Happy New Year

This blog started just over seven years ago, and sometime tonight or tomorrow it will get its forty thousandth recorded hit. Thanks to all of you for listening.

Thanks to a Penguin Pete rant (see Sitemaps). I've discovered Google's webmaster tools and Analytics. My New Year's Blogging Resolution is to learn how to use these next year.^† If I come up with any neat tricks I'll let you know.

In the meantime, Happy New Year, everyone.

^† My primary resolution is to still have a job next year.

Backing Up Your Blog

After the discussion about creating disk backups I realized that I haven't been terribly diligent about backing up this blog. After all, what if Google should fail? Thousands of words of my deathless prose might be lost. (I know I've written some unforgettable things. Just last week I got three emails telling me how my posts had affected them. Only two mentioned nightmares.)

So how do you back up a Blogger blog?

One way to do it is to download the monthly archive HTML. The advantage to this is that everything in in HTML, and easy to read. But you have to remember to do it. I did, for a while, but haven't done it for some years. Sloth, I know.

But there is a way to download the whole blog:

1. Log onto your Blogger account.
2. Go to the Dashboard, if you're not there already.
3. Click Settings.
4. Click Export Blog.
5. Click the orange button.
6. A big file, ending in .xml, will appear in your download folder.

Note that the xml file is hard to read, but if you're moving your blog from one account to another it's the easy way to go. Also note that this does not save pictures or comments, those linked (the HTML archives don't save the pictures, either). So you'll have to find that stuff yourself.

This doesn't save your blogger template, either. To do that, go back to the dashboard, click Layout, then Edit HTML, and Download Full Template. Important if you have witty sayings embedded in you blog header.

Also note that either the HTML or XML backups are useful for searching your blog, because that Google search box in the upper left doesn't always find everything you've written.

Read More (Please)

The Read more ⇒ link at the bottom of many front page posts is a Blogger feature that Liz Castro alerted me to. I'll let you go to her page to read all the gory details, but if you use a third-party template be sure to read all the way through to my comment, which tells you how to activate the feature in your blog.

If you want it. I'm not entirely convinced it's useful, at least for a blog like this. True, it lets the casual reader see more articles in less space, but as my click logger quickly shows, most people don't look at this blog every day for the Pulitzer quality prose — they directly click to a a specific post (or maybe this one) because a search engine told them help was at hand. Those people never see the link, since they automatically see the whole post.

So tell me, mythical reader of my every word, does that little Read more ⇒ link do anything for you?

The Changing Tag Line

By now all three of you have probably realized that I like things to change every once in a while: random wallpaper in GNOME or FVWM, random quotations in the Blog, etc. Heck, if I can figure out how to do it, eventually this blog will have a rotating template as well.

The latest bout with randomness is the tagline at the top of the blog. It was inspired by this hack from Stéphane Hamel. I couldn't get that version to run here, possibly because Blogger has changed a bit since the beta version, but I was able to lift Blog U's random quote generator to get the same effect.

So here's the final version of the hack:

• Log onto the Blogger Dashboard
• Select Layout => Template => Edit HTML
• Download the full template: Because you will frak it up.
• Click the box that says “Expand Widget Templates”
• Look for the second invocation of the string <data:description> — at least that's what I had to do.
• Replace the line
  <p class='description'><span><data:description/></span></p>
  by the following
  <p class='description'>
  <script language='JavaScript'>
  //store the quotations in arrays
  quotes = new Array(5);
  quotes[0] = &quot;First Quote&quot;;
  quotes[1] = &quot;Second Quote&quot;;
  quotes[2] = &quot;And So On&quot;;
  quotes[3] = &quot;Changing the number in Array to match the number of quotes&quot;;
  quotes[4] = &quot;and noticing that the array starts with [0]&quot;;
  //calculate a random index
  index = Math.floor(Math.random() * quotes.length);
  //display the quotation
  document.write(&quot;\n&quot;);
  document.write(quotes[index]);
  //done
  </script>
  <noscript><data:description/></noscript>
  </p>
  
• Save everything

Note that I've never been able to get this script to accept more that 10 quotations. If someone can tell me why, or how to get around that, I'd be grateful.

