06 November 2007
Ten Seconds, Please?
It strikes me that I never announced the rollout of Ten Second News here (even though I added it to the sidebar). Whoops!
Anyway, not-retired-for-long-from-blogging Alex Whitlock and I have launched what is intended mostly as a linkblog on politics, books, and culture. By linkblog, we mean the focus will primarily be on linking to writing on politics/books/culture that we find interesting, as opposed to the same old tedious commentary on the same old news that is available all over the blogosphere. We may occasionally offer a few comments on the articles, but the focus really isn't our commentary.
It's sort of a resurrection of the old Reductio Ad Absurdum linkblog we had going some years ago (without the e-zine format, since people seem to prefer a blog format) and a fusion of our respective furl links.
Mr. Whitlock wrote about TSN here, and there is some more info here.
Give the thing a read and follow some of the links if you're so inclined. We'll try not to bore!
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/06/07 09:21 | Web Stuff | Technorati | Comments (0)
28 April 2006
HostMatters Blues
Host Matters (where blogHOUSTON is hosted) got hit with a massive DOS attack earlier today.
Now, apparently Round Two is underway, according to HM support.
If I weren't constrained by the fun of a 24k dialup connection today (fun!), I would have grabbed the mySQL databases from HM when they got the DOS under control earlier today and flipped the DNS to blogHOUSTON over to my backup host (where this blog is hosted).
Alas, that just wasn't happening at 24k. Maybe tomorrow, if this continues.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 04/28/06 19:56 | Web Stuff | Technorati | Comments (0)
22 March 2006
Songbird
I haven't downloaded Songbird yet, but it looks darn useful.
I'll have to give it a try soon.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 03/22/06 20:48 | Web Stuff | Technorati | Comments (0)
25 February 2006
Chron.com and Bloglines
Bloglines emailed me last night that Chron.com feeds are working again in their service.
I had a support request in, as the feeds stopped updating early in the week. The feeds were fine from the Chron.com end (thanks to them for helping to troubleshoot), but Bloglines just wasn't getting 'em.
I tried NewsGator-web just for Chron feeds during the downtime, but didn't really like the service. The interface is slick, but the screen refreshes and frequency of updates just didn't seem to compare favorably to Bloglines.
Bloglines is starting to seem misnamed, though. I don't use it to track that many blogs really, but I find it indispensable for tracking news.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 02/25/06 12:01 | Web Stuff | Technorati | Comments (0)
21 May 2005
Oilpatch Democrats
Well well, there's a new blog written by Democrats who claim to work in the oil industry.
Welcome to local blogging, guys. Or at least I assume it's local, since I found it at Houston Democrats.
I can't see how the blog has much to do with the industry, but maybe that will come in time. If not, the name is clever anyway.
On a related note, there's been some serious discussion at my own BigCo in the industry about me doing a political risk weblog of sorts, with BigCo sanction. It's just talk at this point, but it could get me blogging more about international affairs again. If anything develops, I will of course point it out here.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/21/05 21:04 | Web Stuff | Technorati | Comments (1)
25 December 2004
Furling Away
A number of friends and bloggers I read regularly have started using the Furl service that I praised here a while back.
I thought I'd list a few of them for folks who might want to subscribe to them:
Alex Whitlock (of RAW360)
Michael Morgan (of Bayou City Perspective)
Anne Linehan (of blogHOUSTON)
Rob Booth (of Slightly Rough and Lone Star Times)
Tom Hanna (of Tom's Rants)
Please feel free to share your furl link in the comments section below if you're so inclined. And if you're not using the service yet -- what are you waiting for? :)
For those who missed my earlier post on the topic, my own Furl archive is here, but the most recent entries are also posted down the right sidebar of this blog (beneath the blogHOUSTON feed under the heading READING).
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 12/25/04 10:14 | Web Stuff | Technorati | Comments (0)
19 December 2004
Time Mag
I'm mildly surprised that Time selected President Bush as its Person of the Year.
I'm not so surprised that they chose Power Line as Blog of the Year.
The Power Line guys achieved fame for their Dan Rather/Sixty Minutes blogging, but theirs is a thoughtful, well written blog that's been an interesting voice on politics for some time.
Good for them.
