Blogging Summary

Here's some blogging to make up for all the time I haven't blogged.

I have no comment about Obama's cabinet picks. I have little to say that hasn't been said about Governor Blagogogoagovavich. A man with a name like that should not be in politics anyway. I'm not sure what to make of the mess that is Canada's national government. Nor anything of import to say about the student-led chaos in Greece (although a movement led by anarchists is ripe for the mocking).

The economy isn't looking so hot, but you didn't hear that from me. And all my investments are worth significantly less than they used to be. Though no one's explained to my satisfaction how the values of these things are determined.

The Giants clinched the NFC East last weekend (by losing, so it's tough to get excited). The Knicks are still batshit crazy.

I was just in Canada, and saw some hockey on TV. I participated in the famed "Hockey Night in Canada". This involved a pub crawl around town, with YSA. The male to female ratio was out of control (like 10:1). Which was disappointing for me, but did you hear that straight women/gay men? Toronto's new slogan: Like shooting fish in a barrel.

Edit: Zimbabwe deserves a mention in the list of places where crap is happening. The times suggests that inflation there may be as high as 8 followed by 18 zeros. That's 8 quintillion for those who are playing at home.

The Quest For A Stat Tracker

So, a few weeks ago, Laurie pointed me at a online tool named "Sitemeter". It's a little icon you put on your webpage which then lets you know how many people are visiting your site.

They're apparently not that good about respecting the privacy of their users.

So I went looking for alternatives.

I found StatCounter. They seem like they're on the up-and-up. But I couldn't get my online registration to work. I registered and put the counter up, but they wouldn't let me log in.

So I moved on.

Now I have RiteCounter. Which seems decent enough.

And now I've found a website dedicated to the discussion and review of free web stat trackers. And it tells me that while RiteCounter is fine, it's not the best because it only keeps about a months worth of data. So out with RiteTracker and in with OneStatFree... We'll see how long this one lasts.

About two seconds. I don't like the way the stats page looks on OneStatFree, so I bailed on them and went over to W3Counter who have a good rep, pretty stat pages, and no ads.

Making the Move

You might have noticed a change in the appearance of the blog the past couple days. (You might notice that it's better now.) I moved the blog to blogger beta. Which has certain advantages (Notice the recent comments at the top?).

I apologize for any stress this transition is causing my users. I promise it's for the best!

News Feed

The transition to blogger is coming along smoothly. You should be automatically redirected to this page if you try to go to http://tom.castoday.com/tomog. Which, is the way it should be.

If you've been using an RSS reader to read my feed, you should probably modify your settings to point to my new RSS feed here. It's in Atom format, which is different, but should work fine on any major news reader.

Meanwhile, the transition is moving along smoothly. Only missing the busy months of March-May 2005. But now I am going to do that.

Working hard?

The Transition Begins

Whatever had been plaguing my blog has been resolved. I believe that somehow my hosting service was mirroring my website on two different computers. Changes to one didn't end up showing up on the other, or showed up only partially. It was very strange.

And frustrating... So frustrating that I have given up on self-hosting my blog and moved over to blogspot. I've begun moving my posts (starting in January '05) over. The move's been surprisingly easy.

I'm a little apprehensive about moving my blog into the maintstream blogosphere. What if something happens? Blogger is owned by Google who, so far, have turned out to be pretty good. So though I still despair over this transition I do feel a little less uncomfortable.

Also, Blogger has some nice tools. They have inline editing, which is really great. They have comment moderation and CAPTCHA. Both of which were lacking on my other site. I think you can also search. And they do all the hosting.

The thing that Blogger doesn't do is categories. And they don't do directory-style grouping the way Bloxsom does. Good ol' Bloxsom. On Bloxsom I can get all the articles from 2005. All the articles from a specific Month or Day. All the articles on a particularly subject. Ohhhh... I miss my Bloxsom already.

But mainly, Blogger is taking away the responsibility of maintaining my own blog and scripts. All I have to do is come up with inane chatter. Phew!

Screw It

My blog is dooomed! Doooooomed!

This is so much nicer. And you know, what can I do?

I'll work on transfering over all my old content soon. Whee!