Got Wood?
May 25, 2008
Somehow, the five-year anniversary of this blog crept by me — Friday the 23rd was the big day. Post #1 was a cheap, unfunny Slashdot reference. Since then, 683 more posts have brought 878 comments, most of them smarter than the entry itself. Read on…
Days
Jan 23, 2007
I’ve been writing this thing for three and a half years now. I started blogging because everything I wrote sounded like a business memo, and that just wasn’t a good way to make date plans; now, I can write things that are occasionally amusing. And have long run-on sentences and snarky footnotes.1 Yep, things are moving along. Read on…
Meet the New Look, Same as the Old Look
Sep 19, 2006
Well, ok, it’s not the same, but, well, it sounded like a catchy headline. Anyway, welcome to my new look. It’s big, and it’s dark grey, and it’s got my moblog right at the top, and I love it. Read on… (plus 6 Comments)
Mini-Hiatus
Aug 20, 2006
I know I haven’t updated in a while; I’ll be back in a bit with a new host and a new look for this blog. Hope to see you back then! If you have any deeply-desired feature requests for the redesign (apart from “content that doesn’t suck”, which you should know by now is too much to ask), now would be the time to express them.
Read on…The Importance of Keeping Busy
Jun 25, 2006
Because two blogs isn’e enough for me, check out what I wrote at my friend’s great Web ‘zine. It’s all about my summer break and shit, yo!
Read on…Dad's Blogging!
Mar 11, 2006
In a sign that this whole thing is not just for the kids now, my dad now has a blog. A former academic and university administrator, he writes on the future of higher education in the 21st century. So far I think he’s proven that he’s way smarter than me, although I’m trying to step it up and compare, insight-wise. Check it out!
Read on…Sidebar Cleanup
Mar 11, 2006
My blog sidebar was getting kind of messy, so I pruned it today. Buttons should lead to things that provide value, and, best of all, I went through all of my links (and my bookmarks!) to include only those sites that I read regularly. So, let me encourage you to check out all of those sites, or, at least, the ones in categories that strike your interest. I cut the infrequent updaters, or those whose content didn’t engage me, or people who had changed their content from when I originally linked then. Heck, I even dropped all of the poker Read on…
How To Show Entries From Multiple Blogs on Your Archive Pages in Movable Type
Jan 15, 2006
If you check out the \monthly and category archives below, you’ll notice that the formerly separate moblog, linkblog, and diary parts of this site share the same archive pages. A lot of blogs out there have just this kind of content, but store it completely seperately; if you’d like to have posts from your moblog, linkblog, and blog or diary, all on the same archive page, and are using Movable Type, you can do it by following the instructions below. Read on… (plus 1 Comments)
RSS Feed Broken
Dec 23, 2005
Yes, I know my RSS feed is broken. No, I don’t know why. I’ll figure it out when I get home from Costa Rica. Darn it, this was supposed to be simple…
Update: fixed. Sorry for the massive friend page spam, LJ people, but I think my RSS feed just newly published everything from mid-November ‘til now…
Read on…New RSS Feeds
Aug 19, 2005
If you’re an RSS fan, look to your right — I’m offering new, more complete feeds in RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, and Atom. Thanks to regular expressions and Textile formatting, you’ll Read on… (plus 2 Comments)
Changes Made! (Partially)
Aug 17, 2005
If you visit this site often (all two of you), then you might have noticed the new archive formats below, and on the archive pages. This new format supports both shorter and longer entries, and calls out commented-on entries. There are also new cool monthly archive pages, which show all of the photos and all of the entries and all of the links in a given month. Should make browsing much more fun!
So, some of the promised changes have been made; there’s been no total facelift Read on…
Plugging Away
Aug 17, 2005
Yes, the archives are broken. I’m working on it; everything will be much better in a day or so. I’m just plugging away, hacking on it, watching a DVD and playing with Junior. Nothing says “well-adjusted” like working on your Web site while watching The Shining and talking to a pet parrot.
Read on… (plus 1 Comments)Attention RSS, Aggregator, Syndicator Users
Aug 11, 2005
Do you use a newsreader, an aggregator like Bloglines or My Yahoo!, or a syndicator like a Livejournal feed to read Juniorbird.com? I’d like to understand how to put together a feed that meets your needs better while still including things I consider important, like the moblog and linkblog on this page. Tell me where you read Juniorbird.com in the comments and if you care about anything but the main post here.
Read on… (plus 6 Comments)This Goes Out To Shorty, From One-Eye
Jul 24, 2005
As part of the general ongoing improvement going on at this blog — also known as “excuses not to do any actual work” — I’ve modified things to support short entries as well as my usual multi-paragraph wordy marvels. This means that I can now bore you much more expeditiously. On the downside, comments are no longer shown on the front page, you need to click through to the individual entry archive page to see them — comment here if you think that’s a problem.
Also, I made the whole look a little Read on… (plus 1 Comments)
Hey Baby, Wanna Take A Survey?
Jun 22, 2005
Come on, you know you want to take my survey. Everyone’s doing it, it won’t hurt. It’ll be fun, you’ll have such a good time. Read on…
There's Changes Being Made
Mar 20, 2005
You may have noticed the changes made to this site: the ads and the (return of the) links box on the right. Nothing like blowing a little vacation on the blog! Read on…
Commenting Works Again
Dec 12, 2004
It should be possible for everyone to comment on my blog entries now. Yes, I’ve worked hard and have given all four of my readers their voice back.
