Still working on my upgrade to Ishbadiddle -- wrestling with Drupal is like wrestling with angel, only with more extensive documentation.
What I have in mind is to collect data streams from the Greater Ishbadiddle Community. The new Ishbadiddle will take in Twitter, LiveJournal, blogs, delicious links, RSS feeds, email, and however else the Ishbadiddlers want to post their information. Sort of what I've tried to do with the "On Our Blogs" section with Yahoo! Pipes, but integrated into the main blog. Suggestions on redesign / retooling are welcome (but email me, because the comments here are nearly broken).
In other news, I have a couple of job interviews coming up (yay!) and sold my first Zepto Dice (wahoo!) And here's the first video of Science Mondays With Dad:
I started doing science stuff with the boys after they went to Carmello the Science Fellow for a week over the summer. They wanted to do his after-school program, but 1) it's pricey, 2) it's not close to home, and 3) we weren't that impressed with the week-long program. Carmello showed them a lot of TV. And we're not talking Cosmos re-runs, either. So I figured I'd do it myself. Coming up next: Electromagnetic Crane, and Which Takes Up More Volume: Ice or Water?
Stay tuned!
| Science Mondays | Site Redesign
We're fixing things up around here for the big move over to Drupal. More to come.
posted this | this entry's link | speak your mind | Movable Type
Going through queued comments today, found this one:
Hi, visit my blog: http://[redacted] no spam!!!! if you report my blog at my hoster, you will die!!!! please visit us!!
How's that strategy working out for you?
posted this | this entry's link | speak your mind | Spam
You've got to rearrange, who you are into who you want to be. And then sha na na a lot.
In the beginning was Geocities, then Blogger, then Movable Type. Now I think it's time to move on. Since I've upgraded to the latest version of MT I've been frustrated. There used to be a much more active community around MT, one that would answer your questions. There used to be plugins that made MT jump through hoops. There used to be decent documentation. Now I find that the forums aren't useful, I can't find plugins to do what I want, when I find them I can't get plugins to work, and much of the time I've spent on the documentation site has caused me to lose what little hair I still possess. (There's lots of legacy documentation still up there, and plenty more that's just plain inadequate.)
In short, I think it's time for a change. Plus, it's always good to learn something new. It seems that my main options are Wordpress, Drupal, and Joomla. Here's what I'm looking for:
1) Can handle the import of 4700+ entries, nearly 10,000 comments, with associated categories, subcategories, and tags.
2) Can handle a multi-author blog.
3) Can replicate my permalink structure (fortunately my current system is "future-proof" so hopefully not a big deal.)
4) Will be useful to learn.
5) Easy to use for authors.
Any thoughts, Ishbapublic?
posted this | this entry's link | 3 comments | Content Management Systems | Drupal | Joomla | Movable Type | Wordpress
Announcement: you can follow Ishbadiddle on Twitter and get handy links to the latest posts.
I resisted the Twitter for a long time, but no longer!
I'm no stranger to the social networks. (Remember Orkut? Friendster?) I've been using Plaxo for years as a way to keep up with people's address changes. (It's still good for that, even as they try and make it more of a social network.) Then there's LinkedIn, which is hugely helpful for work (and looking for work) in all kinds of ways. It's by far the best business networking tool since the Rolodex.
Enter Facebook. (Yeepers, I need a new photograph.) At first I thought, what do I need to join Facebook for? I've got a blog. (Which, of course, everyone in the world is reading, right?) But I eventually caved and signed up, although I refuse to superpoke or give out eggs or any of that silliness (any more). I mean, everyone has a Facebook account now, right? (Welcome aboard, Chris!)
But Twitter? Really? I mean, I have a blog and Facebook now -- do I really need another means of broadcasting my minutiae to the world at large? Kerim was the one who convinced me, with this post: Twitter for Facebook Users. He quotes: "Twitter does one small thing, and does it well." As I'm a sucker for simplicity
To keep myself sane, I'm using HelloTxt so I can update all my networks via email. (I still don't do SMS.) I have one account that will update my status on business networks (Plaxo and LinkedIn) and another for personal networks (Twitter and Facebook), because presumably my professional network does not really want to know what I'm having for breakfast.
