Alphabetical List of My Most-Visited Websites

Here's a stereotypical apology blog post, referencing the lack of recent blog posts, which only further highlights the lack of blog postings. At the moment, there are only three live posts for the last year. That's current, but it might change. A peak under the hood shows that there are often blog drafts that get saved but not published. You can see that over the life of this site, I've got 974 posts saved but just slightly more than half actually published. I often have a seed of an idea to share so I save a quick one- or two-line note on the idea.

Let's pad things up a bit. Here's a fun experiment. Over the last year, I've been thinking about the detritus of my Internet history and found it might tell you a lot about what I browse through in my spare time. I use Google Chrome right now and my browser will bring up a suggested domain with the entry of just one letter. So here with no particular apology or emphasis are the alphabetical list of what comes up first for each letter. Some of these sites I like very much and would recommend. Some of them are just practical. None of these are work-related, as I use a different browser profile for work. Note that some of these may not be safe for work, so you've been warned.

1. Amazon.com - We have a prime account, watch prime video and do quite a bit of online shopping here. We bought nearly all of our Christmas gifts this year online. That being said, as a company Amazon is lead by a rich oligarch I'd personally toss into the sea given the chance. I could rant about this for a while, but the recent trend of wealthy assholes playing astronaut while the world suffers makes me ill. There's some hypocritical actions here, buying from a company that I am so uncomfortable with. But I'm fully in support of government action against the company. Me personally boycotting any one company won't make that much of a difference.

   Second to Amazon, the most-frequently visited sites that start with "A" include some I own:

   • Arconati.us - A wiki for our family tree
   • Arconati.net - A 'news' blog about our family
   • Arconati.name - under construction
2. So... pretty early here we run into a webcomic that I follow for it's story and artwork, but the content is very much pornographic in nature 99% of the time. Not too worried to admit that, but I won't link it here. Instead, I'll link the second runner-up, Blogger.com. Obviously that's the blog software I use to publish this site and quite a number of others. I'm kind of on the fence about recommending it as a platform, as Wordpress seems much more likely to receive consistent development. Perhaps someday I'll migrate permanently, especially if Google ever drops the platform. I'm still bitter about Google Music.

   Here's a few of my other blogger blogs, besides this one.

   • Quotes Archive
   • Arconati Comedy Awards
   • Arconati Kid Korner

   Some runners-up for the "B" category...

   • Build-A-Bear Workshop, Inc - Where I work currently.
   • BibSonomy - A nerdy social bookmarking tool that I've been playing with for a while as a del.icio.us replacement.
3. Google Calendar - For a while now, in our family, we have been using a shared calendar to organize events and work schedules. Did I mention that both my older kids have jobs now? So keeping track of who is going to be where has been much easier with a shared digital calendar.
   • A runner-up for this list is CNN.com, which is one of a few trusted news sources I turn to when called for.
4. d20MONKEY by Brian Patterson - Here is another webcomic I followed very closely for a long time. This comic was largely about Dungeons & Dragons, and a gaming group of friends and their various interactions both in and out of game. The final post in the story was published late in 2020, but I have still returned here to catch up with the story from the beginning, read about some of Brian's homebrewed material and to await the next story called Innsmouth Garden Society.

   There are a number of other Dungeons & Dragons related domains that come up in the list for "D" here that I should mention.

   • D&D Beyond - a great site for D&D 5e players to create characters, campaigns, and encounters. I've been using this for all the games I've been running lately and it's just great.
   • donjon; RPG Tools - another great site with a bunch of D&D tools for game masters to help randomly generate character names, monster encounters, maps, and treasure.
   • 5etools - This one is a secret treasure trove.
   • The Hypertext d20 SRD - and one more great RPG site, although this one has fallen down the list a bit with some of the others I frequent more often.

   Also coming up for "D"...

