Jay Talbot’s Ramblings

Ok, it seems like the host I’ve been using had routing issues getting to my blog. From what I was told, it was a Level3 and/or Clearwire being blocked thing, not sure which. So until they get that fixed, I’ve housed this blog on my own service. It was relatively painless to move it over. We’ll see how it goes.

Maybe more later…

According to this article, Facebook was going to require 1,000 fans to recieve your unique user name. It was a very stiff policy that would have left most Facebook users out in the cold.

As of this morning, the 1,000 fan requirement is gone. Rejoice FB users, and delight in the gold rush for your user names!

Maybe more later…

I’ve been looking at starting a microblogging service for ham operators and a separate service for cloggers. The issue is, what software do I pick? Well, I’ve been looking around and found a few packages and haven’t found one I liked yet. I’ll give you a rundown of what packages I found, and my reservations I have against the software.

• Laconica is a microblogging tool. It looks good and is fairly feature rich. My main reservation about this software is the license it’s released under is the AGPL (GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE) which requires you to not only make available the original source codes, but any modifications you’ve made to the software. I’m sorry, but if I want an original feature that no one else has, and I modify this program and release the modifications, it would no longer make my feature novel.
• Wordpress MU + Prologue theme. Wordpress is prowerful to say the least, and the Prologue theme gives it a simple interface. It’s not a plugin so the 100 to 140 character limit isn’t inforced. The lure is the power of Wordpress and the multitude of plugins available.
• Grooner looks ok, but the installation isn’t that easy, and it’s a 1 hit wonder as it only does microblogging.
• Elgg is another microblogging platform that seems feature rich. There are also a lot of plugins available for it. This is probably the most promising of the platforms I’ve looked at. It’s covered under the GPL and has an active community.

These are the top 4 so far. My requirements are simple. Don’t require me to release my enhancements.  In the past, I’ve made contributions to OSS projects that helped me out in one way or another. If I choose to release it, so be it, but it will be on my terms and my choice. I’m not able to pay for some of the commercial software available ( for multiple hundreds of dollars) so it must be free (as in beer).

All that being said, I’ve toyed with the idea of reviving one of my old projects into a microblogging software. We’ll see I guess….

Maybe more later…

Sometimes I miss the old days of computing. The old BBS’ and how geekycool it was to have a modem and talk to people online. Some BBS’ had tons of files, others had tons of message bases tied into something called Fidonet, yet others dealt in adult files, and they were all community based. This is something that the “social-network” sites like Facebook, Orkit, and Myspace are trying to bring back.

Try as we may, the old days are over. Now, we need to look at the future and what community really means. I don’t think we’ll find it with all the hyped up, over-thought and overdone “social-network”, but with building a “1 site for 1 world community.” Who will do it? Only the future holds the answer.

Maybe more later….

Well, looks like the spammers found a way around  the captcha. Be it automated or a person (if so, I hope they die by the hands of a thousand bloggers) you can thank them. You now have to be a registered member of the blog to post comments. Hey! The slime-bags forced my hand, what else am I supposed to do?

Maybe more later…

Update: I think I’ve found a better way to check for spam and still let everyone else post. Still going to require captcha, but hey, it’s better than having to login. Although my blog’s internal spam filter is catching it all, it’s annoying to me.

Heh, someone thinks this blog is important enough to post over 75 SPAM comments in less than 2 days. At least I’d like to think this blog was important, as trite as it can be. lol! I hope I’ve fixed it well enough to keep it from happening quit as much.

Maybe more later….

Well, and era will soon be over. Yahoo is finally killing off Geocities later this year and replacing it with a pay hosting service.

Yeah, I cut my teeth on Geocities. I had an embeded midi music file and maybe 1 or 2 animated graphics. Maybe I shouldn’t have admitted to that. lol Do I miss it? Hell no! Compared to what I have here, it was kindergarten stuff.

Their new plans are a bit expensive for what you get. Their plans start at $5.98 (for the first 3 months, and $7.95/month after) for “unlimited” bandwidth and space. Ok, there is no such thing as unlimited anything when it comes to hosting. Most blogs and personal sites don’t really use more than a a few hundred megabytes anyway. They also allow only 1000 email addresses. Eh, the limitation on email addresses is so 10 years ago. I’ve seen quite a few hosts still limiting the number of email addresses. This is a truely outdated and out-moded practice. I think the only company who can get away with limiting email address these days is Google and their free email hosting services.

I’m sure someone will fall for these services, but I want to remind everyone to use their resources and do their research. Heck, I pay $3/month and get 5GB of space and 10GB of bandwidth. That’s plenty for my modest websites at this point, and I get unlimited email address although I use the nice services provided by Google.

Maybe more later….

It’s funny to me how many of these companies justify their competitiveness, or lack there of, by lobbying the Government. It’s not the Fed this time. No, it’s the state of North Carolina. What can’t the oh-so-big-and-powerful TWC compete with? Better services with a lower pricetag!

Wilson, NC, and it’s 47,000 residence have had it with TWC. The created their own city run community network, and offer services at prices that make TWC wince in pain and fear. Who can blame these people? We all know how TWC has made few real improvements to their backbone, while charging residence high prices, and providing substandard services. Did I mention they get subsidized by the US Government also? Nice little “operation” they have going there, eh? <wink wink, nudge nudge>

While I was living around Austin, TX, I had TWC and the services weren’t that great. The only two nice things about having my phone through TWC was the long distance was free and Bell maintenance didn’t affect my service.

Maybe more later….

Not much. Not much at all. I’m still unemployeed and it still sucks. Maybe it’s all that bad karma coming back to haunt me….

On the “new server” side….. Ok, it’s not the most reliable host on the net. They “provision” new accounts in the middle of the day (which would be  no no if I were paying for the service). I posted my disagreement with this policy on their support board, so maybe they’ll switch it to nights instead. I hope so!

Maybe more later…..