New look

Still tweaking the new layout, but decided to launch it anyhow.

Once I get the bugs splatted semi-regular blogging will return, hopefully sometime early next week.

O.E.S. Project Weblog back online

I've received several e-mails asking about Ward and the gang over at Beauchamp Tower Corporation. Well they've have been having a rough go of it the past couple of days with their domain registrar.

Most folks looking for updates on Operation Enduring Service knew to find them at http://www.btcorp.us/mt. Well that worked until a couple of days ago and without going into details there were a couple of technical snafus that are in the process of being resolved. So until then you can get your O.E.S. fix at http://www.btconline.us/mt.

So no worries folks, the blogidodihexiweb's resident hurricane magnet is still alive and kicking. Oh and he's dragging John of Argghhh to Mexico to pickup the John Rogers.

Digg Dugg

Every time I read something about Digg I can't help but think back to the wasted days of playing Dig Dug or Dugout as it's titled in the Java Applets on Al Gore's wondermous Intertubenets.

I get beside myself, I've talked to a couple of people who are interested in adding Digg This links to their blog posts on Movable Type Blogs. Wordpress users should be able to use the plug-in, if'n that doesn't work let me know, I'll update this post.

Anyhow, to add the link you'll of course have to add some code to your template.

First things first be sure to have a functioning backup of your template.
I'm a highly trained professional idiot so I don't make backups when I'm toying with my site, but don't be like uncle phinny kids, learn from his mistakes and mishaps. Otherwise your blog could suck too.

So if you'd like the code it's below, you'll have to figure out the best place to add it too your template, that or send an e-mail and I'll tell you where to stick it.

* You'll need to replace this with a category from here.

Adventures in Linux

Warning strong geek content

As you may have picked up I'm a tad bit of a computer geek, but just a tad. Be that as it may I've toyed off and on with various operating systems other than the mainstream Windows and Apple varieties. I'd taken a bit of a hiatus from those endeavors in recent years, work was too much like work and the last thing I wanted to do was battle with a machine when I got home. So like many others I fell into a life sublime mediocrity and played within the parameters that good ole Uncle Bill set forth.

No longer.

I've been toying with a couple of various Linux installs on a test machine. Primarily FreeBSD and openSuSE with plans to install Fedora and Solaris later on. Color me impressed, although I'm not really sure what part of the rainbow that comes from.

openSuSE was a quick and easy install, as easy as installing one of the Windows operating systems. With the pre-bundled open source Software you're up and running in a jiffy with all the tools and applications you'll need to get on with your daily routine. Considerably less space is taken up by the operating system and applications leave space for pictures and music (about 4GIG for a majority of the applications available).

FreeBSD was a bit more of a challenge to get up and running. I had to employ some computer geekery and wave the magic chicken bones around a couple of times to get things to my liking. really it isn't something I'd recommend if you're not comfortable, real comfortable, working at a System (DOS Prompt) and editing files.

With either of them I'd recommend the KDE Desktop Environment. Gnome leaves a bit to be desired and least for my tastes. KDE provides users with a Windows like operating environment without the performance degradation we've all come to know and loathe with Windows XP and from the early reports / testing I've seen Vista won't be any better and probably worse.

FreeBSD / openSuSE and KDE have turned an old, as in seven to eight years old Pentium III 733 with 256MB of RAM, machine into a fully functional and powerful workstation. The system boot time is equal to that of my Pentium IV 3.2gig with a GIG of RAM running Windows XP.

Now I wouldn't recommend trashing your current machine and going with Linux if you haven't toyed around with it first. There are some applications and benefits Windows has over Linux (I'm sure some die hard Linux fan will start sending hate mail now, such is life). But if you have an older machine laying around that is too old / slow to run Windows 2000 or XP and want a spare (so the missus isn't always screaming at you that she needs the computer) or you'd like a backup for the kids, I'd recommend giving openSuSE a whirl.

