AV-3400 Manual from Richard Herring

An old college friend just sent me a nice Christmas gift: a Sony Av-3400 repair manual. Before there were personal computer, we used this Videorecorder as our personal video machine as part of University Television. We made some great tapes in those days. (I need to covert what I have left into DVDs soon. Any hints?)

On the gift was a preprinted mailing label with the web address for Richard D. Herring's Weblog. This will be a great way to get caught up. So now there are two Bucknellians' blogs in my template.

Cookies, cookies, cookies

It is a cookie time of year. Baking in the oven rather than on the screen. Recipes soon as Christmas shopping and visiting is over.

Where is the RSS from Blogger?

If blogger doesn't get RSS within 30 days, I'll have to stop using their software.

• sparkpod
• typepad

I like blogger especially because I can host it. Any other suggestions?

TropiRock Resort, Fort Lauderdale

My brother just got married at the TropiRock Resort just a very short walk to the wonderful beach. And the hosts were great to our all of the wedding guest that stayed. Our kitchen was small, but fine. Combining several kitchens, we got a Thanksgiving dinner cooked for 32 people. The kids loved the pool, as did I, after being thrown in.

Florida in the Cold

Florida is suppose to be warm, right? Flying down, you get off the plane and your jacket feels way too warm. They can tell you're a Northerner.

But on Saturday, before my brother's wedding, it turned cold. 55. And I'm in Fort Lauderdale. Then I remembered many years ago, 1960s, coming down to visit my Grandma for a week. It was often cold then too. Or I would get a cold, or worse the flu. Several times I was in bed for several days.

So I should have known, but that is how memory works. Cold brought back memories of cold. But just thinking about Florida did not. Got to remember this. Another ABCEDmindedness example.

About the Bears

(Tad, Sam and Uncle RE wrote this story.)
Sixty five bears went to enjoy Thanksgiving together. To celebrate they made a Bear's team. They played against the Dolphins in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The game was in 1932. The Bears won this game against the Dolphins by a score of 22-2. This was their first game.

After the game the Bears team got champaigne bottles and sprayed them at their players. They did the same thing as the Cubbies did. And ate cinammon rolls. Everyone was screaming "The Bears Won."

What a happy Thanksgiving for everyone! and the Bears. The End.

Wired Tired

This list was created when we lauched a new web site using HEMS instead of Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver is great for creating pages and small sites, but not a site with 10,000 pages and 200 plus templates.

        TIRED                      WIRED 
10. 201 templates               8 skins 
 9. Blue sky                    NEA & the American Flag 
 8. Message boards              Research 
 7. Tom Haller                  10:00 am stand up 
 6. Working Weekends            Easy-To-Maintain 
 5. FTP accounts                Page editors 
 4. /publications/neatoday      /neatoday 
 3. Dreamweaver sites           HEMS 
 2. new2.nea.org                www.nea.org     
 1. NEA Cafe                    Galileo 
 

Art of Getting Over

Surf on over to Don Blake's blog. Part travel blog, part mind trip, all Don.

Spinsanity Again Is Great

I don't know how they do it at Spinsanity. Time after time they deconstruct a media myth. I just read about Safire in the NY Times spreading a lie about Dean. And you know it will know be repeated in talk radio where they have no reporters researching the truth. Here's the outing of another lie.

Recent Purchases - First Entry

I end up buying books a lot. Sometimes I go to the library, but more often than not I have to buy a book. This is especially true for technical books or internet books. Also, my son and daughter need books for school. And then there are books and other items I buy for gifts.

Then tonite I got my new issue of Wired has a partial page about what staff recently purchased. I really liked this idea and have seen a few other blogs do it - so here goes: my recent purchases.

Seven Laws of Blogs

People continue to try and answer the question of "What is a blog?" I believe we should be answering "What is a good blog?" This is a much more interesting question and it helps advance blogs as a medium.

My proposed answer to this question uses the framework for deriving The Seven Laws of Money by Michael Phillips, Salli Rasberry, et. al.

