Bryan's Weblog of Stuff

Recently...
My 2023 Year in Books
I Believe
Mount Removable Drives in WSL2
What I’m Listening To
My 5-Star Rated Books From 2018
My 2018 Year in Books
Books section of the site, I love to read. I read a ton as a kid, but that diminished quite a bit as an adult. Over the past few years, I’ve started reading more, including 52 books in 2017." class="sidenavlink">My 2017 Year in Books
Cutting The Cord, One Year Later
We Cut The Cord!
DIRECTV NOW Update

Archives...
January 2024 (1)
November 2020 (1)
September 2020 (1)
November 2019 (1)
January 2019 (2)
February 2018 (1)
January 2018 (1)
January 2017 (2)
December 2016 (3)
November 2016 (2)
August 2014 (2)
April 2011 (3)
January 2011 (1)
December 2010 (1)
November 2010 (3)
October 2010 (1)
September 2010 (2)
August 2010 (1)
July 2010 (1)
April 2010 (2)
March 2010 (4)
February 2010 (6)
January 2010 (1)
December 2009 (2)
November 2009 (1)
October 2009 (3)
September 2009 (1)
August 2009 (1)
July 2009 (1)
June 2009 (5)
May 2009 (1)
April 2009 (2)
March 2009 (3)
February 2009 (4)
January 2009 (3)
December 2008 (2)
November 2008 (3)
October 2008 (3)
September 2008 (10)
August 2008 (7)
July 2008 (14)
June 2008 (17)
May 2008 (14)
April 2008 (16)
March 2008 (9)
February 2008 (12)
January 2008 (17)
December 2007 (8)
November 2007 (11)
June 2007 (1)
March 2007 (2)
January 2007 (1)
December 2006 (1)
October 2006 (1)
August 2006 (2)
July 2006 (6)
June 2006 (1)
May 2006 (2)
March 2006 (1)
January 2006 (1)
December 2005 (2)
November 2005 (1)
October 2005 (3)
May 2005 (1)
March 2005 (6)
February 2005 (2)
January 2005 (7)
December 2004 (4)
November 2004 (3)
October 2004 (3)
September 2004 (3)
August 2004 (2)
July 2004 (4)
June 2004 (3)
May 2004 (1)
April 2004 (1)
January 2004 (8)
December 2003 (1)
November 2003 (2)
October 2003 (5)
September 2003 (4)
August 2003 (5)
July 2003 (9)
June 2003 (8)
May 2003 (14)
April 2003 (9)
March 2003 (10)
February 2003 (8)
January 2003 (22)
December 2002 (22)
November 2002 (8)
October 2002 (6)
September 2002 (4)
August 2002 (9)
July 2002 (19)
June 2002 (13)
May 2002 (7)
March 2002 (1)
February 2002 (1)
January 2002 (2)
December 2001 (3)
November 2001 (12)
October 2001 (16)
September 2001 (6)
August 2001 (12)
July 2001 (4)
June 2001 (12)
May 2001 (1)
March 2001 (1)
January 2001 (1)
December 2000 (2)
October 2000 (1)
September 2000 (2)
July 2000 (10)
June 2000 (6)
May 2000 (13)

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Thursday, October 16, 2003

RSS Feeds For Categories
I am now generating RSS feeds for each category.

By Bryan at 4:24 PM , in Weblog Applications - Permalink
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Thursday, July 3, 2003

Necho, or Whatever it's Called
I've been almost completely out of the loop on weblogs, RSS, syndication, etc. for the past few weeks, so I am just now starting to digest Necho.

My first pass at having my weblog app generate an Necho file is here.

By Bryan at 5:05 PM , in Weblog Applications - Permalink
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Thursday, May 8, 2003

BlogShares
For those of you with weblogs of your own, I am sure you are already well familiar with BlogShares, so I won't spend any time explaining it here. If you aren't familiar with it, click the link and check it out.

What I really want to tell you about is that my weblog is finally trading on BlogShares.

[Listening to: Dead Man Blues - Jelly Roll Morton - The Best Of Ken Burns Jazz (03:15)]

By Bryan at 10:58 AM , in Weblog Applications - Permalink
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Tuesday, April 29, 2003

More on Weblog API's
Well, I've nearly implemented all of the functionality needed for me to use w.bloggar with my weblog app. Honestly, implementing these XML-RPC API's is such a pain in my ass. It just seems so backwards compared to building web services in .NET.