Nooz readers

Sadie, the good looks and talent of apothegm designs is gonna kill me for this. She hates the feed readers with a passion, 'cause they're like little girls and ma'ma always said little girls are da debil. At least that's what the Waterboy's ma'ma always said.

I've fallen in love with a news / feed reader. It's aKregator, one of the many open source / free products available in the openSuSE Linux setup.

The best part about it, it's quick and easy to open up the blog to read the article in the format and medium it was intended, best of all it's all in the same window. The downside, the "referral link" for site meter doesn't show up so people won't know where what site you're coming from, if you want to call that a downside. The other downside, it's only available for Linux machines.

Goin' with the GIMP

Get your mind out of the gutter, not that type of gimp, the GIMP. I've downloaded and installed it, next up the tinkering stage.

Over the years I've found that Open Source software, such as the GIMP, Open Office and Linux, often times outperform their pay-per-view counter parts. We'll see if GIMP rises to the challenge. I've been using PhotoShop for years, from about version 3 on, so it's bound to take some adjustment. With the cost of PhotoShop and Paint Shop pro doing nothing but increasing well it's about time I start toying with their open source competitors.

Hopefully in a couple of weeks you'll see a new and improved layout here, with a Graphics by the GIMP logo attached. Otherwise, well I'll just have to concede defeat and proclaim my loyalty to Adobe.

I love you more

Than I did the week before
I discovered alcohol

Trying on your camisole...

And so ends our Bare Naked Ladies sound-bite of the day.

Just one more stroke

Via Slashdot : " A test carried out by Pegasus Lab on account for Swedish magazine PC For Alla showed that a normal PC keyboard was infected by more bacteria than a normal toilet seat. More specific it contained 33000 bacteria per square centimeter, compared to 130 on a ordinary toilet seat. The tests also showed occurrence of up to 3100 fungi per square centimeter."

Think about it, you nasty rascals, every time you sneeze, cough or scratch yourself, your nasty, grubby little fingers are headed back to the keyboard without a proper cleaning.

Just think about the IT Guy at your place of work. He's alone. In his office, that was once a broom closet. Eating Cheetos. Downloading gigs, upon gigs of porn. Ever wonder why he's always flustered when you call?

Then there's you mister flush and run. Sure you don't pee or crap on your hands. But think about all those people that do and then hit the flusher the same as you. Then you head, from the head, to your office, where you once again happily bang away on your ebola ridden, herpisyphamillia infected keyboard.

Me, I'm trashing my keyboard, which notably when licked tastes like a Bojangles sausage biscuit, for a model that will prevent the hunt and peckers that haunt these hallowed halls from ever using my computer again. I'm going with a Das Keyboard, it's 100% blank (zero, zip, zilch, written the keys). Take a gander it's a thing of beauty.

Window dressing

If you're reading my humble "weblog" via RSS Feed please pardon the dust as I'm in the process of revamping the layout.

If you notice any problems with the feed loading or displaying properly in your reader please let me know.

Question for the folks reading via RSS, do you prefer Full or Summary feeds?

Performancing for Firefox

Performancing for Firefox is here!
Of course you're probably wondering just what is Performancing for Firefox.

Well the good folks over at Performancing.com have written a blog editor for Firefox. So if you're using Firefox Version 1.5 or better, instead of writing your posts in Wordpress, Movable Type or Blogger you can use the Performacing Editor.

What makes this even better is you can setup your blog and post directly from the editor, like I did with this post. So you don't even have to log in to write or publish posts ever again.

If you aren't running any other plugins / extensions for Firefox, I whole heartedly recommend you run Performancing for Firefox.

Give me a sign or symbol or something

There comes a time in almost every bloggers life when they want to display a special character or symbol in the content area of their posts. Maybe you're talking about the weather and want to tell folks up north at it's a comfortable 54° outside today, instead of typing out 54 degrees. Maybe you want to tell somebody they aren't worth 2¢, instead of typing out two cents. Maybe you're discussing something that has a Trademark™, a Copyright © or is Registered ®. To do this you'll need to enter special character or symbol code in HTML.

