New Country for Old Blog

Just checked in on our Flag Counter to see who has been visiting lately and noticed a new flag:

Antigua and Barbuda



At first I thought "What a pretty flag!"

My next thought was: "Wow, that looks like a woman looking through her sunburned thighs at the Caribbean sunset!"

Persistent Posting Problems

I've been getting an error msg. when trying to post over this last weekend and earlier today. The Blogger Status page said this:

We're aware of isolated access issues in certain regions within the US. We're investigating this now and will follow-up as soon as we have more information to share

Thanks for your patience in the meantime.

It's now got this additional update:

Update, 12:30 PST: This is now fixed.

Cool, not that I was agonizing over it. MSN Groups taught me patience, along with quite a bit of other stuff, some about HTML and a lot about people.

Blogger has so little downtime, I can't remember ever being more than a little bit perturbed with it. I came close earlier when replying to a post and got the error msg., but what I typed went through. I've almost gotten out of the habit of copying any post before I hit send like we had to in Groups. I participate in a few forums that use the IntenseDebate software and they've been buggy at times, so I was still copying my text just in case.

Nice day here, starting to warm up some. I really need to get out and mow later.

Still, before I send: Ctrl-A, then Ctrl-C.

Free Analog Web Clock

for your website or blog

Easily customizable; just set your time zone and favorite color. There's a shortcut to add to a Blogger blog and the specific coding is supplied for most of the popular social networking sites. A 24hr clock is also available.

Pampa

I also use their time sync app. I hadn't run it in a while and checked my PC's clock just before midnight to make sure I had the correct time. I was off by 8 seconds!

I really shouldn't bother; the sounds of guns being fired in the air lets me know the new year has arrived.

obfuscate

obfuscate \OB-fuh-skayt\ , transitive verb;
1. To darken or render indistinct or dim.
2. To make obscure or difficult to understand or make sense of.
3. To confuse or bewilder.

---

Something I wish I had done to my email address code I used when I first started this blog.

This Hurts

According to this analyzer, I'm a

Yeah, But Kenya Reach 200?

Just now noticed that ToTG has reached a hundred countries on our Flag Counter thanks to a recent visitor from Kenya.

Please, be proud for me. I don't have much else to brag about, gimme this one.

Nigeria is #99

Not that it's all that big of a deal, but here's what I'm talking about.

Hello Goodbye - The Beatles

Grooveshark lets you find specific songs by specific artists, make playlists, and play them whenever you like...all for free!

AND, as you can see, the embed code is available for websites or Blogger and many other social networking sites.

Millions of songs. Find yours.

Grooveshark

And Swaziland Makes 98

Even though the state flag counter (at bottom of the page) has maxed out on all 50 states and the District of Columbia, I still enjoying seeing the newest countries to have visited this blog.

For a week or longer, the newest country visitor was Montenegro, but the other day I noticed Swaziland had been here. It's always interesting to view the country information for countries such as Swaziland.



The African continent is the most under-represented, so I was pleased to see this latest new country from that region of the world.

As the list of new countries grew, I was chuffed to think of the "success" of this blog...then I visited the Flag Counter Forum and saw posts by several bloggers who had well over that number visit their own sites; some claimed over 200.

Several weeks ago, I noticed an odd entry, not a country but listed as "Unknown - Satellite Provider". Now, I'd bet that is exactly what it says it is, someone uses a satellite dish for their ISP. (I've read they're not reliable, touchy to keep in place and while it's faster than a dial-up connection, they are at the low end of everything else)

It's that, or some govt. agency checking for subversive activity...or maybe it's from a UFO who was attracted to the special frequency of this blog. (or perhaps they thought they saw a photo of one of their own kind in here)

Whatever, only two more to reach 100!

Back Up Your Blog

When I was involved in the now defunct MSN Groups it was always such a hassle to try to back up my group so I didn't even try. Files and photos could easily be saved/backed-up via the My Network Spaces, but posts had to be copied into a Notepad document and saved, or pasted into an HTML editor and the page saved. (and since people were constantly clearing out their graphics albums in order to save space, the page had to be saved again to save any images) It was a pain.

With Blogger, it's much easier to save each and every post. I've got my settings where I get posts and replies direct to my inbox. I saved them for a while, then decided I didn't really want to keep them. (face it, my posts are not something for the ages)

Another method of saving posts and replies is to use the RSS feed for your blog and save them within Google Reader. Create a folder, name it something like "ToTG" and move all published content to it, easy as that!

I still don't save them, though. I've lost a few posts from here due to some Blogger glitch, but I'm not losing any sleep over it.

77 Days Later

A screenshot of this blog's state flag counter:



Whew, this sure saves me from some sleepless nights! I had been worrying about it.

Although I've still got a few more states to go, according to the president.

Hail, South Dakota!

From Wiki:

Hail! South Dakota! (1943) is the official state song of South Dakota, selected by popular vote. It was written and composed by DeeCort Hammitt (1893-1970).