   • Google Drive
5. Example Domain - This is an example site, but I use it more often than you might think to test just about anything from my browser to my network connection.
6. Fantasy Name Generators is another site I use often for Dungeons & Dragons, to come up with a quick list of character names very quickly. And there are generators for different species and different themes. Do you need ten Ewok Names from Star Wars? How about Legendary Creatures based on the names of real-world legends? Or how about Maiar Names from Lord of the Rings?
7. Gmail tops this list, but coming in a close second is another webcomic I've followed for the longest time. It's also based on D&D and it's called Order of the Stick, hosted on Giant in the Playground Games. It follows the adventures of a stick figure band of adventurers out to save the world.
8. How Many Days Until Star Wars? was a website I visited often to see the latest countdown to whatever was going to be the next Star Wars movie in the saga. I first learned about it back before Episode VII, then watched it closely for Rogue One, Solo and Episodes VIII and XI (not necessarily in that order). It appears the domain is no longer serving a countdown timer anymore, replaced with a generic "coming soon" message. That may be because there are no current plans for a full-length Star Wars film, only short-form shows and shorts on Disney+ for the moment. There ARE rumors of upcoming projects that will be developed, but no release dates yet.
9. Imgur - Here's one of the few social media sites I still enjoy. Kind of an anonymous image/gif/video sharing site, very much started as a quick way to share images on Reddit. It's just a fun place to see new images every day, funny and irreverant.
10. JustWatch - The Streaming Guide - This is a great site if you have multiple streaming sites and would like to watch a particular film that occurs to you, but you aren't sure what streaming site it might be available on. If you create an account and set your preferences for the streaming services you do have, you can get immediate search results specific to you.
11. Google Keep - My favorite note keeping app, connected with my Google account. You can make shopping lists, idea lists, long form notes, capture photos, draw doodles, all kids of stuff. It connects with your email, calendar, Google appliances, and so on.
12. LinkedIn - Another social media site. LinkedIn is a professional profile site and for the most part avoids a lot of the issues of other sites. I visit infrequently enough that I'm surprised to see it come up first. Since I've been off of Facebook for so long, this is the only way I keep in touch with former coworkers. I've also been doing a bit of networking with other musicians more recently so that's fun.
13. Twitter - And one more social media site, which comes up next for it's mobile.twitter.com subdomain. I dumped the Twitter app off my phone but kept browsing to the mobile site. It turns out the mobile version was also "better" at the time in desktop browser so I stuck with it. Nowadays I can't tell the difference visibily, but I keep typing 'M' when I want to check out Twitter.

    Any more 'M' sites?

    • Musescore.com - A sheet music repository as well as a great composition/arranging tool. I've use Musescore for a while now, but I've been using it lately for arranging band music.
14. NPR - One of my favorite news sites these days. Back when I was commuting to work and Reese was driving me, so she could have the car, we would often listen to and discuss the topics on the 1A show. I now listen to the show occasionally through the podcast app in Spotify.
15. Reddit - What can I say? I like Reddit despite the toxic reputation it sometimes has. This one comes up for the old.reddit.com subdomain, which I prefer on desktop. I used to have an account that I used, but now I just browse the frontpage as a guest.
16. Pinterest is a surprise, since I don't think that I visit this site very often. I save inspirational ideas for gaming, fantasy maps and music reference stuff.
17. Questionable Content is another webcomic I follow regularly. It's about a bunch of 30-somethings living in New England. It's modern day, except there are robots everywhere and there are a few other subtle differences because of that.
18. Reddit comes up next, and I browse the front page on my phone. On desktop I prefer the old.reddit.com as it's more my speed. Again, I stopped using my actual account years ago, but still browse as a guest. Pretty sure it's not a place I'd recommend to a lot of people, as it can be a shithole. Perhaps I should take my own advice? A second "R" site is another adult-rated webcomic, which I won't be linking to.
19. I use Craigslist sometimes (which comes up for "S" because of stlouis.craigslist.org), searching for a good deal on a used trombone or marvelling at the free stuff people attempt to give away.
    • Additionally, Spotify comes in second for "S" in my browser.
20. Tumblr was the first social network my kids wanted to join. Strike that, Reese wanted a MySpace page from a very young age, but we said 'no' for so long that she eventually gave up. When she was old enough for an online account, we suggested Facebook but she wanted Tumblr. Which I had no experience with. So I signed up for Tumblr just to have a way to monitor what the kids were doing. After a while, I started to really like it so it's become something I check daily.
21. Utopia Studios, a rehearsal hall and recording studio here in St. Louis. I first learned about this place back in my Bullseye Womprats days, but I've been there a few times since then and it's nice. I don't really have much else that comes up for "U"...
22. Google Voice comes up for "V" and that's how I have my personalized cell number.
23. Woot is an online deals site that I've been a fan of since before it was a subsidiary of Amazon. I first learned of this site back in 2003 or so, and they specialized in having one special one-of-a-kind product deal for 24 hours (or until they sold out) and then they'd never have it again. Honestly, not as much of a fan since they joined the parent company. Their deals just don't seem as great.
24. xkcd is another important web-comic that I've followed for a good long time. I know I've mentioned them a number of times before. Very simple, usually one panel, stick figures, usually science related, often quirky and obscure.
25. YouTube is always good for some entertainment.
26. Zyi Li Music and Entertainment! I've recently mentioned my band MO ECHO, and of course our website comes up first for "Z". I check the site's calendar and other resources to see where I need to be, but also to keep up with the other lineups.

And that's the alphabetical list of everything that comes up in my browser suggestion box when I type in a single character. I sort of skipped numbers and special characters because most of them bring up nonsense results. Except I did include 5etools above with the "D" and other Dungeon & Dragons sites. Otherwise, these are the ones that I browse first and fastest alphabetically. I hope that was interesting.

Drafting and Blogging

I'm so meta-hipster, I've been blogging about blogging since before it was cool.

This will be my 415^th published post on this blog. There are also about 200 drafts stored in Blogger, but not finished or posted. I apparently do that a lot, although this blog has been in existence for a long while so it's not really that surprising... I wonder...

Oh wow. In ten days this blog will be ten years old! That's pretty impressive to me.

