I found and updated the template again, to something similar to the Forest Green template I had earlier

I searched around the web, and discovered the Rounders4 template originally developed 2 decades ago, which is similar to the Forest Green template I'd been using for 15 years or so from Gecko and Fly. After all these years, it's great to have discovered some early classics, and I guess for now, I'll make use of it.

I do miss the Forest Green template, which was one of the best drawing from what was originally offered by Typepad, and honestly, I hope it does become operable again someday, but for now, I found it great to discover this early template, which I can use in an "everything old is new again" way, and hope it'll work out in the long run. There may be a few parts I need to smooth out here, but overall, it works fantastically, and it's delightful to discover these classic early templates again, which were common years ago, and now can be great for use again today.

After many years, I changed the template because the previous one didn't seem to be working anymore

I must've had the previous template for over 15 years, and because it seemed to stop working about a week or so ago, I felt I'd inevitably have to change it. I'd gone over to Gecko & Fly, where I originally got the previous template from, and even there, it didn't seem to be working on the demonstration page where it was set, and there were at least 2 more that didn't seem to be working either. So, aside from how the forest template was admittedly old, I felt the time had come where I'd inevitably have to change the template on the blog to something that did work, and for now, fortunately, this one does appear to be working and loading properly, there there's some parts, like how all the statistics counters I so love to try out may not be centered properly, that I'll have to try and smooth over. For now, I'm glad I found this one that worked, if only because the counters didn't all seem to work on newer templates, and it's not like I want to discard them just like that.

Again, it was surely inevitable I'd have to change the template one day, and I hope for now it'll work okay. That said, if the older template is repaired by the host, I may restore it, and then must hope all will continue okay from that point onwards.

Grumble, grumble: one of my statistics counters now has "malvertising" on it

At least that's what my AVG program is telling me. It's sad to discover that one of the counter sites I use, Webstat, appears to be generating a frame above the counter itself that's laced with "malvertising", and for me anyway, it leads to a situation where the AVG tells me it's intercepted the potential viruses and phishing trash that could come with it almost every time I load the main page.

So I though it best to write this post to let everybody who might've gotten similar messages know that I'm aware of the problem now affecting a statistics counter I've had for possibly over a decade now, and I wrote a message about it to the Webstat server's support system, but if no promising reply is received, I realize I may have to jettison the counter after all these years. Fortunately, I do have others that're also good, and hopefully won't be affected by such unpleasant issues.

Update: there are some ads turning up now that seem to work properly without prompting the AVG to say malvertising was intercepted. Maybe things are improving on Webstat's end, but even so, it's a shame when annoying cases like these occur, and it's not like anybody actually wants ads put on their statistics counters that easily.

Oh great, that Blogger maintenance seems to have set back at least one of my posts

I was quite bewildered at how long it took Blogger's staff to fix the technology they were working on yesterday, but what was really sad is how it all but wiped out one of my posts; it's still here in draft mode, and I'll try to repost it soon, but that was really sad that this had to happen, and they had to roll back the time settings in order to get their job done. Good grief.

Update: as this message on Google's help forum tells, clearly I wasn't the only victim of this weird reversion to draft effect. Thank goodness only one post and one draft actually suffered from this.

Update 2: a comment that was missing following the setback has been restored. Thank goodness!

Unable to convert to Disqus, so I'm switching back to the standard Blogger commenting system

I tried signing up for and installing a commenting system from Disqus, but I could not comprehend any of the features, nor could get their options to work on my template. Total madness. I found a page on Ask.Com that told to select "generic code" yet their was nothing like that available on the Disqus dashboard to help.

Great. So now I'll have to revert back to the standard Blogger commenting feature. I tried to save all the comments from the account Haloscan will soon be shutting down as part of their change of system (when I logged in today, it put up a wall telling to either convert to their paid options or just export everything to another system), and with any luck, maybe I can install them manually on past posts. But for now, it appears that I'm forced to return to the old commenting feature. I'll try to use something new in the near future if I can find a program that's comprehensible, and most importantly, works with the template properly.

Edit: okay, I did my best to restore some of the past comments as best as possible. I suppose I could keep trying to install Disqus software, but it was way too challenging for me. Even Intense Debate, to my astonishment, was an incomprehensible mess. Clearly, we've come a long way since Haloscan, which was pretty simple by comparison.

Haloscan being turned into pay service. I hope to replace it with Disqus

It seems that Haloscan, which I've used for almost 4 years now, is going to be discontinuing its free services as JS-Kit, the company that took them over, turns them into a new pay per service called Echo. And since I cannot afford to pay almost 10 bucks for the new system - a real ripoff price IMO - that's why I'll be trying to see if I can replace Haloscan with Disqus, another free commenting service, or even Intense Debate, if they also have free accounts.

I hope I can import/export all the comments I have in Haloscan to another service I'll get, but there's no telling for now if I can. I'll try to spend time working on it tomorrow, and hope I can get the changes in gear accomplished as best as possible.

Going on a vacation for three days

I am going on a vacation up north for three days, and will be absent from blogging until then. I'll resume blogging when I return.

Until then, let me wish everyone a happy Fourth of July holiday!

Going on a vacation for 2 and a half weeks

I'm taking a vacation for two and a half weeks to the to attend the wedding of a cousin of mine. I don't know if I'll be able to update during the first week of the trip, but I may be able to later during the second and third. So, see you in another week, everybody.

Great, the computer's motherboard blew

Just a few weeks after the home computer came back from repairs for the hard drive, now the motherboard crashed. I turned on the computer on Friday to discover this, and that it couldn't boot up. So again, I'll have to use the work computer for another two days as the home system goes to the repair shop again.

Oh well, that's something I'll have to get used to expecting, as these things are bound to happen in any computer.

