Senator Reid realized that his plan had backfired and tried to steal some of the credit from Rush. What he’s trying to do is cover up the fact that what they did was wrong and illegal and say that this letter was something great because of what he did. It’s great that the money will go to the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation , but it doesn’t take away from the fact that what Reid and other Democratic Senators did, including Hillary Clinton, was wrong and illegal. Rush is fully responsible for the money being raised and Reid is just trying to play politics. It’s kind of funny.

This Best Blog post was excerpted from True Word Today You can submit a blog post for inclusion in Blogger Blog. Just go HERE for more information.

]]> http://www.bloggerforum.com/modules/wordpress/2007/10/31/harry-reid-a-joke/feed/ http://www.bloggerforum.com/modules/wordpress/2007/10/16/a-history-of-diner-culture/ http://www.bloggerforum.com/modules/wordpress/2007/10/16/a-history-of-diner-culture/#comments Tue, 16 Oct 2007 15:53:07 +0000 Steve Best Blogs http://www.bloggerforum.com/modules/wordpress/2007/10/16/a-history-of-diner-culture/ When I lived in Boston, there were not many places to go out to after 1AM. Many a rowdy night my friends and I wanted to take our parties to the streets, even just to get a bite to eat, but rarely were there any options; except the South Street Diner. It is still opened twenty four hours because of the tradition (diners were often located near 24 hour factories, serving around the clock), and because of the nearby twenty four hour work at the Big Dig. South Street is also located downtown, near South Station, where trains and buses converge from all over New England. But it wasn’t so easy for us to get there, so we usually had to convince someone with a car to drive us. Then we would make our way to the diner, long after the T, Boston’s subway, had stopped running. The diner was always busy, even at 4AM, because others had the same idea to extend their revelry. Construction workers, graveyard shifters, young things and commuters rubbed elbows from dawn to dusk and everything in between.

 South Street Diner, Boston

Diners, luncheonettes, greasy spoons - these have all served as the holding lots for whatever we define as our cuisine. Hamburgers, omelets and hash browns all day, coffee and pie. Diners have always been affordable, and are associated with all the euphoric positivity of the 1950s, when every date took place at a diner, and where kids would meet up after school and have a milkshake.

They got their start in the 1870s in the form of the lunch wagon, selling sandwiches and coffee. The word diner originated around 1925, when these restaurants were built to be used as eating cars on trains. After they went out of service, they became stationary and served as cheap restaurants, often near train stations. They maintained their train car shape and pre-fabrication - the chrome that fit in with the art deco aesthetic of the time, the line of stools at a long counter, facing the preparation and cooking area. More spacious diners also feature booths, and over time they began to be built as restaurants, and kept certain elements: the chrome, neon signs; and left out others: the emphasis on the counter, and the smallness. But they still remain quintessentially American.

This Best Blog post was excerpted from A Lucid Spoonfull You can submit a blog post for inclusion in Blogger Blog. Just go HERE for more information.

So, this bird walks into a store….

This is too funny. 

So, this bird walks into a store….
 
A seagull in Scotland has developed the habit of stealing chips from a neighborhood shop.

The seagull waits until the shopkeeper isn’t looking, and then walks into the store and grabs a snack-size bag of cheese Doritos.

Once outside, the bag gets ripped open and shared by other birds.

The seagull’s shoplifting started early this month when he first swooped into the store in Aberdeen, Scotland, and helped himself to a bag of chips. Since then, he’s become a regular. He always takes the same type of chips.

Customers have begun paying for the seagull’s stolen bags of chips because they think it’s so funny.

Salthaven Wildlife Rehabilitation & Education Centre Inc.
P.O. Box 601 Mt. Brydges ON. Canada, N0L 1W0

See how you can help: www.salthaven.org
B/N 85386 3546 RR0001

 

This Best Blog post was excerpted from Happy Pet Blog You can submit a blog post for inclusion in Blogger Blog. Just go HERE for more information.

