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| Finally Moving |
| 07.29.04 (11:22 am) [edit] |
Well the time has finally come! After much deliberation and consternation, I have finally found a new home for my little scribblings.
First, thank you all very much for reading an commenting here, it has been a very nice experience. However, I have felt that the weblog, such as it is, needed a cleaner more professional appearance.
The best way I have found to do that is on a host that is running the WordPress weblog system. Wordpress uses full CSS scripting for control of the look of the weblog and it is very impressive what people have done with it. In fact when you log on the new webpage, take a look at the bottom of the navigation bar. There you will see a list of styles. If you don't like the default look I have selected, simply click on one of the listed styles -- and zap! -- the page magically changes appearance. Unfortunately the content will remain the same. So this will be my main site which I will update and work on from now on:
The Crash Pad on Blogthing: http://crashpad.blogthing.com...
And just for your information, I have included several other sites where I will be posting content as well. You can check in on these if you wish. I won't really be working on these sites in quite the same way, just using a default template and such.
Crashes Place on Blogspot: http://crashesplace.blogspot....
The Crashpad on LiveJournal: http://www.livejournal.com/us...
The CrashPad on JournalSpace: http://thecrashpad.journalspa...
The CrashPad on JabBlog: http://crashpad.jablog.com/bl...
If you are looking for a weblog home, I would recommend BlogThing if you want full control over the look and feel of your site. If you are more of a point and click kind of person, JournalSpace has really nice templates and a clean look for a free site. JabBlog is another nice full control site, but does not yet have the community support that WordPress does, so there is not as many templates and such. BlogSpot and LiveJournal are probably two of the larger and most visited services, which is why I will post there as well.
I hope to see you on one of all of my weblog sites real soon now. And as always, thanks for reading!!
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| A Blog Vent |
| 07.13.04 (1:26 pm) [edit] |
Hey Weblog designers and site hosters! I got a little bit tired of tBlog, so I started looking around for a new host for this little compendium of my writings. Now, I know that you are not really making any money off of this and it is probably not right for me to complain, but I will.
There only seems to be two kinds of blogging sites and software out there, ones for complete newbies and ones for html/php/css/etc. wizards. How about one in the middle? Not everyone who keeps a blog is out surfing and when the urge strikes them will stop by their blog with a couple of lines of information, an email to the world if you will. I am sure there are many like me who write things in advance, writing that may need to be saved in several different formats.
One thing that never ceases to amaze me is that, considering that a weblog is HTML, no blogging site I have found has a simple little button on the "New Entry" page: Upload File. If I could upload my HTML or .rtf file I would be as happy as a clam. Opening a text editor, opening the file, cutting and pasting the whole thing, is just a pain. On most pages, I can upload images, but almost never HTML files! In fact it is so bad that an offline LiveJournal client won't even import HTML files. Stupid.
There is a nice on/offline interface for many of the blogging setups and sites, W.Bloggar (www.bloggar.com) which does import HTML files, but you sort of have to trick it into doing it. Not very smart.
Why is this important? It isn't really. But even in straight writing like I do, bolds and italics are nice. My word processor exports HTML -- so why should I put the codes in by hand? Why should I have to cut and paste a whole document??
A weblog is pretty much HTML code -- let me write it once and upload it!!
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| Moving Homes |
| 07.13.04 (1:15 pm) [edit] |
Very soon I will be announcing that this blog will be moving. tBlog was a good place to start, but the control over my blog is limited (you can see how ugly it is!!) and the only entry interface is cut and paste on a text box on the webpage. Not very efficient. So I have been looking for another host and I thought I would share my notes with you, in case you are looking for a blogsite yourself.
Two things about these notes, first they are very rough...they really are my actual notes as I went along. Second they don't cover the entire world of blogging, just looking for a good, free, place to torture people with my little writings. So with that in mind, let's get started.
Before we get started, the first blog tool you must know about is: w.bloggar (www.bloggar.com). This is a Windows 9x/2k/XP front end for many blogging softwares, it allows you to edit and upload posts with a desktop application, rather than cutting and pasting on some text editor box. In fact, it looks exactly like a decent text editor, which it is. Unfortunately, although it supports many types of software, not many of the bigger or free hosts use it. The two big exceptions are Blogger and LiveJournal -- W.Bloggar works great with them. But for sites like Xanga, Pitas, Mindsay and yes, tBlog, you are still in the cut and paste world. The software is supposedly in beta, but it works fine for me.
The contenders:
ExpressBlogs.com
http://www.ExpressBlogs.com/" title="http://www.ExpressBlogs.com/" target="_blank"http://www.ExpressBlogs.com/
ExpressBlogs is an Irish company which is a point in it's favor. It is running b2Evolution which is supposed to be great, but so far I haven't seen it. Can use the w.bloggar interface which is a plus. b2 seems to have no templates or anything built-in like the other blogging systems, or at least EB doesn't have them available. The server seems impossibly slow so far. On the plus side it looks like it hosts images with no problems whatsoever. On the other hand w.bloggar doesn't connect and the interface is horrible, probably out.