I think that's only a sign of things to come. Obviously, Dan Rather's forged documents were BIG, but I think we're increasingly going to see blogger/citizen-journalist types also take up smaller issues, bringing expertise (or in some cases, dogged determination) to bear. It won't be a replacement for mainstream media, but such citizen journalism is going to fill in some gaps, and provide plenty of criticism and niche competition. That should only benefit consumers of news.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 12/19/04 17:59 | Web Stuff | Technorati | Comments (4)
Dynamic Is Better? Who Knew?
Comment spam is becoming a problem for blogs, and the Movable Type people have been hit harder than most due to the widespread use of that particular CMS.
The spam problem has become so acute for MT blogs that it's exposed a bug in MT:
In fact, we have found that there is a fairly major bug (in terms of effect, but not code size) which causes page rebuilding even in the case of a comment submission which would be moderated and hence should have no effect on the live page. This means that even if you are using comment moderation in Movable Type and even force moderation in MT-Blacklist, your server load is impacted just as if a comment had been posted to the live site. This bug has been fixed in development.
In addition, we have found another less severe instance of unnecessary database connections which would normally be associated with dynamic pages, even if dynamic templates are not in use. This would adversely affect any customer not using static pages by adding the overhead of dynamic files on top of the normal load caused by rebuilding of static files. This has also been fixed in development.
These two bugs are, in high probability, the causes of the extreme server loads that our customers have been experiencing under the load of a severe spam attack.
The first, bolded bug, is most significant, since everyone knows that grinding that goes on when MT deals with comments and rebuilding and such. Most sites never have the level of commenting that a nasty commentspam script can drop in a short time, so of course that's going to drive loads higher if unmoderated (or if buggily moderated), and hosts are probably going to notice.
One would think the MT commenting core could be rewritten in fairly short order to deal with this bug, but there's a part of me that LOVES one proposed interim solution:
In the meantime, one way you can help protect your system and mitigate the effects of both problems is by enabling dynamic templates. Under normal conditions, there are many factors to consider in choosing dynamic templates vs. static templates. In general, the higher your site's traffic is, the more beneficial static templates are to you. However, since spam attacks are rapid requests that would cause rebuilding in the case of static pages, the sweet spot is moved far towards dynamic templates, even for high traffic sites.
When I ditched MT some time ago, one of the reasons (in addition to MT's confused licensing policies) was that I wanted to move to a dynamic platform. And I vividly remember Anil Dash emailing me all sorts of nonsense about his notion of the relative strength of static versus dynamic blogs.
Glad to see those guys coming around to my view, even if it's a little late! Just for the record, Nucleus caused me no server load issues BEFORE I implemented the various comment spam protective measures, nor has it caused any problems since.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 12/19/04 12:26 | Web Stuff | Technorati | Comments (3)
12 December 2004
CUB
Eric Siegmund's been fleshing out some thoughts on a proposed Coalition of Unpaid Bloggers.
Basically, the notion is that it might be useful for noncommercial bloggers to identify themselves as such, in some fairly standard fashion. Some loose rules would be established, the logo would be there for folks who want it, and some sort of personal statement would probably accompany the logo.
Sure, it's highly dependent on people being honest, but then so is life, right?
If this sort of thing interests you, be sure to leave Eric some feedback on this post, which already has a good discussion going.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 12/12/04 21:41 | Web Stuff | Technorati | Comments (3)
11 December 2004
Only A Matter Of Time
For quite a while, those of us who using Nucleus have enjoyed the benefits of a robust, efficient open-source blog tool that, for whatever reason, hasn't caught the eye of comment spammers.
That's no longer the case.
I see they've gotten Alex and Chris, and they've messed with a couple of my sites.
Fortunately, the Nucleus plugin architecture makes it fairly easy to handle such matters, and the development community has already responded with a Blacklist plugin based on Marco van Hylckama Vlieg's Pivot-Blacklist.
I would still recommend using it in conjunction with the CommentControl plugin, which allows for moderation of comments older than X days. To use both of them, be sure that Blacklist sits above CommentControl in your plugin hierarchy.
Also, I made a slight hack to comments.php as described in this support thread. The hack slightly changes the order of events, so that any spam comment intercepted by the blacklist will NOT trigger the email "new comment" notification. If you're running Nucleus v3.15 and are uncomfortable modifying the core, download this file, unzip, and upload it to your /nucleus/libs directory. RENAME YOUR OLD comments.php first, in case something goes wrong. I've run and tested this hack in conjunction with CommentControl and Blacklist on this site and one other, and it all seems to work just fine, but I can't and don't make any claims whether it will work on your Nucleus site. Caveat Emptor. :)
(Update) Of course, I should have added testing never seems to catch everything, and that if comments or some other feature seems broken/screwy to you, please drop me a line. Thanks!
