Business is Slow
Mar 21, 2009 in Meta
You may have noticed I haven't posted here a lot recently. Umm, sorry. I do feel bad; I miss my old digs here! But, you see, I think there's a lot conspiring against ol' Juniorbird.com. Part of this is changes in my life; part is changes in the Web. I have a feeling there need to be some changes around here soon, and I'd like your input. Read on... (plus 4 Comments)
The More Things Change, the More They (Hopefully) Stay the Same
Sep 21, 2008 in Meta
You may have noticed that it was impossible to comment here for a while. Then, if you follow very closely, you may have noticed that things looked a little funny here for a while. I'd like to say that was "growing pains" but really it was "middle-aged creaky pains." The upshot is that this blog has been updated to Movable Type 4.21 and everything should be better than ever now. Hopefully not in the way that a 47-year-old guy buys a Boxster to distract himself from creaky knees that give him a big old 1" vertical leap at the gym basketball court. Read on... (plus 2 Comments)
Got Wood?
May 25, 2008 in Meta
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 in Meta, Writing Practice
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 in Meta
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 in Meta
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 in Meta
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 Meta
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 in Meta
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 blogs given the, um, challenging-to-read writing that one tends to see in that genre. So, all linkees are guaranteed value-adding. There's just the one catch: Keith Ferrazi, whose Never Eat Alone blog is linked there, came to speak to my Marshall class and struck us all as a person who had traded meaningful personal relationships for social climbing. That said, he certainly knows how to network and I think we can all take something useful away from what he passes on -- just in moderation. So I'm a little uncomfortable linking to that blog, but I think it, too, will provide value. If you think I missed a site I should be checking out, put it in the comments to this entry!... Read on...
How To Show Entries From Multiple Blogs on Your Archive Pages in Movable Type
Jan 15, 2006 in Meta
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 in Meta
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 in Meta
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 even get pretty, working HTML entries. If you're reading this blog through a newsreader or a service like Bloglines, you'll now get both the main entry and the links on the right (the moblog is a bonus for people who actually visit the site, at this point). Oh, and if you admin a feed, I'd appreciate it if you'd update that to use the new RSS files.... Read on... (plus 2 Comments)
Changes Made! (Partially)
Aug 17, 2005 in Meta
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 because I've been able to use some small tweaks to make the site look cleaner and nicer. But I sure like the month-at-a-glance archive pages!... Read on...
Plugging Away
Aug 17, 2005 in Meta
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 in Meta
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 in Meta
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 cleaner and less-busy. Which should make the whole megillah more pleasing to the eye. Just keepin' it real here at the J-bird.... Read on... (plus 1 Comments)
Hey Baby, Wanna Take A Survey?
Jun 22, 2005 in Meta
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 in Meta
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 in Meta
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 functional. If you can't comment, please e-mail me at nocomment at juniorbird dot com. And I promise to provide you with real content again soon. All four of you.... Read on... (plus 3 Comments)
Partypoker And All Those Damn Comment Spammers Got Me Down
Nov 7, 2004 in Meta
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 I realized I couldn't keep up with all of the new pharmaceuticals being released I added "google" and "thanks" to the blacklist Just like they have almost ruined e-mail for the rest of us, spammers are trying to ruin blogs. They're jumping on blogs with any kind of Google PageRank (the good stuff that makes you come at the top of a page of search results) and posting links to other sites. The effect is that these other sites get soome PageRank of their own from that link, and go up in Google results. So, my blog makes credit repair ripoff scammers and Viagra peddlers get good Google results. I suppose I should be flattered that I have enough PageRank that the spammers bother to visit. But mostly I'm annoyed that they post comments that add nothing to the value of my blog at all. I go to quite some trouble to create something of minimal value here! Goddamn leeches. So I did what I had to do. I upgraded to MovableType 3 featuring TypeKey. Theoretically, this means that you can only post a comment if: I review your comment and deem it ok to publish You have a TypeKey I can't get the second part to work, unfortunately, so at the moment I have to review all comments. This sucks about as much as having to watch out for spammers. Hopefully I'll be able to figure out what's wrong in a few days to a couple of weeks; otherwise I'll probably just turn off commenting. Ah well, such is the tragedy of the commons. After removing my old copy of MT-Blacklist (see the MT Forums), all is well. Comments are automatically posted, and community lives! Ha ha, I have defeated the spammers for hours, even days! Mwa ha ha!... Read on... (plus 3 Comments)
Cleverbird.com
Sep 4, 2004 in Meta
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. When I decided to play around with python during the summer, I thought cleverbird.com would be a good place to do it. But my python efforts never led to an operational application, so cleverbird never took off. The way I decided to learn python, however, was interesting: I thought it would be fun to set up and run a python-powered wiki. Wikis are great for organizing and interlinking information. Why not use said wiki to keep track of what I learned at Marshall? So that's what I'm doing. If I can't learn some python, at least I can learn some wiki -- and keep track of useful info. So, check it out. And, hey, it's a collaborative site; if you've got something to add, edit it on! Visit cleverbird.com.... Read on...
Something Not Particularly Daring
Jun 24, 2004 in Meta
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. Frankly, it should be possible for me to write something moderately interesting once a month. So, that's my new goal. A possible new look to make it easier to read the crap I write may be coming too.... Read on...
One Blog To Rule Them All
Jun 23, 2004 in Meta
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 is automatically redirected to the very same entry on juniorbird.com. Hopefully, as a package, this whole blog will be interesting.... Read on...
Spam Spam Spam Wonderful Spam
Apr 23, 2004 in Meta
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 should hopefully end the troubles. Now if only real people would comment.... Read on...
Great, Now I've Got Two Blogs To Keep Current
Oct 19, 2003 in Meta
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 used wadearmstrong.com as a more professional-sounding URL in past job searches. Now that I have a job, I don't so much need wadearmstrong.com out there for job purposes; remodeling it for this whole b-school app thing seemed to make sense. So her it is -- me, spun for an audience of Directors of Admissions. Check out wadearmstrong.com!... Read on...
I Done Wrong
Oct 8, 2003 in Meta
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 appropriate (or useful) for a few ears. There was no reason it should've been on a public site. Why did I publish it? Well, a whole bunch of reasons, but reasons can become excuses and excuses aren't useful. So: I apologize to those about whom I wrote negatively a few days ago. I should not have impugned you in a public area, and I certainly should not have done so without talking to you first, offline, y'know, like folks have done for 30,000 years now. Now that I've talked to you, it's clear that I was given incorrect information and based my opinions upon that. So not only was I wrong to write about what I felt, I shouldn't have felt it. I've deleted the entry, as I no longer believe it ever should have been in a public blog. Where does this leave juniorbird.com? Same place it was before. The abovementioned content was an unexpected topic to add to this site, and I don't think there is a need for me to have a place to express the kinds of feelings I wrote about then. I've got happy, interesting content that I can mostly fill the site with. Well, not so much today, because today I woke up to Governor Schwarzenegger. But there will be jolly, amusing content other days.... Read on... (plus 1 Comments)
About Me
Sep 23, 2003 in Meta
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 in Meta
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 in Meta
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 way you look — and maybe it came time for me to swallow some of my own medicine. The color scheme wasn't the hard part. When your site's named after your bird, and your bird is white, several shades of gray, and yellow, well, yer palette's pretty much picked out for ya. No, the real challenge was of the visual architecture of information on the page, and in particular the main page that everyone will visit most often. Fortunately, organizing information is one skill that I actually have. So, you'll find on this page several key elements: This main entry here, occupying the choice space on the pageThe weblog to the right, a list of links of the momentNavigation options, allowing you, my beloved visitor, to browse the site both by date (which is interesting in its own way), and by topic, which holds together a bit betterLinks to my friends, who are interesting and whom you should visit! And hopefully the visual presentation will draw your eyes to these items in succession and whatnot, and even make you suspect that those of the above items that lay "below the fold" exist despite their initial invisibility. Of course, even if the design does none of these, I'll still have succeeded, because this is my site, and this page looks like I wanted it to, so, hey, that's success. Thbppt! There's a few bugs still left; most notably, the blog doesn't display right in IE/Windows. That's because my approach was to remove all the space between headlines and paragraphs and so on, then add in new space between entries. IE/Win doesn't understand how I added in new space (technically, it doesn't understand adjacent sibling selectors), so it doesn't add that space in. Thus everything looks all jammed together. Of course, everyone else sees it fine. I'll probably have to reverse the method I use and just subtract space in specific situations, which will result in IE/Win showing the blog too spaced out (because, again, it won't understand the selectors I use to subtract space), but I think that'll be easier to read. Enjoy your visit! If you have any comments, or catch any more bugs, hey, make a comment!... Read on... (plus 2 Comments)
A Mission Statement, Of Sorts
May 23, 2003 in Meta
OK, to start things out, here's a list of objectives, in no particular order: 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 It'll be interesting to see how these things turn out.... Read on...
First Post
May 23, 2003 in Meta
Well I don't have the competition of Slashdot, but here's the first post. Hopefully.... Read on...