Bryan's Weblog of Stuff

What I’m Listening To

I’ve had a Podcasts page on this site for quite a while now, but it’s never been anything more than “hey, I listen to a bunch of podcasts.” Tonight that changed. Tonight I added a list of my podcast subscriptions.

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

Including a list of podcast subscriptions was the entire reason for creating a Podcasts page, but the app I use to listen to podcasts doesn't provide a public API, so I put it off. And I kept putting it off. Sure, there’s a way to extract an OPML file, but that would involve messing with XML, and that’s so…I dunno…mid 2000s (full disclosure: my career was built upon XML—creating systems that generate/modify/consume XML—I didn’t want to do it here). Just give me a JSON file, and let’s call it a day!

As it turns out, I was able to grab my podcast subscription as JSON via a private API, and decided that would have to do. So, while my list of podcast subscriptions isn’t real time, it doesn’t require much for me to update it, and rendering it over on the Podcasts page was trivial. Please peruse the list of podcasts; I hope you find something new and interesting. Of course, I’d love to hear about any podcasts you enjoy!

By Bryan at 10:17 PM , in Site Information - Permalink
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New "Books" Section

A quick heads up to let you know that I’ve added a new page to my site—Books. This page currently features a list of books I’ve recently read. In the future, I’ll probably include a list of books I’m currently reading, as well as my list of books to read.

I hope you take a look, and even find one or two books to read. Perhaps Disrupted, the book I just finished.

By Bryan at 10:12 PM , in Site Information - Permalink
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Site Refresh

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I was overhauling the site—in case you’re only reading this via the RSS feed, the overhaul is here! The most obvious change is the look, but the changes go much deeper. In fact, aside from the underlying data store, the entire site has been rewritten, along with a technology refresh.

For those of you interested in the details, the site is running ASP.NET MVC 5 and Web API 2 on .NET 4.6.2. Since I’m a developer, not a designer, I leveraged the very popular Bootstrap framework for a little help with the UI, along with a theme from Bootswatch for a slight variation on the out-of-the-box Bootstrap look and feel. Additionally, I’m utilizing Font Awesome in a couple of places. Of course there’s the actual code that makes it all go, which is C#, and my own custom blog/CMS engine, which has its roots in the blog software I wrote 13 years ago, and utilizes a couple of open source projects, including a slightly modified MvcSiteMapProvider, and Ninject. I've also replaced my own comment engine with Disqus.

With this update, it’s my hope that everything available on the old site is available on the new site. There is one exception to this, and that is any Url that includes a blog post id, rather than a blog post title, will not work. Several years ago, when I went away from using the blog post id to look up posts, I kept that functionality around to avoid any broken links—as of right now, those links are broken, though I don’t know how many still exist. I plan on providing a fix, involving a permanent redirect, but it’s not in place yet.

If you have any questions, or notice anything out of place, please let me know!

By Bryan at 7:45 AM , in Site Information - Permalink
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It’s Been A Long Time

I’m in the process of overhauling this site. A process that includes not only a new paint job, but also getting under the hood and swapping out the engine. All right, enough with the car metaphor. The point is things are changing.

Actually, the point of this post really isn’t to say all of this. More, it’s to wonder how in the world I got here—that is, in 6 years time, I’ve posted 6 times. That’s pretty shoddy work, if you ask me.

As part of the aforementioned overhaul, I am planning on spending more time here. I’m not sure what I’ll write about, but whatever the topic, I’ll at least be writing, and that’s better than not. I’m not promising a ton of new content, because I’m not sure I have that much to say, but I will promise a semi-regular stream of new stuff.

One last thought before I go: if you’ve never read it, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of John Adams by David McCullough.

By Bryan at 12:04 AM , in Site Information - Permalink
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Site Updates

Just a quick note in case you notice anything crazy going on…

I’ve been making some small changes to my site over the last couple of days. You might have noticed the little Twitter-like bird poking its head through the page—it’s new, as is the Twitter feed. Gone is the Facebook feed.

I’ve also added support for Gravatars. If you don’t have one, go get one. Now! Of course, you’ll only notice the Gravatars if people comment, and nobody does that anymore. It might help if I post more often.

Finally, I’ve started messing around with some jQueryUI stuff. So far, I’m only testing on the Archives page.

I think that covers it. Don’t be surprised if the entire site gets torn down—it’s been that long since I last updated it. Don’t worry, I’ll rebuild it.

By Bryan at 6:56 PM , in Site Information - Permalink
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Site Update 2/19/2008

Just a couple of quick items:

• Comments are enabled, though I am not finished mucking around with them.
• My Recent Runs - I've added a new page at the ol' site—My Recent Runs. It lists information about my 10 most recent runs (runs where I used my Forerunner 305). The data is pulled from MotionBased.com, and includes links to more details at Motionbased, as well as to Google Maps and Google Earth.

By Bryan at 8:29 AM , in Site Information - Permalink
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Comments Update

Just wanted to let you know that I am going to add Comments back in (as well as the Contact page), I just haven't gotten around to it just yet, as I'm still moving stuff over to the new web host. The good news is that everything is going very well, there's just a lot to move.

By Bryan at 12:12 AM , in Site Information - Permalink
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Site Update

Just a quick note to let everyone know that I am changing hosts. This site has already been moved, but some of my other sites have not (http://metaapps.com and http:/daneman.com) been moved.

