Category Archives: Websites

This and other websites.

Housekeeping, HOUSEKEEPING!

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I am finally tired of the chaotic structure (viva la oxymoron) pf this, and some of my other weblogs and I decided to go ahead and clean them up. The Blog Cleaning to end all Blog Cleanings.

What I thought would be an easy task, isn’t. In itself, the technical aspect of it, it’s really trivial. If there are no comments on a posting, I can just copy and paste it; otherwise I have to do some import and export magic. Really, no matter.

But what I found to be incredible difficult is to rip apart my history of blogging. I’ve posted some stuff on here that’s really superfluous. people really need to know I ordered ADSL in Frankfurt nine years ago?

Then there’s some stuff I’d probably not post today – nothing really bad, just… not perfect for a site any potential customer, a future employer (no, I am not looking…), girlfriend (I am still not looking, I am using these as examples, don’t hit me honey! *ouch*), or any total stranger could look up. For example, I used to have a neighbor who liked to undress at the window. It’s there, in a bemused posting I made way back when it wasn’t even socially acceptable to call a blog a blog.

Then there are potentially harmful postings. Example: A rant ridiculing the ITIL fashion. Yeah, seven years ago you didn’t need ITIL if you had some common sense. But I’m now a project manager and service manager. I understand that ITIL is a reference that saves people from having to come up with that stuff themselves, and it provides for a common ground and terminology. But reading that old blog posting could give a potential employer a completely wrong impression of myself. I need ITIL as a tool and, more importantly, I need – and my employer needs me to have – ITIL as a badge to show off to my customers. So I actually “parked” this post already.

Another case are posts I really do not have any other home for. I could move my book reviews to my new Kindle blog, but then what about my DVD reviews? Shouldn’t I just keep them all together? I don’t want to start a reviews blog, really. A similar situation for my tech posts (though I have a solution for those), or my travel posts, or the ones about RIFT and World of Warcraft. And if I move all of these, my personal blog will have very little “meat” left.

A final and very special example is a post about Wizard of the Coast’s search for a new setting. It’s just a snippet, really, but it’d perfectly fit in with my world building blog. Except – That post is from 2002 and my world building blog started in 2008. Do I really want a lone post from the past in there? Doesn’t seem to be very useful.

I haven’t really figured out a good solution yet. I don’t want to delete too much. In a way, this blog and its ten year history are dear to me. And once you destroy data, you won’t get it back.

I think I must consider this matter in greater depth before I go ahead.

Big Blog Cleaning

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Woke up early today and did something I had wanted to do in a while. I shut down a lot of the minor websites I have and that I never use. Now I am still left with way too many websites that I never update, but that I think I should update… I’ll probably consolidate them somehow. Anyway in the unlikely case anybody is actually missing a site, just let me know.

What's the Dog-Ear?

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Because my anglophone readers will wonder: The dog-ear in the upper-right corner is a protest against a new data-retention law our government passed on November 9th: Basically, they decided that all communication connection data must be retained for six months. This includes phones, mobiles, email, text messages, and so on. And in the case of mobile phones, they will also log the location. This is being done regardless of suspicions of crime. Germany is now a surveillance state.

A lot of people will say: **But I have nothing to hide!** However, this is incorrect. **Everybody** has **something** to hide. Obviously, most people do not commit crimes, but is that really all there is in one’s life? Maybe someone cheated on his husband or wife, or likes to smoke pot. What about watching porn movies – or calling phone sex lines? A lot of people do that, and few of them would admit to it in public. Using your company phone to make private calls? It’s all documented now. Maybe you like to appear as a rough-tough macho in public, but enjoy folk music in private. Maybe you got really drunk at your last birthday party and made a scene – something you may not wish to become publicly known.

And then there are all the possibilities of misunderstandings, when these huge databases will be searched and used.

Finally, we should have no illusions that this will be the last law of this kind. Banking confidentiality is already history. Our biometric data – photos, fingerprints – are being entered in government databases. The police has started to automatically ID cars. And our interior minister Schäuble has a whole bag full of other ideas. This must not happen.

It saddens me to no end that Germany, the one nation that you would think should know better than this, has implemented this horrible law. There are only two hopes now; our President may refuse to sign it, or the superior court could stop the law. And the dog-ear links to just that initiative.

I hope this clears things up.

50k

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My two “main” blogs, the one you are reading, and [Geek World](http://geek.pandemonium.de/) have received 50000 spams since I first started using [Akismet](http://akismet.com/). I am usually quite happy to celebrate milestones and such, but not this time. :(

And it’s gotten really bad really quickly, too – one and a half years ago it was rare enough that I attempted to [report comment spam by hand](/2005/12/13/spam-spam-spam-lovely-spam/) to the ISPs of origin.

Layout

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Sorry for the new theme. I kinda like the basic layout, but I think I will have to customize it a little.

Update:

The theme is [MegaPress](http://patrick.bloggles.info/2006/12/30/wordpress-theme-megapress/) by Patrick Chia. Supposedly, Patrick based it largely on [WP-Andreas01](http://themes.wordpress.net/columns/3-columns/704/wp-andreas01-12/) by Andreas Viklund (without crediting Andreas). Interestingly enough, the theme does contain several spam links that I have promptly removed.

Things I think I want to change:

* Make it fluid instead of fixed-width
* Some style changes to the “meta box” of posts, and to the posts themselves
* Find room for ads somewhere
* Add a third column – on the right side
* Make the sidebar for article pages different from index pages
* As always, create an integrated style for Gallery 2

It would also be really nice if I could rip the config interface from Tarski theme and add it to this theme.

Update, 2007-06-14:

I had to [hack WPG2](http://www.galleryembedded.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=35205#35205) to get it to work. I’ve also started to use Widgets for the first time with this WordPress release, and I have to say – it makes things a lot easier to use Widgets. I’m using only prefab-widgets right now, except for the [WPG2 ImageBlock Widget](http://moho.optera.net/projects/wordpress/wpg2imageblock/).

Corey and Joel at Pridefest

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I just have to plug these guys again. If you don’t know yet, [Corey and Joel](http://www.coreyandjoelradio.com/) (from Ferndale, Michigan; a suburb of Detroit) have been hosting a talk show Podcast for over a year now. It’s one of my favorite podcasts – they’re entertaining, have great guests, and while they have a slow show every once in a while, they’re really never boring. Just a word of warning: They are absolutely not politically correct, and they know no limits in insulting everybody. it’s all in good spirits, though. I’ve [met them](http://www.geektravel.info/2006/03/22/itinerary/) at their [Life Show](http://www.geektravel.info/2006/03/24/the-corey-and-joel-radio-show-aniversarry-extravaganza/), and they’re good guys.

Anyway, for their current episode they visited [Ferndale's Pridefest 2006](http://www.coreyandjoelradio.com/archives/2006/06/corey_and_joel_69.html) where they interviewed a lot of really colorful characters. If you haven’t started listening yet, what are you waiting for??

More Websites

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I actually added these two blogs a while ago, but I never “announced” them here…

* [Jeppe](http://jeppe.de): A website about the Jeppe family, about my forays into genealogy, and about other people named Jeppe (not with first name!). Pretty much a low volume blog.
* [GEZ Blog](http://gez.pandemonium.de/): This weblog details my interactions with the GEZ, a German organisation with the mission to charge people for their TV licenses. I don’t even own a radio or TV, and thus have to pay no license. The GEZ annoyed me one time too many by sending some guy over to check on me, and by wanting to charge TV licenses for “Internet PCs” starting in 2007. I have taken up the torch to annoy them back – as time permits. German language only, sorry.

Enjoy.

_Edit: Fixed the publishing date._