If your blogging platform doesn't have a WYSIWYG post editing window you can enter the HTML code directly into the post. If you're using Blogger, Typepad or the WYSIWYG editor available for Wordpress you'll need to switch to the Edit HTML mode of your post editor.

To display this sentence with the symbols we'll have to enter the HTML code for the Trademark and Copyright.

Maybe you're discussing something that has a Trademark™or a Copyright©.

The symbols are displayed in bold.

Maybe you're discussing something that has a Trademark™or a Copyright©.

Some of the symbols I commonly use are in the extended entry.

A full listing of the symbols and special characters can be found:

Alphabetically Listed Here
Categorically Listed Here
Additional Symbols and Greek Letters are available from HTMLHelp.com
HTMLHelp.com also has a section for special characters.

I've got class, kinda

I received an e-mail a while back from somebody asking the difference between the class and id selectors used in Style Sheets. If you've done much tinkering with your blog's layout you've definitely seen them in use. My initial reply was something you'd expect from an engineer, it was factually correct yet it didn't give them any useful information. So I dug a bit more and found a reference for Cascading Style Sheet Syntax on W3Schools Online Web Tutorials (a great spot for Style Sheet and other coding help).

The explanation in the extended entry was grabbed directly, without modification, from the W3School's CSS Syntax Tutorial.

Also posted at The Alliance

The class Selector

With the class selector you can define different styles for the same type of HTML element. Say that you would like to have two types of paragraphs in your document: one right-aligned paragraph, and one center-aligned paragraph. Here is how you can do it with styles:

p.right {text-align: right}
p.center {text-align: center}

You have to use the class attribute in your HTML document:

<p class="right">
This paragraph will be right-aligned.
</p>

<p class="center">
This paragraph will be center-aligned.
</p>

Note: Only one class attribute can be specified per HTML element! The example below is wrong:

<p class="right" class="center">
This is a paragraph.
</p>

You can also omit the tag name in the selector to define a style that will be used by all HTML elements that have a certain class. In the example below, all HTML elements with class="center" will be center-aligned:

.center {text-align: center}

<h1 class="center">
This heading will be center-aligned
</h1>

<p class="center">
This paragraph will also be center-aligned.
</p> 

The id Selector
With the id selector you can define the same style for different HTML elements. The style rule below will match any element that has an id attribute with a value of "green":

#green {color: green}

<h1 id="green">Some text</h1>
<p id="green">Some text</p>

p#para1
{
text-align: center;
color: red
}

p#green {color: green}

<h1 id="green">Some text</h1>

Do NOT start an ID name with a number! It will not work in Mozilla/Firefox.

CSS Comments

You can insert comments into CSS to explain your code, which can help you when you edit the source code at a later date. A comment will be ignored by the
browser. A CSS comment begins with "/*", and ends with "*/", like this:

/* This is a comment */
p
{
text-align: center;
/* This is another comment */
color: black;
font-family: arial
}

If you have any questions about Cascading Style Sheets or HTML please drop us (basil or phin) a line and we'll see if we can't get the questions answered.

Better, Faster, Skinnable

If you dropped by the past couple of evenings you've probably noticed some strange happenings in regards to the functionality of my humble weblog.

When we, the MuNuvian Collective, were moved to our new home on the blogidodihexiwebisphere by our benevolent dictator Pixy Misa we also received an upgraded version of php. Most of the time upgrades are good, even this time the upgrade was good. The only thing that was bad was it broke a couple of scripts several of us were running.

So I spent a part of the holiday weekend rewriting scripts. So the good news is that now the scripts work and they're being installed on the other MuNuvian blogs that got broked.

The main script that got unworking was the script used for skinning (changing the layout of the site). It's working again and probably even a bit mo' better than before.

When self promotion goes to far

There's been quite the shakeup in the blogidohexiweb the past couple of days. Nope I'm not referring to the OSM boondoggle, I'll get round to that eventually, you know once everybody else has taken their turn beating Roger, Charles and the rest of the gang with the proverbial whiffle ball bat.

