Blogging thoughts

March 9, 2008 By

The first year or two I had this blog I found I checked my “stats” often. Technorati, Google Analytics, FeedBurner, etc.

Now, I rarely check my stats. I have the little FeedBurner widget on my blog that tells me how many people subscribe via that service. But it doesn’t tell me how many people actually read my blog. Which is fine, now. Because now I don’t care.

Now I write about whatever the heck I feel like. Or I don’t write.

And that is exactly why, I think, I have more people reading now than ever. About 10,000 page views a month for a blog about nothing isn’t bad.

I’ve also found that it doesn’t hurt to share a stupid video I enjoyed – people get to know me better based on what I find interesting, I imagine.

Another thing – adding crap on your blog, like my “ask me a question” box over on the right, or any of the other 30 things I have tried, just don’t add value. My readers don’t use them – because few of my readers actually visit my blog. Most read in Google Reader, or some other RSS aggregator.

Besides – readers that want to talk to me actually tend to pick up the phone and call me – or hit me up on IM. Just tonight a reader called from Michigan to ask questions about Vista and dual monitors. I talked to him for 15 minutes and told him what he needed (a secondary video card that has Vista, not XP drivers). He had never commented, and I had never heard of him. But I had some time – so I shared it with him. He had been reading for 9 months!

DSC00232 Photos are something that people love. Especially ones that give them a sense of who I am – like pictures of my dog.

Here is my poor Yoshi with “Fairy Wings” my daughter put on him. He didn’t care – he was playing in the front hard – his second favorite thing to do (his favorite is any ride in any care\, for any reason).

The cars driving by and honking and the people pointing and laughing didn’t even phase him. He was getting loving!

Finally, the more I f*ck with my blog, adding all that extra crap nobody sees anyway, the less stable my blog becomes. I would like to see every WordPress Widget warn me up front if it is going to a) modify my theme, or b) touch my database. It’s important.

Filed Under: Community, FAQs -Tutorials

Simple Custom Search

February 25, 2008 By

I often search my blog to find older posts I want to link to.  My blog has a search field on it, so it is generally easy enough to find what I want.  But why should I have to open my blog just to search it?

With a Mozilla (or Opera) browser (I use Flock) it takes just seconds to create a custom search.

scob1For example, let’s build a custom search for Robert Scoble’s Scobleizer blog.

 

All we need to do is visit the Scobleizer blog and right click in the Search box on his site (click images to enlarge in a new window).

From the popup menu, select “Add a Keyword for this Search…”.

 

scob2

In the dialog box that opens just type in the Name of your search (in this case, “Scobleizer” and then type in the shortcut you will use from the browser – I used “rs” for Robert Scoble.

Now all I have to do to search Scobleizer is type “rs keyword” in my browser – no need to visit Scobleizer first.  Of course “keyword” will be replaced the term I am actually searching for.  Here’s an example – I’ll type “rs lagesse” in my browser – the browser window returns the Scobleizer pages that include the text “lagesse”.

This can be done for any page that includes a search form – Wikipedia, your own blog, YouTube, whatever.

I found it very useful to create a search shortcut called “img” for searching Google Images.

Filed Under: FAQs -Tutorials, Tips

FreeNAS Tutorial for Windows Users – Part Five – XBOX 360

January 18, 2008 By

Update: Please read all the comments before sending me a question! You can find my FreeNAS posts/Tutorials here:

Very quick one here – but since I get a lot of hits looking or this information, I thought I would post it. Enabling the XBOX 360 to see the FreeNAS server is very simple.

  • On your FreeNAS admin page, select UPnP under Services.
  • Click Enable on the UPnP page.
  • Give it a name that you will recognize when browsing via the XBOX.
  • Set the network interface (should be set if you only have one network card.
  • Select the FreeNAS share you want the XOX 360 to use – in this case I am sharing my Movies folder with my XBOX – I could also add music, pictures, etc.
  • I left the port blank to use the defaults.
  • Under Profile just select XBOX 360.
  • You can enable the Control web page or not.
  • Click Save and Restart.

FN_XBOX That’s it – on your XBOX 360 you should be able to go to the media blade, select Video, then browse for computers and see the FreeNAS server (you may have to press the blue “X” button on the XBOX remote to change the source of the movies, music, whatever. Below is the UPnP screen shot from my FreeNAS server.

Filed Under: FAQs -Tutorials, XBOX 360

Using Microsoft SyncToy 2 with FreeNAS

January 16, 2008 By

You can find my FreeNAS posts/Tutorials here:

[Of course, this tutorial applies to any remote storage that is connected to as a shared drive. This is a complimentary post to FreeNAS: The Free NAS Server - About and FreeNAS Tutorial for Windows Users - Part One - Installation]

SyncToy 2 is a free utility provided by Microsoft and it runs on Vista and XP (and Windows 2008 Server). SyncToy 2 (beta) is available from Microsoft here.

Microsoft describes SyncToy 2 as:

Now there is an easier way. SyncToy, a free PowerToy for Microsoft Windows, is an easy to use, highly customizable program that helps users to do the heavy lifting involved with the copying, moving, and synchronization of different directories. Most common operations can be performed with just a few clicks of the mouse, and additional customization is available without additional complexity. SyncToy can manage multiple sets of folders at the same time; it can combine files from two folders in one case, and mimic renames and deletes in another case. Unlike other applications, SyncToy actually keeps track of renames to files and will make sure those changes get carried over to the synchronized folder.

  1. Download the file.
  2. Install SyncToySetup.exe
  3. Start the application
    1. Start Menu
    2. All Programs
    3. SyncToy 2.0
After you either allow Microsoft to gather some data about how you use SyncToy (or decline), the opening Welcome screen displays: Welcome

[Read more...]

Filed Under: FAQs -Tutorials

FreeNAS Tutorial for Windows Users – Part Three – Upgrading

January 12, 2008 By

You can find my FreeNAS posts/Tutorials here:

Note: I had meant for my next FreeNAS post to cover using Microsoft SyncToy 2.0 with FreeNAS. A new version of FreeNAS was released though, and I decided to upgrade my server first.

Upgrading FreeNAS is a fairly straightforward procedure.

Before continuing, please make sure that your FreeNAS server is not being used. If the server is upgraded while data is being read/written then that data could get corrupted!

The first thing to do is to back up your existing FreeNAS configuration. This is done from the browser on any Windows machine on your network.

Navigate to the server (see tutorial part 2 for information on this – link at bottom of this post).

FreeNAS 1 You will see the standard FreeNAS interface. From the left hand navigation menu select “Backup/Restore” under System.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: FAQs -Tutorials
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