[blog] Email Notifications Enabled

3041.

At least a couple of you (may the Deity-as-appropriate bless) have mentioned they'd not find email updates to this blog amiss.

I'm flattered that people read this chronicle at all, actually, and finding out when I publish, as I'm still irregularly updating, is problematical unless you monitor Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, et alia. So, as of now, at the top of the sidebar, you'll find a place to enter your email address, and when I publish, Feedburner will let you know there's something new to look at.

Onward, ever upward, and all that.

[blog] A Most Unique Mea Culpa: Sorry CookingSchools.Net Is Sorry

2921.We receieved the most memorable, so far, in its way, of communiques here at Home Base today.

Some time ago, we linked to and shared, via this blog, a very witty and very true infographic we found, lord only remembers how at this point, extolling the virtues and benefits of Sriracha - the famous Rooster Sauce, that Thai/Viet style red sauce in the big plastic bottle.

It's an acquired taste. One should work on that. But I digress. The infographic is at this entry hyar.

Today I got an email from on Jack Pritt, saying he was writing on behalf of the site that (I understood) originally released the graphic: CookingSchools.net (I'll not link that right now; why anon). The missive read, in part, as thus:

My name is Jack, and I'm contacting you on behalf of CookingSchools.net today. That makes this seem like a spam email, but I promise it's not. We recently lost our ranking with Google because they changed their standards for webmasters. In the past, we, more or less, pushed links onto people, begging them to please link to us when we thought that their sites would add value to ours and vice versa. It is this pushing that got us into trouble. We behaved in such a way that even the links on good quality sites aren't what they should be. It is our fault entirely.

So, apparently, CookingSchools.Net is a bad actor, at least by the lights of  Google, who de-ranked them a bit because they were way too needy with people who linked to them.

For the record, I linked there because, well, they created that nifty graphic. Honest-to-Ra-truth. But, they've been shilling so much, I guess, that Google took a dim view, and they're doing damage control there.

Well, if that's really what's been going on, then good on them for being so sincere and owning it and all. It's so easy not to own what mistakes one makes on the 'net, and so easy to make them … so, as per Jack's request, I've delinked the entry to CookingSchools.Net from that blog posting. I have, however, left the credit in the narrative.

Because … well, they created it, not me. And it doesn't seem to be a spam site or anything like that, so cut'n'paste from the text here if yer curious.

And so it goes.

[blog] Feed My Ego, Please?

2915.For a little while now, Google has provided me and all Blogger users with the nifty +1 button so we can get some social media heft.

Might I humbly request that, if you stumbled this way (research suggests that few come here on purpose) you kick me a +1? Two reasons.

1. By giving me a +1 you tell me what stuff people who come here actually find interesting. That'll help me to keep active here and craft entries addressing what people would actually want to read.
2. By giving me a +1 you are also helping me to realize a lifelong goal … world domination, as well as the crushing of my enemies. And who doesn't want to crush their enemies?

There are two way to +1 here. You can +1 the individual post (the button's at the bottom, next to the other share buttons (incidentally, please share my stuff! I'm soooooo loooonely!) or +1 the entire blog with a button at the very top bar or at the top of the sidebar.

Anyway, help me help you help me. Just takes a 'sec.

This has been a me-service message. Back to your regular, needy, distracted blog. 

[blog] Sitemeter Ist Gefloogle

2914.Sitemeter.com. Yesterday:

And, today:

And, this:

Whois info shows the domain name sitemeter.com was due to expire 03-April-2013, looks like someone else registered it.

Could be time to change all my counters since this kind of thing can take years to sort out if ever.

Well, we have also had Google toting up the stats on this blog for a while, and we like it, since it counts pageviews it seems to go up faster, making our ego very happy indeed.

Renewing your domain name; it's not just a good idea, it's the … well, it ain't the law. But it's still a damned good idea.

For now, we must consider Sitemeter in a state of gefloogle until further notice.

Further Notice: As of some time Saturday (4/6/13) Sitemeter seems to be back on line.

[design] Escape From Illustration Island

2405.Here's a great site I just stumbled on to.

Local illustrator Thomas James is one of those creative professionals that I think our chosen professions would die out without, because without such people we'd all feel completely isolated and alone. They don't believe the illustration or design world is a pie with only a limited amount of pieces to give out, but that you increase what's out there by sharing what you know.

His omnibus site is Escape From Illustration Island. It's the sort of site where he encourages community and shares what he knows about what's cool and what helps you go 'round to get 'round. He helps you fuel your passion.

I'm still getting to know and going round the site, but it sure looks good. It's quite inspiring and even though this might not be the most read blog around, if you stumble this way, I recommend it.

The amount of stuff requires more of a review than I have time to give it. The quality, however, is a high standard, and if nothing else, the sentiment is a winning one: No illustrator is an island, and he wants to help you build a bridge off yours.

How can you not accept a hand like that?

Also, these go into my links basket.

Technorati Tags: illustration, how-to, illustration resoruces, Escape From Illustration Island, Thomas James

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[blogging] Is Blogger Image Upload working yet? YES!