1. Do It. A blog, no matter how well planned, is worthless unless the author does it. In most cases this means writing. The blog needs a constant stream of ideas, observations, news and more. If you do it, the blog will satisfy.
2. Blogs Have Their Own Rules. If you don't follow the basic rules of blogging, people will have a hard time finding and reading your blog. These rules are different than the rules for a web site or any other media. Though not yet well defined, this is the major topic in most books about blogging.
3. Blogs Produce Good RSS Feeds. This is not about RSS. Rather a well written blog results in a good RSS feed. Snappy headlines, compelling content and a link to more quality information. The elements of a great blog map directly into RSS.
4. RSS feeds are not Blogs. While a good blog produces good RSS, the reverse is not necessarily true. For example, an RSS feed could be a rather mechanical report from some server's monitoring system. Obviously not compelling reading and certainly not a great blog.
5. Writing a Blog Does Not Get You Accepted. Any one can start a blog. You can even have great ideas and but not everyone is is going to notice tomorrow. Or maybe ever. So do you write for yourself or to get accepted?
6. Reading a Blog Gets You Accepted. Blogs are open and simply by reading (or listening) you become part of the club. The blog you are reading is probably being read by others, maybe even linked to by others. So if it is good, link to it.
7. There are Worlds Without Blogs. Have you notice that people take vacations from their blogs? I can not hug my kid with my blog. And a blog does not taste refreshing. Just as "sound bites" don't sound the same in a newspaper, some things don't translate into a blog. Enjoy your blog. But enjoy your life.

Step X: Promote the best sales person to sales manager.

Halley Suitt is writing a series on How To Ruin A Perfectly Good Salesforce and I sent her this suggestion for the series:

Step X: Promote the best sales person to sales manager.

This is almost certain to ruin a sales force: promote the best sales person to sales manager. First, you just got rid of your best sales person. He can not sell anymore, he has to manage. And there is the second problem, this person can probably sell and probably has little skill in managing. So all the other sales people will start to leave. Third, the life blood of a top sales person is sales. Now you've taken away the raison d'etre of a terrific worker.

And finally, the top sales person is probably making great money (see step X) and the promotion to sales manager is probably a cut in pay. Sure talk to the top guy before hiring a new manager, but money will speak.

RSS Rating System - Some thoughts

The questions is: "What is a good RSS feed?" I think part of the answer may be with an RSS Rating System. Here are some thoughts on RSS Ratings

John Robb talks about games as learning

John Robb talked about his son and Roller Coaster Tycoon. Civilization is my game of choice for learning. It teaches histroy (Wonders of the Worlds) including ancient civilizations as well as modern. Because of the geometric way a civilization grows, it also teaches math in a real way (or compound interest, if you'd like). The strategic thinking is wonderful. While John disliked the lack of backup material on engineering in Roller Coaster Tycoon, the background material in Civ is extensive. And if you don't like the game, there is always the music.

This is a tale of poor systems treating a customer badly.

Yesterday, Tuesday August 12, I took time off from work to visit your store to buy a computer for my daughter who is going off to college. We brought in the two most recent flyers because we wanted a package.

We talked to a good sales associate who helped us decide between the eMachine, HP and Compaq that you had on display. Several times he had to ask the manager a question. When we got ready to purchase the Compaq system for $519, he informed us that he had none in stock and we could order online. So after about an hour at the store we went home, disappointed we did not have the computer in hand, but confident that we could get it online.

So at home I spend over two hours trying to order the package the sales associate said was available. online. It turns out that the monitor was not available and I could not find all of the rebates. (This is a particularly horrible aspect of your website and how it differs from your flyers.)

So completely frustrated, but still loyal, I dragged my daughter to the Fairfax store. The sales person tells me that they can do the deal because they have the computer and printer in stock and the rebates will bring the price down to the advertised price. So he starts to ring it up, but his shift is over and he asks another associate to complete the sale. So far so good. After some confusion about how the gift card is deducted from each item, we are ready to proceed. I complete the credit card application which takes more time, but I understand. Then the AOL service agreement for by daughter who has no room phone number yet, but the system can not handle it.

Finally, everything is approved and the paper tape is reeling our receipts and rebates. So I go to add everything up. Gift card fine, receipt fine, rebate one fine and rebate two fine. No third rebate. The sales associated get more receipt tape to spit out, but still no third receipt. A more senior person comes over, more paper and no receipt. The senior people now disapper for about 15 minutes. I'm told they are printing out the rebate form in the back room. We have now been trying to buy this computer package, which only two piece are in stock, for about 90 minutes.

