Posts in category "blogging"

Choose domain name which is taken. Choose another domain name.

Sign-up with Dreamhost despite recent bad press. All the other hosting providers look similar and all have supporters and critics and, to be fair, Dreamhost were quickest (and most helpful) to reply to a simple technical enquiry.

Payment processing takes a long, long time which is a little disconcerting.

Install WordPress 2.0.4 using One-Click installation. Shortly receive email stating 'Blog creation failed. Please try again later' which is worrying.

Repeat installation of WordPress which is successful.

Export existing blog from WordPress.com into XML.

Import XML into a local installation of WordPress 2.1 alpha (includes all comments).

Import XML into new blog. Everything imported successfully apart from the comments.

Install TechSailor plugin. Delete some posts with comments and repeat complete import. Existing posts are skipped and import includes comments for some posts but not others.

Delete complete WordPress installation, recreate mySQL database and empty blog.

Install TechSailor again. Import XML which works fast and without error. All posts, all comments, all categories are present. In fact, everything is intact.

Change theme to the stunning Barthelme which was the main reason for all this effort.

Upgrade Barthelme to the latest version (1.2.2).

Notice that the 'About' page wasn't imported and recreate.

Change permalink format to include name/date as used on WordPress.com.

Install widget support and configure sidebar widgets.

Activate Akismet plug-in (needs WordPress API key).

Install Google Analytics tracking code.

Stake my claim on Technorati.

Respond to amusing comment accusing me of blatant plagiarism.

Delete WordPress blog. Suddenly realise I didn't put up a closing redirect entry. Oh well.

Put kettle on.

Someone ripped my blog off. And it looks better than mine. Thats it. Its over. Finished. Goodbye.

There I was - teetering on the precipice of getting my own domain name, a hosted blog, Website, anonymous FTP server, message board, Wiki and countless other stuff I would never use.

A fully hosted solution (with unlimited bandwidth) on a Linux platform, the bleeding edge versions of mySQL, Apache, PHP and WordPress, a 'control panel', SSH and the prospect of sharing my wonderful set of feeds to my adoring public using Gregarius.

The domain I had set my heart on was 'www.mrbrightside.com'. When I went to buy it, I discovered to my disgust that someone (a female in Doncaster) currently had control of this domain.

I didn't even know idiots speculated on domain names so this was a terrible shock but this article was most useful. Then fate smiled upon me to overcome this minor setback.

When I consulted the 'whois' entry, I found that the domain had recently expired. On 16 September 2006 to be precise. How very exciting ! This surely means I am destined to succeed after all.

All I need to do now is to wait patiently until the domain is released back to the Interweb so I can register it. The only outstanding question is whether I sign up for 1, 2 or even 10 years.

I was excited. I was confident. I started to research various hosting providers in the US and the UK. People I trusted used DreamHost and were blissfully happy with the service.

I was poised with my credit card, polling the domain name every 30 seconds. I had to take compassionate leave from work citing 'illness of someone very close to me' in this dogged pursuit of 'mrbrightside.com'.

In my spare 29 seconds, I busied myself researching the themes, plugins and applications I would be using in this brave new world.

Then, suddenly the status of 'www.mrbrightside.com' changed to 'Locked'. Apparently this means that the owner has not responded to multiple emails, phone calls and final demands to renew his interest and the release of the domain name is now imminent.

Fantastic. Only Brandon Flowers can stop me now.

Then, as always, fate intervened again but this time she wasn't smiling.

The wizzened old hag from Doncaster returned from market in Malton and finally decided to renew the domain even though it cost her more money than if she had acted two days earlier. Maybe Yorkshire folk aren't so mean, after all.

Then the blogosphere erupted, moaning about the appalling level of service provided by Dreamhost - downtime, poor support, bad communication, slow connectivity, veiled threats, termination without due cause.

Phew. What a relief. That was a narrow escape. Fate was really saving me from a disaster.

So, on reflection, I decided to take the easy option - put my wallet away and do absolutely nothing.

I subscribe to a fair number of blogs.

Some of those bloggers use Blogger (despite my WordPress evangelism).

Some of those Blogger bloggers are technical types who would normally seize any chance to play with newly announced beta software.

Curiously, not a single one of them has experimented with the recently announced Blogger beta which includes exciting new developments like 'Labels', drag'n'drop page design, private blogs (where you can be assured no-one is reading), multiple authors, additional templates, RSS feeds and 'instant' publishing.

I lie awake at night and wonder - why ?

Judy Rose has an interesting article on the importance of writing style and Paul Stamatiou also has some excellent tips on structuring blog articles.

My writing style has many flaws. At work, I have a irritating tendency to use 'padding' words that are completely worthless, superfluous and unnecessary. For example, 'It was noted that...'.

This trait was first brought to my attention by the ruthless peer QA review process which helped to reduce my deliverable documents from 78 pages to a more reasonable 12.

In my blog, I have also noticed that I tend to overuse the word 'So'.