2392.This star says something simple but happy …

Which is that ScribeFire, thank you Christopher Finke, with version 3.5.2, is working again on the image upload thing there, which makes my entire day already.

Thank you cfinke!

Firefox users – continue to download ScribeFire. You won't be sorry!

• For spiffy blog editing embedded within your Firefox experience, dial up http://www.scribefire.com.

Technorati Tags: scribefire, blogging, blog editors

[design] How To Become An Online Designer Plenty Quick

2386.

Pariah Burke, how knows more about establishing an online presence than most people I know have forgotten, breaks it down:

1. Get a domain name
2. Install WordPress
3. Use a nifty, fashionable template

You've probably heard of the free blogging software WordPress. Thanks to the efforts of a massive community of diverse users, WordPress has grown into much more than a platform for blogging. For example, WordPress is an excellent host for easy-to-erect and easier-to-maintain portfolios. Even if you never write a blog post, you can use WordPress to get your portfolio online, in front of prospective clients, and you don't have to learn HTML, CSS, or any other Web design language.

Here's the skinny and the details: http://www.creativepro.com/article/put-your-portfolio-web-without-touching-code

Technorati Tags: business of design, design online, digital design, digital design tools, websites

[pdx] PDXBOOM!

2368.

It's all about the boom.

About 2030, 28 March 2010, The Boom happened.

Somewhere over SE Portland. Nobody knows what, or where or why yet. But it seems clear that it was over SE Portland somewhere.

The PDX Worthies on Twitter gathered under the hashtag #pdxboom and we all reported our findings, and a community map has coalesced as we all try to croudsource the source:

View PDXBOOM in a larger map

For years to come, you'll remember where you were ... When The Boom Happened. And maybe someday, we'll know what caused it.

[bloggage] Blogger Template Designer – Template Design for You, Me, and Everyone We Know At Last?

2344.

Well, that's what I certainly hope.

While most of my friends and the cool kids find themselves blogging on WordPress and suchlike, with all thier awesome cusomizability, I've stayed with Blogger because it's comfortable, forgiving, and familiar. I customize the front page of this blog to the limit I feel comfortable doing so.

The problem with taking it to the next level with Blogger is the template code. I've programmed in Pascal, Euphoria, even Lisp, but this is what I call abstruse! No insult intended to the Blogger developers, of course, it works and I don't have to fret about it and that's what I want. But what I also wanted is a way to take my customization even further, to bring this to some level where it's completely different.

Well, Blogger in Draft (which I've made my dashboard home in order so as not to keep missing the nifty as it happens) has a new thing – Blogger Template Designer, which looks like it will abstract the Blogger template design process to a new, more friendly level. Right up my street, I'd say:

We’ve added a fair bit to Blogger over the years, but one thing that’s been constant for some time has been our collection of templates. While a number of talented designers around the web have offered their own fresh and interesting designs that you can apply to your Blogger blog, our stock set has grown a bit stale, and you’ve noticed. You let us know — in the forums, on Twitter, sitting next to us on airplanes, even from across the counter at a Harvard Square stationary store, and we’ve been listening.

Today we’re taking a big first step in improving not just our template designs, but all the ways that you can customize the look and layout of your blog.

So a lot of us, myself included, are going to be poking around in Template Designer over the near term and seeing what we can come up with. The possiblities certainly seem exciting, and an amazing, visually exciting browserscape just might happen.

Or maybe everything will start to look like MySpace. I sure hope not, that!

Oh, I'm just woolgatherthing – this is some pretty nifty stuff, and I'm going in there with the big crayon to be sure.

One other thing: if you create a new template, tweet about it with the hashtag #newbloggertemplate, and Blogger might feature yours some time.

• Visit: http://bloggerindraft.blogspot.com/2010/03/blogger-template-designer.html at the Blogger in Draft blog to get the whole rundown and skinny and slim shady and all that thing there.

Technorati Tags: blogger, blogspot, blogger in draft, blog design, web design

[blog] My Illustrations – A Victim Of My Own Popularity

2258.My hit count (as measured by SiteMeter) per day has been trending upward, which is satisfying to me even if a great deal of them are search hits (though I do get niftyness from Twitter these days). I imagine that it has something to do with the footprint my blog is making – the more I post about the things I care about the more like-mindeds are likely to find me.

Unfortunately, since I'm still poor, I depend on free services to host my images. Photobucket served me very well for a long time but even at my trending-upwards-but-still-modest traffic, I'm now running into a problem I never thought I'd have – in particular here, the 10 MB monthly bandwidth limit Photobucket imposes.

So, as time goes on, I"m shifting my illustration host to Picasa, which makes sense in as much as this blog his hosted by Blogger and the Picasa web interface is cleaner and more intuitive than Photobucket's anyway.

So, if you come here on a search and you get the Photobucket redline graphic, shoot me an email and I'll relocate the graphic. I'm getting to them as I can, assisted by Photobucket's Stats suite.

Technorati Tags: blog, administration, photobucket, free image hosting