What I’m referring to is how the HBIC (Head Bear In Charge) of the ecosystem has made the call, a wise one in my book, to discount trackbacks as links for ranking purposes.

Really I don't get why folks are up in arms about it. Why should a self promoted link to another site count in the standings? If the folks that're all huffy are only trying to "promote their blogs", let them continue to place trackbacks until their hearts are content. When other bloggers find their content interesting they'll link to it in a fashion that is counted by the NZ Bear’s ecosystem.

Taking the, that it's not fair or it's your site do what you want even if it's wrong approach is childish at best. Just a quick poll, how many of y'all picked up your ball and glove and went home when you got caught cheating or were getting beat in grade school?

If you don't think the shameless self linking has gotten out of control I've removed open trackbacks from several sites we designed. Other bloggers have also removed the open trackback feature because they were being abused. It's one thing to trackback to a related post. It called being a slut when you get out of control and abuse the system. Common courtesy and decency is what it's all about, yet some people seem to have forgotten how they were raised.

Just remember it is his site and his routine. If you've got a better system, write it your damned self. Nobody ever said life was fair (if they did you've been lied to). Keep playing games, I imagine it'd be fairly simple to drop your site from the scan and the ecosystem all together (I damn sure would) and that my friends would be Game Over.*

To prove that great minds think alike Madam Sadie and Confederate Yankee both have similar views, I'm sure there are others out there, so feel free to post a trackback, oh, wait...

* My words not The NZ Bear's. If you wanna bitch, whine or moan about the suggestion please do so in my comments or feel free to contact our complaint department.

Dear Mr. Spammer

May the fleas of a million rabid hamsters infest your crotch.

phin's blog version 0.68

Now with more byte!!!

As y'all may have noticed I was being repressed or as my psuedo-eviler older and sometimes wiser brother likes to call it a "kidnapping".

The good news is I'm not dead! The even more better news is I'm not kidnapped anymore either. So bloggering should return to as normal as it's ever been around here.

Details of the harrowing escape may follow, or may not, but I'll take this moment to introduce you to Geno and Bruno. They're partially responsible for phin's release. Really can you say no to a couple of guys with names that end in vowels?

The grand inquisition has been posted at basil's, maybe this'll finally get me started on, as the canadians say, an aboot me page.

Test ping

This post's only purpose in life is to send a test ping.

Lack of hygiene

Why is it that most computer programmers lack decent hygiene?

Maybe it's something in the Jolt Cola and Mountain Dew they swill by the gallon. Maybe their hands lack the strength to grasp a washcloth or toothbrush after hours of banging on a keyboard, manipulating their mice and mashing the buttons on their joysticks. Perhaps they just don't have time to bother with such trivial matters; you know they've got to ensure the aluminum foil that lines their bedroom walls is the proper thickness (to thin and it doesn't work, to thick and it keeps the ultramindotron's brain reader waves just keep bouncing around in there).

During college I pulled my time in the trenches. I've spent many a hour in the depths of a computer lab surrounded by geeks whose breath have the unmistakable stench of Cheeto's and they've got orange fingers and orange crotches from hours of downloading porn and getting their jollies from hacking into some poor soul's machine for the fun of it. These were the ubergeeks of the mid-nineties and they smelled like a locker-room full of jockstraps after homecoming.

It's good to know that some things don't change. Other than addressing a couple of the programmers I work with as stinky on a semi-daily basis I've had to hold meetings with the topic of appropriate hygiene and added a chapter to the employee manual regarding offensive bodily aromas. There is an actual bullet with the phrase: Liberally applying cologne does is not a substitute for an actual bath or shower.

Today a young man came into our offices today offering his services. He's attending one of the local Communist Community Colleges and wanted to inquire about an internship. Normally I'll spend some time talking to them to figure out if they're a fit (normally the first question is if they've been arrested for hacking: if they have it's a plus, I'm the only programmer in the company that hasn't pulled at least a week in county lock up) but today I couldn't do it.

