Category: Geek Love

I’ve been busily working behind the scenes to tweak different things here and there and I realized a few things that I wanted the feedback of other people on. I realize that ultimately it’s my blog, but I was thinking it would be an interesting study in what users really like, what they use, what matters to them. Sort of my own little usability survey, all about blogs. I think we can all learn from it in some way. Am I the only person that wonders about these things?

1. Do you really care what time I made a post at? I mean, does it matter to you that this is being posted at 7:45pm or can I just lose it?
2. What do you think of those little icon thingies for links instead of words? (David Gagne uses them and I’ve always sort of liked them.)
3. What about categories? Do you care what category I posted this in? Do you ever go and look at other posts in the category? I think categories are useful & I will continue to use them and always list them in the archives, but the bigger question is … do you care when you read the post?
4. Skins. I pulled them the other night because I was too exhausted to tweak all of the header graphics. I probably won’t bring them all back, but which one do you miss? Was there a certain one that was your favorite that you want to see revived? No point in bringing them all back if some of them weren’t even being used. Plus I have ideas for some new ones to be coming soon.
5. Aside from more “cookies”, is there anything else you would like to see here? Now is your chance to speak up and be heard!

Thank you for participating. Please drop your surveys in the box when you have finished and have a good day!

For 3 days I’ve been trying to remember the name of the webcam software that I used to use. I knew it started with a “C”. Was it … no. Maybe … no. What on earth is the name of that software? It’s ConquerCam. And now if I ever need it, I’ll have the link. It’s a really good software – in case you need something for your webcam.

For some, blogging is just something you do for fun, to blow off steam, to share links, to write about your cats (hey, I do it – I’m not knocking it.) For others, they care about the history of blogging and where it’s going. I mean, you’ve seen all the articles in the paper about it, haven’t you? If you’re one of those people, you might want to keep an eye on Blogroots which is full of interesting articles and information. It is maintained by the authors of We Blog, and they’ve posted chapter 8 online. [via OnFocus]

I finished the upgrade indoors, it was a little too dark out there to follow upgrade instructions. After I came inside, I left the TV off, turned the music on, and got on IM so that Kristine could hold my hand and guide me through upgrading my blog to be trackback enabled. She is simply amazing. Her MySQL instructions posted at ScriptyGoddess got me through the first part, and then she patiently answered all my questions about the code updates I needed to make. So my first trackback ping goes out to her – THANK YOU Kristine!

I decided when I got home tonight that it was actually somewhat tolerable outside and I didn’t feel like I was melting after sitting on the patio for a few minutes. The view is nice, the desruptions are few, the mosquitos aren’t too bad (they tried to carry me away last weekend) so I grabbed the laptop and the wireless card and set up outside. If you own a laptop, I simply can not say enough about the wonders of 802.11b wireless. Sitting outside with the citronella candles lit, I’m going to take advantage of this and upgrade to MT 2.21. If the site seems a bit crazy, blame it on the upgrade. Change is in the air.