So, I am working hard with my English teacher to eradicate these flaws but please remember that old habits die hard.

Rugby players spend a lot of time physical training Compared to other form of sports. I have read the Rugby laws mentioned on this site. Its a gripping sport which targets the grip strength and the active mindedness of a player. American football and rugby league are also primarily collision sports, but their tackles tend to terminate much more quickly. For professional rugby, players are often chosen on the basis of their size and apparent strength and they develop the skill and power over the passage of time. In modern rugby considerable attention is given to fitness and aerobic conditioning as well as basic weight training.

There really are some sick people out there.

I heard an interesting interview on Radio 5 yesterday with UK blogger, Tom Reynolds. Tom works for the London Ambulance Service and his blog is a mixture of amusing anecdotes and real-life experiences.

I really like Tom's blog title ('Random Acts of Reality'), his tagline ('Trying to kill as few people as possible'), the dry sense of humour (summary of his recent holiday) and his general writing style.

Tom started his blog in 2003 which has just been made into a book ('Blood Sweat and Tea') which is pretty remarkable.

Most definitely, one for the blogroll.

The first blog I ever saw was this one (this entry to be precise) and to be honest, I just couldnt see the point whatsoever.

Then I stumbled across Tom Kyte's blog which was relevant, interesting and sparked my interest in reading other technical (Oracle related) blogs.

Just over a year ago, I started a blog (on blogger.com). Little did I know it but WordPress.com was launched the day before.

The creation of the blog was simply a quick experiment to play around with the blogging software. Secondly I was interested to see how long it would take to get a comment on the blog from a standing start. Then I fully expected to lose interest completely.

The first comment 'Great blog!' from a German reader duly arrived after 6 weeks. Looking back, this was probably comment spam so I was lucky enough to count this as one of the first proper comments.

Initially, I thought I would produce more technical content but, to be honest, the blog is done for fun in my spare time and I think there are a wealth of more interesting, amusing subjects to write about than Oracle and Siebel. In any case, a lot of very intelligent, articulate people are already producing a raft of excellent technical blogs.

So, a year on, and much to my surprise, the blog is still going strong. I discovered that I actually enjoy writing. Maybe this is because I have to produce fairly dry technical reports as part of my job.

Over the year, there were bursts of activity (11 consecutive days in January) mainly from lonely European hotel rooms while on another occasion, inspiration dried up and my finger was poised over 'Delete this blog'.

I have made some new contacts and met up with some old friends which was also quite unexpected and welcome. Anyway, one thing's for sure; if there was no-one out there reading and occasionally commenting, I would lose all interest in blogging in isolation so thanks for reading.

And finally, please forgive my self indulgence for a moment, but here is a list of my favourite Top 10 posts from the last year:

1. A narrow escape.

Yes. That's it. After one year, the only memorable post is one written years before I even started this blog. I simply must try harder this year.

No-one ever asks me: Hey Norman, why dont you have a blogroll with 457 interesting, thought provoking sites for me to look at ?.

Firstly, while I find the reading lists of others interesting and a useful means of discovering new sources, I don't particularly want an lengthy blogroll adding yet more clutter to my (sort of) minimalist blog.

Secondly, my RSS reading lists are stored on a Netvibes server. I have separate tabs for 'Oracle', 'WordPress', 'Sport', 'News', 'Blogs', 'Tech', 'Software' and a small one called 'UK'. I would love to be able to publish these tabs and share the contents with everyone.

Ideally, I would like to publish all my Netvibes tabs somewhere which would always reflect my subscriptions. This would ensure that the lists are always up to date and reflect my current reading list so transient blogs (like World Cup 2006) and dead blogs would be removed.

Netvibes has a ecosystem for sharing resources but I am not quite sure whether this does precisely what I want. If I wasn't so lazy, I might investigate further.

One thing I like about Bloglines is the tight and seamless integration of the 'My Feeds' reading list with the Bloglines blog. The blogroll on the Bloglines blog is always synchronised with the Bloglines reading list. Automatically. No need to think about it. No need to export your OPML and upload it (again). Bloglines manages this for you. OK - it was the only thing I liked about my Bloglines blog but still.

This is exactly how it should be and what Share Your OPML is sadly lacking. Share Your OPML has some promising features for popular and common feeds, feed discovery, recommendations and match making. However, while I can share my feeds on Share Your OPML, this is merely a static, outdated list.

The onus is on me to remember to do something i.e. export my reading list from my current RSS reader and upload a modified OPML file at recurring, regular intervals.

This is a lot of tedious work for me to do. Computers are much better at this sort of stuff than humans. We are in 2006 and using Web 2.0 after all. Finally, please remember that I am very, very lazy.

So, that's why I don't have a blogroll.

A trawl across the blogosphere revealed that hardly anyone, with any sense, hosts a blog at Yahoo 360 or Bloglines which is very surprising indeed.

Or maybe not.