Les Jones

I’m a man, baby

Tuesday, November 25th, 2008 | Blogging | Permalink | 1 Comment |

Since all the cool kids are doing it: Gender Analyzer sez “We think http://lesjones.com is written by a man (87%).”

WordPress: adding “Edit This” link, recent comments

Sunday, November 23rd, 2008 | Blogging | Permalink | No Comments |

From way back before I began blogging I believed that every post should have an Edit This link. Blame it on Dave Winer. Reducing the pain of editing your mistakes and expanding your thoughts makes for a better blog.

I finally got my wish the other day with a little Googling. Just add this code to your Single Post, Archives, and Main Index Template. You have to be logged in as an administrator to see the link.

<?php edit_post_link(’Edit This’, ‘optionaltextbeforelink’,'optionaltextafterlink’); ?>

I found a new recent comments plug-in that has the behavior I wanted. The Get Recent Comments plug-inhas an option for everything. You can make the output as simple or as complicated as you want. I made it simple: don’t show trackbacks and pings, don’t show commentor’s names, show the subject name, group by subject, and show the number of comments. Bingo.

Here are the settings I used:

Template for the post: <li><strong><a href=”%post_link” title=”%post_title was posted on %post_date”>%post_title</a>&nbsp;<a href=”#” title=”There are %post_counter comments to this posting”>(%post_counter comments)</a></strong><ul>

Template for the comments: (empty)

Template for the closing tags of the post template: </ul></li>

Subscription options for LesJones.com

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008 | Blogging | Permalink | 1 Comment |

Atom Feed

RSS Comment Feed

RSS Posts Feed

That’s the old stuff. Here’s the new stuff courtesy of Feedburner, which is pretty cool:

The email subscription sends you one email per day containing all of the posts since the last email. When I tried it the email arrived around midnight-thirty Eastern time.

Testing Atom feed and comments RSS feed

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008 | Blogging | Permalink | No Comments |

Here’s the Atom feed and RSS comments feed. Let me know if you experience any problems with them. Especially the Atom feed, which is kinda new to me.

Update your RSS feeds - new blog

Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 | Blogging | Permalink | No Comments |

A note for anyone using an RSS reader. I’ve moved to a WordPress blog with a new URL for the RSS feed. The new RSS feed is at http://www.lesjones.com/feed/.

(I’m also copying this into the old RSS feeds.)

Possible downtime today

Sunday, August 24th, 2008 | Blogging | Permalink | No Comments |

I’ve got a WordPress consultant looking at the site. We’re working to preserve the links from the Moveable Type pages so that they’ll point to the new WordPress pages. If we move ahead with the plan today we’ll have to take the site down for a time.

Later: not today. Still working on it.

How to find and delete duplicate WordPress posts?

Saturday, August 23rd, 2008 | Blogging | Permalink | No Comments |

For some reason when I imported into WordPress I got a lot of duplicate posts. Any ideas for good ways to find and delete duplicates?

PS I’ll be asking lots of WordPress questions for a while. Bear with me. And I hasten to add that moving to WordPress has been much, much easier than I would have guessed.

Dumping Moveable Type for Wordpress

Saturday, August 23rd, 2008 | Blogging | Permalink | 6 Comments |

Moveable Type hasn’t upgraded the default styles since my last upgrade three years ago. When I tried applying one of the new themes and rebuilding it used my old templates and complained about them being out of date. Eventually the whole thing died. Wotta piece a junk.

To heck with ‘em. I’m switching to WordPress this weekend. I’ll try to get some redirects in place for the old files.

“Mister, here’s your problem!” Blog hiccup revealed

Friday, August 22nd, 2008 | Blogging | Permalink | No Comments |

Since the site was having trouble with comments hanging. I decided to upgrade the blogging software to the new version, which is reputed to be much quicker.

Installion of the new version kept quitting during the import of the old comments. Then I found a mention in the installation notes that large numbers of comments (usually spam comments) could cause the upgrade to fail.

So I checked and holy frijoles! I had 271,833 spam comments and 47,586 spam trackbacks. The built-in spam filter kept them from appearing on the blog, but they were still in the SQL database. Gory details of the cleanup after the jump.