The less senior sales person is assigned to tell us that the third rebate, from Circuit City, is no longer valid. The computer system will cost us an addition 30% or $150. Sorry, there is nothing I can do. No manager or senior person shows up.

If three different sales people and one senior sales person did not know that the advertised price, after rebates, was no longer available, how do you expect a consumer to know? Any why do I have to wait 90 plus minutes to find out? Apparently the package in the flyer was for a limited time. This information should have been flagged for the salespeople when they checked inventory! Your systems are failing your business.

So still loyal, I agree to buy the system that is on the front page of the current flyer even though I have to pick up the computer from Tysons Corner, pick up the monitor whenever it may arrive in Fairfax and take the printer tonight. The senior person is now taking care of me. But wait, while backing out the other system the printer is no longer available, but it will have to be shipped to me. So now I'm buying a system and nothing is available at the store! But it gets worse.

We have now been in the store for about 2 hours and it is about 8:00 pm. My daughter, who is diabetic, is going low and needs food or sugar. I grab a soda out of your machine and explain my daughter needs the soda. I pay $1.13. She get better.

And to top the day off, the receipts start printing. More and more paper. The sales associate adds up the rebates and it does not add up. The rebates are $50 short. After some apologies, he gives me an instant $50 credit/rebate on my new Circuit City card.

It is now too late to get dinner, which my daughter disparately needs, and get to Tysons to pick up the computer.

NO COMPUTER SYSTEM SHOULD PUT A CUSTOMER THROUGH THIS. There is no excuse to have four or more sales people look at the sale and not be able to be flagged to tell the customer what the final price after rebates will be. Though I generally think that Circuit City has been a leader in customer service for electronic products, this should not be accepted by management, associates or customers.

RegEx to Remove font tags

Wrote this on my birthday and now here for safe keeping:

Here's a Regular Express for removing all font tags with Dream Weaver;

1) Go to Find and Replace. Paste this into the right Search For box:
<fon[^<]+>|</fon[^<]+>

2) Leave Replace with blank

3) Click the Option Use Regular Expressions.

This will replace all Font tags and their contents like size="99".

Have fun.

Feed Demon has a great feature of allowing you to read an item and email it. It works great with both Outlook and Netscape as my clients (two different computers). Would also make an interesting way to update your blog.

Here's an RSS Tutorial, meant for a programmer. Even programmers need a style guide to know how to program RSS. I've got to get moving on this style guide after vacation.

enewsletters move to RSS - Part 2

This is True enewsletter has grown to over 117,000 subscribers. Randy Cassingham, the author of this enewsletter was written up by Steve Outing on Poynteronline's E-Media Tidbit. This is True is moving to RSS, according to the article, to fight the clutter of spam. More evidence to come.

Lockergnome RSS feeds about RSS

Lockegnome has nearly created an RSS Feed of the Day with their RSS Resource. They have several feeds, but just recently added several about RSS itself. If you like following what is happening in the RSS world, this is the feed to follow.

Bloglines.com

This is a great service. So good it makes me wonder how they can do it for free.

Bloglines is a web based RSS reader. You create an account for free, subscribe to RSS feeds and read them in a framed web page. From work or from home, it is still the same RSS reader.

From a technical/RSS provider, this is a great service because of the reduced bandwidth to hopefully hundreds or thousands or millions of RSS hits to the server everyday. Now the load is carried by bloglines. And given the feedback to RSS providers, there is nothing not to like here.

I particularly like the New Blogs and Top Blogs that are available from the front page. Just a very easy interface to add some new feeds.

I now recommend Bloglines to anyone who I'm trying to convince to start using an RSS reader. This is much easier than trying to install a desktop reader in a work environment.

(Now if Blogger wouls just make Blogger Pro available soon. I want my RSS feeds live.)

Browser Wars: newsmonster.org

Open source tends to win: Apache and Linux. But it rarely goes against shareware.

I think browsers are starting to be commodities, so it is the value-add to browsers that brings on the Second Browser Wars. RSS readers are that value-added. I downloaded newsmonster.org for mozilla yesterday. Terrific product that competes head-to-had with Feed Demon which works with IE. This will be an interesting test of open source versus shareware.

But it points out how irrelevant standard browsers are becoming.

50 Year Old Landfills

Thinking that I'd like to upgrade my computer, so I've been looking at these ads. What do people do with yet another printer and yet another set of speakers and .... A lot of stuff must be going into landfills. So I was wondering if any college Anthropology courses go out and dig up landfills that were created 50 years ago. I wonder how well Barbie or Littl' Red Wagons survived. An inventory would be interesting.

