Lots of crashes and a longer outage at teatime (I was 'aving my tea -- so missed alerts) that lasted nearly an hour. All my fault, I'm cleaning out old sites from sexblogs, want to get it down to a core of maybe 5 before shutting it down. Then over the weekend, I'll be chipper choppering abandoned blogfootball sites (only those never used) before the move next week.
I'm hoping that there'll be a tiny number left on these servers. Then, I can start selling individual sites.
I wish I had done this deleting as a regular chore, once a week or so, rather than trying to delete 200 sites in one sitting.
So this is why the serving is flaky today, tomorrow and over the weekend. I'm off to Sunny Wales to see the Easter Bunny BTW

Scaredy cats

I'm an I/Oer apparently. Can see the application, can see what it does, don't care how it does it, but wonder what I could use it for, as I work by myself, and nobody I know uses Radio -- though I tell 'em. (Stupid, stupid, scaredy cats.)

40,124 hits yesterday. BTW: I'm still here. Only working in another part of the factory. Still putting in 14 hour days, for little pay, just like my Granddad -- he died of miner's lung too. Now, I've got a hacking cough, and had it for nearly 5 weeks -- time to visit the quack. Feel sure he'll tell me I've programmers' tickle and give me three months to live.

More buttons, more to come!

Create a Manila warBlog

Or a Manila sexBlog

Or a Manila villaBlog

Or a Manila spursBlog

Some more buttons. If you want to add them to your site, go ahead.

Villa Views. Over in parallel land. I think I included the Villa Views yesterday. The Spurs site is off the radar but ticking along nicely - just in case any of you are interested. [BlogFootball]
Looks dead to me Jim. 8 days dead on the front page, but wait the discussion group is kkkkkicking http://spurs.blogfootball.com/discuss/ why aren't they posting to the front page then?

plans."Editors note: The people at PeoplesStory are a bit worried that the blog people who support Spurs might see and nick our plans. I would like reassurance that our plans are safe. Otherwise no more plans."
You can of course, make your site private. Merely by going to your editors only menu ==> prefs ==> editorial ==> site access. Only the members YOU invite will be allowed in.

40,375 hits today from yesterday at 8.00pm to tonight at 8.00pm.

Fast blogging

Power Blogging and SMS-to-blog are the latest technical gizmos in the Service shop window. Take a look - it's the future, only now. [BlogFootball]
So I'm a few minutes behind Mark, or is he a few minutes behind me?

You'll be able to SMS to your blogs -- yes blogs. Check out my version of it http://www.cyberSaps.org/ I actually FTP (automatically) to another server, thus, response times are much faster. You'll still get into the blogfootball radar, you'll get as many blogs as you like (though only two Manila sites, but unless you've a community of other people who need to post to your Manila sites, you'll not worry about Manila any more).
You'll be able to bulk upload picture, merely by dropping them into a folder on your desk top.
You'll still be able to edit any files you upload -- news items or just text files you put into your www folder -- that's right -- you'll have a www folder on your machine which is upstreamed to the server. This means that any file -- ANY -- file you drop into this folder will be upstreamed.
You'll get feeds from any other Manila site directly to your web browser, this is perfect for keeping in touch with the Villa bloggers, as well as news from, say, the NY Times, and 3,000 other known channels. You'll be able to blog millions of news items merely with a click... See? I told you even you meatheads could do it. Really, really, it's as simple as Manila -- more I'd say!
You'll still get referers -- here's mine. I'll be moving over to my machine in a few days.
You'll also get tech support from me directly.
I can even arrange it that your existing Manila site is converted to files in your www folder, so this could be seen as a helluva upgrade path.
You'll be able to post items to more than one blog at the same time.
And still you're just using a web browser interface, just like Manila.