The New Design

The three column template used here comes from Webtalks. (The link is repeated at the very bottom of the page as well.) I've wanted a three column design for some time, but hadn't bitten the bullet because when you go to an externally designed template Blogger deletes most of your widgets. I've restored some of the widgets, added an almanac/weather feature, and made minor changes to the Blogroll. Now that I've got my own domain/webspace, perhaps I'll consider moving to whole thing to WordPress or some such. Time will tell, I guess.

Under Construction

Comcast finally pulled the plug on our account this week. They were actually pretty nice about it, giving us about a month of email forwarding and web space after our defection to Verizon. Heck, I may switch back to them when our contract is up in two years (hey, folks, we've got competition in the cable TV and high-speed Internet market — enjoy it while you can).

With the account turned off, some of the links on the right-hand side of the blog will be invalid, and some of the pictures in the blog will probably disappear. (I moved as many as I found onto Blogger its own self, but I probably missed a few.) I'm working to restore the links. I even have my own domain, now: http://www.rcjhawk.us. You'll note the home page is pretty much like the Comcast one, but not all of the links are live as yet. I'll try to get everything pretty much back the way it was during the upcoming three-day weekend.

I should say that the Verizon FIOS service has been pretty good so far. Only two glitches. One, the wireless connection has gone down three-four times, sometimes for an hour or more. This might be neighborhood interference. Two, for some reason I can't play streaming audio of Prairie Home Companion via mplayer, even though I can play it using Real Player. This might be a bug in my mplayer setup, but it started immediately after we switched. Something to be tracked down ...

The Strange Search

Occasionally I look at the SiteMeter logs for this blog. Other than the fact that readership has been going down lately, probably because I've concentrated on “Things” rather than “Linux,” this lets me know what people are interested in. (Mainly in making transparent PNGs, it seems. It hasn't changed, people, unlike much of the GIMP.)

Anyway, we get sometimes get strange search requests, like this one:

images of hawk girl, courtesy of Prodigy (that's still around?)

Note that they had to match hawk out of hawknotes to get anything at all.

While Google® found:

Hawkgirl pictures

Immediately.

Trust our Guaranteed Non-Evil Masters®, fellow websurfers.

Blogger Play

This is probably a statement about how much privacy we're willing to surrender in exchange for free web presence.

Or, maybe, it's just interesting:

http://play.blogger.com/

“Real Time” viewing of images uploaded to Blogger.

Running New Blogger

For some time, Blogger has been talking about its new, improved version. I've finally switched over. Bear with me while I try out some of the features.

Blogiversary

This blog first appeared three years ago today. It started out as A Linux Notebook, and that's pretty much what it still is. There are a few "Things" thrown in here and there just for fun.

So in three years there have been over 12,000 hits on the blog, and 14,000+ on the Linux only extracts from the Fedora Core days. Considering the cross-talk between the two pages, but taking into account the fact that I didn't start keeping count for over a year, I'd guess there have been 15,000+ "unique hits" on this blog, which ain't bad for a farm boy physicist from Kansas whose best-known paper never hit 500 citations.

The most popular topic ever here was on Linux, Firefox, and rtsp, meaning a lot of people needed help with viewing Realplayer videos. Still popular is the mini-tutorial on making transparent png images with the GIMP. The weirdest search was something about "AMITYVILLE HORROR." I can't find the comment I made about it, but a lot of people came looking here for some reason. I hope I helped you all.

The most surprising thing about this blog is that I've kept it up and running for three years. It must mean something to me, though I haven't the foggiest idea what. I have met some interesting people along the way. And I've apparently created a puzzle that no one can solve (hint: it's not a turtle, but it lives very close to one). And, I guess, occasionally I need to write down a few notes about how to do things on this furshlugginer computer.

