Whoops! Lost my Blog Roll
Sometime in the past several weeks, I totally lost my blog roll. How long were they missing? A couple weeks maybe? But everything else was OK, or so it appeared…
A total blogging bummer…
So, I have to find a backup of my old blog, and re-create it, and find all you wonderful people again. I say I lost my blog roll — really not sure when — sometime during the past several weeks, because I’m not sure when it happened, or why it happened, but a lot has been happening. I recently moved my website and this blog to a new hosting company. I think everything was OK then. Then I backed up my hard-drive on my PC and downgraded my PC from Vista back to Windows-XP pro. I think everything was OK then, however, I did backup all my old backups to DVD and CD’s before downgrading to Windows-XP. And Windows-XP is running much nicer than Vista was. (Vista really sucks on an Intel box with only 1GB of RAM.)
So anyway, might need to dig through a box of CDs or DVDs to find an old backup of a backup.
But then I also upgraded from WordPress 2.2 to WordPress 2.3 and finally to WordPress 2.5, and also tried out a few new plugins, and everytime I always tried to make backups before I installed a new plugin, or a new theme… but like I said I need to look through the box of backups of the backups… or could it be the WordPress Import/Export feature that bit me.
You might recall that I wrote a few articles about Managing Your Blogroll, and Refactoring Your Blogroll, and now it looks like I wrote an article about Losing and Recovering your blogroll.
Man, I really miss my old blog roll. If you are out there, I am looking for you … again.
Update (6:00PM Saturday night) - I did find a February 2008 backup of an SQL dump that contains my total blogroll - assembled from 2006 to 2008, so no one is missing — and I’m adding those blog links back on my blogroll.
As long as I’m restoring and refactoring my blogroll, I’ll compare it to the list at WebLog Tool Collection called The 25 Most Valuable Blogs, and see if I should add anything new to my list.
Blue Beanie Day
Show your support for web standards and accessibility. Please join us on Monday, November 26, 2007 in celebrating Blue Beanie Day.
Monday, November 26, 2007 is the day thousands of Standardistas (people who support web standards) will wear a Blue Beanie to show their support for accessible, semantic web content.
It’s easy to show your support for web design done right. Don a Blue Beanie and snap a photo. Then on November 26, switch your profile picture in Facebook and post your photo to the Blue Beanie Day photo pool on Flickr.
Next Steps:
- Make a personal commitment to fight Web Standards Apathy. Show solidarity with the Standardistas on November 26th, 2007.
- Buy, beg, or borrow a Blue Beanie (blue hat or cap, even a black or grey one will do in a pinch.)
- Take a photo of yourself wearing the Blue Beanie. Or take a cool group photo of you and your friends wearing Blue Beanies.
- Post your photo, or photos to Facebook, Flickr, and other social networks on November 26th, 2007. Remember to switch your Facebook profile photo that day. While you’re at it, switch all your social network profile photos. Flickr, Twitter, Last.fm, iLike, Pownce, you name it.
- Promote Blue Beanie Day in your blog or wiki starting today, and tell all your friends to get ready for Blue Beanie Day. Start by inviting all your Facebook friends to this event.
Check the Blue Beanie Day event notification on Facebook to see more Blue Beanie heads and to make a comment or ask questions.
Tags: beanie, blogs, DWWS, facebook, flickr, Standardistas, twitter, Web Standards
BlogPulse Charts and Graphs
Have you tried BlogPulse charts and graphs to track and analyze what’s behind the buzzwords?
Here is an example showing the keywords python, ruby, and wordpress (time-line is the past 6 months). Looks like the WordPress spike is beginning to fade, and I wonder what that means?
Here is another BlogPulse trend chart showing what everyone was talking about last week. Keywords/Phrases : Virginia Tech, Cho, gun control.
Now that we are on this topic, let me say that my deepest sympathy goes out to all the families affected by this horrific tragedy (mass murder, suicide); my prayers for peace and love continue unto God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, and I recommend that everyone read and meditate on Psalm 4 and Psalm 23 this week.
Tags: blogs, charting, graphing, measuring, metrics, Python, RSS, Ruby, WordPress
Refactoring Your BlogRoll
Back in July, I began an article on How to Manage Your Blogroll. Managing your blogrolls and managing your RSS-feeds is really all about “staying in touch” with wonderful, intelligent, funny or witty people. Be careful who you delete. Be careful who you add. It’s all about reputation. It’s about the global conversation, and taking a ride on the ClueTrain. It’s all about loving and respecting people. It’s all about the cycles of life, your circle of concern, and your circles of influence. It’s all about listening more than you talk.
God gave us two ears and one mouth, to remind us to listen more than we talk. My blog roll is full of links to many people that I have never met-in-person. I may disagree with some of the things they write, but I love and respect them all.
So, I was talking about various rules you might use — to know when to delete blogs from your list. Is there a book on blogroll refactoring? How do you know when to delete a link from your blogroll?
Tags: blogging, blogroll, blogs, community, conversation, listening, refactoring
Random Image Rotation
Another research topic… I’m taking some notes here, so I can come back to this topic later. Paul Stamatiou talks about the new WordPress blog he installed for Yahoo, (Yodel Anecdotal) as part of his summer internship at Yahoo. Apparently Paul decided to implement the random image rotator developed / explained / recommended by Dan Benjamin. You can read more about this image rotator (and see it in action) over at Automatic Labs.
I also recalled reading about another Image Rotator and Randomizer that I had stumbled across — over at Photo Matt (Matthew Mullenweg’s) a while back. Matt’s Random Image script is here. Not sure what the differences are between these various scripts, but one day when I get a chance to read the source code for each, I’ll see if there is any big diff.
Tags: blogs, image rotation, random, Research, WordPress
TinyPic - Like TinyURL - But More Fun
Don’t get your nose bent out of shape over this one, or should I say - don’t get your finger in a ringer…
Some people enjoy things you don’t like very much. People are different. A wise man once said “It’s a good thing everyone does not like the same thing. If everyone liked the same movie, you would go to watch it and the line would be 69 miles long to get into the movie (cinema) theatre.”
There have been flame wars over using TinyURL (or why you should not), and now there is TinyPic. I love it.
TinyPic.com is cool because…
- It’s free (for now).
- You can quickly upload and store pictures and videos.
- It has short URL’s, even if the images or videos are big files
- Seems to be very fast and zippy (at this point).
- Yet another place to host your photos and videos.
I’ll be trying it out for a while. Let me know what you think.
Tags: blogs, How To, I Love This, photo, photography, photos, WordPress