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You scored as Darth Vader.
Which Revenge of the Sith Character are you? |
Personal
No More Address Munging
I while ago, I noticed that Google Groups‘ new Beta system does not display full email addresses. Seeing as Google is probably the most popular usenet archival engine, and thus the main source of email address harvesting for spammers, I wondered how much affect the new system had on spam.
For the past week, I have posted to usenet with a real email address. It turned out to be a total of 21 messages in both alt.* hierarchy and the netscape.* hierarchy.
I didn’t get one spam message.
It just may be time for people to stop munging their email addresses on usenet. 
UPDATE: A couple of days later, I got two spam messages.
An Audioblogging Manifesto
For audio bloggers everywhere;
please listen to Maciej Ceglowski‘s, Audioblogging Manifesto.
I have at times considered doing an audio post, but now remember why I never choose to. It never seems to fall in line with my first blog post.
Forum Diet
You’ve seen how many forums there are for Mozilla and Netscape, right? Including developer forums, there’s no way a normal human being can keep up, let alone participate. And so, I’m going on a forum diet.
Most notably, I’m no longer participating in netscape.mozilla.user.win32.
I don’t have the time to participate in netscape.public.general, or alt.netscape. I did some support in the UFAQ forums, but not anymore.
I started doing Netscape support in alt.netscape, so I’m still hesitant about leaving that one.
In which newsgroups am I still giving tech support?
netscape.mozilla.firefox
netscape.mozilla.thunderbird
netscape.mozilla.user.general
netscape.netscape7.windows
The only web-based forums I’m going to do support in (on occasion) is Mozillazine’s Thunderbird and Seamonkey support forums.
Best Blog Template
Choosing my new RSS reader
As I stated in a previous post, duplicate RSS items is my #1 Thunderbird bug. I recently decided to look for alternatives.
Stand-alone RSS readers are out of the question. I prefer to view the actual webpage of the RSS item, instead of the summary. I get to read the comments, and it makes placing a comment much quicker (thanks blogger.com, for only offering atom feeds. 
). As a result, I think I would be much better off with a Firefox or Thunderbird extension. This way, I make sure the Gecko rendering engine is used.
I should first explain why I don’t use Firefox’s live bookmarks feature. It’s a nice feature, but it does not indicate which RSS items I have read, and which ones are new. I don’t want to have to reread through the list of items on every RSS feed to see if I recognize the titles. Live bookmarks is a nice technology demo, but I have trouble finding a practical use for it.
So I looked at the RSS extensions available. I tried Forumzilla a few months ago on the Mozilla Application Suite and Netscape 7, having been told to add it to https://ilias.ca/MozillavsFirefox. It would not remember any RSS feeds I entered, let alone fetch items. It seems to work for others, so I assume the problem was local.
Next, I had look at Aggreg8. According to the Aggreg8 weblog, development on Aggreg8 has ceased, and Habarixenu is recommended. So I tried Habarixenu. I quickly uninstalled it, after finding no way to set it to display the actual webpage of an RSS item.
So I went to addons.mozilla.org, and saw Wizz RSS. It has the layout I’m looking for. It also has the stupidest caveat I’ve seen in an RSS reader: You have to store your feed list on the Wizz Computers server. Buh-bye.
Next, I tried Sage. It has a good user interface. It keeps track of which items are read and unread. It has a nice “check feeds” button, which checks for new items on all my feeds, and puts an indicator beside those feeds, which have new items. My only problem with it is that the list of items kept on the list is not controlled, like it is in Thunderbird. I like to hold on to certain blog posts, that I find helpful. I suppose simply bookmarking them would do the trick.
And so, I chose Sage as my new RSS reader.
On Hiatus
If anyone cares, I have not been doing tech support in the past few days. I’ve been feeling a little burnt out. I’ll probably be back at the end of the week.
Why Blog?
This being my first blog post, it begs the question, “Why blog?”
CNN and The Daily Show have been making a big deal about blogging; but I still don’t understand what the big deal is. When Homer Simpson was building his infamous MrX website, Lisa told him, “you have to offer people something.” What’s ironic is I want to know what the ability to blog offers me. (forgive me, I’m a Generation Xer)
From what I’ve seen of other blogs, it’s easily something that can already be done. Other methods to voice one’s opinion, publish news, or keep an online journal, are:
– create a website
– post to a newsgroup, web forum, or mailing list
What makes someone prefer a blog?
Most of my participation on the internet has been in the form of Mozilla and Netscape user support, which is usually done in a ‘forum’ format, not a blog. Heck, even my website is simply a resource of information to help people use Mozilla or Netscape. There doesn’t seem like much need for a blog. What, amongst what I can offer, is best suited for a blog? Now that I have a blog, what would I offer people with it?
I don’t have the answers just yet; but I do have a blog.