BlogDrive.com
Seems to have a 100KB(!!) limit on picture uploads. Not quite what I am looking for! Doesn't work with w.bloggar so it out.
Pitas.com
http://www.pitas.com/" title="http://www.pitas.com/" target="_blank"http://www.pitas.com/
Too stupid for words.
Blogger
www.Blogger.com
I have an account and a blog setup, works with W.Bloggar, so I will keep it for now and update it for additional traffic.
JournalSpace
Seems to a paid/free service does host images, does use w.bloggar, it is live journal based.. Nice look and stats. A definite contender. But then the free trial period (of about 5 minutes) ended and it looks like every other livejournal client.
Bloty Journals
Bloty is a livejournal client and w.bloggar seems to work fine with it...however, no pictures and no delete! I'll look at this one again.
Live Journal
http://www.livejournal.com/" title="http://www.livejournal.com/" target="_blank"http://www.livejournal.com/
I signed up for a real live livejournal. It is a free account and doesn't look good so far, but I can update it from w.bloggar and maybe get some extra traffic. The biggest pain in the butt for livejournal clients is that the interface is maddeningly split. You have control center where you can fire up the editor and such or you can look at your weblog. From within the weblog there is no way to get back to the control center! Trying to delete an entry is madness :-)
Web Crimson
http://www.webcrimson.com" title="http://www.webcrimson.com" target="_blank"http://www.webcrimson.com
The E-zine portion of the site really has a nice layout with article summaries and such, but there doesn't seem to be offsite editing supported and no image support. Maybe not. On the other hand the e-zine layout is much more professional than anything else I have seen, so I might just mess with it.
Free-Conversant
Isn't really a weblog site, but rather sort of a webpage generator, or maybe interactive information portal. It looks very, very powerful and I may move in this direction eventually. I will also think about setting up a website for ProgressWausau or ProgressWisconsin. If I can download a complete set of docs, I will look at them.
DK3
I signed up for free hosting here and got a portal: http://TheCrashPad.portal.dk3...
but get nothing but php errors and such. So far useless.
GreatestJournal
http://www.greatestjournal.com/" title="http://www.greatestjournal.com/" target="_blank"http://www.greatestjournal.co...
Another Livejournal powered site. It is completely free so most of the features are activated. It still is not easy, as the LJ software is so unfriendly. I might update this one since I can through w.bloggar.
jroller
This was actually the most promising site. Host software written in Java. Unfortunately, after I signed up, the site would not let me log in. I'll check back later.
What we have so far:
Blogger
LiveJournal
Greatest Journal -- LJ Client
Bloty -- out
Free Conversant -- a real webpage!
WebCrimson -- cut and paste
Jroller (if I can log in!!) -- maybe out
LiveLog
The also rans...(mostly cause I couldn't use w.bloggar)
http://www.blogeasy.com/" title="http://www.blogeasy.com/" target="_blank"http://www.blogeasy.com/
http://www.20six.co.uk/" title="http://www.20six.co.uk/" target="_blank"http://www.20six.co.uk/ (really close, this one!)
http://www.blogstudio.com/" title="http://www.blogstudio.com/" target="_blank"http://www.blogstudio.com/ (only 100K for free accounts...)
http://www.ujournal.org/" title="http://www.ujournal.org/" target="_blank"http://www.ujournal.org/ (another LJ service)
http://www.livelog.com/" title="http://www.livelog.com/" target="_blank"http://www.livelog.com/ (registered here, very nice look...)
http://www.weblog.co.nz/" title="http://www.weblog.co.nz/" target="_blank"http://www.weblog.co.nz/ (5mb wordpress account, signed up to use wp)
http://www.blogontheweb.com/crashpad/" title="http://www.blogontheweb.com/crashpad/" target="_blank"http://www.blogontheweb.com/c... powered by some microsoft crap, but I have to admit it works good...cut and paste only though
http://blog.interbaseusa.com/" title="http://blog.interbaseusa.com/" target="_blank"http://blog.interbaseusa.com/...
http://journurl.com/" title="http://journurl.com/" target="_blank"http://journurl.com/ Looks promising, uses w.bloggar interface
http://www.ipadder.com/" title="http://www.ipadder.com/" target="_blank"http://www.ipadder.com/ all open source, looks promising, signed up, but now it won't let me log in...
http://www.electricdiary.com/main.aspx" title="http://www.electricdiary.com/main.aspx" target="_blank"http://www.electricdiary.com/... (wouldn't let me sign in!)
http://www.freeonlineblogs.com/" title="http://www.freeonlineblogs.com/" target="_blank"http://www.freeonlineblogs.co...