]]> http://www.bloggerforum.com/modules/wordpress/2007/10/04/so-this-bird-walks-into-a-store/feed/ http://www.bloggerforum.com/modules/wordpress/2007/09/17/ten-forums-to-make-you-a-better-blogger/ http://www.bloggerforum.com/modules/wordpress/2007/09/17/ten-forums-to-make-you-a-better-blogger/#comments Mon, 17 Sep 2007 16:17:20 +0000 Steve Best Blogs http://www.bloggerforum.com/modules/wordpress/2007/09/17/ten-forums-to-make-you-a-better-blogger/ Reading forums and participating in forums is a great way to become a better blogger. Forums focused on blogging are the best means to get questions answered and become known within the blogging community. I don’t suggest that you participate in all of these, but instead pick one or two and become a valuable member. The real power of forums is to become well known within the forums’ community. You want to establish yourself as a valued member of the community and an authority blogger.

Here are my favorite blogging forums:

1. Authority Blogger Forum:

The Authority Blogger Forum is a forum created by Chris Garrett, the author of Chrisg.com. This Forum is pretty new, but I am finding it to be a great community of bloggers. It is also great for new bloggers.

2. Blog Traffic School Forums:

The Blog Traffic School Forums are forums provided by Yaro Starak. Yaro is the author of Entrepreneur’s-Journey blog. In addition to this blog, Yaro runs the Blog Mastermind blog mentoring program. If you are interested in being a professional blogger, I highly recommend join the Blog Mastermind program. I have been a participant since Yaro started it.

3. The Blog Experiment Forums: The Blog Experiment Forums are an extension of The Blog Experiment, but the forums are the focus of the community. This is an excellent community of bloggers. The forums are very active and very helpful.

The move of this blog to my own domain is nigh. At the same time I am moving over to Wordpress. Although blogspot Blogger has served me well, there are a few aspects that that frustrate me. I enjoyed the challenge of finding ways round problems but because of the time involved the novelty of this has worn off. Some of these issues have been solved with the new Blogger but it is not possible to use this version on your own server.

Please keep in mind that these are my reasons for moving to Wordpress on my own domain, based on my own requirements. I would not consider moving to the online Wordpress as Blogger allows much more flexibility and the new version offers an easy to use interface for many customizations and add ins.. Before considering a move of this kind it is a good idea to think about why you need to. Consider:

• What features are not supported by your current blogging platform that you really need?
• Can these features be added to your current blog with plug-ins, workarounds or 3rd party sites. (e.g. Feedburner)?
• Your level of skill - Wordpress is not quite as easy to operate as Blogger and there is a learning process involved in setting up and managing your own domain. Do you have the time or inclination to go through this?
• If you are currently using Blogger classic - would a move over to the new and very much improved version satisfy your requirements?

What bugs me about Blogger

The comments page

1. The theme cannot be edited and I want the ability to style it to match my blog template.
2. There is no \”follow this thread by email\” feature or add in.
3. It is not possible to remove nofollow. I have been compensating for this by manually creating a list of those who have commented, which I publish to the blog page, but this is time consuming. I want to continue giving recognition on my front page to those who contribute comments but this can be achieved automatically with Wordpress.

The Main Blog Page

1. The Blogger navigation bar that runs at the very top of the page is unattractive. Although it can be removed with a hack, I always felt this unfair on those who are using the browse \’next blog\’ feature; to land on my blog and not be able to continue further.
2. There is no \’previous post\’ link at the end of the page. I find this frustrating when reading other class Blogger blogs. You have to search for the archive section and browse from there. I have lost count how many times I have clicked on the previous month name in the archive list to discover I have navigated to the prior year. ( A previous posts feature has been added to the new Blogger ).
3. Classic blogger does not have a built in post categorization. I add the tags to the bottom of my posts manually which is a nuisance and the results not satisfactory. The workaround I operate uses Google Blog Search to hunt for my tags.At first I thought all relevant posts were showing up. I have now discovered that older pages are being dropped. For example a search for posts tagged \”SSS\”, which I number sequentially, only show up SSS 10 onwards. The current 6 weeks are being shown but the prior 9 weeks have disappeared. A general Google search shows that the pages are still being indexed but Blog Search is just not showing them.