Many times an idea for a blog post will occur to me. Perhaps I'll read about something and want to respond. Or I'll want to review a movie, book or album I just got. I post the basic details and a link without really any meat to the post and save it as a draft for finishing later. But now there are a lot of unfinished posts and that bugs me. And of course, this isn't my only blog just my main one.

But it's a good problem to have. There's a lot of other things I think about for how this blog and my others are connected. Lately I've been thinking about combining things into one site to be easier to manage, despite the fact they are contextually very different.

An Honorable Mention of Mentioning People

I've blogged since 2003 or so and one of the features I've always been hassled with was how to easily link to someone else. I mean, it's very easy to use the built in link tool and simply enter the proper URL of their personal website or blog or ... whatever. But my problem is recalling the right URL. For instance, let's say I want to link to my friend Vincent Le Pes III's website. He's a musician, web developer and all-around cool guy so perhaps I want to share a link to his site. However, I always have a moment's pause here as I try and recall the exact URL of his site specifically -- www.vincentlepes.com -- since I don't go there every day and I don't have the bookmark handy. In case you don't know this, misspelling a URL can lead you down a dark path. If you don't believe me, try going to www.whitehouse.com instead of www.whitehouse.gov. Inevitably, I end up going to Vinnie's Facebook profile and then his About page. Sure, it's handy but it seems like there are too many steps. I've always wanted a shortcut of some kind. I start to type out his name (or the name of some other friend) and the Blogger tool completes it for me and adds in the link. Facebook has had a feature similar to this for their posts and comments for a few years now, so it stands to reason this is not impossible.

I didn't really notice it right away, but it would appear that Blogger has added just such a feature recently. They talk about it on Blogger Buzz and explain how this feature works with Google+ to link your friends' names at your choice to their profile. It does not escape my notice that this is their profile on the social network, which might be somewhat private or might not. But it is not linking directly to their site. Still, it's a potentially cool feature.

It's kind of funny that my second thought regarding this feature was... "I wonder how many people I can annoy with this new toy?" Suddenly this feature seems a bit dangerous. Oh well, time to put the question to the test.

Say hello and a big HAPPY NEW YEAR to Lisa Arconati, Matt Armfield, Shashi Bellamkonda, Michelle Behymer, Ian Baird, Eric Berger, Amy Bliss, Amanda C. Peterson, Andy T., Adam Hallas, Andy Scott, Ben Durnell, Eric Baggett, Brad Vonder Haar, Cale Fischer, Chris Coy, Cathy Nicol, Chris Stoddard, Shawn Duncan, Don Krutewicz, Rachel Duncan, Mike Damewood, Dave McCann, Mike DuBois, Dan Kennedy, Erin Moloney, Erin Steinbruegge, Eddie Parker, Cari Schueller, Eric Patmythes, Aaron Eversgerd, James E. Arconati, Jonathan Frazier, Fayth Kleg, Scott DuBois, Alex Foster, Matt Galligan, Gina Ronat, Gina Maness, Mike Goggin, Greg Simms, Angie Garner, Heather VanMeter, Russ Henneberry, Jerry Henderson III, Jason Kevin Hill, Ryan VanMeter, Travis Irwin, Robin Rath, Jeremy Stoeckel, Janet Lackey, Jeremy Polen, Jeremy Zhang, Jacalyn Rausch, Joseph Madden, J.D. Pohlman, Toni Phillips, Scott Kingery, Brandon Kendall, Lisa Keller, Andrea Kuehnel, Jordan Koene, Lexi Long, Stephen Lotz, Adam Lefever, Mark McCoy, Nils Rurack, Robert Noles, Nikomas Perez, Jonathan Needleman, Nathan A. Tuskey, Jayme O'Renic, Jason O, Tracy Papproth, Mark Page, Robert Amos, Sparky Walkup, Tracy Papproth, Tolga Tanriseven, Tony Mast, Josh Brink, Valerie Starr, Wain W, Timothy Yow, Jeremy Zhang ...

Note: As I go through this process, these listings are showing up in alpha order, but sometimes by first name and sometimes by last name,.. and sometimes by email address? With this setup, I'm likely to have listed someone twice... Errrk! Usability fail!

Also notable are a few folks who don't 'technically' have Google+ profiles, but I email them often enough they got invites somewhere along the line. However, if Google/Blogger allowed me to link to them here, I kept it. There were a few names that did not become links. If you see your name and you'd rather I removed you please let me know immediately!

It does occur to me that I just made a very public list of nearly all of my friends, exposing important information about me in addition to possibly exposing their information without their permission. It gets all the privacy-loving hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. I'm guessing that you all each got some sort of notification emailed to you OR posted to Google Plus OR both. Perhaps you even have to approve my link or something. Perhaps not. My intent is test the technology a bit and wish you all a sincere Happy New Year. I apologize in advance for any inconvenience. If you are mad, I owe you a beer or coffee. Let's catch up.

Blogger Says Goodbye to Full FTP Feature Support

Blogger has delivered more work for me to do for free. Thanks!