Feedup with Blogger Pro

I want to pay money. I want to pay to use Blogger Pro. But every day for weeks it says: Please check back next week. This is getting intolerable. I keep looking at other software to use and hoping Pro will be available sooner. By September I just won't wait around any longer.

netomat

netomat is an application/site generator that should be right up my alley. I tend towards visual thinking and netomat lets you communicate via web or via email visually with added sounds and voice. I even like the example of designing a kitchen. But it just doesn't work for me. Maybe when I'm doing more with my digital camera which is on loan.

Enough finger pointing RSS children!

Everyone is pointing at the RSS article in news.com. What a shame. I agree with Dave about personalities.

Get over it folks. The PC software people didn't and Microsoft Office swamped them. This is a repeat of Harvard Busines Graphics, Lotus 1-2-3, etc and those personalities not getting along.

But on the other hand, I hope this finger pointing doesn't matter much. I hope the "network" tidal wave of RSS just keeps moving with products like FeedDemon and others.

Biking in Rock Creek Park

Went biking in Rock Creek Park again today. This is one of the nicest places to ride during the steamy summers in the DC area. Lots of tall trees keep it cool and shady.

I got in 20 miles riding my old road bike. I bought this bike used in 1983 for about $70. A few years ago I road a metric century on it. I mainly only use 5 of the ten gears, so it takes some thinking to keep it fun. I'll have to take it out on a solo ride soon.

The bike shop called and my newer bike is fixed. On Saturday I crossed a road on the WO&D trail, heard a snap and my rear tire was no longer true. Just like that over an 1/8 bump. Had to take off my brake just to move the thing. (A this point I was as mad as a golfer who misses a simple putt.) So new bike went into the shop and I was only my old, trusty road bike.

Past times are pastimes. (McLuhan)

RSS Feed of the Day

I'm sure somebody is doing one, but I'd love to see the mailing list called "RSS Feed of the Day." Of course it would also be an RSS feed. I'd like to have someone shift through all the new feeds and pick out some good ones.

I've got some ideas on this and might just start it up if I can not find anyone else doing it. But then, where will I find the time?

Are you rich?

The Washington Post reporter was asked "How many of you are rich?" Only a few people raised their hands.

Tonight I was reading the Money article on "How Rich is Rich?" You'll need $7.5 million if you spend $200,000 per year and are in your 40s.

I have ice cream in my ice box. Now that is rich. Maybe too rich. :)

Men and Clean Bathrooms

I think there is a simple explanation about why, in general, women keep a cleaner bathroom than men. Conventional wisdom is that men are sloppier because we stand. And then there is a chuckle about our aim. But this misses the point. Sure men can stand, but more importantly we can stand anywhere, especially in the woods. So men's point a reference for a clean bathroom is a pile of leaves next to a tree. Throw in some green moss and a little dirt, then men have a perfectly color coordinated bathroom. Who needs porcelain white?

Civilization

Civilization is still the best computer game. It takes a while to play, so no posts for a few days while I tried to build a civilization and not not get wiped out by the computer.

FeedDemon is not Tivo, yet. Part One.

Don't take this harshly. I love FeedDemon, but I love my Tivo more.

I love RSS readers because they help me manage the information glut. Much easier to have all the news in one spot rather than surf, surf, surf. But FeedDemon is not as good as my Tivo, yet.

Tivo manages channels and lots of information. I can watch programs when I want. It records shows I like or thinks I'll like. But what it does better than FeedDemon is helping me manage my channels. I just wish that FeedDemon was a little smarter.

Here's one example. I just clicked on a XML button to subscribe to a feed while browsing with FeedDemon. [BTW, this is one of the neat things about FeedDemon and very much like Tivo's thumb's up icon that rarely appears during cross-promotions.] But after a few steps FeedDemon gives me an error message: "A channel with this name already exists." And asks if I want to add the existing channel to this listing? It is at this point that FeedDemon frustrates me. Maybe I want to move the channel to this listing and delete it from the other listing. What other listing or listings have the channel. Does this effect performance or being a good RSS citizen. Will this just be an alias to the existing entry? What if I really want it in a new listing?

