blagosphere

After reading a couple of blog posts on a comment system called Disqus, I want to give it another shot.

I tried Disqus back in the day, and it was really slow and generally fairly annoying. Most of their issues seem to be resolved, and they've picked up a lot of steam in the meantime. So now I'm considering swapping out my current comments for something a little more hip and magickal. But I'd like your feedback on the issue. So here's what you've gotta do:

1. Leave a comment below.
2. Let me know how you feel about the experience.
3. That's it!

You'll notice that there are several ways to identify yourself. If you have a Disqus, Facebook, or Twitter account you can use one of those. Feel free to try out a couple of accounts, or choose none at all. You can also link to this post on just about any social media site (FriendFeed or Twitter or Reddit or YouTube, for example) and it should pull in those comments as well.

So I'm curious what you think about it.

How is the experience? Do you like it better than a traditional blog comment system? Can you see yourself actually voting on other comments à la Slashdot/Reddit/Digg?

Have you used Disqus (or Intense Debate, or another similar service) in the past? Was there anything about it that you couldn't stand?

Most importantly, will this make you more or less likely to join the conversation?

We don't need to make a decision right away. We can play with Disqus for a while and see how we feel. If it's horrid, the old comment system is just a pref setting away.

So talk to me :)

Note: This is the first post on my blog (and currently the only one) with Disqus comments enabled. All older posts still use the native comment system. So you've gotta try Disqus out on this post. Thanks!

Look! It's different!

Don't worry, if you liked the old one, it's still here too.

i have a server hosting a handful of sites. a combined total of about 6000 visitors per month.

in the last year, seven URLs have accounted for 58% of all error pages on that server. you'll never guess what they were.

that's right, they were seven trackback URLs for i heart stella, the scooter blog i host on that box. to give you a hint of the magnitude of this problem, i installed trackbacks on that blog in may, and only used them for about a week. those seven URLs have been returning "404: file not found" for almost seven months.

so far this year, ive received over three hundred thousand trackback attempts for pages that don't exist. i can guarantee that not one of them was legit.

you people make me sick.

This guy named Farzad Fard owes Dave from the Scooter Lounge a lot of money. It looks like he makes a habit out of writing bad checks and screwing people who trust him. Read more about Farzad Fard...

Provo/Orem business owners, look out for this guy.

Update: There's a new video you should watch over on Dave's blog.

i think this thing needs a bit more contrast... and it's looked the same for a while, so i'm kinda tired of it. i wanted to get it done before NaBloPoMo, but school and work conspired against me. it's almost done though: check it out and let me know what you think...

note: i know it's broken in IE6. if you still use that, you should be kicked. i'll fix it later

answers to a few questions from my server logs:

• where does the justin come from?
  i'm from the southeastern end of washington state, but i currently reside in utah county, utah.
• is your space cooler?
  yes, my space is cooler than yours.
• how do i carry a loaded gun?
  i wouldn't suggest carrying it in your pants, unless you want to become another strange google search result
• why don't my msplinks work?
  it could be a couple of things. first, msplinks are intended to save myspace users from spammy sites. if myspace (in their infinite wisdom) decided that the site you're linking to isn't kosher, they could have blocked it. second, myspace seems to be sniffing referrers. this means that if you post a msplinks link on any page other than myspace.com (like my blog, for example), it will be redirected to myspace.com...
• what is this msplinks.com?
  msplinks.com is an anti-spam attempt by myspace that rewrites any URL posted on myspace into something that looks like http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi... i talked a bit more about the effect of msplinks.com on SEO a couple of months ago.
• have you ever seen a mothball?
  yes.
• is drupal cron.php secure?
  i wouldn't worry too much about it. cron.php just triggers events for modules you've enabled for your site. it grabs all it's instructions from the database and from php files stored on your server, so there's no way to pass it anything sketchy to execute. if someone messes with cron.php, it will just execute the cron jobs a bit sooner than they would otherwise run.
• what do you say when you meet someone?
  i usually say "hi" or "good to meet you". but that's pretty region specific. in texas they might say "howdy"...
• why do i suck with girls?
  i'm not sure of the exact cause, but it might be related to the fact that you go to the internet for your answer.
• is msplinks a virus?
  nope. see the article i linked above.
• is drupal secure?
  is anything really secure? drupal has a very active developer community, bugfixes and security patches are released in a timely manner, and most of the security updates i've received since installing were for third-party modules, not for the drupal core. i think drupal's doing alright.

inspired by Philipp Lenssen.

ISPs need to stop taking down blogs because of legal threats. it just riles up the blagosphere.

The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. —John Gilmore (EFF)

look how long it took for Craig Murray's website to come back...

Blog Action Day 2007

we don't care what you say, just that you're saying something...

Any of you remember ValleySchwag? A company that (for a $15 monthly subscription) sent random t-shirts and other schwag every month. It intrigued me, but I never signed up. Then it went away. But there's a new company on the block, and they're going to give it another go: I just signed up for Startup Schwag.

"Startup Schwag" is a surprise web2.0 startup tshirt of the month club. There may be more schwag (stickers, random chochkis) at some point, possibly even in the first shipment *wink-wink* but that'll be another surprise.

It's an interesting insight into tech culture that I'm willing to pay to advertise someone else's company...

apparently i'm 88% addicted to the blagosphere. i think that might be an underestimation...

as i post this, i'm listening to one blog and reading another.

88%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?