Oh well, what's done is done.

By Bryan at 12:40 AM , in Weblog Applications - Permalink
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Monday, April 28, 2003

XML-RPC
Back in the early days of my weblog app, I came across Charles Cook's excellent XML-RPC.NET library and used it to ping weblogs.com whenever there was a new post.

Now, I think I will delve into it once again -- this time to implement the MetaWeblogAPI and the BloggerAPI.

By Bryan at 10:08 AM , in Weblog Applications - Permalink
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Thursday, April 24, 2003

the World as a Blog

This is so cool. Sit back and watch the world blog its way around the clock. Now you know you simply must get those geotags and that RSS autodiscovery machinery into your blog.
[Sean McGrath, CTO, Propylon]
Indeed, this is one of the coolest things I've seen lately.

By Bryan at 9:10 PM , in Weblog Applications - Permalink
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Thursday, March 13, 2003

Searching The Weblog Part 2
I mentioned earlier that I was going to start on this this past weekend, but better late than never. Anyway, I've begun to play around with implementing search functionality for the weblog. At the moment it is a very basic search that matches everything entered, and only the body of an entry is searched.

You can see it for yourself over at what is becoming the testing ground for this site.

Of course I've got a few things to work out still, but the search functionality should find it's way into production shortly.

By Bryan at 6:21 PM , in Weblog Applications - Permalink
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Friday, March 7, 2003

Searching The Weblog

Does anyone implement search on their blogs? The .NET weblog systems I have seen don't, neither does Radio. But Sam Ruby's does. I would think that search would be a useful feature. Is it? If not, why not?
[Harry Pierson's DevHawk Weblog]
I think that I will finally stop putting off adding this feature.

By Bryan at 9:10 AM , in Weblog Applications - Permalink
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Wednesday, March 5, 2003

New Look Archives
Previously, I discussed using the ASP.NET Calendar Control as an additional means of navigating my archives.

Since then, there has been a lot of talk about what is the best (or preferred) method for presenting archives and navigating them, and it seems that most people don't care for the calendar method (at least not as the only method).

Personally, I do like the Calendar method for navigating, as long as it isn't the only method. I especially like the ability to select a range of dates using the ASP.NET Calendar Control -- such as everything for a month, week, or day, so you aren't forced to click each individual day to view posts.

Anyway, I've always provided the ability to navigate archives by month using the simple Archives list you see on this page. I even show the number of posts for a given month. Prior to right now, clicking a link in the Archive list would display all the posts, in their entirety for that month. Now, I list only the titles of each post and provide a link to each individual post, as others have done.

I am not sure which presentation method I prefer. When you click an Archive link for a specific month, do you want to have all the posts right there in front of you, or do you prefer just to see their titles, and perhaps even a summary?

By Bryan at 3:39 PM , in Weblog Applications - Permalink
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Tuesday, January 21, 2003

More On Tracking Referrers

What is the best way to implement referrer tracking in a home-grown weblog?
[Harry Pierson's DevHawk Weblog]
My referrer page currently treats each unique URL as just that -- unique. So this - http://objective.mine.nu/archive/2003/1/2.aspx - is different than this - http://objective.mine.nu/. I decided to do this mainly because I was interested in the specific location that was referring someone to my site, not just the referring site. However, if you look at my referrer's page, you'll see that only the domain is displayed, and not the path info (moving your mouse over the links reveals the true referring URL).

This was pretty quick and dirty, well not dirty, but quick. Anyway, I've been thinking of other ways to display the referrer information, and keep coming back to a hierarchical view, where I display the referring domains, and then drill down to view data on the specific referring URL's.

Of course, I am always looking for a better way...

By Bryan at 10:38 PM , in Weblog Applications - Permalink
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Tuesday, January 14, 2003

Searching
I need to make the content of my weblog, or any weblog powered by my weblog app searchable.

By Bryan at 3:55 PM , in Weblog Applications - Permalink
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Sunday, January 5, 2003

RSS Aggregator
Thanks to Brad Wilson, I just RSS subscribed to a new blog. Bryan Daneman appears to be working on a .NET-powered weblog app and with my Radio license due to expire in a month or two, perhaps it's time to start looking. My favorite feature in Radio is the integrated news aggregator and as soon as Bryan gets this implemented, I may have to start begging him for a copy. [Grumpicus Maximus]

I had forgotten about adding this feature. I will work on it in the morning.