He was dressed pretty well compared to the reprobates that typically walk through the doors (it's a shoes optional workplace), but damn it he had a stench about him that would wake the dead. After about five minutes in the conference room discussing his goals and plans and offering advice on how to get there I had to end the meeting, as I was gasping for clean air at that time.

Just a word of advice for the ubergeeks that may be reading this, a bit of soap and water isn't going to get you pregnant; and it may actually help you get a job.

Back it up

As most of my three regular readers know the MuNuvian server was down for a while yesterday. Our benevolent and ever fearless leader Pixy Misa exorcized the demons and got the MuNuvians back up and running.

The good news was that of the all the MuNu hosted blogs there was very little data lost. Thanks mainly too Pixy being ubersmart. I can honestly say I had all faith in Pixy, even when some people were blaming the crash on me calling for me to be tarred and feathered (see what happens when people get bored). I still think it was Frank J and the IMAO's fault, never mind that spacemonkey and Harvey are both MuNuvians (I'm ignoring the facts I don't like, I hereby proclaim Thursdays to be Liberal Day at the phish tank).

Oh but back to the point of this post. Make sure you have a current backup of your template and fairly recent backup of your posts. If you aren't sure how to do this shoot me an e-mail or leave a comment I'll get you detailed instructions. Just make sure you've got backup, otherwise you have nobody to blame but yourself.

Oh and for the Yohans saying see what you get for not being on your own server: Even if the server had been down a full 24 hours (which it wasn't) it'd still have 99.73% up time, and many many less problems than BlogSplat and some of the other hosting services, beyatches one and all they are.

A new design complete

The Jawa Report is now Jawalicious!

An easier way.....

After reading my Link Tips post at The Alliance basil of basil's blog has come up with an alternative for adding target="_blank" to every link you add.

basil explains on how to set the default target so your links open in new windows / tabs by default.

The change has been made here and I'm greatly appreciated for the tip, as it makes blogging easier.

Thanks basil!

Update: When using MT there are a couple of places target="_self". The main places are the pemalinks. To keep a new window from popping up when you submit a comment add target="_self" to the <form method="post".... line on the individual template.

A Villainous Task

The Naked Villains have been made over. Well the villains themselves didn't under go rapid transformations, but nakedvillainy.com did.

Gone to take a look-see yet?

Go ahead, I'll wait......

Impressive isn't it?
But would you expect any less from Apothegm Designs?

And so it begins.

With the launch of The LLama Butchers new design Sadie and I are announcing a partnership, Apothegm Designs. Following will be announcements of the web site, with portfolios, services we're willing to perform and the prices of said services. If you're a bit curious before then please feel free to send us an e-mail.

If you'd like to see a couple of the other sites we've done you can take a look around Feisty Repartee (where Sadie demonstrates her exquisite skinning skills) and Confederate Yankee (by me).

More details will be posted as they become available.

Ping that thing

As I was perusing my blogroll last night I noticed that several of my daily reads were showing that they hadn't posted anything in the past month.

I remembered a post that Kelley of suburban blight had written earlier regarding the same topic. I'd already set my blog to do this when I first moved over to MuNuviana and Movable Type and being the selfish SOB I am I figured most other folks had done the same (sorry I'm a geek and at times assume most others are too).

Then I walked through the to set it up in Movable Type steps and sent it to Harvey (as a belated blogiversary present) and a couple of other folks. They were appreciated so I figured I'd post it here also, spreading the gospel according to Kelley and Harvey so to speak.

When you log in to Movable Type, click Weblog Config. Then Click the Preferences Option. From there scroll down and make sure you're notifying blo.gs and weblogs.com when you update. In the Others box add the following lines if they aren't already there.

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

Note: The two sites mentioned above are the sites bare minimum sites I would recommend you ping.