Home computer in repair shop for a few days

As luck would have it, my computer's hard drive crashed, and it'll need to go for repairs for a few days. Until it's ready again, I can use a computer I have at work, but I won't be able to update as well as I'd like to. The home computer should certainly be ready again by Monday.

Well, that was an ordeal, but fortunately, I think I've found a fitting template at last

And from the webmasters resources site of Gecko and Fly; when I tried at Blogger Templates, none of those that I tried out seemed to load. I kept getting a throughly white screen with no template designs showing up for any of the items I tried to test. That was really strange. Fortunately, Gecko and Fly's samples work perfectly with no flaws, and this is certainly a cool template.

And with that, I'll try and get back to more updates soon.

Oh great, the template isn't working now

If you're visiting this site through Internet Explorer, you may have found, as I just discovered, that the template does not seem to be working on that browser anymore, and probably not on Netscape either. I think I've been able to figure out why though: the site that was providing these templates may have moved them onto a different server! Oh well, I knew I was going to have to change the templates yet again sometime soon, so I'll be getting around to that soon. I won't be able to get the Stevenson template this time though, as it seems to have been discarded from the list of choices for templates. I may try and use the Newsline Miniblue or the K2 template this time.

May be busy for several days

I'm going to be doing extra work within the next two weeks that may keep me away from the keyboard, so I have no idea if I'll be able to update as often as I'd like to. Stay tuned until then, and I hope I'll be able to make time to do some more write-ups within that time!

A pull-down menu to help save space on the sidebar

There, I just succeeded at fitting in a drop-down menu, as it's actually called, on the side for all the sections. That helps to save space and fit all external links into a nice compact space, and will probably also help make it easier to load the pages too. One thing I can't seem to figure out though is how to control the exact length so that it doesn't look like it's going halfway off the screen, even though it does look like I added the correct codings when I preview it. Oh well, what matters for now is that I succeeded in working out something I'd wanted to experiment with for some time now, and to make everything easier to handle and to load onto the screen! Perfect.

The log of a "splog"

Not very pleasing, but, as I discovered, there's a "splog", meaning, a spam-blog, that's been siphoning content from my own blog for a few months now, probably by logging on to my RSS feed, I'm not sure. It's on a server called 120host, and here's the URL, where, with the possible exception of anything that involves javascript in the post, it's been copying off of my blog and, if I'm sending a trackback ping to some Wordpress blogs (it's powered by their software), it seems to follow suit.

According to this blogger here, who's also been getting content siphoned from this server:

It's a "splog", or a spam blog. A splogger syphons high-quality content from an original blog (We are talking high-quality in baesian terms. It can be utter trite as far as humans are concerned.) Visitors from search engines then visit the splog and drive the ad revenue.

I have quite a few of them attached, although the 120host is unique because apparently it seeks me personally (e.g. it double-sourced my content from Advogato when available).

There's no way to complain to anyone about the 120host.net. It is a website run by sploggers (which also allows free registration for everyone, as a fig leaf).

I still don't like it. Maybe it's possible to contact Wordpress administration about this, and ask if they can do anything about it, so I'll have to think about it sometime.

Well, there we are, it's done

I was always so nervous about making the transfer, but, there you have it, I made it there at last. So now, here I am in brand new Blogger mode, and ready for action, baby!

Update: it's excellent, the new controls and such! Very good!

I'm going to switch to the new Blogger mode soon

I realized that in time, it would have to be done, and so soon, I'm going to switch to the new, updated Blogger version soon that uses tags and various other more advanced features.

I certainly hope that, when I make the switch to the new mode, that it'll turn out well. I know that there are some people who've experienced errors and such on their blogs when switching before being able to get things sorted out properly again. So, here's to hoping that I'll be able to manage the switch when I do it.

Happy Hanuka to everyone!

A little late, but, lemme wish a Happy Hanuka week to everyone. There may even be a comics convention held over in Tel Aviv for the holiday on Wednesday, and I'll be trying to go there to tour around.

Blogging tip: A way to locate pictures uploaded even without the HTML codes turning up

For anyone who has troubles in getting pictures uploaded to Blogger correctly, and has to keep trying several times before succeeding, I found a way to get around the problem, if not entirely.

If you've uploaded a picture to your Blogger account, but it fails to show up in the enlargening code within the text field, here's what to do: each account on Blogger, from what I can tell, has its own internet address (the photos-dot-blogger thingie) which, if you've already been able to upload a picture, you can take part of the URL, paste it onto the text field, type in the filename you uploaded the failed picture under complete with the extension (dot-JPG/GIF/PNG). Then, type in the IMG with SRC code plus brackets that's used to display pictures with, switch the field to "compose" and then, see if your picture loads. If it does, this means that your pictures are actually uploaded to your Blogger account after all! For example:

Here is a picture of Pepper Potts I tried to upload. As luck would have it, this particular attempt did not succeed in getting uploaded with a frameset to accompany it. But, as I discovered, it was there. All I had to do was to type in the filename under which I uploaded it right after the URL that comes with my database, plus the extension, and voila! It's there.

The upside: thus, you'll be able to post your pictures to the web despite the failure of the uploading options to present the picture with the HTML code surrounding it.

The downside: even if you try to say, copy the code featured around another picture and apply it to the one you've currently uploaded, it may not work, at least not the ones that are aligned to the left and right. That's a quirk about the options that so far, I can't seem to get around. If there's any substitute code that does work, I have yet to find it.

But at least your pictures will still be uploaded to the database, and you'll be able to publish them online. It's the enlargening code that's still a major challenge.

Having error in comments

It's probably just a minor glitch, but the Haloscan comments aren't showing. I'll see if I can check with support to see what happened.

Update: looks like I was just worried about nothing, they're back and displaying correctly again. Three cheers for Haloscan! Hooray!