Lyrics (midi file, so you can sing along)

Hail! South Dakota! a great state of the land;
Health, wealth and beauty, that's what makes her grand;
She has her Black Hills, and mines with gold so rare,
And with her scenery, no other state can compare.

Come where the sun shines, and where life's worth your while;
You won't be here long, till you'll wear a smile;
No state's so healthy, and no folk quite so true.
To South Dakota we welcome you.

Hail! South Dakota! the state we love the best,
Land of our fathers, builders of the west;
Home of the Badlands, and Rushmore's ageless shrine,
Black Hills and prairies, farmland and sunshine.
Hills, farms and prairies, blessed with bright sunshine.

---

What's this got to do with this blog, one more-or-less devoted to this part of Texas? Well, South Dakota is the only state that's not represented by a visitor since I put in the state Flag Counter at the bottom of the page a couple of months ago. North Dakota was the next-to-last state, but someone from there visited yesterday. (thanks for the heads-up, Barb!)

I don't know what it was that kept that part of the country from visiting; decency and good sense, I reckon.

Maybe, just maybe, Google will index this soon and someone from the state will be searching for the lyrics or melody and click on the link. If it doesn't, then I'll title a post "South Dakota Gay Dwarfs Who Love Their Sister's Feet".

That'll bring 'em from all over, betcha.

(although "out of the woodwork" isn't a state)

May is Gone!

Yes, I know the month has passed, but all my May posts from two years ago when I started this blog are gone! I'm not for sure how many there were, but most of April's are gone as well. There's a single post in April, but then it skips to June.

I first noticed something unusual when I wanted to re-post some photos for the recent Woody Guthrie post; there were three different pics of metal sculptures of the score of Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land". The post was titled "Name That Tune" and a search using the Blogger supplied site search turned up nothing.

The photos can be seen starting here in the album. (use the arrow at top to scroll to the next two)

I wonder why an entire month's posts vanished?

Oil Consumption Widget

Find out how to invest in energy stocks at EnergyAndCapital.com.

49 and Holding

For over a week now this has been the message on my US Flag Counter:



That's pretty neat, considering it's only been 3 weeks since I put in the counter.

BUT, when navigating to the Flag Map, I noticed two states haven't visited this blog, both North and South Dakota:



Looking through the list, I see that it counts the District of Columbia as a state, so there's the problem.

OTOH, I better not hold my breath waiting waiting for visits from President Obama's "57 States".

On a related note, I noticed that there's now a Visitor Log which details more on each visitor, whether they're a new visitor or a new visitor from a new state (the same with the country flag counter) and what sort of operating system they're using as well as what browser.

The country count is now up to 75, and that's in less than two months of the counter being on this blog.

Cool. I suppose it's nothing really to brag about; I know of some blogs that probably get that many visitors a day as I've had total, but I think it's still neat.

A Rush of Reddit Readers

Thanks to this post on Reddit, this blog has had 3-4 times the normal daily new visitors as usual. (my regular readers aren't "normal" or they wouldn't be here)

They were following a link left to a post from over a year ago: The Week I Was Born. The subject of the Reddit post was the photo of the man with the huge grasshopper.

Earlier today I took a screenshot of the Feedjit counter and the page changed a half dozen times as I watched, with most new visitors coming from the Reddit site.

(click to view larger size)


There's not been any new non-US visitors, but thanks to the link, there's only one more US state to complete the entire fifty!

---

EDIT: The FlagCounter Page views shows how much the traffic increased yesterday, and I've noticed with the Feedjit counter that they're still coming in from Reddit!

Vietnam - Jimmy Cliff

To commemorate the 56th country to visit this blog in the last 11 days.





It's mostly to honor all the Vietnam Vets.

Worth One Sword, Three Throwing Stars

My site is worth $162.
How much is yours worth?

Or some other combo

Obama Countdown

On the other hand, he *might* get re-elected.

In that case, they'll have to redo their countdown.

OR... you'd best ace this quiz:

You Got 8/10 Questions Right

You are a probably a news junkie, Obama fan, or both. You know a lot about Barack Obama - including his politics, history, and family. It's likely you're a very knowledgeable person and quite well read. You can't stand ignorant people, no matter what their political persuasion is.

How Much Do You Know About Barack Obama?

I hope I did well enough to keep me out of the FEMA concentration camps.

Sophomoric Humor

Test your blog's readability at Juicy Studio

From the site:

Gunning Fog, Flesch Reading Ease, and Flesch-Kincaid are reading level algorithms that can be helpful in determining how readable your content is. Reading level algorithms only provide a rough guide, as they tend to reward short sentences made up of short words. Whilst they're rough guides, they can give a useful indication as to whether you've pitched your content at the right level for your intended audience.

According to the results, this blog is best understood by tenth graders and up and not very well at that.

Oh well. I was aspiring to sophomoric humor, so I got THAT goin' for me. The way I understand it, I'll just have to try harder to be easier to understand.