Category: meta

I came up with an idea this morning to help make my blog entries easier to sort. Of course, this may end up being a bad idea that gets dropped, but I’m going to try it out for awhile and decide if I like it or not.

The idea is keywords placed at the bottom of each entry, with each keywords linked to a search query for my domain. In theory anyway it should make it easy to find all related entries on a specific topic.

Search keywords: meta

Update: This lasted for a few months but I’ve gone back and removed the search query’s from all other posts except this one.

I’m switching my comment provider to blogger, so for the next while please excuse any weirdness with the blog / comments.

Update: The new comments are up and running – though it’s still pretty sketchy. For now I’m keeping the old comments enabled in the archives. We’ll see how long I keep them.

I think more blogs should have trackbacks. What is a trackback you ask? Well the Wikipedia defines it as a system “that alerts and allows bloggers to see who has blogged about his or her posts on his or her blog. The system works by sending a ‘ping’ between the blogs, and there[by] providing the alert.”

In other words it’s a nice way to keep up with what other bloggers are saying about your posts. So far, I haven’t had any trackbacks (except for the ones I pinged myself), maybe that should tell me something. Anyway there’s a possibility that it’s just because not enough people know how to use trackbacks. I want you to know, though, it’s easy to ping a trackback – and you don’t even need to have trackbacks on your site.

The process goes something like this (assuming the trackback is from Haloscan): You read something on someone’s site that you would also like to write about. You then write a post on the same topic on your own site. Now you want to add a trackback, so you just copy the trackback link from the other persons site to the clipboard and ping it at Haloscan. To do that, first you must login to Haloscan and secondly Click on “Manage Trackback” in the navigation bar. There you can click on “Send a Trackback Ping”. Fill out the pertinent data like the URL to ping (the one on your clipboard) and your permanent link URL and then your trackback will be on its way. It sounds a lot more complicated than it is. Really.

Haloscan has a graphical tutorial, but in the meantime here is a list of other sites that also support trackback pings:

• Bloxsom
• Blojsom
• Movable Type
• Radio Userland

Update: I got rid of the trackbacks. The problem with trackbacks is that they allow comment spammers or in this case trackback spammers to change the content of your site without your permission. I had tons of trackbacks on my stairway to heaven page and many of them were unrelated and, for whatever reason, that just really bothers me.

The XML Feed for the site is now up and running thanks to Blogger’s Atom Feed. I just downloaded Macromedia Central to use as my news aggregator. I really like it so far except for the fact that some of the weather and movie features only work around your zip code and not around a postal code. Hopefully they update it for us Canadians, but in the meantime I’ll stick with it because it’s sweet.

Update: I’m now using Mozilla Firefox with Sage XML reader. It really IS sweet.

Update March 2025: I’m now using this RSS 2.0 Feed.

My first post on the new blog. I intend this to be a place where I can post and not have to worry about editorial censorship.

Update: I’m bringing some of my older posts from the last blog here. It’s a lot bigger job than I had imagined; hence the reason it is taking so long to do it.

I sent out a mass email telling some of my friends about the blog and the new flash movie that I completed. I remember some of them asked me to update them if I ever finished it, and as for the others that didn’t know about it? Well you can enjoy now. Please don’t be shy – share your comments. I’m getting a lot faster at making these flash movies, and who knows, maybe I’ll even get “good” at it one day. Thanks for visiting.