Where To List

I began to look at blog registries. Opportunities to make the web aware that you exist. One was arranged like the categories in Yahoo. I didn’t see any categories that matched consulting or old computers.

I did look at a number of their Business & Professional sites. A lot of real estate agents and affiliations programs. I’ll just need to keep looking.

Ten Mistakes

Plenty of blogging articles out there. Noticed a site called Blogarama, essentially an index/category listing of blogs, in the sponsor buttons on another site. I checked it out, along with the other "publication" sites for blogs. Blogarama has some "How to Blog" articles on the site.

One in particular was titled "The Top Ten Mistakes To Avoid When Blogging." So far I'm not drifting too far into troubled waters.

I was right to create two blogs, maybe not for the extra work of posting, but to keep the themes separate. 9 Edge Down is where I want to discuss old computer systems. PiqueroBlog is about small business & knowledge management (KM), the current KM topic is starting a blog.

Business Queries

I don't know what it is about December, probably the holidays from work and wishlist making for Christmas, but I always seem to get one or two inquires about MindManager around this time of year.

I am a certified trainer, but haven't been aggressively marketing my services. The queries usually originate from the Mindjet site, where my name is listed.

I've added a new blogroll category to this blog. I'll start collecting MindManager/Business Mapping blogs in that list.

I have some sample maps over at my business site.

Technorati Tags:MindManager

Adding A Counter

Adding the Site Meter (hit counter) turns out to be painless.

I added one to this blog last night. Then I reviewed the code they added to the template. It contains some specific ID information, which is no surprise.

I used the path of least resistance this time. Give the application the blogger name & id and then let them add the html.

It's now Sunday evening and I've added a site meter to 9 Edge Down. So far the traffic is nil on this blog. I suspect for a while it will just be traffic from me between the two sites. I'll give it a week or two, the robots will have found me by then, and then take a better look at the statistics.

Now it's on the Step Three, "Comments" (at other sites). I'm going to leave trackbacks for another time.

Adding A Link Section

Compared the two templates last night. This one had links in the sidebar on the right. The book I've been using as a loose reference, Essential Blogging, suggested that you look for the lines that come up Edit Me. Sure enough this blog's template had them.

The 9 Edge Down template, "Dots," didn't. So, I copied the code over into the template. Simple html, a title and an unordered list (ul,li tags). The sidebar is on the left for 9 Edge Down but that isn't relevant to the code.

The sidebar appears to have limited width. The links wrapped to two lines. I'm not real sure where the overall layout control is. I tried to expand the sidebar to 300px but that gave funny results. The sidebar was "first" and the main content didn't start until after the sidebar. Foo!

Found a simpler solution. Used a FONT tag to reduce the text by 1. That seems to work for now.

I probably need to get additional information on the templates.

Claiming A Place In Technorati

Greyhawk's Step Two was to "Get a Site Meter." I don't anticipate that being of much value for this blog, at least not while I'm building it. There is another service, however, that I am interested in learning about.

That service is Technorati. It is blog oriented, and I've always been interested in its usefulness. Since my business web site is not a blog per se, I never felt the need to register with Technorati. I focused on getting my business site registered with search engines.

Claiming a blog (i.e. registration) seemed easy enough. Until I got to the screen where they asked for my blog's id and sign-on. That made me a little uncomfortable, so the first time through I went through the hard way.

The hardest part was finding a likely place to put the javascript tag. They suggested that it be put in the sidebar section. I found a likely place aand everything seemed to work. Except there wasn't any logo displayed. I began to feel like my html ability had gone from some to none.

I let it drop for the evening. Figured I would address it Wednesday.

Wednesday I fired up the blog with a different computer, different browser. Ta-Daaa... the logo and the serch bar now appears. Nothing changed except the browser. Doesn't make sense they would only work with IE. Might be the settings on the browser at home.

Nope, works just fine with Foxfire too.

My guess is that I put it in an acceptable position in the template, but my preferences to the Technorati database wasn't getting updated as fast as I was bouncing between blogs and Technorati. I had a similar expeience with this blog. The name was appearing as the URL for some time, and then it changed to PiqueroBlog. Database lag isn't a new phenomenom, just something I need to keep in mind.

So, I have a little more confidence that I can change the template. A similar trick will be needed for the site meter. That's the next stop.

On To Hit Meters

Pixels and Punched Cards

I had chosen a template called “Dots.” As a background they were remeniscent of console lights on an older computer. What I really wanted was some punch card images. Fortunately, I have a few old decks hanging around the house, and I have a scanner.

I guess it is the sign of a true pack-rat. A couple of card decks for FORTRAN programs. Computers don’t have card readers these days, and few PCs need FORTRAN compiler. But I haven’t thrown the card decks out. [Like I said pack rat!]