By now, this will be old news in the technology universe. But by the end of the month, Blogger will be phasing out support for blogs published over FTP. You can read more at Blogger Buzz. Previous to this change, you could use their service to host your blog at an "example.blogspot.com" address on Google's servers OR your own domain pointed at Google's servers OR published over FTP to your own hosting account. But the FTP option is going away.

There are changes and improvements internally to how they're systems work and the FTP option has always been a bit unstable and difficult to support. Too many engineering resources are being assigned to fixing these specific problems when only a small portion of the users of this free service need it. Basically, this means that they removed one optional feature used by only 0.05% of their users. This small percentage included me.

Six of the blogs that I use for different sites are posted over FTP this way. It was late at night and I was pretty tired when I found out about this. Before I cooled off and thought about it, I got a little irate trying to post constructive comments.

ArcoJedi said...

Well, I'm so very very very glad to see we finally dropped that very problematic and difficult to follow rule about "doing no evil". That's been slowing you guys down. Do I have your attention now?

I've been using Blogger since 2003. I have a mix of FTP and custom domain blogs (total on Blogger: 17) that I use for a variety of my hobbies and interests.

One of the things that I've used to my advantage is that you can post via FTP to two separate blogs into the same hosting account or even the same folder. For instance, these blogs were all in different sub-folders of the same main site:

• Friends of ArcoJedi
• Musical Holocron
• Mudhorny
• R-Quotes
• Lisa is 30!!!

Since all of these were posted with .ASP file extensions and my own includes on the back end, I got to do some more advanced stuff over the years that 'widgets' just aren't going to cover.

One of my blogs - http://arconati.net/ - is even hosted in the same site as a separate WordPress site - http://james.a.arconati.net/ - and the two do not interfere. I could have the first site also be .PHP, though it's just .HTML files right now. With your plans to drop FTP, I'm not even sure there's a way to continue what I'm doing now. Unless of course, I simply install WordPress and import all posts and be done with it.

Additionally, for clients that want a simple blog added to their existing site in a sub-directory, your FTP was a lot easier to implement than WordPress. I've got some projects on complete hold now because of your changes.

The more knowledgeable 0.5% of us who know what we are doing enough to get FTP to work and care enough to do more advanced things with the blogger tools on our own hosted sites, we are your most loyal fans. When asked the WordPress vs. Blogger question, I have always stated that they both have very valid and useful features with plenty of expansion. I have recommended Blogger just a little bit more because I simply had more experience with it and I couldn't think of anything I couldn't do with it.

Now? Yeah, not so much.

Okay, wow. That's a lot of venom considering this is a free service. I don't normally go that far, but I've loved this service and used it for ... huh, 7 years now! Has it really been that long? Well, anyway, I didn't get a response comment but I owe an apology to whomever might have had to read that poison.

The good news is that the migration tool is actually pretty promising and I can easily get five of the six blogs that this affects moved over with a minimum of effort. The last one, Arconati News, will be a little harder to somehow get migrated properly. As I mentioned above, it's posted to the same account as a separate blog powered by WordPress. I'm not sure yet how to get the DNS settings right for this to work. But I'll keep hammering away until I get the option to work.

And coming from the other side of the fence, I can understand why they need to streamline things and simplify what they can and cannot support. From their point of view, it's got to be hard to continue to support a feature that doesn't work as well as they'd like and to get it to be up to standards will require way too much development and engineering resources than they can commit to a free service.

It still stinks. That's it, I guess.

Update (2010/05/25)

I've gotten all the blogs migrated over except the last one. I've tested some settings that proved to my satisfaction that I could get it to work. I'm a little tied up with other stuff right now to finish this last one so I'll let it sit on the back burner for the time being.

ArcoJedi's Messy Stuff Central

One of the very first web sites I ever created is closing very soon. ArcoJedi's Messy Stuff Central is being forcefully shut down in a manner of speaking. I got an email at the end of September that AOL was shutting down it's 'hometown service' for good.

We're sorry to inform you that on Oct. 31, 2008, AOL® Hometown will be shut down permanently. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

I became aware of this service for the first time way back when I first used the internet post-college at home on a black-and-white-screen Macintosh II.

Do you remember those? Well, I really got into the internet beyond just email when I got home from college. Dad got me an AOL account because they were next-to-free through his work. This would have been about 1997 or so. I was working on a group project with the Dark Sun Mailing List, but lamented that I didn't really have a place to host the files. Someone suggested that I use the hosting that AOL included. I looked into it and found out that AOL subscribers (which technically included me) had 10mb of free space online at - members.aol.com/USERNAME - and I took advantage of it. What it amounted to at the completion of the project was about two dozen wordpad files (.rtf), most of which I'd written myself. They were uploaded to a folder and the server built a directory listing which I linked to for the mailing list.