Also, my new host supports version 3.5 of the .NET Framework as well as SQL Server 2005, so you can expect to see some new things popping up, or perhaps not, as they might mostly be behind the scenes. At any rate, if there's any problems with the site, I'd say hit the Contact page and let me know, but of course, I haven't added a Contact page into this latest site template (or comments, for that matter!). I guess I've got some work to do...

By Bryan at 7:09 PM , in Site Information - Permalink
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Pardon The Mess

Hey folks, as you've surely noticed by now, I am rearranging things here. I've been itching for a new look for quite some time, and I've been wanting to implement some new features of this sites blog engine, metaBlog, so I figured that there was no better time to work on it, than on my end of year vacation. So please pardon the mess for the next few days.

By Bryan at 1:11 AM , in Site Information - Permalink
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Server Update

After a very long night, all of my sites have been migrated to a new host. If you don't mind, please let me know if you see anything weird going on with the site.

Thanks.

By Bryan at 2:09 PM , in Site Information - Permalink
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Web Site Downtime

It looks like I am in the market for a new hosting company (need ASP.NET 1.1, 2.0, and SQL Server 2000 or greater). I've been getting a great deal lately (free) at a major hosting company, but it appears that the hosting company is discontinuing their generosity. So, it is safe to say that there will be some downtime for this site as well as the other sites that I host. Here's a list of sites that will be affected by the move (these are my sites, there are others that will be affected, too -- I'll be in touch soon if your site is one of those):

• metastash.com
• metaapps.com
• daneman.com
• daneman.org

By Bryan at 9:37 AM , in Site Information - Permalink
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Comment Notification Turned Off

For the few of you that have commented on something here, you should know that I have turned off the notification mechanism that sends out an email whenever someone leaves a new comment for a post that you've commented on. I need to clean up the email message and make the notification opt-in, rather than on by default with no way to opt-out. That's all.

By Bryan at 10:07 AM , in Site Information - Permalink
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Too Much Stuff
I've decided that I've got too much stuff here on my weblog...you know, Bryan's Weblog of Stuff? Anyway, it is time to shed some of it. Too many categories, too many links, too many arch...well, I guess the archives should stay. Perhaps I should create an archives page that lists all of the months, and then on the main page only show the last 12 months, with a link to "more..." Decisions, decisions.

By Bryan at 9:42 AM , in Site Information - Permalink
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Problems With The Power
Hopefully anyone with a website or email hosted on one of my servers was sleeping between the hours of 4 AM and 6:30 AM Central Time this morning. On the off chance that one of you wasn't, and tried accessing something, my apologies. It seems that the power company is having problems. We were completely without power for over two hours, and it has been back on intermittently since.

And for the smart ass, yes, my servers are on UPS. Of course the "U" in "UPS" is true only as long as the batteries last, and I am not a rich enough man to have batteries to last me 2 and a half hours.

Oh, and by the way...when the average high temperature as been above 100 degrees for several days in a row, like it has been here in North Texas, including the last couple which were closer to 110 than 100, and the lows are barely making it into the lower 80's, the servers were the least of my worries -- I wanted the damn AC back on!

By Bryan at 6:42 AM , in Site Information - Permalink
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Connectivity Problems
This morning, I noticed that things were taking forever to load -- I blamed it on the low quality wireless link I was using at the time. Several hours later, and now with a much better wireless link, pages were still loading slowly.

Move to the desktop, and a wired connection. No change, still very, very slow.

On to running some speed tests... < 3 kbps down!!! (Upstream speeds seemed normal.)

Call in to tech support. D/FW customers are experiencing extremely slow connections, estimated fix time 5:30 PM.

So that's the story. If you try hitting this site, or any of the others I host, and they seem slow, now you know.

By Bryan at 3:29 PM , in Site Information - Permalink
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Server Migration Complete
Finally, the server migration is complete. That was relatively painless. If you notice anything odd, let me know.

By Bryan at 12:57 AM , in Site Information - Permalink
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Server Migration, Part 2
Server migration is nearly complete (everything is running on a temporary server at the moment). It looks like there has been an issue with permissions on my RSS feed. I am fixing that now (thanks to Brad for pointing it out).

By Bryan at 5:31 PM , in Site Information - Permalink
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Cleaning Up
Don't mind me, I am just tidying up around here. Trying to get all these entries a bit more organized. This doesn't impact links to specific entries, only where they show up when clicking the Category links.

By Bryan at 2:38 AM , in Site Information - Permalink
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By Bryan at 1:17 AM , in Site Information - Permalink
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New Look
It seems that everything is distracting me from the tasks at hand, which is to overhaul the weblog app. You need not look any further than this website for proof. Instead of working on the weblog app, I've give my personal site a new look.

Hope you like it.

By Bryan at 10:42 PM , in Site Information - Permalink
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Redesign Done
Redesign done (for now). Tell me what you think.

By Bryan at 8:33 PM , in Site Information - Permalink
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What a shame that one of our bombs hit a house in Afghanistan. So now the count of civilian lives lost is somewhere around US: 7,000+ Them:4+.

To CNN and all the other liberal media outlets...stop putting so much emphasis on a stray bomb, or on a prince who had his donation rejected because his true feelings are much more inline with those of the radicals than with ours. Each time you run a piece on our stray bomb killing 4 civilians, you should also report on how our humanitarian aid saves hundreds or thousands of lives, or how the Taliban regularly murders their own.

By Bryan at 12:27 PM , in Site Information - Permalink
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