Super Ginormous

Blog

  • Combatting Blog Spam

    Blog spam is a huge problem. Akismet estimates that 93% of comments made on blogs are usually spam. That is a ridiculously high amount of spam! A little blog like mine doesn’t receive a lot of traffic (maybe 20-30 visitors a day). Yet, since my conversion to WordPress several months ago, I have received well over 600 spam comments (versus about 50 legit comments). It wasn’t until a couple of days ago that I realized that maybe I should check on which posts are being affected. Know what I discovered? They were posts about WordPress.

    I love the Akismet plugin for WordPress. It works well, and I have yet to deal with a spam comment on the front-end of my site. It’s caught every bit of spam I’ve ever received through this site and makes dealing with it very easy.
    So, what did I do to take care of the spam – so even Akismet wouldn’t have to deal with it? That was easy, actually. I disallowed Pings and Comments on the posts attracting the spammers. Problem solved (for now at least).

  • Better Living by Giving

    Better Living by GivingLet’s face it, most greeting cards aren’t that great. Better Living by Giving aims to change that, with a twist. They’re looking to make a difference:

    We started this company with passions for great design, art and music, nested with a need to make a little difference in this big world. We looked inside to see what made us happy. It was actually very simple. Helping make others happy made us happy. And so this became our mission.

    Designing cards and getting to work with talented creatives are just icing. The best part is knowing someone will help someone else feel better. That’s the beauty of giving cards.

    What an awesome concept! It’s hard to believe that something like this came out of Augusta. But then, the two people behind it – Linda and Brent – are stars in the Augusta design community. While I was with The Alison Group, I worked under Linda’s supervision – and she is one of the most talented designers I’ve ever met.
    So, if you feel like helping out a great cause, and would love to get some very well-designed greeting cards in the process, check out their site: http://www.betterlivingbygiving.com

  • Nobody loves me, it’s true.

    Windows 98 LogoIt’s a sad, sad day for fans of Windows 95/98/Me *gag*. Effective today, Microsoft will no longer support your antiquated operating system(s). Perhaps it’s time for an upgrade or possibly a switch?

    End of support for Windows 98 and Windows Me – Effective July 11, 2006, Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, and Windows Me (and their related components) will transition to a non-supported status. After this date, Microsoft will no longer provide any incident support options or security updates. Microsoft is not offering a custom support agreement for these products.

  • One Month Down

    Saturday marked the end of our first month in our new home. We’re not completely settled in yet, but we’re getting there. I wish I could say it’s been completely stress-free, but it hasn’t been. Our house turned out great, but I’ve struggled with dealing with the contractors working on our street. We’ve had several contractors use our backyard as a cut-through. Some even ran over our sprinkler heads (which prompted me to put string up around my yard to keep them out).
    Over the past few weeks, we’ve had several neighbors move in on the street. We haven’t met them all, but we’re glad to see traffic on the street other than contractors. So far, it’s a pretty good mix of people. uite a few couples are around Kim and my age. A number of them have children.

    The thing I’m most excited about though, is being closer to friends and family. Scott and I have already started talking about “Lost” parties in the fall when Season 3 of Lost starts up. I can’t wait.

  • Wherefor art thou, Basecamp?

    UPDATE: It appears the problem has been resolved. Though I am still curious to know what happened…

    Is it just me, or is Basecamp (and all of 37Signals’ websites) down now? None of their sites is resolving for me now. I know they just moved their servers recently…and perhaps this is related to that move somehow.

    A TraceRoute is showing that one of their servers is unreachable…

    69.36.39.150 ASN=18462[Destination Unreachable] burnham.37signals.com.

    I’m sure similar tests on other URLs would yield similar results.

    This outage concerns me because we use the Premium level Basecamp plan to manage all of our projects. When Basecamp is offline, it effects our ability to work efficiently (especially given our dependancy on this app now…) It begs the question now … what will 37Signals do to compensate users effected by their outage? And is a hosted offsite solution really the best thing for our business? I’m not sure, but ActiveCollab is looking pretty good right now…

  • PowerUp

    It was inevitable that it would happen. PowerServe now has a blog.

    Not much available in terms of content, yet. (Most of it comes from my own blog.) But we’re going to be adding articles, features over the coming weeks & months (as time permits) that will give readers a better idea of who we are and what we do. So, stay tuned, and subscribe to the RSS feed for updates!

