Brucified

Blogger to End FTP Publishing

2010-02-01T08:37:00.002-07:00

Blogger to End FTP Publishing

Today, while trying to create a Blogger blog for my cooking site, I learned that Google will end FTP publishing support after March 26, 2010. From Blogger Buzz...

Last May, we discussed a number of challenges facing Blogger users who relied on FTP to publish their blogs. FTP remains a significant drain on our ability to improve Blogger: only .5% of active blogs are published via FTP - yet the percentage of our engineering resources devoted to supporting FTP vastly exceeds that. On top of this, critical infrastructure that our FTP support relies on at Google will soon become unavailable, which would require that we completely rewrite the code that handles our FTP processing.

At first, I was pretty disappointed; I'm one of the half percenters that publishes several Blogger blogs via FTP. I'm currently trying to maintain an investment blog, a political blog and a coin collecting blog all on subdirectories off of a main website (domain) which, it appears as of now, is not supported by Google's Custom Domain option.

Here's what I mean: www.brucified.com (a domain) or anything.brucified.com (a subdomain) is supported by Google Custom Domains but, as I understand, www.brucified.com/blog/ (a subdirectory) is not. This last example is what I'm doing on my websites.

I have several options. I can register the subdomains. I can host on Google's Blogspot domain. I can quit blogging on all those other blogs and do all of my blogging here at Brucified.

I'm too cheap to register extra domains just for blogs and I'm too proud to host my blogs on someone else's domain. The third option sounds like the way to go. I think I'll start doing all of my blogging here and spend more time writing articles for my other sites. Unlike most bloggers, I don't really need "push button publishing." I'm pretty good at writing my own HTML.

This may be a blessing. I've been spreading myself a little thin lately.

Read More: Blogger Buzz: Important Note to FTP Users

Sunday Zen - Hawaii

2010-01-31T06:46:00.002-07:00

Hawaii pictures courtesy of Donna's Travel Photography.
(Happy Birthday Donna!)

Caturday - Scooter

2010-01-30T06:46:00.011-07:00

Scooter enjoying a Saturday afternoon nip.
Cat pictures courtesy of Donna's Travel Photography.

A Photo Of Noah Every Day For 6 Years

2009-10-09T19:59:00.004-06:00

Noah takes a photo of himself every day for 6 years (January 11, 2000 - July 31, 2006) with original music by Carly Comando.

It's a Work Still in Progress: Noah K. Everyday

A Successful Website In 12 Months

2009-10-07T17:18:00.003-06:00

Although Brett Tabke, the head honcho at WebmasterWorld, wrote this article on how to build a successful website in 12 months with Google alone over seven years ago it's still good and relevent advice.

"I know the following system works 100% of the time with Google to attain rankings across a wide range of keywords. This is what I do with clients to build a successful site and it has worked every time. The level of success will depend largely on the subject matter, its potential audience, and its level of competition on the net."

I suggest you copy it to a text file, print it out, and refer to it often.

Read More: Successful Site in 12 Months with Google Alone

How To Get A Million Hits to Your Blog

2009-10-05T08:16:00.004-06:00

R.S. McCain of The Other McCain has, to celebrate surpassing one million hits to his blog, revealed his secrets to, well, getting one million hits to your blog.

Here's a preview...

1. Get a Blogspot account.
2. ???
3. One million visitors!

Easy -- aye? Not really.

Read More: How to Get a Million Hits on Your Blog in Less Than a Year
Related: The Underpants Gnome

The MANtage

2009-10-02T17:55:00.001-06:00

Tonight's Friday Night Video is a montage of manly men doing manly things in a manly way -- Thank you Mister Man Sir.

My favorite lines -
"There's Luke laughin' at somebody different!"
"There's Joe wrestling a bear at night!"
"There's Luke not tippin' on account of poor service!"

Barats and Bereta's: Website and YouTube Channel

CSS Backgrounds

2009-09-30T19:22:00.002-06:00

A good background can transform a website or blog from a boring, also ran into something special. Here's a post from Smashing Magazine that will, through the use of a cascading style sheet, provide both inspiration and instruction.

I just might need to create a category for Smashing Magazine; I'm finding a lot of very useful stuff over there.

Read More: Backgrounds In CSS: Everything You Need To Know

Gorbachev By ANJ

2009-09-25T18:00:00.006-06:00

The very first in a continuing series of Friday Night Videos.

The greatest Heavy Metal tribute to Mikael Gorbachov (Russian spelling) ever. It's got your zombies, Stalin, Zombie Stalins, eyeball lasers, explosions and hot half-dressed babes with Twinkies and Coca-Cola falling from the sky.

The actual title is "Gorbachov: The Music Video - Bigger And Russianer" also known as "ANJ and Gorby Save Hot Girls from Stalin Zombies."

Here's The HD Version at Vimeo. Let it load a bit before you play it and then click the little "four arrows" symbol on the lower right part of the viewer to see it in true HD. Awesome, eh? Rock on brothers -- and die you commie swine! Thanks ANJ.

The Bands Myspace Page: ANJKill
Related: Download More Free Music

Writer's Resources

2009-09-24T14:35:00.005-06:00

I'll be adding to this dandy little post of online tools and resources for writers as needed, and found.

The Chicago Manual of Style - An indispensable reference for writers.
Writer's Digest - Write Better, Get Published

You'll have to get your own booze.

Much ink has been spilled on the question of why so many writers are alcoholics. Of America’s seven Nobel laureates, five were lushes - to whom we can add an equally drunk-and-disorderly line of Brits: Dylan Thomas, Malcolm Lowry, Brendan Behan, Patrick Hamilton, Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis, all doing the conga to (in most cases) an early grave.