Just wondering. Is there anybody out there who'd like to power blog? You get an application that sits in your system tray. Even if you're a complete football meathead ";->" you can still use this stuff, with in 2 minutes and 40 seconds you'll be up and running an posting to your blog, in a new, more powerful way.
The only down side or difference is that you'll need to do it from one computer, where as with Manila you can log into your site from any computer. You can actually set this app up so that if you have a permenant connection somewhere you can log into that instance of the application and post remotely through it, and that's quite easy to set up.
I'm looking for volunteers or guinea pigs, call it what you will.
There is a price to pay, after the free 30 days test, and that's $40 (or £24 approx) and that's to Userland, not to me. If you like it you'll gladly pay. I have.
The up side is that thiis stuff, is very easy, and very, very, very powerful! Believe me when I say very, very powerful. Believe me when I say easy, even for non geeks... I see them on the mailing lists non geeks having fun. This application is gaining ground because of it's ease!
Please, if you're interested, even if you're technical or completely non technical, mail me steve@cybersaps.com and if there's a few of you I'll set up a downloadable version -- a blog football template and settings for this app.
BTW: you'll be able to post to your Villa blog, and for the first pioneers, I'll set up another blog for your personal use... Friends, family, fun... Whatever.

Hate Man U

I can't believe this damned bug is back again. When we were hosted in Birmingham, before cybersaps had it's own domain, I used Rob Sharl's domain name for the pictures (pixCyberSaps.sharl.co.uk). When we moved over to the US, I swapped these for the US servers, but, still they crop up again. I can't find where they come from, but every time I see them , I know it's time to run my correction scripts to put those addresses right.
Now, this guy's probably looking at his site and thinking he's done a good job on it. But, soon he's going to see images appear where there wasn't images. What to do? I cannot allow bad URLs on my machine, it's something that's bust and needs fixing... This is the way I'm programmed, and I it may affect others in a bad way... So, HateMan U... This is why, if you want to fix your template just fix, or remove the new URLs in the table cells.

Still slow

Still seems to be a lag when accessing pages on blogfootball (and other domains posted here). Wasn't expecting that, and can't figure what it is. Hit a page, and nothing happens for about 30-60 seconds, then the page loads as normal. This could be traffic on the server (people saving pages, uploading pix), or it could be network related (perhaps our ISP is having some troubles, or the DNS machine is slow) or, my worry, it's the server software... Cannot be sure.

Microcontent News: "covers what we call the "microcontent" sector: weblogs, Webzines, email digests, and the entire personal publishing sector."
I think I'll be reading this a fair bit. But truth be told, I'm already converted, if only some people who I talk to would read this.

Major problems today Worse than I feared. Had hoped that I could wait till this evening or late tonight, but...

Had to take the whole thing apart, and squish by hand each frigging database. Even had to go all the way to California and get that pesky heroes root, the one with 60,000 messages, and bring it back here to Telford, and squish it, and then take it all the way back.

I hope things are back to normal now, they should be, but I'm keeping a weary eye on it.

A five and a half hour outage, while this little machine nor the Calif. can do nothing, but wait till squsihes are over.

Boy will I be glad to get rid of that damned 60,000 root. Mac has no idea what trouble this will cause him when I finally move it Which will be much sooner!

Post Modern Sleaze (Reprazent Mix)

Currently listening to Post Modern Sleaze (Reprazent Mix). Drum and bass to you!

As confirmed by part of the latest service snippet. No, I wasn't cheating! [BlogFootball]
I don't get you Mark? What cheating? Where, when, please be specific. I need times, dates... ";->"

All good clean fun. I just thought I'd show the types of envelopes I'm sending out... Like to add some more templates to this feature. It looks good printed, believe me, it's just the cheap jpeging I've used...