Fast forward about two or three years. I'm married, a father of one and a member of a small-town garage band called Rod & the Satalites. When we lived in Quincy, Illinois at this time we didn't really have much when it came to a computer and I didn't have time for it anyhow. However, when we moved back to St. Louis, my first hobby project was to build a long overdue web site for the band. I posted pictures of the band members, short three-line bios, a few upcoming show dates and contact information. I created this all on my mom's computer using Windows 95 Microsoft Paint and Netscape Composer 4.5! Yeah, good times.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to visit back at Quincy as often as I'd hoped and I eventually stopped contact with the band members. The older free-form Dark Sun Mailing List got replaced with a more official corporate one and it wasn't much fun. They had also halted Dark Sun as a product line. My site sat dormant with few updates until probably 2003 or so. That's when I became a member of MonsterCommerce and really started learning about websites.

I wanted to create something new and was going to just use the AOL space, but it turned out to be a little difficult to manipulate without being signed into AOL at the same time so I found an alternative in the space my cable provider and earthlink made available and started work from there. Eventually those other sites became the family sites you see today with domain names and everything. But I never forgot those older projects.

So, get yourself caught up to the present day. In case you haven't noticed AOL is way down on the list of successful internet companies and is completely repurposing themselves into an entirely different animal; a content and portal provider instead of an ISP. At least, I'm surmising that is their plan. I'm not really following it all that closely. Since the hometown/journal operations don't really benefit anyone at AOL, they did the smart move and retired them. I'm honestly surprised it took them this long. At least I got wind of their warnings and saved those files. AOL also had a blog tool at one time that I tested out and they made it easy to import these blogs into Blogger.

So, my Dark Sun Net Project and Rod & the Satalites pages will have to find a new home in some archive folder somewhere. I have all of the files saved to my local computer and will probably post them somewhere, just for the sake of history. The AOL Journal has been imported properly too, just in case I ever wanted it (which, at the moment, I don't).

My AOL email address still works for those old college friends that still have it, though I check it infrequently. There's some life lesson here about impermanence and growth through destruction, ... or something. Anyhow, that's how it happened.

More Information

• Attention AOL Hometown Users - People Connection Blog
• We're Closing Our Doors - People Connection Blog
• How to Download Your Hometown Files - People Connection Blog
• arstechnica.com - AOL axing two more services this month
• Macsimum News - AOL Hometown
• Anti-AOL

Periodic Google Pagerank Report

And now it's time for another quick report on the Google Pagerank of the various websites that I manage. This is starting to mean less and less to me the higher it goes. I have traffic, but I really don't have the traffic I would have expected from the ratings but it doesn't really matter.

• Arconati.us - 0
• ArcoJedi's Holocron (this site) - 4
• Arconati Kid's Korner - 0
• Arconati Comedy Awards - 0
• Seamist Inn • Dungeons & Dragons - 0
• Arconati.name - 2
• Musical Holocron - 1
• Friends of ArcoJedi - 3
• R-Quotes - 3
• Arconati News - 3
• my del.icio.us archive - 4
• Arconati Family Tree Wiki - 3
• Ferguson Christian Church - 3
• Mudhorny - 3
• Colorburst Video - 2
• Happy is the Bride - 0

In summary, the Arconati.us has taken a bit of a dip, and the sub domains have followed it down.

More Information

• google/pagerank
• google
• Search Results for google pagerank

Updated Template Again

It was pointed out to me by my dad in a blog comment that the design I was using was not really all that great, especially on certain monitors or in high contrast settings. I rearranged the colors again and do I hope I've improved it. Posted here for your comedic pleasure is a screen shot of the old look. Thanks!

Updating My Description

It was pointed out to me that I have not updated the little header description on this blog. It currently says:

You are now reading a blog maintained by ArcoJedi; webmaster for Arconati.us, ecstatic husband, proud father of two, Star Wars fanatic; read the thoughts I felt worthwile and wonder why I thought that way.

There is at least one factual and necessary change that I have completely overlooked and I'm making that change right now.

You are now reading a blog maintained by ArcoJedi; webmaster for Arconati.us, ecstatic husband, proud father of two three and Star Wars fanatic. Below you can read the thoughts I felt were worthwile and wonder why I thought that way.

How could I possible miss that? My son Lucas is nearly 12 weeks old at this point. That's one of those interesting aspects of human nature that you look at something every day, but you might not notice glaring mistakes. They have to be pointed out to you by other folks to your embarassment.

I Want YOU to Comment

No seriously, I really do want you to comment. If you are viewing this page, stop what you are doing for just a second and comment. Whether you know me personally, family or coworker, or if you don't know me and came here from a link or search engine, just let me know very quickly.

I keep track of my stats. I know how many visitors I'm getting and where they are coming for the most part. But I really want to hear from some of these visitors. So take a moment and just say hi.

How Do You Leave a Comment?

Leaving a comment is very simple and easy on my site. I use Blogger software to create almost all of my blogs. First, in most cases you have to be on an individual post's page to create a comment. Look for a link in the footer of the post labeled with the time or the number of comments. Then look for text link named Post a Comment. This will take you to a screen on Blogger.com where you can enter your text comment (and even add some formatting or a link if you want). There are three ways of identifying yourself on the comments page.