I guess I'll keep it going for a while. Maybe, in the next few years, I'll get a bit more feedback? :-(

Lotsa Linux Listings

So this morning, bleary-eyed after dropping Child Mark I off at the airport, I sat down at my computer and took a look at the blog's logs from sitemeter.com. There I found a large number (well, OK, 4) listings from a specific Arch Linux Forum. Why? I ask myself, slugging down another cup of coffee. Well, duh, I answer, click on the link and find out.

And so I do. It turns out to be a topic started by a guy who has too many MS blogs in his RSS aggregator and wants some more about Linux.

And about 5 replies down is a list of Blogs from McQueen. I'll reprint them here, because it's a useful list:

• Beranger
• All About Linux
• Jeremy's Blog
• Luis Villa's Blog
• Living With Penguins
• Linux & Things
• Penguin Pete
• Willy Sudiarto
• Yet Another Linux Blog
• Liquidat
• Myself & My Computer
• Ilya Hevnikov
• Brad-X

You'll notice some of these are in the sidebar, and one of these is at the top of this blog. Thanks for the mention, McQueen. I appreciate it.

And thanks for the list of blogs, which I'll now be searching.

New Tag Line

The translation is courtesy of InterTran, but I reached the English to Latin page from here. OK, I'm sure it is not grammatically correct, but if it was, I wouldn't get it.

The Biggest Story Ever Told

My children discovered early on that you're only going to get a few stories in Sunday School: the creation of the world and the fall; Joseph; David and Goliath, David and Samuel; Shadrack, Meshack, and Abendigo; the Christmas Story; Palm Sunday/Good Friday/Easter; Pentecost; and Saul's trip to Damascus. There may be a few other stories, but basically you get the same ones, over and over and over. Child I said that everything was learned by about third grade, and basically tuned it all out after that.

There are many more stories, characters, and events in the Bible. At our church we take a book or two a year and try to dissect it, to learn who wrote it, why, for what audience, its historical importance, and why we should study it today.

Over the last year, for example, we spent about twelve weeks on Paul's Letter to the Romans. This is generally known as Luther's source for the doctrine of justification by faith, but it's also Paul's statement to the Jews about his belief that Jesus was the looked for Messiah.

Anyway, Slate's David Plotz recently discovered that the Bible has more to it than he learned in Hebrew school, so he's begun to blog his way through the Bible. He's currently up to Genesis 25, Abraham's death. So far he seems surprised, I think, to see that the Bible is a rather bloody book, and that there aren't too many real heroes in it.

Just wait. We've been working our way through various books of the Bible, and there are a lot of things that are at least as, uh, interesting as what he's read to this point:

• You do not, ever, want to buy a used car from either Jacob or his father-in-law, Laban (around Genesis 30). (I started this entry a week ago. Plotz has since gotten to this part.)
• You think Abraham almost sacrificing his son is bad? Look at the story of Jephthah and his daughter (Judges 11:29-40).
• All of Joshua and Judges (basically the founding stories of Israel) show that the conquest was a lot bloodier than you might think from reading about Jericho. There was a lot of internal bickering, e.g., the fate of the tribe of Benjamin (Judges 20). Oh — stay away from women with hammers. (Judges 4:21)
• David and Goliath? Well, maybe it was "Elahanan son of Jaaretoregim, the Bethlehemite." (2 Samuel 21:19). The books of Samuel and Kings are basically court histories, maybe they forgot the official story here.
• Speaking of David, look at his death-bed instructions to Solomon in 1 Kings 25:9. Read them aloud, as Brando in The Godfather.
• The prophet Hosea was hopelessly in love with a prostitute.
• Job? Patient? Actually, the book has three parts: Job's "friends" telling him how he must be the biggest sinner, ever; Job whining about his unjust fate, and demanding that God come down and talk to him, right now; and God delivering the most poetic "because I said so" in the history of parenting. (Job 38-42) I had to become a parent to understand this, and why He might have done that.
• Jesus's disciples are essentially clueless throughout the Gospels and Acts. Peter denies Christ. John ("the Beloved") and James want a guarantee of the Head Jobs in the Kingdom. Paul has to be hit in the head with a rather large club before he believes.