Some disruption to service for the past few hours (time now 8:56:11 pm ) and there'll be some more tomorrow. I'm upgrading the server and adding more services.
I'll be taking it down tomorrow as well for a couple of hours. I need to compact the databases and get rid of the bloat.

theswedishchef: See YA Later!: "Thanks for the blogs Steve, A world changing invention, for me.... " True, once you've blogged, you're lost for all time.
Dont get the tip though. Does he mean the old way? http://astonVilla.blogFootball.com/theswedishchef/admin/flipHomePage

This is a rough draft of the letter I'll be sending out. I think I'll add in the blog item below too, just to stir the pot a little. Watch out it's an 800k file, the big one.

CNET: Gateway shifts retail strategy: Gateway said last month that it was testing stocking three of its most popular desktop models at about 40 percent of its stores.
They're getting desperate, well, creative anyway? Could these guys be ready to give blogs away with 'puters. Quick edit this page demo on their machine in the store... Or tell them the address on the phone or send them to their new site, once they've bought on line.
Their site contains all the details about their new machine, ads for new bits see below.
Like fellow PC manufacturer Dell Computer, Gateway more typically sells computers directly to customers, either online or over the telephone. But now the company plans to carry computers in the stores on a permanent basis
Joe Punter, the ordinary man in the street, just like Villa bloggers.
The move is a risky one, warn analysts, who caution Gateway could increase its cost structure by selling PCs through the retail outlets. Offering select models in stores, where salespeople have more incentive to move stock on hand, could sap other systems. The PC manufacturer also must absorb the cost of moving and maintaining stock and the financial risks of carrying inventory.
Risky? Would giving blogs to store sales people also be risky? Staff could be bloggers of blogs, knitting the community together. The subgroups could be about machines, geographic areas, applications. Of course, people (staff/customers) would be blogging about personal stuff too
Drawing store traffic and with it sales, is something Gateway dperately needs right now. The company has been in turnaround mode since CEO Ted Waitt returned in January 2001 to run the company he founded. Waitt's return sent seven of 14 top executives packing and set off a series of strategic initiatives that have yet to right a company listing from stormy PC sales and a pounding by Dell.
Strategic initiatives? A cluetrainy blogging colony where Gateway become context providers, would certainly be strategic -- fuck me! They could dominate the whole 'puter gig.
Turner also sees another opportunity to further sell services, software and other extras along with PCs bought and carried out the same day.
Their blog could remind them of the bits they didn't buy. People go to their own site, they don't go back to Gateways's.
"They're also going to be focusing more on peripheral products," Duboise said. "We're talking digital cameras, camcorders, games and all of that."
All of those high-margin add-ons could benefit Gateway's gross margins and eventually operation margins.
Perfect!

This is fun! The rest are over at sexblogs. A client sent these to me by email, me thinks, he'll be proud to got onto sexblogs ";->"

This is nice. Using clipToGif it automatically resizes an uploaded graphic and opens a browser window with the HTML ready for text. I just drop a screen shot into a folder, bingo.

A little bird tells me that villa bloggers buy 'puters. This hadn't occurred to me. I always saw bloggers as 'puter literate and with 'puters at home, certainly at work.
I've a Mac PowerBook 500 MHZ G3, my main machine, A 800 MHZ PC with a 19" monitor, and a Mac G3 233 MHZ. I've also an old pre PPC Mac in the loft. Two servers in the US which I've never seen, but feel like they're here.
This is a revelation to me. I see now why, when I start babbling away about how I want bloggers to do more, I'm completely missing the mark.
What I should be doing is paying more attention to the actual users of this system rather than who I think should be using it.
Please tell me more about yourselves!
Do you think you are reasonably computer literate?
Would you need support with your new machines?
Would a blogging colony run by and for 'puter newbies be a good idea? Possibly sponsored or owned by Gateway, Time, Evesham, etc.?