Even after the cleanup the blog is having problems so I’m going ahead with the ugprade.

Continue reading the rest of this post ›››

Light blogging; upgrading to MoveableType 4.2

Friday, August 22nd, 2008 | Blogging | Permalink | No Comments |

I installed Moveable Type 4.2 last night. I’m trying to finagle it through the upgrade process, but it’s stalling out when it tries to import comments. I’m starting it again as I leave for work. Light blogging today, but I hope to finish the upgrade this weekend.

Site Issues

Thursday, August 21st, 2008 | Blogging | Permalink | 2 Comments |

I’m having some server problems right now, particularly with comments. Sometimes when you leave a comment the page seems to hang. I’ve contacted my host and restarted the system, but it seems to keep happening.

There’s a new version of the Moveable Type software that runs the blog. It’s supposed to be much faster. I’m going to experiment with that this weekend.

Sad and creepy

Thursday, August 21st, 2008 | Blogging | Permalink | No Comments |

In a comment to this post someone named Niamh writes:

I just wanted to let you know that a young girl on the site gurl.com is using your son’s ultrasound picture and claiming it’s her son. Here is the link:

http://messageboards.gurl.com/gl-teenpreg/messages?msg=48710.1

She’s already been caught, but I just wanted to let you guys know. I know I’d want to know if someone was using MY ultrasound pictures and claiming it’s their’s.

And from that post on gurl.com:

from: kalulugirl 7:09 pm
To: ALL 1 of 9
48710.1

okay to all of you people who dont beleive me that my kids are 11 months apart or that i dont have 2 kids here are my ultrasounds i found one of each

this is Annabells
http://i313.photobucket.com/albums/ll386/kalulugirl/my%20baby%20boy/ultrasoundpics.jpg

here is Chaz’s 3d ultrasound

http://i313.photobucket.com/albums/ll386/kalulugirl/my%20baby%20boy/30week-ultrasound.gif

there you go now you have your proof

Like I said … sad and creepy.

Congrats to Craig and Jenny Thomas on their baby girl

Tuesday, August 19th, 2008 | Blogging | Permalink | 1 Comment |

Congrats, you two.

Wedding Bells

Friday, August 1st, 2008 | Blogging | Permalink | No Comments |

Congrats to Lissa and Rich on their engagement.

New to the Blogroll

Thursday, July 31st, 2008 | Blogging | Permalink | 5 Comments |

- MittelMitte
- Nikon D40 Photographer
- Breda
- Arsenal
- Firearms Blog

And probably some others I’ve forgotten about. If you’re a regular reader and have a blog, post it in comments and I’ll be glad to add you to the blogroll.

MacRumors Founder Chooses “Blogger” Over “Doctor” Title

Thursday, July 24th, 2008 | Blogging | Permalink | 1 Comment |

New York Times - My Son, the Blogger: An M.D. Trades Medicine for Apple Rumors:

For eight years, Arnold Kim has been trading gossip, rumor and facts about Apple, the notoriously secretive computer company, on his Web site, MacRumors.com.

It had been a hobby — albeit a time-consuming one — while Dr. Kim earned his medical degree. He kept at it as he completed his medical training and began diagnosing patients’ kidney problems. Dr. Kim’s Web site now attracts more than 4.4 million people and 40 million page views a month, according to Quantcast, making it one of the most popular technology Web sites.

It is enough to make Dr. Kim hang up his stethoscope. This month he stopped practicing medicine and started blogging full time.

Somebody Tell Blake his Old Domain is Expiring

Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 | Blogging | Permalink | No Comments |

Either that or register it and turn it into “Blake’s My Little Ponies Fan Page.” Your choice.

That First Million is Always the Hardest

Thursday, June 5th, 2008 | Blogging | Permalink | 3 Comments |

Well the first thing you know ole Tam’s a millionaire.

Please Make the Hurty Thoughts Stop Hurting My Head

Sunday, May 25th, 2008 | Blogging | Permalink | No Comments |

Micheal Silence, who wrote for a newspaper then wrote a blog for the newspaper about blogs, is now writing in the newspaper about blogging about blogs here.