(Update 2) The hacked file included above can cause some odd behavior (nothing critical, just odd) with certain plugins. I would actually recommend not using it, and am discontinuing its use on my blogs.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 12/11/04 13:10 | Web Stuff | Technorati | Comments (6)
08 December 2004
Banjo Jones Is Back
Banjo Jones is back, and posting away at the Brazosport News.
I'm sorry it didn't work out for Banjo out of state, but it's awfully good to have the dude posting again.
And really, anyone who can make pollution emissions so damn entertaining... well, that's someone who belongs in Texas!
Welcome back, Banjo!
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 12/08/04 00:04 | Web Stuff | Technorati | Comments (1)
07 December 2004
Web Awards
It seems like everyone's engaged in some sort of blogging award endeavor these days, and some of the new kids can't wait to get in line for them.
Bah.
That was the extent of my reaction. Then I found Laurence Simon's post on the topic, which makes these nice points:
Blogs are all about poking holes in the false pride and arrogance of the MSM. To begin the trappings of the MSM's awards like Pulitzers and such only begins the long, slow crawl into hypocrisy.
and
Seeking external justification will only cause stratification and the planting of the seeds of the medium through which bloggers will be hunted and brought down Dan Rather-style.
and
Awards are not going to cement the foundations of this open-source endeavor we all engage in. They will only destabilize it and contribute to the fossilization of the entire structure, making it that much easier to shatter later on.
and
The Blogosphere is built on foundation of cooperation, self-correction, adaptation, and conflict. It is constantly rebuilding itself. Good and bad blogs are ultimately measured and determined by content, links, ease of use, and impact. Artificial attempts to influence or amplify that system with awards will only destabilize it and eventually bring it down.
Yeah, all of that, along with my Bah.
(12-08-2004 Update) More thoughts on the topic from Laurence.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 12/07/04 23:53 | Web Stuff | Technorati | Comments (7)
05 December 2004
Introducing Furl
A while back, I started playing around a little with a blogging/browsing tool called delicious that my friend Andrew Breese turned me on to.
The service basically serves as a simple blog tool that can file links under multiple categories, with brief commentary. One compelling aspect of the service is that it lets users browse the offerings of other people who have linked the same article, thereby potentially finding linkers who are interested in similar topics and articles.
While social/web networking tools interest me, that alone wasn't enough to get me using the service.
Then I discovered Furl, which works much the same as delicious, with one really important addition -- any article that one links using the service is automatically stored in a private, personal archive. Not the link, but the whole article! That's incredibly useful, especially given the number of sites that eventually retire their articles behind paid archives (the New York Times, for example), or don't archive some content at all (the Comical's editorial page).
I don't have much time to blog on politics and history and arts and letters and such, but I do frequently run across interesting articles, so my Furl page is perfect for those sorts of things. And since I know a fair number of readers actually do LIKE those sorts of links (judging by traffic at another blog that I no longer maintain), it only makes sense to use the service's RSS feed to reproduce those links over here (or, feed lovers can get the RSS themselves). So, if you scroll down the right sidebar, past the google ads and the blogHOUSTON links, you'll find my furl links, updated throughout the day, whenever I find articles of interest.
For you bloggers who frequently run across stuff you want to blog about later in the day (that's how I tend to operate, since the folks at work don't really pay me to blog at work), Furl is a very useful little bookmark service that plays nicely with Firefox. If you decide to give it a try, please let me know your url. I'm always curious what people are reading. :)
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 12/05/04 23:59 | Web Stuff | Technorati | Comments (3)
14 October 2004
Best Of Dallas
The Dallas alt-weekly has released its annual Best Of issue, and this time around the editors name Mark Cuban's Blog Maverick as Best Blog.
Last year, they named D magazine's Frontburner as the winner.
You can say this about New Times Dallas -- they sure seem to like corporate blogs that aren't very alt at all. Or even that blog-like. But then, alt-weeklies have, in many ways, become like their dinosaur daily print media brethren anyway, so this isn't all that surprising.