I was asking Mac if there were advertisers in Heroes and Villains mag or in the club's mag. He replied that HV has no advertisers, that the Club has national advertisers. These wouldn't be interested in an approach from me. Their advertising is probably looked after by a large London advertising agency.
If anybody has any clue how we could sell advertising to somebody please tell me. steve@cybersaps.com
The pack would contain a website ";->" results page, poster of site, poster of advert, and kisses.
I guess we're running at about 300,000 to 400,000 impressions a month, so our cost for an advert should be £2.50 per CPM (cost per thousand) which would make £750 to £1,000 per month (assuming we sell all -- very doubtful in current state of market). The usual industry standard price per CPM is £10 so we're good value. And, I guess, ready and willing to be advertised to.
Minimum placing is for 20,000 ads or £50.
We'll also start text ads, small text only adverts. These will be much lower in cost. And aimed at Joe Public, like, you and me.
Priced at 50p per CPM and a minimum placing of 10,000 adverts. So for as low as £5, you can announce new projects, articles, companies, and services to thousands of tech- and media-savvy Villa supporters. This would make us £150 to £200 per month (if we sold all). No free posters or websites with this, but you'd get a stats page.
I suppose we should also do button ads

sorry, it was my mistake. please delete my log.

sorry for the inconveniences i caused,

stephan

> Hallo nicht Fu§ballperson. Wenn Sie mich Ihre Site auf ein anderes Gebiet
> verschieben w�nschen, kann ich. Hier unter blogfootball sind Sie nicht
> willkommen. Dieses ist f�r nur Fu§ballleute. Ich bewirte Sites Klammeraffe
> UK£50 pro Jahr, wenn Sie die Energie des Bearbeitens in der
> Datenbanksuchroutine mit dieser Software m�gen, Sie wei§, da§ sie sie
> wertIST.

 

Another interloper bites the dust! And doesn't take up the offer of renting the site. Cheap skate! Everybody's after something for nothing.

Advert results: "Total click throughs = 15
Total views = 8672 "
A new macro, anybody can add it to their site, so long as it's a blog football site. {suites.bannerAds.adResults ()} I'm hoping to try and sell some advertising on blogfootball, and this macro is an early beta of the results a customer could expect.
{suites.bannerAds.adResults ()}

theswedishchef: WELL NOW THEY ARE ALL "LISTENING!": "Frankly, I wondered where they all were, this is such a great idea why wasn't there a site for the low-life * supporters of other sides."
My thoughts exactly. Allowing anybody to have their own site, where they can do what the hell they like in (so long as it's on topic, or a paid for site) makes real sense. You do realize that you can download your site and move it somewhere else, like another service provider (not many that are service providers, but they're out there).

claretpimpernel : And on the second day, God made Blogfootball: "Not sure about the oar puller tip though Steve! Out of all the articles here, you chose the only one that dwelt on tactics."
I wasn't going to wade through loads of villa sites just to get a suitable site with a suitable quote... I was at yours and... Didn't mean to cause offence, just illustrate.

Spurs : Allow me to introduce myself.: "...send it in and we'll talk about it. I only ask one thing of you good people. If you're going to send in a short-ish comment then your copy on an email is fine. However, if you want to go for a full-blown article, please, please, please, write on a Word Doc and attach it to an email. As the next paragraph will explain, at this early stage, I'm not entirely sure just where you will send your feed back too, but that will be sorted in the extremely near future. "

Actually you'll find it better if they contribute to your discussion group. All they need to do is join your site and start posting by hitting the discuss link. You can of course delete messages, and ban members as you like.

"Just one last thing. In my days at FTT/Spurs, I had the decadent luxury of having a full time webmaster to solve all my 'techy' problems. Now, I'm going to have to do a lot of the nuts and bolts stuff myself. At this point in time, my pet Beardie knows as much about it as I do, so in these early days, please bear with me if something you've sent doesn't make an immediate appearance. I CAN handle this! Trust me!"

I ain't no webmaster whipping boy! Right now you're on my machines in California. I'm in Telford. But you'll find the help link in your editors only menu to be a big help. There's probably about 30,000 site owners around the world. God knows how many members and users so the technology is very well tested, just that it'll seem a bit difficult in the early few days. Don't worry. I'll get better. You can ask me or Mac, I guess.