If you want you can follow Ishbadiddle via twitter, at least if the plugin works. It should tweet the latest posts. (And this is me).
So, do you Tweet?
| HelloTxt | LinkedIn | Plaxo | Social Networking | Twitter | Web Tools
Since the whois data on ishbadiddle.com opened up, I've had several databases thinking that I must be a business. Ishbadiddle has been offered a line of credit. Ishbadiddle was asked to take over Lehman Bros.
Caller: Hello, is this Eesh... Badeedle?
Me: Who? [I don't usually get calls asking for Eesh Badeedle, and besides, I'm only on my third cuppa coffee.]
C: I'm trying to reach... [clearly struggling to pronounce Ishbadiddle, or figure out why any business would have any business calling itself that].... Eesh Badeedle.
M: [Finally connecting Eesh Badeedle to Ishbadiddle] Who's calling?
C: This is Experian. We're trying to update our business records for Eesh Badeedle.
M: It's not a business. It's just a website.
C: So there are no transactions involving Eesh Badeedle?
M: [Momentarily pondering what sort of transactions via this blog might qualify] Um, no. It's just a website.
C: It's just a website.
M: Yes.
C: OK. Would you like our toll-free number in case you have any questions?
M: No, not really!
[We wish each other a good day.]
| They Make Phone Calls
I've long wanted to be able to automatically import feeds from other posters' blogs (hence the little-used "On Our Blogs" category) directly into Ish. There are a few MT plugins that are supposed to do that, but I couldn't seem to get anything to work. So I tried Pipes, the mash-your-own-feed service from Yahoo! Check out the results over on the sidebar. Boring "how it works" stuff below the fold.
| Feeds | Regex | Yahoo! | Yahoo! Pipes
Posting here has still been light as I've been working under the hood to get everything just the way I likes it. One of the things I've been working to get fixed is the Tags, discussed at length in this previous post. Upgrading to MT4.2 meant that I no longer had to hack keywords to act like tags since it comes with native tag support. (For anyone following along, I used the Keywords as Tags plugin to convert all my old keywords into the new tags.)
But under the old system, I could easily produce a list of tags for the most recent entries as a "What We're Talking About Lately" feature. MT's tag function, though, will only produce a "most used tags" cloud. The Tags.App plugin has this functionality -- but the out-of-the-box tag cloud it creates is difficult to style. (I could set a minimum font size, but not a maximum, resulting in GIANT TAGS THAT ATE MY BLOG.) So I waded into the variable functions of MT, in order to set the size correctly for the sidebar. Here's the recipe:
<MTTags latest="20">
<MTSetVarBlock name="addsize"><MTTagCount></MTSetVarBlock>
<MTSetVar name="tagsize" value="7">
<a rel="tag" href="<MTTagLink>" style="font-size:<MTGetVar name="tagsize" op="add" value="$addsize">pt; text-decoration:none;"><MTTagName></a>
</MTTags>
Incidentally, I'm finding that MT's documentation of their latest version isn't that great -- and worse, the community doesn't seem to be as active as it once was. Lots of forum searches turned up questions with no answers.
More to come: fixing the tag results page, category-specific tag pages, and the uber-tag cloud.
posted this | this entry's link | 1 comment | Tags
Well, after a loooooong hiatus -- caused first by spambots that brought down our server, and then by my busy busyess, and then some technical issues, and then the arrival of the alien invasion, which totally threw me off, and then more technical issues, and then my having to recode all these templates -- which I am not finished with, but the main index and the post pages seem to be working OK now -- because I upgraded to Movable Type 4, and a bunch of things are different, a lot of it better so I don't have to hack my tags any more, and it's all modular, etc., so I'll have to redo the indicies later, but for now this seems to be mostly functional. Let me know if there's anything broken.
Thanks again to Trip for helping get Ish back online.
Excelsior!