• Your Blogger Username (preferred)
• Other (Name & Web Page URL)
• Anonymous

I can control which of these options (if any) is allowed and I might change them later. But rest assured that you can use Anonymous if you want for the foreseeable future. But if you have a Blogger username or if you have your own website, I'd really like you to post it. Keep in mind that I moderate comments, so they may not show up right away.

So, post a comment on this post below. Just test it out if you have nothing else to say. Alternatively, you can find a post you like (or dislike) and add a comment to it right now.

Thanks!

My Blogger Profile

I'm about to change the "About Me" section of my Blogger profile. The current one is just lame and conceited. I archive it here just for historical data.

About Me

I could write a small book about myself (okay, I could write a BIG book about myself), but instead I thought I'd post a modest blog... or two. Okay, make that about five.

I have written a rather largish glob of stuff about me, but also about other things that I cared about. The above is kinda funny, but it could really make me sound like a jerk as a first impression.

Tech Life Blogged Continued: Plans Awry

For those keeping up with the TechLifeBlogged story, it has taken a lot longer than I had guessed. Here is an update.

Plans Awry

Well the plan since the beginning of the month has been to transfer ownership of this blog to Scott ever since he got in contact with me in his comment. However, that appears to not be as easy as expected nor as easy as the Blogger documentation would lead me to believe. Here are the references I'm talking about and the instructions we are trying to follow.

• What is a blog administrator?
• How do I move a blog between accounts?
• How do I remove a team member?

The problem is mainly that I have added Scott as an admin, but when he logs in, he does not have the option to remove me. Well that's not going to cut it. Here is a screen shot he sent me.

Note that this image has been resized to fit and the email addresses have been blocked out.

There is no remove link next to my name. If we figure out how this is really supposed to be done and the steps involved, I'll be sure to post them. My next step is to contact Blogger Support.

The search results on the Google Help Group was full of posts concerning the fact that this cannot be done as the help files suggest in the new Blogger. I wrote to Blogger Support and am waiting for response.

File Not Found

Hmm, I'm getting an error when trying to load this blog and I thought I'd republish to see if that fixes something.

Firefox can't find the file at /.

• Check the file name for capitalization or other typing errors.
• Check to see if the file was moved, renamed or deleted.

This happens simply when I try to load the root home page of the site. We will see what happens.

Fixed! The moment after I published, the issue was gone.

TechLifeBlogged - The Overview

Okay, so here is an overview of a story involving blogger, blogspot domains, spammers, Google Pagerank and me. The subtitle of this one could also be:

How I Got a Site With a Pagerank of 5 With Absolutely No Work ... and Then Gave it Away

It began when I was reading through some blog posts about del.icio.us integration with blogs. In one good post there was a comment recommending a site with a post explaining How to Create Those del.icio.us Link Posts. By the summary in the comment, it sounded like exactly what I was looking for. Unfortunately, the link was dead and I was confronted with the blogspot 404 error. The URL was:

techlifeblogged.blogspot.com/something

Even though it wasn't there anymore, I noticed the post URL had a Pagerank of 1. Curious, I checked the root directory of this blog and found that the root had a Pagerank of 5. So even though the site was not there anymore, it was clear that the blogger had done a lot of work posting and promoting the blog. Now it was gone. It had either been deleted or the blogger had changed the URL (perhaps posting over FTP).

I had some experience with posting a blog with blogspot for awhile and then switching it to a hosting provider. Sometimes this worked really well and sometimes it didn't depending on how Blogger set it up. In one example, I'd had http://arco-friends.blogspot.com/ but wanted to set it up with a subdomain on a hosting account at http://friends.arconati.name/. Prior to switching these settings within the Blogger dashboard, I modified the template to redirect using JavaScript or a meta refresh. I'd done this more than once:

• http://arconati.blogspot.com/ » http://arconati.net/
• http://mudhorny.blogspot.com/ » http://www.mudhorny.com/
• http://lisa-is-30.blogspot.com/ » http://lisa.arconati.us/

I'd also more recently used Blogger's new feature for Custom Domains, which allows you to actually point your DNS to Blogger's servers. Hey, it's like free hosting!

• http://arcojedi.blogspot.com/ » http://blog.arconati.us/
• http://arco-comedy-awards.blogspot.com/ » http://comedy.arconati.us/
• http://arco-kid-korner.blogspot.com/ » http://kids.arconati.us/
• http://seamist-inn.blogspot.com/ » http://seamist.arconati.us/

The cool advantage to this latest feature is that the old blogspot URL actually redirects to your domain with a search-engine friendly 301 redirect, meaning any listings in the SERPs and inbound links will still work correctly with no JavaScript needed.

However, between the first list and the day that Blogger added the Custom Domains feature, there was one site that didn't quite work out that well. When I went to set up and move - http://arco-quotes.blogspot.com/ - to - http://quotes.arconati.name/ - it didn't work out quite as well. I set up the redirect correctly, but moments after changing the settings to FTP, the old blogspot site was showing PAGE NOT FOUND. A blog I had built up with almost 250 posts and was well listed in the search engines was now gone. Minutes after I had discovered what happened, I did the natural thing and posted an emotionally reserved rant called BLOGGER SCREWED ME.