I could tell you the full story of what the problem was but it had something to do with comment spammers, a Movable Type upgrade, cookies, and Internet Explorer’s absoloutely bizarre approach to security, in which tremendously serious security holes are left open while the most innocuous practices are tightly controled.
So please post away below to test that all is fully Read on… (plus 3 Comments)
Partypoker And All Those Damn Comment Spammers Got Me Down
Nov 7, 2004
If you look down at the bottom of the page you’ll see a new form for posting comments. That’s because, today, I spent three hours of my time trying to save this blog from comment spammers.
I realized the problem was out of hand when four things happened:
- MT-Blacklist was catching about 7 attempted comment spammings a day
- MT-Blacklist was letting about 3 attempted comment spammings a day get past, requiring me to check new comments daily and try to both delete spam and add new spam terms to the blacklist Read on… (plus 3 Comments)
- Write. Just write.
- Write regularly
- Write non-technical stuff
- Write fiction, even
- Publish a few pictures
- Think more about the world around me
- Provide amusement to others
- Improve my connection with friends
- Stop watching so damn much tv
Cleverbird.com
Sep 4, 2004
The very first domain name I bought was cleverbird.com. Back in ‘98 I was working on a sideline project with Alan, the guy I bought Junior from, to sell high-end bird toys online. Someone suggested the name Cleverbird, which fit perfectly. There was even a great logo. But I had other things to do and, soon enough, Alan took his own store online. Cleverbird sat still for a few years; especially after the cost of owning a domain name for a year fell under $10, there was no reason not to keep the domain around for when I might need it.
Read on…Something Not Particularly Daring
Jun 24, 2004
John Gruber wants to do something daring — he wants to make his Web site a self-supporting place in which he can write useful and interesting content that can’t be found elsewhere. I’ve never had such lofty goals, but, perhaps, Philip Greenspun’s goal of “an interesting idea every three months; a posting every day” is more achievable.
Read on…One Blog To Rule Them All
Jun 23, 2004
With my business school application process over, using wadearmstrong.com as a second “marketing” blog no longer makes sense (not that it necessarily ever did). The wadearmstrong.com blog was, frankly, more interesting when read along with this blog, so why not merge them? A little magic in MySQL, a little mod_rewrite, and any link or bookmark to an old entry on wadearmstrong.com Read on…
Spam Spam Spam Wonderful Spam
Apr 23, 2004
Some of you may have noticed the Phentermine spam in the comments. Don’t you love spam? Comment spam like this is designed to improve another site’s Google rank by linking to that site from a site that has some Google juice. So, on the upside, that means that juniorbird.com ranks high enough on Google that somebody would try to steal my juice.
So I installed MT-Blacklist, a Moveable Type plug-in that both rejects new comment spam and deletes old comment spam. This Read on…
Great, Now I've Got Two Blogs To Keep Current
Oct 19, 2003
The problem with a personal site, whether diary, blog, photo album, whatever, is that it’s not always, as they say, “safe for work.”
This comes particularly into light when you’d like to show somebody a site. In my case, I was hoping to, perhaps, show off my Web skills to somebody at the business schools I’m applying to. Show myself to be more than just a GMAT score, a GPA, another copy of a standardized essay, all that. So, I needed a new space.
I’d Read on…
I Done Wrong
Oct 8, 2003
What goes on a blog? It’s tempting to say “whatever I like.” But this is not true; the medium is a public one. Thus, content has to pass a kind of “smell test” — is what I write appropriate for everybody? Is it appropriate for those whom I know read the site? Is it appropriate for those whom I don’t know read the site? Is it appropriate for strangers? Is it appropriate for people who find this site through Google in five years?
In an entry I made a few days ago, the content was only Read on… (plus 1 Comments)
About Me
Sep 23, 2003
Who am I? I’m a 28-year-old man from Baltimore living in Los Angeles and planning to go to business school in the fall of 2004 (when, incidentally, I will be 29). I’m interested in the Web and cooking and several other topics which don’t make nearly such interesting subjects for a blog.
Read on…About This Site
Sep 22, 2003
Welcome to wadearmstrong.com! This site is an exercise in regular, reasonably high-quality writing and, maybe someday, a resource for information I’ve learned or otherwise collected. Wadearmstrong.com will concentrate on four things:
Read on…Look, Ma, It's A Facelift!
Jul 12, 2003
Now I’ve had this here blog/diary up for nearly two months now, and maybe it was getting a little embarrassing that I was still using the default template provided with every installation of Movable Type, seeing as I’m supposed to be a professional Web designer and all.
See, the concept all along was that I would write, not design, but it’s true the two are linked. I preach this to my clients all the time, really — your look is part of the message that people take away from your site, so make sure you mean the Read on… (plus 2 Comments)
A Mission Statement, Of Sorts
May 23, 2003
OK, to start things out, here’s a list of objectives, in no particular order:
It’ll be interesting to see how these things turn out.
Read on…First Post
May 23, 2003
Well I don’t have the competition of Slashdot, but here’s the first post. Hopefully.
Read on…