I have some other non-Tivo behavior, but let's start with this one.

Servers at Home

The BigCos want to read the meters in your home over the internet. When they figure that out, then there is no reason not to turn all of those old computers into servers. Sounds like a good transaction to me.

Save The Net

Why aren't there more servers? Nearly everyone has replaced a computer in their lifetime, so why aren't these computers sitting as servers on the web? All of these old computers make perfectly good web servers. They should be in homes running as servers.

Well, we ran out of IP numbers. The BigCo's (ie cable the tele) are using this to their advantage to make the net more and more like broadcast instead of end-to-end. Read Doc Searls' piece on saving the net. It is a bit technical, not too bad, and requires you to work. I agree with the conclusion, the net needs to be saved.

RSS and font tags

Interesting discussion of font tags in RSS feeds on Gadgettopia blog. I have previous seen a comment about what HTML code, like script, should not be allowed in feeds for security reasons. Again, a reason for a style guide for RSS.

Keep Media Debuts Monday

Washington Post story by Leslie Walker on Keep Media is a good look at this start-up by Louis Borders who founded Borders books (and sold out). A subscription based internet newsstand. It debuts Monday and it will be interesting to see how bloggers can link to articles.

Thanks John Robb

John Robb mentioned Bletter in his blog today and said very nice things:

Bletter. E-mail newsletter demo. Looks very easy to use. It also creates an RSS feed. They are looking for beta users. This may be useful as part of the Weblog Network. It would also be nice if all you needed to do is put in your RSS feed and it would put the posts into the form itself. That way all you would need to do is work on the global template options.

I'm working on the RSS import into Bletter.

Weblog Network Hieracrchy

John Robb on his Weblog Network blog was looking for a top level hierarchy. I wrote him:

As for structure, this is a very difficult thing to do. I suggest you borrow someone else to start and modify as you go along. I sat in on hours of debate for the metadata controlled vocabulary for educational "lesson plans" and other materials (http://www.geminfo.org/Workbench/gem2.html). So look at Yahoo, Google, Feedster, About and make a choice.

RSS Style Guilde Intro

I'm going to set up the RSS Style Guide in my content management system software, HEMS. But until I do, I'm going to post some stuff here. So, below is the first draft of the intro.

Desktop RSS readers, web news aggregators (portals) and search/directory engines all use RSS feeds. When creating an RSS file either directly, by writing a blog or by writng an enewsletter, it is important to keep these applications in mind. The purpose of this style guide is to maximize your presentation in these applications.

The technical specification for RSS are not useful as a style guide. The specs are so flexible that almost anything goes. For example, while headline, link and description are essential parts of a RSS feed, only one of the three is required in the technical specs. While the guide will look at the specs for limitations, this is not a place to look for style advice.

This guide will address three widely used versions of RSS: 0.92, 1.0 and 2.0. It is not the purpose of this guide to rehash the history of the development of RSS. Because these version are widely used, the guide will discuss each.

This guide will also assume that you may have limited control over the creation of your RSS file. While some people may create their RSS files "by hand" using a text editor, most people will be using an appplication which automates the creation of the RSS file. Blogging software and enewsletter software does this. For the most popular of these tools, the guide will point out the limitations of these tools.

These words are meant as a guide and not as a set of rules. Please, go your own way to accomplish your RSS goals, if you feel it is necessary. But then, please add that style to the guide.

This is community work, so comments by email are welcomed. I'll add them to the appropriate page. However, this might be done better with a Wiki, but I just don't know enough.

I'm working on the outline/structure of the guide. Let me review it tomorrow on the Metro and I'll post it after that - unless I get HEMS set up for this first.

RSS Style Guide

I'm working on an RSS Stle Guide. I wrote the intro last night about 4:00 am. I hope to work on the structure over the next few Metro trips to/from work. Then I'll have something to post.

Ideally this should be a Wiki, but I don't have access or know people that do. So for now I'll publish it using HEMS. If it attracts attention, then maybe I can move it. Otherwise, I just use it.

Blogger Pro is where?

I'm getting frustrated waiting to upgrade to Blogger Pro!

Lawns as Quilts

Just finished sweating and cutting the lawn. Does it have to be perfect or can it be more like a quilt?

Best Network Wins?

Doc Searls quotes "The best network wins" by Jim Moore. Then quotes "All the significant trends start with technologists." And finally states that it's "sobriety therapy for marketers".