How to Fold a T-Shirt

2009-08-17T17:25:00.006-06:00

How to fold a t-shirt in 2 seconds (via Bit Rebels).

Here's a slower version with instructions.

Free Icon Sets

2009-07-10T12:39:00.004-06:00

Icons, Icons, Lots of Really Cool Icons.

From Smashing Magazine:
Fresh free high-quality icon sets and 35 incredible free icon sets you can use for your web designs or your desktop. More in SM's Icon Category.

From The Web:
The Icon Archive is a categorized collection of high quality desktop and web icon sets; they have lots of really good stuff there.

Happy Birthday To Me

2009-06-30T09:12:00.002-06:00

Well, happy effing birthday to me. Instead of the traditional birthday ditty, let's all gather around our 'puters and sing this little number. All together now...

Battle Hymn of the Baby Boomers (holy crap I'm getting older).

SM's Best of 2009

2009-06-20T13:57:00.003-06:00

I was reading Smashing Magazine this morning and I decided to check out their "About" page where I found this...

Our Most Popular Stories Of 2009 So Far:
Web Design Trends For 2009
Best Adobe Photoshop Tutorials
40 Excellent Free Fonts For Professional Design

And this...

Our Greatest Story Ever:
53 CSS Techniques You Can’t Live Without

I've got to get me one of those "About" pages, someday.

Page Rank Sculpting

2009-06-15T23:50:00.002-06:00

Matt Cutts, the head of Google's Webspam team, cat lover (Hi Ozzie!), and all 'round good guy, has written a helpful post explaining page rank flow, the "nofollow" attribute, and when you should use it (hint: not so much). Page rank can be a complicated subject because Google is quite secretive about the algorithm. It's nice to get a little information straight from a Google employee.

It's a concise and easy to read post (with pictures!). I suggest you give it a look.

Read More: Page Rank Sculpting

Tweak Guides Updated

2009-06-05T12:21:00.007-06:00

Eric (a.k.a. TweakHound) has updated his excellent guides to installing, tweaking and optimzing Windows XP and Windows Vista in preparation for his Windows 7 guides. I used his guides to set up Vista on my laptop and I've been very happy with the results.

TweakHound's Blog is also one of my favorite RSS feed subscriptions - highly recommended.

Read More: Tweak Guides Updated

Blogging Mistakes

2009-06-01T16:57:00.004-06:00

Problogger.net has an excellent article, "Do You Recognize These 21 Blogging Mistakes?"

My answer - you bet. Of the 21 mistakes here's mine...

3. Echoing everyone else - This post is a good example.
5. Irregular Posting - This blog is, once again, a good example.
17. Becoming a Stats-a-holic - I really can't help myself.
20. Not Selling Yourself - I'm just shy that way.
21. Thinking You Have to Know it All - See above.

5 mistakes out of a possible 21 isn't too bad. with a little rounding that's about a 75; I pass. I feel pretty good about that.

You'll have to visit Problogger.net to see the complete list.

Read More: Do You Recognize These 21 Blogging Mistakes?

Bing Goes Live

2009-06-01T10:00:00.002-06:00

Microsoft's Bing goes live today. Check it out - Bing.com.

Microsoft's Bing.com

2009-05-28T12:55:00.004-06:00

Microsoft launches a new search engine at Bing.com, and it looks pretty good too. I hope it works out. As much as I love Google they could use a little competition.

Stavros Flatley

2009-05-02T08:09:00.004-06:00

Michael Flatley's Greek Brother?

Dimitrios and Lagi share a special bond, and tonight they share a piece of Greek culture - an Irish Jig!

Milky, Coffee and TV

2009-04-09T09:44:00.013-06:00

The music video from Blur's "Coffee & TV" tells the story of a carton of milk, with the picture of a missing boy printed on its side, that finds itself on the breakfast table of the family of that same missing boy. Seeing the sadness of the family Milky does a dance to cheer them up - it doesn't work.

Milky decides to go out and find the boy himself.

This YouTube video has over four million views, almost four thousand comments, and a five star rating after more than eight thousand votes. Milky even has his own fan site.

Be forewarned, many people, according to the comments, have a rather emotional reaction to this video. The creator of the video admits to crying after seeing the final version. It's cute, sad, funny, and ultimately uplifting.

Enjoy

The Video: Coffee & TV - Blur
The Website: MilkyFan.com

Clocks for Your Blog

2009-04-02T16:08:00.004-06:00

I really like this. I use clocks on a several of my websites, but all I'm really doing is imbedding a bit of javascript that displays the client's computer time. If their clock is wrong, so is the clock on my webpage. This is different. It's...

Accurate - Always displays the correct time.
Automatic - Automatically adjusts for Daylight Saving Time.
Configurable - Choose colors, borders, fonts, languages, etc.
Free - No registration required.

Check it out: Free Clocks for Your Website

Adsense Cool Tools

2009-03-24T09:16:00.005-06:00

AdSense Earnings Tool - You can see your earnings for today, yesterday, this month and since last payment all from a nice little unobtrusive application right on your desktop and in your system tray.

Update: The link is dead. If I can't find an alternative I'll upload the zip file and make it available myself.

More Google Adsense Tools, Tips and Resources from Smashing Magazine.

Funny Newspaper Clippings

2009-03-19T16:30:00.007-06:00

Here's something funny to make up for that last, sad guy, downer post.
Criggo - Newspapers are going away. And that’s too bad.

I Miss Her

2009-03-19T05:24:00.005-06:00

Is a picture worth a thousand words? I don't know. What about a picture of these three words? I think so; because I miss her... enough said.