http://mobynuke.net/" title="http://mobynuke.net/" target="_blank"http://mobynuke.net/ (here and cafelog, I just could not create an account)
http://ilohablog.com/" title="http://ilohablog.com/" target="_blank"http://ilohablog.com/
http://blogpage.com/UserPage/" title="http://blogpage.com/UserPage/" target="_blank"http://blogpage.com/UserPage/... (signed up, but editor did not work)
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| Pledge O'llegiance |
| 07.13.04 (1:04 pm) [edit] |
The Pledge O'llegiance
Once again the Supreme Court used a legal loophole to duck its responsibilities. I am referring here to the Pledge of Allegiance case. According to the Supremes, we can keep "under God"ing, but they are not actually going to say whether it is Constitutional or not. Thanks guys and gals, you're a bunch of swells! Well, I guess we'll have to solve this problem ourselves.
First let's take a quick look at the Pledge and its history. The Pledge was originally written in 1892 by Baptist Minister and socialist author Francis Bellamy. It was originally published in Youth's Companion -- sort of a Reader's Digest for kids. President Benjamin Harrison issued a proclamation in favor of the Pledge in October 1892, to honor of the 400th anniversary of Columbus's arrival in the Americas. Slightly edited from its original, the pledge was officially recognized by Congress in 1945. After a campaign by the Catholic Knights of Columbus, Congress itself wielded the red editorial pen and added "under God" in 1954. This, of course, was designed to keep the Godless communists at bay, but it is also where the controversy really began.
Now we have conservative Republican types zealously defending the work of a socialist author. Certainly those defenders are well aware that "under God" was added by a Congress that was under the sway of rampant McCarthyism and cold war hysteria. Whatever else you might say, it is fairly clear that adding "under God" to the pledge had more to do with politics than religion. Which you might think would appease liberal critics of the pledge just a bit.
To be honest about it, there other things I don't understand about the defenders of the pledge. First of all, these defenders of personal liberty want the state to force your kids to say the Pledge -- even if you object! Did I miss something here? Usually the idea that the state occaisionally needs to force people to do something for the common good is a liberal notion. Where are are these defenders coming from, anyway? And speaking of philosophical inconsistency, how many defenders do you think would still be there if the Pledge read "under Allah"? Or even "under The Great Spirit"? "Jehovah"? Well, there is nothing like a purely philosophical position that depends solely on the facts at hand.
One edit to the Pledge that Bellamy considered, but ultimately rejected -- mostly for political considerations -- was using the word "equality" in the pledge. "Equality" was dropped because he could see that equality was something that schools across the country, particularly in the south, were decidely lacking, so the Pledge might not be widely accepted. It sure would be interesting to see who would be lining up on which side if the Pledge yearned for "equality" rather than "liberty", under God or not.
Another concern I wonder if the defenders of the Pledge think about, is whether or not rote recitation of a simple sentence is actually beneficial. To some, the Pledge can become the very definition of lip service. Others may find themselves moved by the ceremony and tradition, even if that ceremony is not very deeply rooted in our history. Myself, whenever I considered the words of the Pledge, I always wondered why "to the flag?" Was "the republic for which it stands" simply an afterthought? Whether the Pledge is stirring or boring for most people, I can't say. But when Martin Luther King wanted to sum up the goals and aspirations of the civil rights movement, he did not choose words that are on children's lips every day -- "liberty and justice for all" -- as appropriate as those words might have been.
No, when Dr. King was asking that the country live up to its promises to all of her people, he went straight to the historical record of our country, and cited the Declaration of Independence. King was in good company, Abraham Lincoln did the same thing in his Gettysburg address. While the Declaration is an interesting and wonderful document, it spends most of it's words detailing why the old government had to go. Not much of a basis for a pledge of allegiance. So, instead, let us turn to the guiding document of our republic, the Constitution.
The preamble of the Constitution is as stirring as Jefferson's "we hold these truths to be self-evident" bit. Perhaps, there has never been a more perfect expression of what democracy is about than the first three words the Founders used to establish our government: "We the people." There's a reason they put it in really big letters at the top. Sometimes we seem to forget that "We the people of the United States" are really in charge here. Just look at our low voting rates. Maybe we can change that, and maybe a new pledge would help.
Submitted for your approval, with a nod to my Irish heritage and with great humility, I hereby present the rough draft of the Pledge O'llegiance:
"We the people -- in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice and promote the general welfare -- promise to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, so that government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish. To this we pledge our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor"
I can almost hear an "Amen" at the end. Who says that the sacred and the secular can never meet? Say it out loud a few times and see if you don't feel a little more connected to your country, a little more in charge. Maybe you might even feel like voting or calling your representatives rather than shooting off firecrackers. If you don't feel that way, that's OK, it's just a starting point. If Bellamy -- and Jefferson -- can be edited, surely this humble attempt at a new pledge can be too. Relying on the best that our history has given us makes much more sense than arguing over some old magazine piece.
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