In the extended entry Via Harvey Via Physics Geek, the ultimate ping list from Emily of How To Blog:

http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://bitacoras.net/ping/
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogs.se/
http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/
http://xmlrpc.blogg.de/
http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

Back to normal

Well things are finally back to normal (if you can call it that) around here.

I've made quite a few changes to the layout and how things are being handled in the template, so if you notice anything screwy please let me know.

He's BAAAACK!

I should have known it would be hard to keep a good fish down for long. He's back and boy howdy is he pissed. Seems he doesn't take to kindly to being swatted at by those damned cats, much less their decision to try and remove him from his rightful spot at the top of this blog.

He seems to have things under control on the home front and is doing a pretty good job running the cats off. Now I've just got to straighten out the mess they made, damned nasty critters. Hopefully If I get things back to as normal as they've ever been around here we can forget about the phishes little forays into the worlds of cross dressing, bondage and the performance arts.

It appears that the cats and I both forgot the first rule of phin's blog. Thou shalt not piss off the goldfish.

If it's good enough for Frank J.

Well if it's good enough for Frank J. it's good enough for me.

That's right; I found the easiest way to deal with that damned psychotic schizophrenic ill tempered goldfish was to get a couple of cats. I figured he’d take a hint.

Only problem is those damned cats have taken over the joint and turned it into a cat blog. They haven't gotten to the content portion yet, like they did with IMAO. I'm trying to prevent at least keep them out of the archives, thus all necessary precautions are being taken.

I guess I’ll have to follow in Wisconsin’s footsteps and declare open season.

Trying my patience

That damned fish is trying my patience. I explained to him last night that sadie was already spoken for and that The Lad probably didn’t appreciate his advances.

So he gets all pissed of and mopes around his aquarium for a bit. Next thing I know he’s painted his face and he thinks he's a dag damned mime. I tried talking to him, we've been blog mates for a while now, and he just writes out that he isn't speaking to me or anyone else ever again. Fine by me I didn't care for his smart mouth anyhow.

I've got to give him credit though; he's working really hard on his mime act. I just don't have the heart to tell him that it really isn't hard to act like you're trapped in a box when you're pressing up against the side of an aquarium, but his elevator routine rocks.

I'm pretty sure I've figured out a cure for his little “identity crisis” and if he doesn't get his act straight by tomorrow he'll find out what it is.

Trying my patience

That damned fish is trying my patience. I explained to him last night that sadie was already spoken for and that The Lad probably didn’t appreciate his advances.

So he gets all pissed of and mopes around his aquarium for a bit. Next thing I know he’s painted his face and he thinks he's a dag damned mime. I tried talking to him, we've been blog mates for a while now, and he just writes out that he isn't speaking to me or anyone else ever again. Fine by me I didn't care for his smart mouth anyhow.

I've got to give him credit though; he's working really hard on his mime act. I just don't have the heart to tell him that it really isn't hard to act like you're trapped in a box when you're pressing up against the side of an aquarium, but his elevator routine rocks.

I'm pretty sure I've figured out a cure for his little “identity crisis” and if he doesn't get his act straight by tomorrow he'll find out what it is.

Not again

That damned goldfish's identity crisis has to end soon.

I tried reasoning with him yesterday, that didn't work. Then he got all huffy saying everybody was picking on him and nobody understands him.

What the hell does he expect when he redecorates in pink? Thanks for the backup guys, I truly appreciate it.

So I took the little sumbeech behind the woodshed, so to speak, and whooped his ass. After the beating he promised to get things back to normal, or as normal as they get around here. Problem is I came in this afternoon and he's wearing a gimp mask that he refuses to take it off and he keeps asking for spankings.

I'm betting he thinks that sadie finds him being masochistic sexy.

Damned goldfish.

A blog identity crisis

Click Here for the Full Effect.

I never really knew my poor little ole blog could have an identity crisis. It’s not like I ignored it while I was posting elsewhere. I’ve posted the same amount of useless drivel here that I’ve always posted, I’ve just had a couple of easy targets folks nice enough to let me post on their blogs also. Maybe it got jealous, but that a feminine trait isn’t it and my blog’s definitely male right?