Leaving Comments on Other Blogs

1. When leaving a comment on another blog, using your Blogger name, the link that appears on the comment is that of your Blogger profile page and not your blog page; even though the url you have entered is your blog address. I want to have the choice of which blog I am leaving a link to.
2. Having the extra step involved, of having to navigate to the profile page first, means that readers may not continue on to your actual blog.

User Profile

1. The user profile page is a default Blogger page which lists all blogs operated by a user.
2. There is no control over the styling or the content.
3. Wordpress has a static page feature which can be used for an About page. This can include whatever content you wish and follows the style of your blog.

Features and Plugins

Although the new Blogger has many easy to implement add ins, classic Blogger lacks these.
Features that I would like which are available for Wordpress:

1. Static Pages
2. Site map creator
3. Recent Comments
4. Top Commenters
5. Sticky Posts
6. Read More feature
7. Write post feature with more formatting options.
8. Subscribe to comments feature
9. Automatic tag creation.
10. Ability to use PHP coding
11. An archive list
12. A contact form by plugin rather than 3rd party sites
13. Social networking plugins rather than having to manually code/use 3rd party widgets
14. Related posts list at bottom of posts.
15. Spamming protection plugins
16. Pagination for long posts
17. Lots of other plugins and utilities for administrator and blog pages

General Gripes

1. I do not have as much control over my site as I would like. I enjoy tinkering with the coding and am a plugin junkie.
2. Wordpress is a complete program, which you install on your server. With blogger hosted on your own domain, only your own data is stored on the server, the rest is still held by Blogger. This allows less customization and tweaking and more running backwards and forwards to fetch code.
3. Although I will be creating my own theme, as I did with this blog, for those with no knowledge of html/CSS the available blogger templates tend to lack sparkle. Wordpress themes are plentiful.
4. When I compose my posts using an editor and html tags and past into the html post window I have to hunt through and delete extra line breaks which are automatically put in.
5. If I have to retype in the captcha code because the page has timed out many more times, I may well scream.
6. Blogger is doing very strange things to my image dimensions at the moment. e.g. I pasted in width:\”423\” but blogger changed this number to 230.4526?

This is part one in a series of posts about using your own domain for hosting blogs and moving over to Wordpress. More to come very soon.

\”SCREAM\”

This Best Blog post was excerpted from Sueblimely You can submit a blog post for inclusion in Blogger Blog. Just go HERE for more information.

]]> http://www.bloggerforum.com/modules/wordpress/2007/09/08/why-use-wordpress-34-reasons/feed/ http://www.bloggerforum.com/modules/wordpress/2007/09/03/what-do-you-install-after-a-windows-re-format/ http://www.bloggerforum.com/modules/wordpress/2007/09/03/what-do-you-install-after-a-windows-re-format/#comments Mon, 03 Sep 2007 15:06:50 +0000 Steve Best Blogs http://www.bloggerforum.com/modules/wordpress/2007/09/03/what-do-you-install-after-a-windows-re-format/ When I installed Vista on my laptop, I did so as an upgrade from Windows XP. Soon my computer became almost unusably slow and I was experiencing random crashes. One of our programmers had installed Vista from scratch and he had no such problems. So I did what I used to do every six months or so with Windows XP, a complete re-install.

I have become a minimalist in many ways, so this was a good chance to do some housekeeping and only install the minimums (which ended up being pretty significant). I detailed this process and I am sharing it with you here. It would be interesting to find out what applications you consider essential when doing a complete re-format. I have changed some of the specific steps to be a bit more generic.Using this list, I will do the same exercise for my Unbuntu box.0. Make sure all data is backed upI generally put all my data in an external hard drive that is shared amongst my internal network, so this step is pretty easy. Things like bookmarks and setting are committed to subversion where the repository is stored externally.