  • New Media and Higher Ed

    As a geek, I take for granted the technology that I use on a daily basis. I read RSS feeds through FeedDemon several times during the day. I blog occasionally. I visit Wikipedia several times a week either to look up information or to make sure spammers aren’t screwing articles of interest to me. I also listen to a number of podcasts, such as Desiring God Radio and LostCasts. I use these technologies to stay abreast of the latest news, trends and technology out there that is important to me. Blogs, Podcasts, Wikis: these are all “tools” that would be extremely beneficial for use in Higher Education.

    In preparing for my speech I learned a lot about new media technologies and their use in higher education and, frankly, I was surprised by what I learned.

    Of the 35 colleges and universities in the University System of Georgia, only three had a publicly available (i.e. on the homepage, news or admissions page) RSS feed – Armstrong Atlantic University, University of West Georgia, and Darton College. Only two of the 35 schools had podcasts – Armstrong Atlantic University and Georgia College and State University.

    Why aren’t schools taking advantage of these new technologies? Based on the feedback I received from workshop attendees it comes down to:

    • Cost
    • Server Capabilities/Restricitions
    • Technology Access
    • Knowledge/Implementation Limitations

    The good news is – many are in the process of implementing some or all of these tools into public and private portions of their website. This is good news for students, faculty and alumni alike.

    By utilizing technology that is out there, and gaining in popularity, they can avoid having to play catch up once the general public “adopts” them.

  • Fear

    We all fear something, be it death, snakes, spiders, etc. My fear is public speaking. As Franklin Delano Roosevelt once said, though, “the only thing to fear is fear itself.”
    I conquered my fear by giving a presentation at the Georgia Educational Advancement Council Summer Conference at Augusta State University this past Friday. I’m still amazed I agreed to speak at the engagement with so little time to prepare, but given the topic – New Media 101 (Blogs, Wikis, Chatrooms, and more) – I felt like I could handle it. In attendance at my workshop were 40-50 University System of Georgia employees from institutions all over the state. I had no idea what their depth of knowledge would be, no idea what the format of the discussion would be… I just showed up to do my best. A few minutes in, it was pretty evident that there would be a consistent back and forth between what I was presenting and questions from the attendees. This worked out perfectly.

    I was worried going in about doing well, mis-speaking, getting something factually wrong, etc. – but in the end, I did okay. I built all of these “worse case scenarioes” up in my mind trying to defeat myself before I even got started. As my boss told me before going into this… “You’re the expert here. You know this stuff. You’re going to do alright.” And he was right.

    I survived the presentation, got over my fears of speaking in public, and sent people on their way equipped with the knowledge I shared in my presentation. Thank God. :)

  • 10 Years

    I knew today was “important” somehow. I graduated from Denbigh High School ten years ago today. On June 16, 1996, we were holding commencement exercises at the Hampton Coliseum in Hampton, Virginia. If you had asked me then what I’d be doing now, I probably would have told you “working for the United Nations”. I was young and idealistic and fresh off a number of Model United Nations conferences. I didn’t know any better back then ;)

    A reunion has been planned for August 11-13, with activities scheduled all weekend long. On Friday night there will be a Meet and Greet at Jillians at Waterside. On Saturday afternoon there will be a cookout at Newport News Park. On Saturday evening there will be an Adults-Only party at the American Legion Post in Denbigh. To close out the weekend, those who’d like to can meet to attend church services together, and meet for brunch afterwards.

    If you’d like more information on the reunion activities, visit the Denbigh High School Class of 1996 Yahoo! Group.

  • Flock Revisited

    Last October, I blogged about the availability of the first Flock Developer Preview. After several months of silence, the Flock team just unveiled the first Public Beta (0.7) of Flock.

    With the new release, Flock’s also inveiled a new site design (Nice work, Mr. Veloso.) What sets Flock apart from other browsers is the inclusion of “social” web services within the browser. The tight integration with del.icio.us and flickr and blogging are pretty sweet.

    My initial impression of Flock was that it was a nice browser – and the social aspects of it definitely set it apart from Firefox and Internet Explorer – but I’m not sure how well the general public will take it. I’m not sure how I feel now.

    Because it’s been quite some time since I last used Flock, I’ve decided to give Flock another try. We’ll see how it works out…