The scanned images were ok, but going to be too large (250K). And if I used them for repeatable background images they would be extremely “busy.” The dots were bad enough.

Looking at the template for the blog, the background was 5 or 6 different versions of the dots. There was one light image that made up the bulk of the background. So, I decided to leave that.

I created a new top of the main page image, a strip of about 25 columns that showed the printed “9,” the column numbers, and a few of the 9s had been punched out. I cropped the image until it was roughly the same size as the 3 dot graphic I was replacing.

I also took a chunk of the whole card and used gamma correction (correction isn’t the best term here) to “wash” the heavy black numbers out. This became the graphic wallpaper for the main posts.

I uploaded the images to my own web server. Then I replaced the template’s URLs with pointers to my images. [I image I could use a free photo host but I already know how to upload and access images from my own pages.]

So, with a name like “9 Edge Down” a top banner is the 9 edge of a punched card seems appropriate. The background, if you look closely is a punch card number pattern that overlays some dots/console lights.

I’ve noticed the LCD screen in my back room is very sharp and shows the colors and patterns. The graphics aren’t as visible on my laptop or on the computer I’m currently sitting at to write this post. [Sitting in St. Louis airport on my way to Tampa.]

I may have gotten the graphics right. More by accident than skill.

On to Sitemeters and Technorati.

"9 Edge Down" Comes To Life

Step 1, according to Greyhawk, is to “Get A Blog.” Since Blogger is free, that sounds good to me.

I took a short detour to my local library, however, and picked up a book called “Essential Blogging” [ISBN 0-596-00388-9]. It has 6 authors. It is published by O’Reilly & Associates. [UPDATE: Amazon.com lists the lead author as Shelley Powers. The authors in total are Shelley Powers, Cory Doctorow, J. Scott Johnson, Mena G. Trott, Benjamin Trott, Rael Dornfest.]

The book compares various tools. And it has a few chapters about Blogger. That looked like a good addition to the help files.

In true engineering fashion, I jump right in without reading the book or the help files.

Creating a blog was pretty simple. Using the standard template got me up and running in a hurry.

I’ve worked a bit with client portals, so the notion of having to “publish” the pages before they show up wasn’t a foreign concept.

What I wanted first on the list is to control comments. While part of the blogosphere is the interaction, and I welcome suggestions and comments, I don’t really want to get long political arguments started.

One of the options in the settings was to restrict comments “to members of this blog.” No problem, registration is free, let’s look at that process by creating a second user.

So I sent an “invitation” to my business email ID. My assumption is that I create an authorization list for commentors.

But after I answered the email, accepting the invitation, my new id appears as a contributor, a co-author, who can create new posts. That isn’t what I had in mind.

I don’t want to open it up to the whole world, yet, so I changed the settings to “registered users.” Now you need a Blogger ID, but that’s the only restriction.

I played around with comments. It appears the administrator can delete comments, there’s a trash can icon. Another commentor can only delete the comments he/she added. The trash can only shows up on their comments.

So, right from the start it was useful for me to have two IDs.

Now, off to monkeying with the graphics.

Where to begin...

I’ve been a long time reader of political and mil-blogs. While I have a background in technology, I am more of a consumer than a supplier.

I’ve programmed my own web site, for my consulting business. But I avoided a lot of the flash graphics and animation. The site provides potential clients with more information about my company and services.

And, as I’ve chased various technology issues, I added white papers and sample diagrams and mind maps.

So, enough experience to be dangerous but not over confidence about programming skills. That’s not my primary business. I’ve written enough programs, on enough machines, for manufacturing floor applications. Hence, the foray into blogging with a concentration on old computing hardware.

I was scanning the Mudville Gazette one evening and found Greyhawk’s post on “Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Blogging.” That was interesting, but I didn’t have time to pursue it last September.

Over Thanksgiving I set a goal to start a blog before Christmas. I realize this isn’t particularly aggressive. On the other hand, there isn’t a lot of money riding on it and like most hobbies it all depends on what else is going on.

I now have a playpen, with two blogs. I should be able to experiment with pings, trackbacks, and all the other blogging toys without screwing up someone else’s blog.

This one: PiqueroBlog will be my diary for building 9 Edge Down. All the customization experiments will be on that one.

On with the testing!

Learning To Blog

A few days ago I started a blog with the intent to post interesting things I've run across about old computers. The blog is called 9 Edge Down.

It is clear that I have a lot to learn. Starting with an attempt to limit comments, not that I expect thousand a day anyway. But in the process I created an extra ID.

What to do? Deleting would be too easy.

Ah HA! I know. Create a second blog to record what I learn about building the first blog.

And that's what you will have here. One blogger's journey through getting a blog up and running the way he wants it to be. I'm sure this isn't novel. But this lets me keep the original block less cluttered with programming issues.