1. Install Vista Ultimate (at your own risk )
Write down all the configuration steps you take, such as removing the sidebar, changing resolution, etc… so the next time you just go through the checklist.

2. Set up Wireless/Internet Connection

3. Microsoft Update

4. Get Updates from PC manufacturer (Latest firmware drivers)

5. Change domain to internal domain name

6. Uninstall un-needed programs

7. Map Network Drives

8. Map Network Printers

9. Install AVG Free (Anti-Virus and Spyware)

10. Install Firefox 2 with the following plugins:
Del.Icio.Us toolbar
Alexa Toolbar
Firebug
Web Developer
Minimize to Tray and Minimize to Tray Enhancer
Cobalt theme or or Blue Ice
Netvibes.com as the home
Make icons small

10a. Netvibes Bookmarks
I like to have a centralized list of all the web applications I use frequently.
Google Mail
MindMeister
Zoho Projects and CRM
Google Docs
Google Calendar
Eventum
Trac
FlowChart.com
Notifir.com
ConstantContact.com

11. Install Spybot Search and Destroy
Update
Immunize

12. Install Ad-Aware SE Personal

13. Set Power Settings
Use advanced settings

14. Taskbar and Start Menu Properties
Removed hidden toolbar
Enabled Administrator Links on program files
changed icon size for programs to be small

15. Right Click->Properties
Put My Computer on the Desktop along with Network

16. Install QuickBooks 2007

17. Install Daemon Tools
I have a folder on the external driver where I store frequently used CD’s and DVD’s in the ISO format.

18. Install Outlook 2007
Downloaded for free from 1and1.com for my Exchange account

19. Setup Users

20. Install Adobe Photoshop CS2
I have not learned Gimp sufficiently enough to dump Photoshop yet. But I’m getting there…

21. Install Acrobat Reader

22. Install Flash 8
I still do some flash work here and there.

23. Install 7z

24. Install FileZilla

25. Install NotePad++

26. Install Camtasia+

27. Install Audacity + Plugins

28. Install GoToMeeting
I’m looking at some free alternatives, maybe even Skype, but I have not found a good replacement yet.

29. Install JRE 6

30. Install ArgoUML

31. Install DBDesigner
While I usually create database schema’s by hand, this is a good tool for quick prototypes. Especially because it exports the schema for you based on the UML diagram.

32. Install Skype

33. Install Azureus

34. Install Joost
I still have some beta invites here.

35. Install XAMPP Windows 1.5.4
I use this for Symfony development.

36. Installed Putty

37. Install WinSCP3

38. Install iTunes
For the video iPod.

39. Install 3GP Converter
Converts my movies to iPod format.

40. Install EasyEclipse for LAMP
Install RadRails

41. Install Tortoise SVN

42. Install FreeMind
I normally use mindmeister.com; however, this solution is good for offline work and is compatible with mindmeister.com

43. Install VMware Converter
I will use this to make this install an image that I can put in VMware on Ubuntu.

44. Install Instant Rails

45. Install Cygwin
I have to have my Linux command prompt.

46. Install OpenOffice

47. Install DIVX

48. Create a backup image the system (thanks to all the suggestions to do this)

It’s been weeks since the re-install and all is going well.

This list used to be over 200 items long… now it takes much less time to do a re-install. I have put all these applications that I need to re-install in one location on my external hard drive and I have a document with links to all the applications that should be downloaded in order to get the latest version. The other big factor in saving time, was setting up all my data remotely and using web services whenever possible.

What are your essentials?

 

This Best Blog post was excerpted from Thembid.com You can submit a blog post for inclusion in Blogger Blog. Just go HERE for more information.