At least they have the good sense to have a reader's choice category, which my buddy Cindy Chaffin at Texas Gigs has won two years in a row.
Never one to rest on her laurels, Cindy's streaming tunes from her site now. Sweet! Congrats Cindy, and thanks for all the good work!
We're thinking next year maybe the New Times Dallas folks will get a clue and give her the the editors' award (and our friends at Y'all Blog can assume the readers' choice championship). That's how it would work in Kev's world anyway.
Here in town, the New Times folks don't have a reader's choice category, but the editors had the good sense to give their nod to Charles Kuffner this year (and the bad sense to give the nod to this little blog last year). These are actual blogs. With frequent updates, comments, links, blogrolls, trackback and the like. Go figure. Advantage: New Times Houston.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 10/14/04 18:19 | Web Stuff | Technorati | Comments (0)
12 October 2004
Eric Celeste Blogs
Scott Chaffin writes that Eric Celeste of the Dallas Observer alt-weekly now has a blog (but on blogspot, blar).
That ought to be good for some smartassery, I imagine.
I don't understand why New Times hasn't pushed some of its better writers towards blogging on the company dime. It would draw readers to their websites, which are a bore aside from Wednesday night/Thursday morning, when they all update and we all rush to see what restaurant Robb Walsh has reviewed and what gaffes Rich Connelly has pointed out.
A Connelly blog would just plain rock, btw, for any New Times folks who might be reading.
But maybe New Times figures it won't sell sex aids or escort services and isn't worth the trouble. Beats me. Alt-weeklies just aren't very alt in their thinking these days.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 10/12/04 17:48 | Web Stuff | Technorati | Comments (0)
22 September 2004
Pearls, Twinkies, and Bugs
Rob Booth posts a snippet from OpinionJournal's Best of the Web highlighting the fact that a spiteful Comical staffer apparently thought it would be cute to give an inappropriate name to a photo saved on its server as part of a story. A photo of a child, no less. Nice.
Someone at the Comical must read either OpinionJournal or Chronically Biased, because the name of the photo was changed some time after Rob posted.
Elsewhere on the site, there were posts today about Twinkies and endangered bugs. Because THAT is the sort of cutting-edge content you expect from a media watchblog.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 09/22/04 21:02 | Web Stuff | Technorati | Comments (3)
21 September 2004
Google Ads
The google ads on the site are a constant source of amusement.
As I've been posting, I've noticed on different refreshes ads for Sooner tickets, then Longhorn tickets, then Texas Tech tickets.
How the hell hard would it be to get Tech tickets, anyway?! Is that really something one must turn to google to do?
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 09/21/04 22:26 | Web Stuff | Technorati | Comments (1)
14 September 2004
Sullivan/TNR On The Hoax
Andrew Sullivan wails on CBS News in a new post on TNR Online:
Last week, CBS News reported on fascinating and newly discovered documents that purported to show that George W. Bush did not perform his military service in the Texas National Guard adequately and that political influences got him off the hook. The alleged memos--from Lieutenant Colonel Jerry B. Killian, Bush's Texas National Guard squadron commander--are almost certainly fakes. And the fakery was uncovered by a series of blog postings on a variety--a bewildering variety--of old, new, and tenacious blogs. Within a couple of days, the news about the probably forged memos had reached full circle to become stories in the MSM itself, with even The New York Times conceding that Dan Rather had almost certainly been hoaxed to some degree or other.
[snip]
This is not the first time that a major news organization has been hoaxed. It happens. But what's stunning is the way in which CBS has responded. Its defensiveness is not the attitude of any journalistic organization truly interested in finding out the truth. CBS's Jonathan Klein even went so far as to say the following: "Bloggers have no checks and balances. ... [It's] a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas." Actually, I'm in sweatpants and a tanktop. But of course, it doesn't matter a jot what a fact-checker is wearing as long as his facts are correct. CBS's apparently aren't.
There's been a lot of hubris in the blogosphere about this, and, indeed, some blogs, most especially Power Line, should get the blog equivalent of a Pulitzer for their dogged pursuit of the truth. But the reality is far simpler and less flattering to bloggers. Journalism is not a profession as such. It's a craft. You get better at it by doing it; and there are very few ground rules. By and large, anyone with a mind, a modem, a telephone, and a conscience can be a journalist. The only criterion that matters is that you get stuff right; and if you get stuff wrong (and you will), you correct yourself as soon as possible. The blogosphere is threatening to some professional journalists because it exposes these simple truths. It demystifies the craft. It makes it seem easy--because, in essence, it often is.
