Blog in Isolation

There is a radiant darkness upon us

Posts

7 habits of highly ineffectual bloggers

  1. Describing your state of mind. I really don’t care whether you are happy, sad, somewhere in between or suicidal because your girlfriend dumped you.

  2. Describing your state of health. I really don’t want to read about your flu like symptoms, your hangover, your runny nose or your migraine headache. Otherwise you will give me one.

  3. Telling me what music you are listening to. You like your music. I like my music. We may share some common interests but it really doesn’t matter.

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Blogger down

Apologies to all you Oracle Bloggers.

Excessive traffic levels to my new Web journal on Blogger appears to have breached the ’tipping point’ and tipped it right over the edge.

Blogger is unavailable (again). Two nights running. Hmm.

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Recently I Gave Birth To A Blog

…and it really hurt.

I continue to be intrigued by this article (I have now read it 67 times and still can’t make any sense of it whatsoever). I simply love the title so I thought I would blatantly plagiarise it. I also adore the Anonymous comments of ‘Not bad’ and ‘Nice job’. Damned with faint praise.

Anyway, my shiny new blog in question is over here. Before you gleefully note that I have finally seen the light and have reverted to Blogger, this is simply an experiment to look at the Google Analytics dashboard and various detailed traffic reports. [GA requires Javascript which precludes its use on WordPress.com]. Inevitably, after a separation of six months, Blogger was sulking and unavailable last night.

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blankety blank - World Cup Special

Another in this occasional but very popular series:

‘I am doing this in the best interests of Rooney, the England team and 40 million England fans’ - Sven Goran Eriksson

…and Alex Ferguson and Manchester United fans can just cross their fingers and hope.

Still, I am looking forward to this TV program tonight.

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don't talk to strangers

There’s nowt as queer as folk. I could maintain a blog purely on search terms leading to this dark recess of the blogsphere.

For example: ‘Urinals With a View at Stockholm Airport’

Worryingly, Stockholm is precisely where I am heading next week. Thankfully this time, I will be leaving the confines of the airport complex. I think I will abstain from all fluid intake prior to the flight, cross my legs and wait until I get to the hotel.

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Google Browser Sync

What could be worse than forgetting to bookmark the obscure page you found that maps out the perfect walking tour of Venice ?

Well I can think of one thing. Going on a lovely, romantic weekend city break and getting lost (and wet) in the narrow backstreets of Venice. Then I eventually find an Internet cafe but am horrified to discover that the computer is locked down and I can’t install Google Browser Sync. My wife would be absolutely livid.

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Blogger does something shock

A modern, standards compliant RSS feed. Whatever next. Let’s hope people take this opportunity to switch to a full feed.

Odd to compare Google’s relative inactivity with all the features, languages, statistics, themes and functionality added to WordPress in the last six months.

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Google Spreadsheets

Inevitably, Google enters the online spreadsheet market to provide competition for ThinkFree. No charts (yet) and limited invite only but it’s coming.

As an aside, I don’t use Excel much. My kids are much more proficient at producing pretty, colourful pie charts and histograms than me.

However, I also find it quite staggering that many sensible, intelligent adults spend their lives in Microsoft Excel. A gentleman once emailed me a spreadsheet and I hunted high and low across all tabs for any relevant table data, pretty charts and forumlae.

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history of Oracle

A couple of people stumble across this blog searching for the ‘History of Oracle’ but ultimately go away disappointed.

For those people, there is a brief but interesting timeline (covering 1977 to 2001) detailing the development of Oracle Corporation in this freely available screensaver available from Club Oracle.

The screensaver is the one titled ‘Oracle Defining Moments - 25 Years of Technology Innovation’.

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