Other than lots of layovers at Hartsfield, I’ve never spent any time in the state of Georgia. Patricia has some business in Savannah next week, though, so we’re driving up there this weekend to check the place out. It should be interesting to see the antebellum architecture there. Savannah is sort of like Prague — it managed to avoid the ravages of a war that destroyed much else in the region (they surrendered to Sherman as he ended his march to the sea).
I’ll have Internet, in theory, but I also have work (and I’ll be heading off to LA the week after) so blogging may be light.
I’ve created a category called “Inadvertent Comic Relief.” It will contain links to sites that are serious, but hilariously and relentlessly stupid. The honor of the first link goes to perennial anti-military-space loon Bruce Gagnon. As an example, here he expresses his frustration that the Obama administration is going to do nothing to prevent those evil Anglospherians from colonizing the moon and terrorizing the moon people:
In Obama’s opening words he talked about the early vision of our “founding fathers”. He intends to remain loyal to the rich white men who dreamed of their own empire — one that would challenge England’s global power. An empire that would push the Native Americans from their land, ravage the Earth for its natural resources, and move overseas to terrorize and colonize people in Hawaii, the Philippines, Guam, Latin America, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and ultimately the moon in the sky.
End the madness.
[Update a few minutes later]
I’ve also added another of my favorite whacko conspiracy mongers — Elaine Supkis (who also happens to be L-5 Society founder Carolyn Meinel’s sister).
I’ve noticed a new type of comment spam showing up. It’s a link to a post, that’s aggregated with other links to other posts, which may or may not be related, in a blog that consists of nothing else but links.
Here’s an example. This seems to be a blog that is set up for free as part of a larger blog site (in this case, “localferret.com”), with no restrictions. So, two questions. What is the purpose of such a blog? And is there any harm in allowing it to provide links to my site (probably picked up by a bot that simply watches my feed — I get a lot of Russian spam this way), even though they seem pointless? It does, after all, increase my Google and Technorati (and probably other) rankings. All of them are captured for moderation, but I can’t decide whether to approve them or declare them spam.
As you can see, I’m starting to rebuild (and update) my old blogroll over on the left. It’s going to be a long, painful process, though. Also, the link widget in WordPress seems to just alphabetize both links and link categories, so I can’t get it to present the links in the order desired (does anyone know if there’s a way around this?). If you have a space web site that I didn’t have on the old one, it might be a good time to post it in comments here, where I can collect them for eventual inclusion.
This has actually been true since I switched to Word Press, but it’s now possible to view specific category posts. For instance, by clicking on the space category, you can see only space stuff (for those who have complained over the years that they like my space posts, but aren’t interested in, or are put off by, my political posts). Likewise, those who like the politics without the space can use this page instead. Or any of the other categories, though those two are probably updated most often. Same thing applies to people who have me on their blogroll as a service to their readers, but don’t necessarily want to subject them to what they might consider off-topic blather (e.g., Alan Boyle or Clark Lindsey, or Jon Goff might only want to blogroll the space category).
OK, I’m trying a different template, at the suggestion of Robin Snelson (who, amazingly, doesn’t seem to have an actual web site of her own), to see if this one is more tractable. There is obviously a lot of tweaking to do.
I bought an HD-DVR receiver for Christmas. Which means additional cable runs, because it needs two satellite signals to record while playing real time. I’ve always used the twist-on F connectors for RG-6, but the last time the DirecTV guy came he recommended crimp-on compression connectors, for a better water seal (we always have LOS in heavy rain, which is a problem in south Florida).
So I spent the money on a DataShark crimper and a package of ten connectors. I followed the instructions, stripping the right lengths of both center conductor and plastic inner insulator (even though it looks to me like if you only do a quarter inch of bare wire, it won’t stick out enough to make contact). I’ve now wasted four of the things. None of them stay on the cable after crimping. They don’t even try. I take it out of the crimper, and it almost falls off. And of course, you can’t uncrimp to try again, so it’s a waste of almost a buck with each one. I have no clue what the problem is. I’m using standard RG-6. I can’t quite figure out what they’re supposed to be crimping to, even after looking at a crimped and uncrimped one. Anyone out there have any experience?
Just taking a little blogging break for the holidays. Also, I may be playing around with templates to get something more functional for all. Hope everyone had/is having a good holiday/Chrisnakkuh, whatever.