Knoxville Blog Get-together Tonight

Saturday, May 10th, 2008 | Blogging | Permalink | No Comments |

This slipped my mind because I was going to be on vacation, but it’s tonight. My allergies and sinus infection are back, so I won’t be able to make it.

Should You Blog Under Your Own Name?

Sunday, May 4th, 2008 | Blogging | Permalink | 3 Comments |

Marko and SayUncle are blogging about blogging under your own name and anonymously/pseudonymously, respectively. Uncle refers to it as pseudonymity, because many people know who he is. As we’ll see that’s probably the correct point of view.

I understand why some people don’t want to blog under their own names. Truth be told, blogging under a pseudonym should be the default decision for most people. You can always reveal your name later. Some of the reasons you might not want your name out there include the potential for stalking or for future employers searching for your name to see what you’ve been up to online, which is happening more and more.

Having said that there’s a downside to pseudonymity that’s rarely discussed. If you assume most people won’t know who you are you’re more likely to blog about topics you wouldn’t otherwise, to reveal details you shouldn’t, or to behave in a manner or tone that you wouldn’t if your words were attached to your name for all the world to see.

Example. In comments at one blog I was surprised by a person’s anti-handgun stance and said something to the effect of but you’ve got a so-and-so pistol yourself. His response was gee, thanks for telling everyone I’ve got that gun, to which I responded, dude, the only reason I know you’ve got it is because you told the whole world about it on your blog. His reply was, yeah, but back then I was anonymous so I didn’t care that people knew I owned a gun. Once he started blogging under his own name he regretted having revealed that detail when he was writing under his nome de blog.

If you blog pseudonymously your name may not be splashed on the page, but inevitably some people will learn who you are. At that point concealment of your true name becomes a matter of Internet etiquette - most people will respect your pseudonymity unless you piss them off. At that point the threat of revealing your identity becomes leverage that can be used to intimidate you.

Secrecy is fragile. Once it’s broken all its protections are gone forever. If secrecy is your only defense you only have one fragile wall of protection. It’s probably best to use discretion as your primary defense, with secrecy as a second wall in case your discretion fails.

On my blog my name is right there in the URL. Consequently I try to measure what I say and reveal details about my personal life and my family selectively. It would be trivial to find me in the real world, but I don’t worry too much about that because I’m a guy, a big guy, and I also blog about the fact that I’m armed. (Conversely, blogging about guns could become a problem if a future employer who didn’t like guns Googled my name.) For others, the threat of harassment or stalking is very real. For a single, unarmed woman the problem looms much larger.

I also know that some people I work with read what I write. That’s why I only talk about work in the most general terms and don’t gossip about my company or co-workers. If there’s something at work I don’t like I get it out of my system the old-fashioned way: I complain about it to my wife.

Congratulations to LesJones.com’s 3 Millionth Visitor

Friday, May 2nd, 2008 | Blogging | Permalink | 3 Comments |

who won a lifetime supply of net.fame, the San Francisco Treat.

Nashville Knucklehead is a Dirty Stinking Liar…

Thursday, May 1st, 2008 | Blogging | Permalink | No Comments |

when he says he’s quitting blogging.

He’ll be back. They all come back.

Hey, Les, What’s With All the Not Blogging?

Thursday, May 1st, 2008 | Blogging | Permalink | 2 Comments |

Had a bad case of allergies the past few weeks. That was mostly it. Then there was Photoshop class, computer problems, shopping for a new computer, and setting up a new computer. Now the new computer is up and I’ve about licked my allergies, so all’s well.

Pity Us Poor, Poor Bloggers

Monday, April 7th, 2008 | Blogging, Polls | Permalink | No Comments |

New York Times - In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop:

They work long hours, often to exhaustion. Many are paid by the piece — not garments, but blog posts. This is the digital-era sweatshop. You may know it by a different name: home.

A growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment.

Of course, the bloggers can work elsewhere, and they profess a love of the nonstop action and perhaps the chance to create a global media outlet without a major up-front investment. At the same time, some are starting to wonder if something has gone very wrong. In the last few months, two among their ranks have died suddenly.

Which leads to this week’s poll question.