(Oh, and while the blog was down -- apparently there's some sort of election happening today. Go vote if you haven't yet. I'm taking cookies to the PTA Bake Sale.)
posted this | this entry's link | 6 comments
Ishbareaders will remember the sleuthing work that Alex B. did in uncovering the Misleading Water Filter Comparison Chart, which ranks "Aquasana" as number one but hides the fact that it's sponsored by... Aquasana. There's been some back-and-forth between President of Sun Water Systems, maker of the Aquasana water filters, me, and various other folks who feel that Mr. Strand was not being above board.
Yesterday a satisfied Aquasana customer, "Miguel," posted here about his wonderful experience with Aquasana.. "After all, I wanted a water filter that would do the best job, not the one who I thought had the best marketing team," says "Miguel."
Curious, I looked up where "Miguel" was posting from. Hmmm -- his IP is 67.152.98.19 in Fort Worth, TX, home of... Sun Water Systems! And it's the same IP used earlier by.... Charles Strand, President of same!
As Henry David Thoreau said, "Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk." Ladies and gentlemen, we have a Sock Puppet. This from a man who wrote here: "I've always been suspicious of people who make defamatory remarks, but use aliases to do so. If you feel good about what you are saying, why use an Alias..."
You lose! Good day sir!
Update: He wrote again, still claiming to be Miguel, and clearly not understanding what an IP address is. I've closed the thread, since I really have better things to do than argue with a sock puppet about water filtration marketing.
FWIW there's now an Ishbadiddle group on Facebook. For authors, readers, and fans. Let me know if you want to join.
I just got back from Philadelphia and I noticed an ad for Ishkabibbles’s, home of the original chicken cheesesteak. I rembered there being some discussion of this blogs name (but an internal search showed no mention of “iskabibble”. A yahoo search had many hits, including this one:
ISHKABIBBLE A dismissive statement. This slang expression came into existence in the USA quite suddenly around 1913 with the ostensible meaning “I should worry!”, which means, of course, “Don’t worry!” or “Who cares?”. It had quite a vogue for a decade or two and was the name of a character played by Merwyn Bogue on a 1930s radio show called Kay Kyser’s Kollege of Musical Knowledge (they don’t make titles like that any more).
Mike, maybe your grandparents got Ishbadiddle from here. Maybe they really invented the chicken cheesesteak?
Created with the Seal Generator that Trip just wrote about.
(German, of course, for "The Spammers, The.")
Sorry I've been light on blogging as of late -- v. busy at work. Plus Ish was hit by spam commenters. It's been a couple of years since our last major invasion. Then, as now, the ironic thing is that their attempts to hijack this blog to boost the Google ranks for their real estate, airline ticket, and education scamsites are completely and utterly useless. Since the nofollow attribute is added to every hyperlink in comments, Google will ignore it. So at least I can take some comfort in the thought that the SEO firm (I assume they've paid someone to do this) is wasting their money. In the meantime, I've been plugging the leaks, deleting comments, and banning IP addresses (they are all from ThePlanet.com in Texas, which means either our friends are in TX and hopping IPs or someone is using a proxy through them; thanks guys!). This may take a while.
In the meantime, enjoy some pulp fiction popups courtesy of Cynical C.
Hey, Ishbadiddle is in an article on neighborhood blogs in the latest Park Slope Reader, available in fine stores everywhere. Well, not everywhere, but here. PDF version here in case the Community Bookstore is too far away.
The full uncut "interview" is below the fold. Some of it will look familiar.
Continue reading "Park Slope Reader" »
It seems that Ishbadiddle is blocked in China. You can use The Great Firewall of China to test any site's availability. More about Chinese Internet censorship here.
I finally got around to it... www.ishbadiddle.com and www.ishbadiddle.org now both redirect here.
Updated the templates so the tags should be working again. Also, update the links section, pruning some dead sites and others I don't read as much. Feel free to leave corrections and suggestions in the comment box.
Yesterday, in addition to being Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday and the 88th anniversary of The Great Boston Molasses Disaster, was also Ishbadiddle's six-year blogiversary. Oh, and some time back we passed the 4,000th post. Howzaboutthat?
