My plan was to post here using the Digg blog feature instead of posting comments on Digg. Guess what? There hasn’t been a single story on Digg that has solicited more than a few sentences of response from me. Not one story on Digg all week has provoked anything more than a very short response from me.

My plan is still the same. I’m still going to blog anything if I see it. There just hasn’t been anything worthwhile to write about.

Secondly, you might notice some nice changes to the CSS here. I’ve been working on a new theme for the podcast site lately. While I was doing that I learned some stuff about web 2.0 style and typography. That made me realize the fonts on this site were small and ugly. You should notice I’ve already made changes to the style that should make this page more pleasant to look at.

Another change you will notice is that I have removed the automatic del.icio.us cross posts from the front page and the RSS feed. You can still check them out by going to the actual del.icio.us category however. I liked the fact that I could backup my del.icio.us links to my blog, but I didn’t like the clutter they created. I finally found a technological solution to create a happy medium. I also have changed the arrangement of links on the right side of the page.
If I had a penny for every time a content creator on the web asked forgiveness for not creating content reguarly enough I could buy and sell the Sultan of Brunai. So I’ll let the sultan breath a sigh of relief and skip it. But I would just like to let you know that more awesome stuff will be appearing here soon. I’m doing a pretty good job of getting my affairs in order, and in the coming spring and summer months I have more energy to get things done.

Carry on.

Other than that I haven’t updated much on this blog lately. That is largely in part to me using most of my time and effort on GeekNights. But do not fear, this blog is not dead. I’m already well on my way to finishing my “Complete Guide to PC Audio” with special emphasis on surround sound and Linux. I’m not sure if I want to wait until all the parts are complete and release them in a big block or release them one part at a time. I’ll make up my mind soon. But let me tell you I was quite surprised when I realized it was growing to be the size of a small book.

I have an idea or two floating around in my brain which doesn’t really have any room to come out in the podcast. In fact, I’m writing this on the train, and I’ll probably write up one of those ideas as soon as I hit save. Any second now.

I got into podcasting recently when I purchased the iPod nano. Come to think of it, I should probably keep an OPML online of all the podcasts I listen to. I’ll do that sometime this week. Anyway, this sudden realization that podcasts are actually awesome and people listen got me to rethink about my audioblog idea. Before you knew it, my roommate and I had started a podcast.

You see, when I get home from work, we talk about all kinds of things. And our friends often remark about how entertaining our conversations are. I don’t understand what they’re talking about, but apparently standard conversational fare for us has been called “pure sex” by others. Who are we to deny the world its need for pure sex?

The problem we had with the podcast was coming up with a name. We came up with some good names like “renaissance geeks” and such, but that didn’t pan out. Rym thought “teh show” was a good name, but I felt it implied some sort of connection to l33t kiddies. But then, I rememberd a previous Idea of mine. You know those late night TV shows hosted by guys who have last names beginning with the letter “L”? I always felt there should be a show like that just for geeks. So we settled on “GeekNights with Rym + Scott”.

The website for the podcast is www.frontrowcrew.com. In college our group of friends was known as the front row crew because we sat in the front row of anime club ever week. That site is shaping up to be sort of a community blog that ties us all together on the Internet. The podcast is just the first, and primary, thing that will be hosted there. However, because of iTunes and such, we had to seperate and reformat our podcast feed using feedburner. So the GeekNights podcast feed is at a different URL.

I hope you enjoy the podcast, but if you don’t I wont force you to listen to it. And I doubt that the podcast will diminish the content posted to this blog. If anything it will be quite the opposite.

I was writing opinion essays on the web as long ago as the late 1990s. I know for a fact that the stuff I wrote when I was in high school was completely crazy stupid. If you looked at things you said or wrote in high school you would also think the same thing. What’s really scary is that stuff I’m reading from as recently as 2004 is looking like total crap. I’m having a tough time deciding if I should edit it or leave it be.

One major post that stood out as garbage was the one on habit and routine. I was reading this book, “The Fourth Way”, on the suggestion of a friend. The book had a few good ideas which I expanded upon in the blog, but now I realize that 90% of that book was complete batshit. I remember a quote in there about the moon wanting to eat my soul because it was hungry, literally.

Not only is the content of my old posts terrible, but so is the grammar and formatting. The paragraphs are so incredibly long. My word choices were so incredibly painful. No wonder there weren’t very many readers. I can’t blame anyone for not reading a website that was so painful just to look at.

From now on I promise to spell check, grammar check and doubly edit all of my blog posts. In the past I have noticed that heavily edited posts often get more comments than other posts. It’s not that I’m incapable of writing well, it’s just that I didn’t put in the full effort all the time. I have felt the pain of my own unedited prose, and the world will suffer it no more.

Physical changes to the blog include a nicer sidebar on the right, full of actual useful links. No more fickle tabs across the top. The about page as well as other static pages will return and be linked on the side as well, I just have to do some work on them. The about page in particular will probably get a full rewrite.

