March 31st, 2009
So, a while back I turned on comment moderation, because the blog was receiving tons of spam. This has stopped the visible spam completely of course, but I still get tons of it every day.
Wordpress also allows you to block posts that have certain strings in their url, email, subject, or body as well. Adding a few things like .ru, and some other common spam URL bits, I have cut it down to almost nothing. Unfortunately now all I have to deal with seems to be male enhancement pill posts.
Categories: Tech |
Tags: blog matters | No Comments
January 8th, 2009
Has been turned on for new posters. It sucks too. I don’t have very many commenters, and now I have to do this to try to combat the freaking spammers. Hopefully any new commenters will understand.
They spammers found my blog I guess, as it has gotten worse, and worse over the last couple of weeks. You few guys that comment here regulary should not notice a difference.
If you are a new commenter your comments will not appear until I approve the first one.
HANG ALL SPAMMERS!
Categories: Tech |
Tags: blog matters | No Comments
December 3rd, 2008
Well, Kim du Toit has emptied out his virtual inkwell, and quit blogging. Kim and Chris Byrne were my biggest inspirations to start a blog myself. While I did not always agree with Kim and Connie, their very well written arguments where always something to be respected.
This is one blog that I will personally miss a lot.
Categories: Life, Tech |
Tags: blog matters | No Comments
December 3rd, 2008
So Borepatch graciously chose me as one of his five bloggers to participate in a fun little endeavor, and I ungraciously missed it completely. What an ass!
It is the bookworm award, and the rules are as follows:
Pass it on to five other bloggers, and tell them to open the nearest book to page 56. Write out the fifth sentence on that page, and also the next two to five sentences. The CLOSEST BOOK, NOT YOUR FAVORITE, OR MOST INTELLECTUAL!
Having been caught at work with this, my entry will be very boring. The only book on my desk is a well-worn copy of Dynamic HTML - The Definitive Reference. So here goes.
In deciding among the many ways to introduce style sheets into your pages-the style tag, the style attribute, or imported from outside the document-you need to consider how important it is for you to separate design from content. The style tag technique distances HTML content from the styles associated with elements throughout the document. If you need to change a font family or size for a particular kind of element, you can do so quickly and reliably by making the change to one location in the document.
Boring!
So on to my five bloggers. This is funny, as there are probably not five people that read my blog. It might be wrong to re-tag those that have already participated, so here are three that have not to my knowledge, and they are three very worthy individuals.
Dirtcrasher
TheIrritableArchitect
Rivrdog
Categories: Books, Life |
Tags: blog matters | 4 Comments
December 3rd, 2008
Hopefully my few readers have not given up on me. There has been a brief hiatus from blogging tied into the Thanksgiving holiday, and being very busy at work. Regular posting will resume now. I have a couple of book reviews to work on, and have some thoughts about Obama’s cabinet picks and such. I have completed Hemingway’s great A Farewell to Arms, and will review it in the next few days. The order of the reading list has been officially thrown overboard. Reading something from the list, that interested me was more important than strictly adhering to the order, which had been my previous intention.
There has been an intentional avoidance, on my part, of all things political for the last couple of weeks. The election is over, and we our all waiting to see what President Obama is going to do. Hopefully my assumptions about him will be proven wrong, and all will be well. This is doubtful based on his history, but we shall see.
There is also almost a feeling of ‘post-politicism’ within me. This is no doubt just an internal valve being turned down, so that my soul will survive all that has gone wrong in the last few months for those of us that oppose higher taxes, and more nanny government. Having lost the first election that I really cared about, I find myself wanting to ignore the whole mess. President Bush’s two elections were the first that I participated in, and having won both of them, this new defeat was quite a shock. As a country-loving American my feelings are not sustainable, so surely this disgust at the whole prospect will fade soon. It could be a couple of months, or five minutes. Time will tell.
Categories: Life, Politics |
Tags: blog matters | No Comments
November 4th, 2008
Blogging is a big challenge for me. Most of the time my desire is to create something interesting for my few readers to enjoy. Some posts, such as embedded videos are used to make a point, or to pass on an interesting tidbit of information.
There are no illusions in my head however, that this blog will ever become “popular”. There just is not enough talent in my writing, or time to devote to realizing such an endeavor. What is the goal then? First, of course, the goal is to reach out to my fellow man, and specifically my fellow citizens with similars interests. Secondly, there is a great hope that these words will hold some value to my offspring when I part ways with this world.
Beyond those two ideas, the greatest desire I have, is to improve my writing skills. One thing that “I” constantly do, is use the pronoun “I” way to often. It is irritating, and is a crutch. In this endeavor to convey one’s experience, much of the story-telling is written in first person. This leads me to start every sentence with what I am doing, or what I think.
This link should be helpful in beating back this great impediment to my writing style. Our Creator has not blessed me with eloquence, so I have to learn to fake it.
Categories: Life |
Tags: blog matters | 2 Comments
October 16th, 2008
Welcome to the new home of my Guns and Guts blog. My wife and I decided to start up a family website recently. The host had the ability to use Wordpress, so I decided to move my blog off of Blogger. While I get used to Wordpress and learn more about its abilities things will probably change around here quite a bit. I hope that my few readers will continue to check out the space.
After considering importing my old content, I decided to just start fresh here. The old Blogger blog will remain up indefinitely. I will be adding a link in the template over there to this new blog. Most of my little bit of traffic, comes from Google searches, so if the reader is interested in learning more, they will be able to follow me here.
A few things will be copied over here. This will include my book posts and my “Guns That I Own” series.
If you have me in your blogroll please update it to point this new site. I appreciate all of you that link to my little blog, and thank you all for reading it. I have learned a lot from all of you.
There are several other reasons for my switch to a privately-hosted blog. I don’t like the idea of Google owning my content, or relying on them for hosting. Their anti-freedom policies in China turn me off. The blogger software was also pretty limited. I am excited to explore all that Wordpress has to offer. There is a huge community of people that are doing work on it across the globe.
I now have the ability to back up my content and go somewhere else if need be. I can run this blog from home if I want in the future, or at another host. There is little doubt that we freedom-loving gun bloggers may be squeezed during an Obama administration. The likelihood of them every getting to little ‘ol me is slim, but why not be prepared. We should all be prepared to get our voices out in the event something like that happens, even if we are only talking to ourselves. 
Categories: Tech |
Tags: blog matters, blogger | No Comments
October 15th, 2008
Wow, I have a lot to learn. Wordpress is awesome, but very complicated. So far I am really, really liking it. Blogger was OK, but its capabilities are lacking compared to this software. Most of the items in my sidebar are widgets, which is great because I don’t have to code anything for them to work. The only problem I have run into is you can only have one “links” widget, which I am using for my blogroll right now. So, I am either going to have to settle with that, find a different widget to use, or kick it old school.
The interface for Wordpress is very well refined. I have been able to figure out a lot very quickly. If anyone else is thinking about making the jump to a privately hosted blog, I would recommend it so far.
Categories: Tech |
Tags: blog matters | 2 Comments
