You an find out more at Captcha From ProtectWebForm. I7m using the Smart CAPTCHA to make it easier for everyone, usually I can’t read other systems.
Since I set up my blog with different software and on a professional server, I’m more inclined to bore you all with my tirades. I haven’t become cured of my MS but there are things in the works that make me feel positive about the future. I’m not going to bore you with details but I’ll sneak on you with what’s going on or I’ll just bore you until you beg for mercy.
I believe in having a photoblog so that my friends and remote family can stay connected to me in some way. My past efforts have met with mixed results and the pages were too much work to maintain, I think I finally found a compromise. I first thought of using a web site that I can put my photos safely, www.flickr.com, and a plug in for this web page that can get the photos from flickr without fuss.
New design and hardware for my blog, I needed to find a design and stay with it. I like this design so if aren’t any villagers storming the castle entrance I’ll stay with this design for awhile. The site is hosted at godaddy which has good rates but why does the the banner at the top of the page from godaddy say “This page is hosted free, does that entitle me to a refund ’cause I paid something for this. I installed my own blogging software on godaddy ’cause the “free” blog software from godaddy is crap.
Now now on to real life …
A few things got started this week. Bad and good like usual. The bad is about my health, I was told by a eye specialist that since the problem with my eyes fluctuate that any serious repair would be useless since there was a good chance the work would be useless. Time to wait for the money for stem cells. Which brings me to the good, the wife and I had a meeting with the folks that would make our product. We’ll start our first business!!! Well the first step at least but a million mile march starts with a single first step. I found a hospital in China that will give me umbilical cord stem cells. Not a cure but hopefully will reset the damage to my nerves so that my legs an eye to return to the state they were in before my body started attacking itself. I know what to do now so if damage begins anew I’ll be ready for it.
Since my successful return I’ve been busy on this site. Never mind the revamped design here, I’ve recently re-added the photoblog to this site. I’m staying with my thinking and getting someone to ensure uptime (too much work). The photoblog is <a href=”http://www.vazdotpic.741.com”>here</a> and I added a few pics from my last trip to the US. The design is also changed so if you’ve got something intelligent to say I’ll comment on it, good or bad. Unintelligent and I won’t comment but since I don’t censor it will probable end up on the site. Take …
With this new functionality you can type your full email address into the text box (marked “Email Address”) then click on the button to automatically have your email inserted into the database. After being inserted into the database you will be notified on new entries to this blog. I will try to only send notifications when I think I’ve added something worth reading (not that I think everything here is not worth reading).
My position on spam: I hate the stuff. I have tried many tricks to avoid spam and would not subject anyone to spam, either directly or indirectly. The choice is yours of course to send me your email, I pledge that I will not divulge your email on pain of death (OK, let’s not get carried away).
If you would like to be removed from the notification list, please email me at webmaster@vazdot.net with the subject line reading “Remove”, in the body of the mail please include in the body the email address to be removed.
This page was completely whacked (more so than now). My first thought was that I had been hacked. I felt violated, abused then I felt kinds of proud. Some cracker (not to be confused with hacker, cracker - bad, hacker - good) took the time to hack MY site, wow. After I got over that sick masochist feeling I tried to solve the problem as fast as I could. After checking the template and the page itself I found the problem. I hadn’t been hacked, no one actually reads this page except you. I learned that XHTML can be very unforgiving if you don’t match things properly. I had updated one entry and to my dismay I had entered class=’spanking”. That’s bad. what is correct is class=”spanking”. I’ll be more care full in the future.
This is a little HowTo to demonstrate how you can use your Moveable Type Personal Publishing program to maintain links. This is so obvious now that I hesitate to do a write-up for this hint but as I miss the obvious maybe you do also. The big advantage is that once everything is setup to add a link for you readers it is a simple matter of adding an entry, the same is true for editing a link.
First requirement is that you have MT setup and running on a computer acting as your web server. After which you download and install the FilterCategories plugin. MT can do limited filtering but not enough for my purposes. You can get the plugin and view the documentation here.
1. Tell MT to generate Category Archives.
Go into your Blog Config screen and open the Archiving portion of the configuration. Click the box next to Category (not under the Del column) and click the SAVE button.
2. Add categories
Got to the category screen and add the category “links”. This is were we will be keeping the links. Add any other categories for your blog now. You will have to categorize all of your entries from now to keep you site working.