Blogging's comparative advantage has nothing to do with the alleged superior skills of bloggers or their higher intelligence, quicker wit, or more fabulous physiques. The blogosphere is a media improvement because the sheer number of blogs, and the speed of response, make errors hard to sustain for very long. The collective mind is also a corrective mind. Transparency is all. And the essence of journalistic trust is not simply the ability to get things right and to present views or ideas or facts clearly and entertainingly. It is also the capacity to admit error, suck it up, and correct what you've gotten wrong. Take it from me. I've both corrected and been corrected. When you screw up, it hurts. But in the long run, it's a good hurt, because it takes you down a peg or two and reminds you what you're supposed to be doing in the first place. Any journalist who starts mistaking himself for an oracle needs to be reminded who he is from time to time.
CBS News has failed on all these counts. It did shoddy reporting and then self-interestedly dug in against an avalanche of evidence against it. Rather can blather all he wants about the political motivation of some in the blogosphere--but what matters is not bias but accuracy. His attitude, moreover, has bordered on the contemptuous; and the blogosphere has chewed him up and spat him out. He has acted as if journalism is a privilege rather than a process; as if his long career makes his critics illegitimate; as if his good motives can make up for bad material. The original mistake was not a firable offense. But the digging in surely is.
One of the guys from the Powerline blog he references is scheduled to be on Special Report with Brit Hume a little bit later tonight (and he promises to get out of his jammies and throw on a suit).
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 09/14/04 16:39 | Web Stuff | Technorati | Comments (1)
10 September 2004
Another Local Angle
Hugh Hewitt posts some interesting emails from a Rice prof on the Texas Air National Guard memo controversy.
CBS News is a formidable organization, but email and the net connect a lot of experts to each other. The days of CBS News or any other "big media" outlet making a declaration and that being the end of it are over. And that's a good thing, wherever this leads.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 09/10/04 19:22 | Web Stuff | Technorati | Comments (0)
09 September 2004
A Bad Day For Old Media?
How ironic.
On a day when this person in old media is transparently bitching and moaning about bloggers fact-checking journalists, bloggers have been very busy fact-checking the journalists at CBS.
And the bloggers have produced some pretty interesting arguments that the memos that made liberals wee-wee all over themselves were forged -- the modern type of the documents being a dead giveaway (see also PowerLine, Rather Biased, and Little Green Footballs none of which I'm going to link because they're getting pounded at the moment).
Powerline even got a link from Drudge, which represents a watershed of sorts (since Drudge usually throws up a sentence or two followed by "developing hard").
Now, it may well turn out the memos are genuine -- and the blogosphere will accurately report that -- or it may turn out that the blogosphere has done the work that old media should have done in the first place.
Exciting times, these.
(Update) Ya'll can go visit all the "technical" arguments on the various sites where this is being debated and decide for yourself about that. I just think the blogging angle is kind of neat. And I also think my buddy Scott Chaffin's post is the most fun (all the references to masturbation in MY comments rank a close second in fun, though). How many Shiners helped produce that good ol' rant, Scott?
(09-10-2004 Update) KTRK-13, the best TV news outlet in town, fleshes out some local angles in a report by Jessica Willey, including an interview with a UH expert who calls the documents forgeries. Here's the video. Good job as usual, KTRK.
(09-10-2004 Update 2) Local attorney and blogger Beldar asserts the burden is now on CBS News to prove the authenticity of its documents in light of recent challenges. Go read and let him know what you think.
(09-10-2004 Update 3) Lileks has some thoughts on this topic and old media here (scroll down about halfway). His "go local" advice to middle-market newspapers ought to be heeded, but probably won't be. More on that subject by the end of the weekend (I hope).
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 09/09/04 15:46 | Web Stuff | Technorati | Comments (21)
[Previous 20 Entries]
BLOG
» Create Account
» Log In
ASSORTED
DISCLAIMER
Content and design copyright © 1997-2008, Kevin Whited.
Posts represent the views of Kevin Whited (and occasional guest bloggers) only, and do not necessarily reflect the views of employers, family, friends, or significant others.