neat blog about technology, photography and other random things.
  
• http://www.bloggingwhilepaused.com/ - Video game characters, blogging about video games.
• http://www.smashbros.com/ - Until Brawl comes out, I’m drooling over this site.
• http://www.randsinrepose.com/ - The Nerd Handbook, this man described me.
• http://www.alistapart.com/ - Excellent web development techniques.
• http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/ - Just found out about this one, but great photo tips.
• http://www.tuaw.com/ - Gotta read my Apple News.
• http://indexed.blogspot.com/ - Not quite sure what this is, but it looks interesting, so I’m watching it from a distance.
• http://ilovetypography.com/ - Someday I am going to sit down and read up everything I can on typography, this site is on the list of literature.
• http://cabel.name/ - For all your Panic goodness.
• http://theappleblog.com/ - The Apple Blog
• http://diveintomark.org/ - Mark Pilgrim’s Blog
• http://5ives.com/ - A neat idea from the Merlin Man
• http://www.43folders.com/ - And the Merlin Man’s Site.
• http://www.cwob.com/ - Andy Ihnatko’s Colossal Waste of Bandwidth.
• http://www.crazyapplerumors.com/ - I love Crazy Apple Rumors
• http://www.macalope.com/ - Good site for Mac thoughts. (In the 3rd person.)
• http://ambermac.typepad.com/ - “Everybody wants to be like Amber”
• http://rvb.roosterteeth.com/ - Red vs Blue FTW!
• http://leoville.com/blog/ - Leo Laporte, where can’t you find this man?
• http://modernlifeisrubbish.co.uk/ - Web stuffs, good articles, I’m a fan.
• http://thewiire.com/ - Nintendo news.
• http://www.macworld.com/ - Mac Stuffs
• http://macuser.com/ - More Mac Stuffs
• http://www.uncrate.com/ - Coolest creations ever.
• http://www.makezine.com/ - I wish I could do it all.
• http://www.howstuffworks.com/ - For the scientist in me.
• http://www.instructables.com/ - More stuff I don’t have time for.
• http://lifehacker.com/ - Awesome concept, good articles as well.
• http://www.theonion.com/content/ - My Official source of news.
• http://blog.despair.com/ - My favorite company ever.

Podcasts:

• Security Now - http://www.grc.com/securitynow.htm
• This Week In Tech - http://twit.tv/twit
• The Daily GizWiz - http://twit.tv/DGW
• Onion News Network (Video) - http://www.theonion.com/content/video/
• Webb Alert - http://webbalert.com/
• Windows Weekly - http://twit.tv/ww
• Ask A Ninja - http://askaninja.com/

Looks like BloggingWhilePaused.com has had an interface lift, and there is finally some new content up. We’ll see how long this lasts.

I really love Yahoo Pipes. I don’t use it much, but it really comes in handy the few times I have used it. I currently use it for MacPhobia.org, which basically is a compiled list of all the technology posts written by me or my friend Bob. Yahoo Pipes grabs our RSS feeds and merges them, and MacPhobia.org simply displays the results.

Well Apple’s RSS screen saver is really handy, but it’s number one flaw is that it only allows for one RSS feed. I have more than one RSS feed they like to read, so instead of deciding which one  I wanted to be shown, I decided I wanted them merged together. I could scour the internet looking for a screen saver that would work, I could spend hours working with Quartz Composer to create something that would work, but I have a better solution. Yahoo Pipes.

I logged onto Yahoo Pipes, and in about 5 to 10 minutes I have compiled a simple “Get Feed” command which grabs from 8-12 feeds that I read, and merges them together with a command called “Union.” I run the pipe, and grab the output as an RSS feed, plug that into my RSS screen saver, and it works!  I have a wonderful screensaver with multiple RSS feeds. I think Yahoo has really done a fine job with their Pipes, if you haven’t given it a look, take a gander over there sometime, it’s really well done.

Well, I finally found some time and decided to ditch the Google and Pzizz ads I have on my website. I’ve replaced them with new ads for t-shirts that I am trying to sell. This should be more relevant to my site, I think.

Anyway, hope you enjoy.

Well, I’ve had several people comment about how the search on my site is broken, so I finally decided to do something about it. As of the other day, clicking on the “Search” link in the header, will take you to a separate search page, which will launch a Google Search of my site. Better yet, it will also search my Photo Blog and Land of Chaos.net as well, so if you can’t remember what site it was on, you can still find it.

It does create one extra level of clickage, meaning that the search box is on a page of it’s own now, but I like the look and feel of this new setup, so I think I’m going to keep it around for awhile.

Enjoy!

Browsing through some FaceBook links that my “friends” have on their profiles, I came across this site. I must say, I have become a fan. I really liked this one:

For years I have resisted ads on my websites. I don’t like ads because I feel that they detract from the beauty of the web. Many ads these days are obtrusive and obnoxious. I have toyed with ads now and then, but nothing ever seemed to work for me. I don’t get much traffic and I never really made any money.

A few months ago I saw a post on fortuito.us which gave me something to think about. After much thought, I think I’m going to give it a try. As of right now, ApatheticThursday.net and pictures.landofchaos.net have a single Google Ad across the top of the page. However, you will only see this if you are not logged into the site. So if you become a member of the blog, you lose the ad.

I’m thinking about adding a second feature which would show the ads only if you have not visited the site within the last week. There are a few ways to do this and I’m toying with the best way to go about logging this data.

Last week on Friday (June 22), I got an email from my website host with the subject: “Collarhosting - URGENT!” The email read something like this:

Dear sir, this email is to inform you that collarhosting.com will be shutting down it business by june 30, we advise you to by hosting from other hosts. Here are a list of host that you may find interesting. please cancel your subscription with us on paypal. If you are using paypal a refund will be provided for you for this month.

….

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Collarhosting allowed me to pay by the month, so the last thing on my mind was getting a refund, it was only $5 a month and PayPal is good about refunds.

The big thing on my mind was “Where do I find a host within the next week?” and “Can I copy everything in time?”

To be entirely honest, I mis-read the email at first, and took it that I had 30 days to find a new host. The second email I got on Sunday made me take a second look to see that, I in-fact, had only 7 days.

As of right now, I am moving the final files over to bluehost.com, my choice for my next webhost. I did not have much time to research them, but I felt they were the best of the options I gave myself. I’ll be posting more on my thought process within the next week. For right now, I just want to make sure that everything is up and running properly. I have to switch over email accounts and make sure my domain names and subdomains are functioning properly.

If you find any bugs, let me know, I’m doing my best to fix them.

Well, I got all my sites upgraded to the newest WordPress. At least, I think I have all my sites updated. I’m currently on a crusade against my room, and it’s actually looking pretty good right now. Granted, I still have a third of it sitting outside my door, but for two days of work, I’m sitting pretty good.

In my breaks from cleaning I’m working on some website details, so I will have my sites updated within the next week. Doing some bug fixing, interface tweaks, and if all goes well, I’ll have a few more products to sell from my store.

Stay tuned for more!

I just saw a post on Modern Life is Rubbish talking about how he changes his color scheme on the first of every month. I thought this sounded like a sweet idea. The best part is that my color scheme for this site is so minimal, I basically have to change the link colors once a month. I took the liberty of changing all the link colors to more spring colors for the month of April. I think they look nice and pastel. Hopefully later today I will have some time to choose the rest of the months colors, and I hope to set up a script that will change the colors for me, so I don’t have to think about it. Maybe I could even get a WordPress plugin made out of it. We’ll see.