One easy and frugal way to get lots of pots for seed starting is to make them from things you may find around your house. Seed starting pots from newspaper is not only very cheap but you’re keeping trash out of landfills. I take a sheet of newspaper and fold it in half so that it’s about the length of a can of soda (or “pop” as we say in Chicago) and then just roll the soda can until it wraps around the can. Then I’ll just fold in one end of the newspaper and you have a quick and cheap pot for starting seeds. In the photo above I used this technique to start some Amaryllis seeds, but you can do just about any seeds you want. When the seedlings have sprouted you can plant the whole thing in the ground where the newspaper will eventually decompose.

You can also create your own seed pots from toilette paper rolls. One good alternative I like when I only have a few seeds to work with is to make them from the tubes of gift wrapping paper. They’re usually much sturdier than the tubes for paper towels or toilette paper. These seed pots can also be completely planted in the ground or into your container gardens.

Tip: set all of your homemade pots inside a take out container, if you don’t have seed starting trays, so that they’re touching. When you water fill the container with water and allow the water to be absorbed by the paper pots. If you’re very eco-friendly make sure the newspaper you use prints with soy based ink.

Other things around your house you can use are yogurt cups, cut a water bottle in half and poke holes in th bottom for drainage, plastic containers from restaurants, Styrofoam cups from fast food restaurants or instant soup.

 

This Best Blog post was excerpted from Mr. Brown Thumb You can submit a blog post for inclusion in Blogger Blog. Just go HERE for more information.

]]> http://www.bloggerforum.com/modules/wordpress/2007/08/26/seed-starting-pots-from-newspaper/feed/ http://www.bloggerforum.com/modules/wordpress/2007/08/21/do-i-really-have-to-post-to-my-blog-every-day/ http://www.bloggerforum.com/modules/wordpress/2007/08/21/do-i-really-have-to-post-to-my-blog-every-day/#comments Tue, 21 Aug 2007 18:28:47 +0000 Steve Best Blogs http://www.bloggerforum.com/modules/wordpress/2007/08/21/do-i-really-have-to-post-to-my-blog-every-day/ Posting Every Day Makes Me a Better Blog?   Here’s how I see it. If I post great content every 3-7 days, isn’t that better than if I were to post poor or mediocre quality content every day? The answer is obvious to me. I should post in a way that results in better quality, no?So then, posting every day is not a “carve it in stone” rule. If search engines use it in their algorithms to rank sites, it’s another misnomer as I see it, because the everyday post could just be junk.

Quality Posts Must Be Frequent and Regular Still   I know, I probably don’t post enough to this blog for some of you. Sorry, but producing quality content that is meaningful and valuable takes a little more time, thought and effort than that.But I will agree that posting often and regularly is important because of the audience and the need they have for continuous information. Otherwise they may lose interest or think the blog has become inactive.

What Is The Minimum Time Standard for a Quality Blog?   I’d say it is at least once a week. Anything less than once every 7-10 days and people will begin to wonder. Once a week may also match how often people would regularly visit the site based on how much info you provide per post. It may take them a couple days just to read one post.However, I also say, cut us bloggers some slack! Sometimes our lives get busy too! We can’t always blog, but we will most of the time.

Depends on the Topic Too   Entertainment and celebrity gossip sites may have a daily audience while other more academic or information-based sites have a every few days or once a week following.Whatever the case may be, follow the key rule in marketing and product satisfaction - match the service you provide to the needs of your target audience or market.I hope this was helpful and definitely welcome some dialogue on this one. How often would you visit this blog BTW, daily? Maybe I blog too little then, As always feedback is helpful.

This Best Blog post was excerpted from Quality Blogger You can submit a blog post for inclusion in Blogger Blog. Just go HERE for more information.

“Besides his Tiger Admin plugin for the WP administrative interface, Steve Smith’s blog invented the wide-horizontal look. Black, green, and blue, with bigger fonts than most blogs, it’s both plain and subtle at the same time. Check out the careful use of icons everywhere, tagging and related links, and comments. Because he uses more color than images, the pages are light and fast to load. They’re also very uncluttered.”

Here’s a shot of the main page: