I decided that I have too much else to get done before I head out for Europe to deal with finding a new web host this month.
However, MT-Blacklist is still hosed and at this point I don't believe that Powweb is either willing or able to help me fix it. So until I have the time to really deal with this issue, I've turned off all trackbacks on the site and I am going to be very aggressive about turning off comments after a couple of days. I don't like doing this, but there's no other way to keep the blog spam under control for now.
Something that's been bothering me for a while now is that due to this post, I get Google hits on literally a daily basis from people who've used the search term "evil Jews".
Of course, I don't know why all these people are searching for that particular phrase, but I think it's a safe bet that at least some of them are looking for "proof" that Jews are evil. And as a Jew, I find that upsetting.
There's not a lot I can do to change the minds of most of those people. However, I feel that I have a responsibility to do something about the fact that some small number of them may be ending up at my website. As an initial attempt at a response, I've added a new graphic link to the sidebar: the Holocaust History Project.
If just one misguided person can end up at that website and learn that some of the lies they were told about Jews are just that -- lies -- then I'll have done a little bit of good.
Still no Internet access chez Lux and not sure when it's going to be back up.
This sux.
Comcast took us offline for about 24 hours, for the second time in less than a month. This is getting annoying.
Friday night, I get home from a long week of work and classes, wanting nothing more than to catch up on the news and have some fun on my computer, but to my dismay, our 'net access was down and remained so until just a few minutes ago.
"Comcastic" my butt. Sorry about the lack of blogging.
For the next few months, Wednesday are my Hell Days; I leave the house about 8 AM and don't get home until after 10PM. Since it's Bad Form to blog from work or in-class, expect little to no blogging on Wednesdays.
I try to steer clear of meta-blog posts, and doing two in a week is definitely not usual for me, but given that Fiat Lux has recently been added to a few more blogrolls around the Internet, I though it might be a good idea to explain a little bit about my own blogroll and how one gets into it.
My Blogroll / Link Policy
I use Bloglines as my primary RSS feed aggregator. What I've been trying recently is this: I've self-imposed a limit on the number of blogs in my blogroll as a way of keeping my blog-reading habit under control. Any time I add a new blog to my Bloglines list, I force myself to remove an old one.
Bloglines also happens to have a neat little feature that lets me paste a bit of JavaScript into a template and my current list gets automagically updated on my website. It's less work for me that way, but it does have the drawback that I can't easily do "courtesy" blogroll additions unless I break my self-imposed rule above, get funky with my Bloglines setup and/or manually maintain that list.
The exception to this plan is the list of personal weblogs written by people that I know in real life. I keep their blogs in a private folder on Bloglines and manually maintain a selected list of those here on my weblog.
In short, if you want to get into my blogroll, you have to be better / smarter / funnier / more interesting than somebody on the current list, or you have to be a friend or family member. I do read blogs that are not on my blogroll, generally by clicking through other people's links and blogrolls, but that's reserved for days when I have more time on my hands.
So that's how my blogroll works. If I come up with a better way of managing things, I'll switch to it; ultimately this is about keeping things easy, informative and fun for me. Incidentally, that's also why I do not use Technorati tags. Writing posts is fun; messing around with tags isn't.
And while I'm at it, here's two other meta-blogging bits and pieces:
Comment Policy
I have a very simple comments policy. I reserve the right to remove any comment left on this site, for any reason or for no reason at all. I pay for the web hosting; I get to decide how my disk space and bandwidth are used. However, I do not edit comments; that seems unfair. If they do not get tossed into the bit bucket, they remain as their authors wrote them.
Advertising
At one point I had a tip jar up here; it's not anymore. I decided that this site is a hobby, and I'm not going to ask people to subsidize my fun. If my traffic were to rise to the point where I had to pay significantly more for hosting, I might reconsider and put up some ads, but for now, this site stays ad and tip jar free.
In checking through my SiteMeter references today, I came across an interesting (if useless) factoid: apparently, I'm #888 of 4417 "Political" blogs in the Technorati system.
Something seems off to me there; you'd think there would be more blogs in that category. Plus, I don't use any Technorati tagging, so I'm not sure why I got classed as a Political blog over any other category. I've always maintained that this is primarily a personal weblog mor than anything else. But what the heck, it's always nice to be noticed.
8 is also a lucky number to the Chinese, and my Econ final is tomorrow. I'll take all the luck I can get with that one.
So, I signed up to be listed at JewishBlogging.com.
It was a bit difficult trying to figure out which category to list this blog under, as my subject matter can vary wildly depending on my mood. I ultimately chose 'women,' since after all, that's what I am. Hopefully I won't stick out like a sore thumb amidst all the frum bloggers.
I made a few small tweaks to the templates for the blog today. Fiat Lux will be two years old in a couple of weeks, and I'm thinking a new look might be in order.
I can tweak CSS when I have to, but I'm not an expert, so creating a new look from scratch would be a lot more work that I'm willing to do. I did some quick Googling for Movable Type styles other than the default ones, and apparently there are at least a few out there. I'll see what I can find.
I finally got around to upgrading the photo gallery. I'll be adding more pix to it soon.
Per Feministe:
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don’t search around and look for the “coolest” book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.
Mine: Why?
From: Writing Effective Letters, Memos, & E-Mail by Arthur H Bell. Third Edition (C) 2004.
It was another "be at work at 4:30 AM" day so I'm too tired to think much right now. Per Pandagon, here's the 10 random songs that my iTunes gave forth on Shuffle:
Baubles, Bangles, and Beads - Kismet (Original Broadway Cast)
All Night Long - Lionel Richie & The Commodores
And Suddenly There Was With The Angel - Handel (Messiah)
With This Love - Peter Gabriel (Passion Music for The Last Temptation Of Christ)
Take Me to the River - Talking Heads
Virtual Reality - Rusted Root
Poems, Prayers And Promises - John Denver
Too Early For The Sky - Johnny Clegg & Savuka
Take Another Piece Of My Heart - Faith Hill
In The Still Of The Night - Neville Brothers (Red Hot + Blue, A Tribute To Cole Porter)
I do actually listen to stuff written after 1995, but random chance didn't pull any of it into this list.
I can't get through to any of the Blogger-hosted blogs in my blogroll today. I hope they get their issues straightened out soon, because web traffic to blogs is likely to increse significantly for the nest week or so.
Comment spam, which to date has been pretty minimal, has sharply spiked upwards the past few days. I suppose it's the price of increased site traffic, but it's annoying. Not that I get a lot of comments, but I definitely prefer to keep commenting on when possible. I have reluctantly decided to turn off comments on some of the more popular older posts (e.g. the ones on The Davinci Code and Fahrenheit 9/11) on my site for now, since they're the posts getting hardest hit with comment spam.
I'm planning on upgrading to Movable Type 3.1 when it comes out, in large part becasue it will integrate the MT-Blacklist plugin. If comment spam starts getting really bad I may implement the plugin sooner than that, but I'm going to try to hold out for just the one upgrade so I don't have to implement the same change twice.
More fun stuff going into the long weekend:
If you're on really slow dial-up you might prefer this link though.
Thanks to Sid's Fishbowl for the link!
Enough teasing everyone that you know something the rest of us don't about the forged Niger uranium documents.
If you've got the story, run with it. If you don't, stop hinting that you do. In short, as the old saying goes, shit or get off the pot.
I'm travelling to NYC today. See ya on the flip side!
Only 6 weeks after the fact, my travelogue of our trip to Rome is now online.
Click here or on the link to your right to enjoy!
I finally got the 120+ photos from Rome captioned and uploaded. Click on the photo gallery link to the right or here if you're lazy to check them out.
I'm back to 6 day work weeks but hope to get the travelogue uploaded within the next week as well.
We're back safely from Rome. We had a fantastic time.
I kept a travel diary, which I will be uploading over the next few days, plus shot 6 rolls of film which I will also upload. Please be patient!
We leave for Rome tonight, so this will most likely be the last blog update until April 10. I'm told our hotel has Internet access but I want to enjoy Rome while I'm there, not spend my time in front of a computer.
Of course, my PC picked last night to stop recognizing my iPod, so I was up very very late trying to get the two of them talking again. That's done, and 2 audio books are ready for listening on the flight.
We also discovered, almost by accident, some financial upheaval - it seems someone got one of Scott's passwords and attempted to transfer all the money in our checking and savings account to our American Express card, then to buy expensive stuff with it. Luckily for us, we found out about it after all the cash had been transferred out of our bank but before it had been moved out of AmEx. Unluckily for us, the person who did this cleaned out our checking and savings accounts the day before our trip and two days before rent is due. AmEx can refund us the money but it will take some time for them to do so.
So overall, our luck held, but it's still a pretty sucky thing to have happen to you. We're off to the bank early this AM to see what else we can do to get things straightened out. We don't have to leave for the airport until 3pm, so there's time enough for that, a few loads of laundry, and packing, but that's about it.
Ciao all! See you when I get back.