If he means that technologist win, I have to disagree. The Fairchild video game was better than Atari, yet no one remembers Fairchild. GEOWorks as better than Windows 3.x, but even with AOL using GEOS, no one remembers.

It is the networks that marketers build for the technologist that make a winner, IMHO

New adults working it out

My daughter and female friend are having four boys/adults over for dinner on my deck. To be so young and lack experience at these things. Boys are bad mouthed for arriving very late. Boys arrive and everyone seems happy. Until dishes have to be done.

RSS 2.0 Transfer

Dave Winer has transferred the licence to RSS 2.0 to Harvard and set up an advisory panel. God I hope this calms people down so we can get on with making good RSS feeds. We need style guide about RSS, not more tech guides.

AOL Journals: Golden Age Ending?

AOL will soon update its software to version 9 Optimized. Washington Post continues that there will be three ways to update: form, telephone and IM. Certainly the number of bloggers will expand quickly - just in time for the US Presidential primaries.

Some bloggers are speculating that it is the end of the Golden Age. So long as people are hitting AOL servers for RSS feeds, I don't think it is the end of the Golden Age. (If you haven't been involved with AOL servers, know that both the caching of web sites and email servers have been the subject of many technical articles over the years.) But if AOL finds that they need to change the RSS updating rules, then we have a different story.

AmericansForDeam has RSS Core

Americans For Dean is putting together a set of tools to help people use the internet for dean. This is down to the grassroots, local level. Fully Creative Commons. And all the tools work together with RSS. We'll see if they can use Bletter.

Friends of the W&OD Trail

Time to get my mind off computer and my seat on a bile. I'm off to the W&OD Trail.

Golden Age of RSS

I think we are in the Golder Age of RSS. I mean right now.

Can blogs/RSS be spammed? Some one asked me this question at the Blogfest. The technical answer is no.

However, the practical answers is that just as the Golden Age of eNewsletters has passed because of spam, so too is there a danger lurking beyond this RSS Golder Age. An RSS feed can be abused by too many requests. Too many requests and the publisher will be forced discontinue the feed or buy more in bandwidth. Abuse the system and the Gold Age is over.

How can this happen? As the number of users of desktop RSS readers increases, so does the requests to RSS files. In fact Dave Winer was complaining about this the over day where someone was pinging every 5 minutes. And there are several posts on the FeedDemon beta forum on it. So take a fast growing use of RSS readers used by newbies who don't know about bandwidth costs and they unknowingly make too many requests. Cost go up exponentially for RSS providers.

The only solution I see is to have an industry certification process for RSS Readers to make sure they are well written and warn users about abusing bandwidth.

PS. This also speaks to why all RSS feeds should be static. A dynamic feed just takes up too much server resources. A good web developer should spend a little extra time and have the dynamic feed write to a static file.

Second Browser War

There have been a number of posts about the browser wars being over. No way. In fact I think we are entering the Second Browser Wars. I've been using Feed Demon, an RSS Reader. This type of software allows you to harvest and reed RSS files. In so doing, most also include a browser. So way have Internet Explorer open and my RSS reader? No reason to. So Microsoft is losing desktop time to my RSS Reader. (Never mind that Feed Demon uses IE components to make its browser.)

I'm looking foward to more browsers that incorporate RSS readers.

Feed Demon will change your life

Feed Demon will change your life. I know this is high praise, so let me temper it a bit. As a Tivo owner about how it changed their television viewing habits. You may not be able to shut them up. Tivo is the best thing since an ATM machine.

So it is with a quality RSS reader. Use Feed Demon of a week instead of your brower and you might no go back. So people will go back, because we are early into the network effect curve for RSS. Feed Demon makes it easy to visit those sites that support RSS. I think you can visit 10 times as many sites with Feed Demon (or any other good RSS reader) as you can with a Internet Explorer.

Before I forget, I'm recommend trying FeedDemon. It is currently in beta, but it appears to be very stable.

ABCEDmindedness

The title comes from James Joyce and was often quoted by Marshall McLuhan. It was a single word to indicate one of the effects of the literate world. Since a group blog replaces verbal chatting with written chatting, the word seemed appropriate.

I will keep you updated on my other two blogs, my outside projects (maybe even my house) and general browsing and reading of interest.

Welcome to the blogsphere.