And perhaps my favorite change are the excerpts displayed at the top of each post. I feel they give the blog a more professional tone while helping give readers a better understanding of what a post is really about.

I haven’t yet put all of my old posts into the new database yet. I will do that over the course of the next week or so. I’m going to start with the posts I think are the best or the most popular and work my way down. I will not edit anything for content or remove anything, no matter how bad I think it is now. I will, however edit posts for obvious mistakes and formatting. Small grammatical errors like missing commas will be fixed. Anything that requires the rewording of a sentence will not be done.

Oh yeah, I’m afraid that comments from the old blog might be lost forever. I’ve still got them, but I don’t know if I can find a pratical way of porting them over.

Stay tuned for a podcast and other goodies to come very soon.

I am going to say it right now. I am a shit-talker. Awhile back I posted about my quest to develop custom blog software. I can seriously say that I have been working on it. I also signed up for CSS Reboot in order to set a project deadline of November first. Today I decided to abandon the project.

This decision did not come easily. Dropping it made me realize that over the years I have never finished a project that was not for school or work. It’s pretty upsetting to look back and see every attempt to implement your own ideas was a failure. At least I think I know why it happens.

Take the blog project as an example. I was simultaneously the sole customer and the sole developer. Because I will not push myself into discomfort, it becomes much more difficult to force myself to work. That is a nice filter to weed out waste of time projects, but it also means I am unable to make anything for myself unless it is very easy, badly needed or greatly desired. I have a solution. Henceforth, I will only work on projects with a team and/or for people other than myself. Hopefully this will cure my shit-talking related to software development.

What will happen to my blog? After a great deal of deliberation I have decided on switching to WordPress. A great deal of thought went into this decision. It comes down to the fact that the custom blog project was a cork in my bottle of creativity. I wasn’t making blog posts, I wasn’t working on other projects, I wasn’t properly maintaining my computer(s) and I was losing rare and valuable free time. WordPress is free and it does 90% of the things I was going to implement in my software. I think I can manage without that remaining 10%. I might even be able to add that 10% in the future. Not having a unique snowflake for a blog is a tough pill I will have to swallow. Though, it will finally be a beautiful blog. Most WordPress themes are nicer than any CSS I can produce.

Sometime soon there might be some downtime on this site. This time it will be intentional, unlike the great Gentoo Apache configuration change. After the switch this blog will be like Lenin, a corpse on public display. Keep checking here for the full details of how this site will be changing. It is likely that I will probably purchase a new domain for a podcast being created by me and my roommate. Yesterday we actually did a test recording, and we have a dry run scheduled for today. The end of my shit-talking days could be just around the corner.

I considered some co-location, but I think I’ll have to set that as a long term goal. I need money now for a security deposit on an apartment, not for another computer. Luckily I found Linode. Basically what they do is utilize the user mode Linux technology to turn one giant server into 20 or so normal servers. Then they sell each of the 20 servers to people like me. UML is really cool because what it does is virtually turn a single physical hardware computer into as many fully functional Linux machines as you want. It’s kind of like VMware, but for Linux only and 1000 times more powerful.

Originally I was hesitant about getting it. I was afraid it wouldn’t be powerful enough. But it was the only place that was providing complete root control of a Linux box for a reasonable price. So I took it and I can say so far I am very pleased. The web interface is especially nice. I can reboot the computer all i want and re-image with any distribution from their image server at the push of a button. I’m running Gentoo as always and administering it the way I like. And despite being a bit low on RAM I’m still pulling through quite nicely.

One thing I would especially like to note is that user mode Linux is free like all open source stuff. You can turn your computer into 50 virtual Linux boxes if you want at no cost. No other OS I know of has a freely available and high quality way to run multiple copies of itself on a single piece of hardware simultaneously. I know BSD has the jails, but its not the same. UML rules, this site will be hosted for a long while. Hooray and hooray.

The other thing is that I have a lot of downtime lately. Not server downtime, real life downtime. I’m working full time every weekday with hour long train commutes on either end. That situation should persist for many more weeks to come until I find an apartment and move the hell out. My computing situation isn’t perfect now, but I do have the ability to make blog posts wherever and whenever I want. Since the only other things I have to do with my time are play video games, compute and read books I have a lot more time for blogging. I can definitely say I am glad that I will never again do any homework as long as I live. So don’t be surprised if you see an increased rate of blogging here. I could even post as much as once or twice a day if I have something to say.

For various reasons I usually attempt to refrain from making too many blog posts. Mostly its because I only want to write when I have something to say. Forcing myself to write more often I fear I may just make shit up or write inferior articles. Also the purpose of this blog isn’t like most others. I write this only for me, and don’t even expect anyone else to read it. So I only write when I need to. But I figure it can’t hurt to experiment writing more. If it turns out bad I can just stop any time. Besides, its not like I’ve got anything better to do these days.

So, update all your bookmarks, RSS readers, etc. to use apreche.net or www.apreche.net in place of protoman.rh.rit.edu. That domain will point to my site for many years to come.