Well maybe it was the lack of right leaning politics being posted here, but I came back after my last post and be damned if the layout hadn’t changed. Maybe I need to send my blog to the nearest inpatient psychiatric blog clinic. A couple of days in rehab should straighten its communist sympathizing arse out hadn’t it? Maybe it isn’t my blogs fault at all. Maybe there’s a new pinko commie virus that is making it’s way around the blogdodecahedron and Norton hasn’t had a chance to catch up with it yet.

I sure wish Frank J. as overlord of the blogdodecahedron would outlaw viral infections for blogs; or at least ban pinko communist makeovers.

Anybody know a decent blog exorcist that works cheap?

Note: Logo and layout design originally done by basil from basil's blog. Read the original entry here.

IE Loses Market Share

It was bound to happen. From CNN:

NEW YORK (AP) -- Microsoft Corp.'s share of the U.S. browser market has slipped below 90 percent as the Firefox browser continues to grow in popularity, according to independent tracking by WebSideStory.

Not that I'm one to go bashing Microsoft's products. They have some great products and since they're the giant on the block they're an easy target. Most of the programmers I know like to talk bad 'bout Billy G. and his products, while they write code with a higher bug to function ratio than any Microsoft Product has ever had.

I'm not one of them. I like a majority of Microsoft's products.

If Internet 'splorer was CSS compliant and followed the standards set by The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) the interweb would be a much happier place. But it isn't and causes mucho headaches for those of us tryin' to do nifty stuff with our sites. Which means IE will continue to loose market share until Billy and the Gang finally catch on and rush a copy of IE 7 to market that half asses W3C standards and pushes more people to Firefox.

If you're thinking about making the switch go ahead and give Firefox a shot, it can be downloaded from GetFirefox.com. You'll probably be delightfully surprised by the performance increase.

Stat Counter

I finally got off my lazy tail and added a StatCounter.

Why would somebody want to add a Stat Counter Hit Counter, Web Tracker thingy to their site if they already have a SiteMeter?

I guess you could desribe it as being married to both a redhead and a brunette. You get to see the same thing presented in different packages that you can't do much with.

StatCounter does however provide information I couldn't find in Sitemeter; the following information is being provide by StatCounter:
Browsers: 54% Microsoft IE, 36% Firefox (100% Java Enabled)
Resolution: 62% -1024x768, 22% 800x600
Operating System: 71% Windows XP, 10% Windows 2000, 6% MacOS X

The installation is a simple cut and paste routine.
With the information provided by StatCounter & SiteMeter you can ensure the readability of your blog, something critical to readership growth.

Pop-up Comments fixed YAY ME

Sometimes being OCD Pays off.

I've been agitated that I couldn't get the Pop-up Comments window to remember my / your information. Finally I pieced together several pieces of the puzzle and figured it out.

If your blog is being hosted by mu.nu, I'd recommend reading the post about it over on Munuviana. Oh and pass it along to all the Munuvian bloggers who don't check up on Munuviana posts.

YAY ME.

I ROCK.

Okay so I think I've successfully dislocated my shoulder patting myself on the back.

Almost there

I realized the templates were all kinds of ugly when viewed in Internet Explorer, thus I had to poke / prod / kick / punch / scream at the template to get Fire Fox & IE to display close to the same thing.

I'm pretty much done with the templates. If anything else isn't visible / looks screwy / is atrocious let me know. Otherwise I’m in the process of moving most of my post interesting posts from blogspot to here.

And I’ll be live from here as of tonight now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

First mu.nu

There really isn't much to see here as of right now.

I'm in the process of wrappng up the changes to the Movable Type Template

I'm hoping to have a majority of it wrapped up Soon; so I can get back to blogging as normal.

As I'm working out the bugs if you can't see something or something is hard to read let me know.

Well as normal as blogging gets for me anyhooo......