3. Edit your template
For the main body of your MT tags for your entries add:
<MTCategories>
<MTFilterCategories exclude=”links”>
<MTEntries lastn=”5″>
…
</MTEntries>
</MTFilterCategories>
</MTCategories>
This will prevent your links (any entry of the prior defined links category) for adding an entry in your
For the links to show up your page add:
<MTCategories lastn=”10″>
<MTFilterCategories include=”links”>
<MTEntries><$MTEntryBody$><br /></MTEntries>
</MTFilterCategories>
</MTCategories>
Add the formating to fit into your style.
4. Add your entries
In the Entry body of a new entry add your link, <a href=”url”>URL Name</a>, under the links category you added early. Do not check off the various options available and save as a Draft. Next go into the Edit Entry screen and click on the Power Editing mode. Publish each of the links and save. It is important to add a category to each of your entries now for the entry to show on your Blog.
5. Rebuild the site
Just added some commentary to my PhotoBlog for South Korea. It’s just an intro piece but with all the stuf happening between Japan and the two Koreas it may be interesting in the future. Then again it’s from me so you can take that last comment with a grain of salt 8^).
I haven’t written anything that comes close to being a mission statement for this weblog. I’m not sure why I should even call it a mission statement but it does sound important, nor is a requirement for a weblog or for any document, but I will feel better with a definition in place. I will attempt to write this definition today. A statement that describes what this weblog is attempting to accomplish, to create, and/or to add to our collective conscience. This weblog, this spot on the ‘net, is for me to get some writing practice. It is to announce to friends and family that I am alive and probably in need of money. This site is to experiment with having a conversation with complete strangers on my forum.
Writing
The best way to improve writing skills is to write (I read that somewhere). It seems that the last time I did writing from a creative angle was when I was in high school, many years ago. I do some writing in my job but those are technical reports, bound by the constraints of a technical report. In high school I enjoyed writing book reports, short stories, and just free flowing thoughts onto paper. Ah paper, those were the good old days. In the old days I remember using paper and not having a software program correcting every spelling error I made. I made 3 errors just typing that sentence. With much needed practice I may be able to cut that statistic down to 2 errors (yes, I dream big). With practice I may be able to hold a thought for more than a paragraph. With practice I may improve my poor typing skills to the level I had in my days in the army. 40 wpm is not great but it’s better than my present -5 wpm (yes I’m actually erasing years of past work). With practice this may get easy.
Family and friends
I have a few. I have immediate family in the US (New Jersey and Florida). I have friends in New Jersey, in Japan, even in Singapore. Instead of trying to keep in touch with everyone (which I’m very bad at), I can keep this site and update it with news and notes and put the burden of responsibility on their shoulders to keep up with me. Yes it is the easy way out but I am in favor of the “easy way”. If someone asks me, “Do you want the easy way or the hard way?” I take the easy way every time; I’m just like that. That is in total disagreement with my mother who thinks I take the hard way every time, or is that my girlfriend? If you are wondering to yourself, “Does he need money?” Not for anything important but if you want to contribute there’s the donate button. That’s only there to help subsidize my Internet connection. In Japan ADSL is cheap, maybe the cheapest in the world but it ain’t free.
Conversations
This is a bit of an odd feeling. Talking to a word processor program about whatever is on my mind at the moment. This is while I know that everyone is looking over my shoulder. I figure that if I can keep the conversation pointed at one person then everyone that reads this will think they’re the one person. In actuality the one person I’m writing this to is my evil twin. Raul. If I speak in soothing tones to Raul (and he reads this page) then he stays quite and won’t make a fool of me. He has dressed in a gorilla costume and chased people at the zoo and worse. It’s always difficult to explain to the police that it wasn’t me but my evil twin Raul. No, no Raul, it’s ok, these people don’t want to hurt you. They’re your friends. NO Raul, not the gorilla costume, don’t put it back on, stop Raul, stop…
A promise
I am grateful for the opportunity to grace your web browser and I will try to maintain some modicum of integrity as I vomit my mental rambling to your screen. In fact I will go so far as to try to respect your screen and not to lie or cheat you in any way (and keep the vomit to a minimum). Thank you for your time and I hope this will be a long friendship between us.