The point of this all isn't to run down religion. The Bible is a book about People. Mostly, they're people just like you and me, which means that they are mostly driven by self-interest, and aren't necessarily nice to be around. Yet God works (in his mysterious way) to make everything come out the way He wants — not necessarily the way we think it should come out (go back and read Job again), but the way He wants.

I'm aware that reading the Bible this way can destroy faith. But so can the traditional Sunday School version. In any case, I submit that a faith that can be destroyed by learning and thinking about its origins isn't much of a faith.

So I hope David Plotz keeps up with the blog. He's slowed down since the beginning, I hope that's not boredom. The good parts of Exodus (you know, Charlton Heston and all that) are coming up next. Then, of course, there are all the laws and regulations in Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, but the story picks up in Joshua and Judges, and then we get all the stuff about David, which would make a good movie in and of itself. Keep it coming, Mr. Plotz.

Blogger Stats

While not watching the game (John Kerry's Election Prospects are looking very good.) I've been hitting the next blog link at the top of this page. Some observations based on really bad statistics (meaning these are only kept in my mind):

• About half of the Blogs are from outside the US. Most of those are in another language, so I can't really comment. There are some interesting ones from Iraq, Iran, and other places in the Mideast.
• It takes an average of 10 clicks to find a page which doesn't have the "next blog" link. I suppose these are outside of the blogspot.com domain, hosted on individual's web sites.
• 10% or so of the pages come with annoying pop-ups that welcome you to the page -- uh, people, I'd feel a lot more welcome if you'd just let me read the page, rather than have to click the OK button.
• Many of you spend a lot of time on setting up the background.
• I don't understand a lot of the pages that are in English. Some pages are written in shorthand, some just don't make sense.

Things to try

Blogger has an option which tells weblogs.com every time you post. I've set that up, let's see if it gets any increase in traffic.

In other news, I deleted the Google search box, which I couldn't get working. Will try again someday.

And from one of those Baseblogs,

specifically Sabernomics (Economic Thinking About Baseball), comes the article "Selig’s Shill," which points to a link to a George Will column which has the following lovely sentence: Selig has been -- baseball is a game of inches, but this is not a close call -- the greatest commissioner. And that, boys and girls, tells you all you need to know about the worth of George Will's opinions.

Baseball Blogs

Slate (the one good thing about Microsoft) has an article on Baseball on the web. Not the MLB site, nor ESPN or even The Sporting News, though. These are blogs and websites written by fans. Next time I update the Favorite News Feeds it will have a baseball link.

I, uh, "borrowed" this yeah, that's it, from

Dave Barry's blog:

Give The Dialectizer a web page, it will give it back to you in Redneck, Jive, Cockney, Elmer Fudd, Swedish Chef, Moron, Pig Latin, or Hacker.

And the Problem With RSS Reader Panel is

You'll remember I'm using the RSS Reader Panel extension to Firefox as my RSS Aggregator. And it works really well.

Except on this Blog. If you add Linux & Things to your RSS bookmarks, and then click on the link, everything looks normal. On the sidebar below the bookmarks you see the article titles. In the "content area" you see the first few lines of each article. However, when you click on an article you get the message

We're sorry but the Username/Password combination you've entered is either invalid or you don't have permission to access this Blog.

I contacted Blogger support, who gave me a nice answer which showed me that they'd really looked at the problem but, unfortunately, their answer comes down to "not our problem, man". :-( It seems that when Blogger produces its Atom-formatted XML file it produces two links per article. The first is an internal link for Blog*splot, and the second is the permanent link to the article. As far as I can tell, Blog*splot is the only site that does this. I've examined some other Atom files, and none of them seem to have more than one link per article. However, Blog*splot does produce proper XML code, according to http://feedvalidator.org, so I guess it's legal. The permalink is identified as type text/html, while the other link is type application/x.atom+xml, so it shouldn't be too hard to figure out the correct link.

I've posted a bug report with Reader Panel Support, so hopefully this will get fixed soon.

Favorite Blogs

OK, following Slate's lead, here are my favorite RSS Newsfeeds. This is in OPML format. (No, I didn't know what that meant, either. Thanks Google (TM).