With all this as a back story (phew), I was staring at the techlifeblogged URL and wondering what happened to it. Still being curious, I wondered in my head how long Blogger kept blogspot subdomains before they went back into circulation and someone else could get them. So I went to the dashboard page and attempted to sign up for that as a new blog. I assumed it wouldn't work.

And I just about fell out of my chair when lo and behold, it did work. All of a sudden, I was the administrator of a site that had a pagerank of 5! But then the dilemma sets in. What did I just do? What do I do now? Naturally, I blogged about it --can you sense the theme?

TechLifeBlogged - The Beginning

Okay, what has just happened tonight was that I was browsing around and found a link to a blogspot site that was giving 404 page not found errors. I was sad cause the content I wanted was on it. I checked the root of the blog but was still getting 404 errors. Curious, I decided to try signing up for this subdomain and assumed it wouldn't ... [read more]

So I posted that and I waited. Not much happened. I wondered if anyone was actually coming to the site. I also wondered if the pagerank would drop very quickly, so I kept my eye on things.

TechLifeBlogged - Google Pagerank

As of today, the pagerank on this site as measured in both Firefox and IE is currently 4. When I ... [read more]

Thinking about it the next day, I tried just using Google to see if I could find where the original blog had gone and it was surprisingly easy. I posted again, linking to the original TechLifeBlogged and browsed around a bit enjoying the site. The blogger was a good writer and a geek like me. I had to get in touch with him. I found the contact page and hovered my cursor over the email link... and then wasn't sure what I would say.

Thankfully I was saved from the trouble. Scott Kingery, owner and writer of the TechLifeWeb Network posted a comment on what was once his blog but was now mine. He confirmed what I had already guessed. That he had owned and maintained that blog for a long time and then switched to a hosting plan. Without realizing it, he lost the 'blogspot' address that he had been promoting for so long and a spammer picked it up. When it became available again, I was the first to notice while simply browsing around.

By the end of this weekend, Scott should have his old blog address back. I am going to be adding him as an admin and then when he logs in he should be able to remove me. Prior to hearing from him, I briefly entertained turning this into a project for myself and using it to promote my own interests in technology, hardware, software and web development. But besides the fact that I'm already very busy, I just can't morally do this. Even if I had never figured out who Scott was, I'd always have assumed that someone out there had lost something that was their labor of love. I know it sounds stupid and sentimental and pretentious, but I just couldn't do it.

Any comments? What would you have done in my place? What would you have done in Scott's place? Thanks for visiting and thanks to Scott for being understanding!

TechLifeBlogged - Google Analytics Results

Update: This blog post was originally posted at TechLifeBlogged, but has been moved and archived here. The full story begins here and ends here.

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I've got an update about this site. First off, I found a site simply by doing a Google search for 'Tech Life Blogged' and I discovered a site that was most likely the original prior to posting the blog over FTP. Please visit the actual and most likely original TechLifeBlogged.

Secondly, the preliminary Google Analytics results have shown that only ONE other person besides me visited this site in the last 24 hours. It was about noon today CST and they were from or near Williston, Vermont. The clicked a link from Lifehacker.org. They probably didn't find what they were looking for and left quickly. And hey, if that was you, sorry!

TechLifeBlogged - Google Pagerank

Update: This blog post was originally posted at TechLifeBlogged, but has been moved and archived here. The full story begins here and ends here.

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As of today, the pagerank on [techlifeblogged.blogspot.com] as measured in both Firefox and IE is currently 4. When I signed up for the blog, it registered as a 5 but has dipped a little.

I've mentioned Google PR on my blog multiple times.

• Google Hiccup Gone For Now
• Let's Do the Google Shuffle Again
• Alexa
• Google Pagerank Dip
• Google Pagerank Shuffle
• Holy Pagerank Three Batman
• Google Pagerank Achieved

But having a site with PR of 4 or 5 is pretty impressive. My question that I'm wrestling with morally is whether or not I should really USE this site or abandon it. The previous owner was a spammer. If I benefit from this, am I not also associating myself with this spammer?

The question is not JUST a moral one. Google may have this site on a bad list, and any site or person associated with it might get marked as spammy also. Hmm...

Any comments? I've installed Google Analytics on this site to see if I can discover more about if anyone is coming to this site and from where. I'll post results when I have them (probably in a few days).

TechLifeBlogged - The Beginning

Update: This blog post was originally posted at TechLifeBlogged, but has been moved and archived here. The full story begins here (on this page) and ends here.

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Okay, what has just happened tonight was that I was browsing around and found a link to a blogspot site that was giving 404 page not found errors. I was sad because the content I wanted was on it. I checked the root of the blog but was still getting 404 error. Curious, I decided to try signing up for this subdomain and assumed it wouldn't work.