By Bryan at 1:35 AM , in Weblog Applications - Permalink
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Friday, January 3, 2003

Referrers, Trackback...
Chris wants to know about my trackback implementation so that our sites can talk in a more automagic way.

I am on the cusp of redoing the trackback functionality for the weblog app. Until then, you can click the Trackback link below each post to get the URL that a trackback can be sent to. I have verified that sending a trackback from Movable Type to my trackback page works. If you have no way of sending a trackback through your weblog app, then you can put everything in the querystring, or you can use the test form that the web service page provides. Go here for more information doing this.

More to come...eventually...

By Bryan at 1:34 PM , in Weblog Applications - Permalink
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Referrer Log
I've finally gotten around to implementing a referrer log for my little weblog app. Like most other things in the weblog app, it is usable for me, but probably still lacking if others were to use it.

I decided to create an HTTPModule to intercept incoming requests and log the referrer information. Currently, it ignores requests made from the site it is implemented in. This will probably change and become an configurable option, I just didn't care to see referrers to my site, from my site -- but others might.

One other "to do" is to create a server control for easily displaying the list of referrers.

By Bryan at 9:56 AM , in Weblog Applications - Permalink
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Thursday, January 2, 2003

.NET Weblog App Update
There is another user of my .NET based weblog application. Welcome to the neighborhood, Ken!

This brings the total number of weblogs powered by my app up to 6 including mine and metaApps.com.

By Bryan at 1:40 PM , in Weblog Applications - Permalink
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Thursday, May 30, 2002

RSS News Feed
Here's how the story goes...

I downloaded Radio.Userland. Why? I don't know, I wanted to see what it does and how it works. Anyway, I was checking out their News page and realized that I could easily make content from metaBlogs available as a news feed as well. 15 minutes later, it was done.

By Bryan at 1:12 PM , in Weblog Applications - Permalink
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Tuesday, May 28, 2002

Migration From Blogger To metaBlog: Complete
With relative ease, I was able to migrate 2 years worth of content from Blogger to my new system, metaBlog.

The metaBlog system itself is still a bit rough around the edges, for example, I don't have the archive functionality built yet. Also, the comments feature doesn't work. I had multiple users setup to post to my Bloger blog, I still need to set those users up in my metaBlog blog and point their posts to the right user ID.

Finally, you might notice the new design of the site. It might stay, or not. I am undecided.

By Bryan at 5:18 PM , in Weblog Applications - Permalink
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metaBlog Part 2
The weblog system that I've been building is almost ready for it's coming out party.

Of course it is not 100% ready yet, but it is ready enough to begin using. The first task will be migrating this site to it. BTW, the system is tenatively named metaBlog. You can learn more about it at metaApps.com.

By Bryan at 10:02 AM , in Weblog Applications - Permalink
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Wednesday, May 15, 2002

metaBlog Part 1
I am building my own blogging system. I've been building it for a while. It is mainly for myself and my friends and family to use, but once complete, I will make the code available. There is no website for it at the moment.

Another project.

By Bryan at 9:20 AM , in Weblog Applications - Permalink
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Monday, January 14, 2002

MovableType Experiment
I am experimenting with Movable Type is this bad?

By Bryan at 9:28 PM , in Weblog Applications - Permalink
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Monday, October 15, 2001

Bloggerbot
This is pretty cool...

By Bryan at 10:38 AM , in Weblog Applications - Permalink
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Thursday, August 16, 2001

Blogger API
Anyway, this is a cool thing...and this post, as well as the previous one, is posted using it.

By Bryan at 1:14 AM , in Weblog Applications - Permalink
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Again...
um, ok...so that previous post, well it was just posted using the blogger.newPost API.

So what, you say? Well the Blogger API pretty much falls in line with the stuff I've been doing over at metaStash.com, that is, Web Services.

To follow up on the 'so what' theme, this means that blogging can be done from your own application, be it on the desktop or a website. Me, I am posting this from my own web page.

By Bryan at 1:07 AM , in Weblog Applications - Permalink
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