Well, it did and I'm faced with a quandary. I now have a blog that somebody else used and worked on for a while. It's gone, either lost or abandoned, but now what do I do with it? I feel weird, like I cheated or am guilty of something.

I am not a hacker NOR am a black-hat person at all. I did this rather randomly. However this site ...hmm.

Further investigation has shown that it was one of those rather nasty spammers who signed up for a blogspot account but have it redirect to their spammy domain. Check the Google cache if you doubt me. Still, I felt very weird, like I'm painting a big target sign on my forehead for what I just did.

If you have a complaint about this, please post a comment below. If this is your former blog and you want it back please comment as well and I'm sure we can find a way to work it out so that you get it back after we prove it was yours.

Blogger Custom Domains

Okay, here is a great feature that Blogger has just fully redeemed & outdone themselves with that was released a few days ago. Blogger is now allowing custom domains. This is great because I can have the domain name or subdomain name show up properly for a blog without it having to forward onto a 'blogspot' server.

The following blogs of mine have been updated for this feature over this last weekend.

• My Blog: ArcoJedi's Holocron (you are here)
• Arconati Kids' Korner
• Arconati Comedy Awards
• Seamist Inn

I plan to do this with Colorburst-Video.com as soon as possible. For any site that needs other features besides just a blog, a hosting account like at NetworkSolutions would be necessary. But if all you have is a domain and all you need is a blog, this feature is perfect.

New Blogger Version

I've just had all of my blogs upgraded to the latest version of blogger. It took a few minutes to complete, but was mostly painless. One immediate change I noted was that the dashboard lists all unmoderated comments and has a decent interface for viewing them. I noted immediately that this blog had five comments I didn't even know about. I'm wondering if they were there and I just never went to the "Moderate Comments" section, or if some bug had kept them hidden even on that menu.

I thought nobody read my blog and here were several different comments from people other than my close family. There were two comments from J.D., one on my post about Ferguson-Florissant School District and another post about Olivia's adventure in the supermarket late one night. I also had a comment on my post from last summer when I created the website for Ferguson Christian Church from our former Youth Minister, Nikomas Perez. I also got a comment on one of my posts from a coworker from MonsterCommerce, Janet Lackey thanking me for linking to her site, which I was all too thrilled to do.

Most exciting to me was a comment from an old best friend, Jeff Kirchhofer, who I've been thinking of getting back in touch with for the longest time. What bugs me most about this comment thing is that he posted a comment way back in January of this year and I am only finding out about it now. Don't I look like a jerk? Oh well, I'm emailing him now.

Why Blogger Why?

Back in August, I posted a rather scathing but minor complaint called BLOGGER SCREWED ME. More recently, I've noted another issue where I expected their software to work a certain way and it went another direction.

One of my blogs is a 'friends list' of my buddies and their respective web sites. At some point in March, I moved this from a separate site hosted at blogger -

http://arco-friends.blogspot.com/

- to a subdomain of my new site with Network Solutions, Arconati.name -

http://friends.arconati.name/

Though many of the pages of the blogspot site were ranked or linked to directly, I was able to publish the site on blogspot one more time with a javascript redirect back to the subdomain and this now goes correctly to the right place after I changed it at the registrar. The old site at blogspot is still there.

More recently, with a mind to bring all the sites back under one domain rather than scattered on blogspot, I attempted to do the same with my Quotes Archive. I had the blogspot site -

http://arco-quotes.blogspot.com/

- and was republishing this well spidered site onto it's own subdomain -

http://quotes.arconati.name/

But there was a glitch or something. The blogspot site disappeared almost immediately. Now all of the links to the pages on this site result in type 404 missing page errors. The page will say The requested URL was not found on this server. Yeah, that's not very helpful. I'm not sure what it was that I did differently between the two changes that caused this --if that is, it was me that screwed up somewhere.

As I said before, it's free. Oh well.

Bug within Blogger and Blog*Spot

Perhaps this is logged somewhere but I cannot find it at this time. Right now, I cannot post this blog anywhere because my hosting on Sparky's server is not available so I have been getting ready to 'temporarily' remove the hosting of this blog from Arconati.us at Arconati.us/blog.asp through standard FTP posting and repost it into Blog*Spot's server. This should be a simple process of removing the FTP settings for the server and setting it back to Blog*Spot. But I'm getting an FTP login error from the blogger interface for some dumb reason. I've tried it a few times with same results even trying to repost older links, changing some settings back to default, setting things back to minimal wizbangs and dancing monkeys, and still I get this same error.

004 dk.eos.net.FtpError: Login incorrect.

I can't even post this at the moment... any ideas?

Update (2005/08/11): Problem fixed now.

Update (2007/01/16): I think I have found the resolution just in case anyone else was curious.

Simply, delete the browser cache, re-login to you blogger account, republish and everything back to normal.

With the latest version of Blogger, I no longer think this is going to be a problem, but I wanted to update this page with the details I just recently found. I'm no longer publishing this blog via FTP at any rate but using Blogger's new Custom Domains Feature so that changes everything.