Villa : Coming Soon: "and hopefully recieve a weekly newsletter as you used to from FTT."
You should be able to use the bulletin feature for that news letter, once you've added all your old list to the member list in your site. Though I've never test this feature out, I'm told it's one of the most used on some sites.

CT :title}: "Other clubs' fans on the Blogs? DO I NOT LIKE THAT!"
Why not? I've always stated that I don't like football. I've tried to bang home to you lot some cluetrainy bollocks about the clubs treating you fans like shit. Never listening, never providing good service. The only way fans are going to get a better deal, is if they can get some political voice. At least here in Villa blogland there has been some sail makers, some agitation. By getting bigger, by drawing in other teams, surely this fighting back spirit could be harnessed and organised.
BTW CT when are you going to fix your title macro?

Aston Villa en Fran�ais :: "I'm more worried about the expansion of blogfootball. Looking at some of the test pages, it would appear that more clubs will be involved.
What bothers me though is the prospect of cockney wide-boys and thieving scallies turning up around here. As well as Dorset Reds pitching up and claiming blogfootball as their own invention, just like they did to us with the "Always look on..." song that Villa first used as a football chant in the late 1980's."
It's a free blogging world. I'd personally like it if there was fresh blogs every morning from intrepid trout fishers. TGelling me what flys were successful this morning, fished a few inches off the surface, retrieved slowly... And strike slowly just as the fish turns... Much more frigging interesting than a year of moaning about some geezer call Hellis.

cold shiver

Mac's having a cold shiver about the possible expansion of the blog empire. The future is coming, is the rest of the football world about to join us in the 21st century? [BlogFootball]
I had a slap head thing, the other night. Using Radio to read a discussion group is far, far less strain on a server than building pages. It is however, a strange way of working, all be it much more powerful. You can mail directly from outlines, send them else where, to another blog for instance, as well as seeing the outline of a dg like this -- click to enlarge.. Maybe we should start renting these blogs out to other sub spawners. Let's think bigger, and we get many more teams. Would people want an easy to use website and information centre for £40 a year? All you serious blogger here in Villa land how much do you think this service is worth? I know some have paid up to £50 to the fighting fund, and most donations were to the news site, or rather from the news community -- non bloggers.

I've always had in mind a community business model, or co-operative. People do what they do best and get something back for it. Maybe each team sells subsites. With the proceeds shared amongst the blogger who blogs the blogs, even if it's taken in turns, or shared -- and machines, software, updates, hosting, bandwidth, set up and maintenance costs?

To keep this service going, to better it, to bring in new features, to ensure there's adequate back ups, this all costs money, and time.

The serious bloggers here, you know the power of your site, well, maybe some of it. Imagine being able to grow into it more, to integrate it perhaps into your work, at least posting more pix of family life, or other habits. Over the years it'll build into quite a record.

Let me put it another way. What would you want for £40? Or is that too much? First 30 days free, SMS blogging, chat, several sites?

Maybe standard blogs should be free (one per individual) and other features charged for? Manila is available in 5 languages, so European clubs could also join the fray, this could get big, quite fast and it needs cash to keep going. Anybody know how to sell ads to chippies in Aston?

rss.xml file in every blogFootball site!

Click for bigger view of how I blog from the villa blogs these days, well as of in a minute. Now, I can keep up with the people who use the servers. They spot errors PDQ ";->"

PalmInfocenter: Sony Introduces Two Models with Keyboards, MP3 Players

Sony Japan has just introduced two new cutting-edge handhelds. The PEG-NR70 and PEG-NR70V both have built-in keyboards and 320 by 480 color screens. They also have built-in MP3 and ATRAC3 audio players. In addition, the PEG-NR70V has a built-in camera.

Palm OS 4.1, 16mb RAM has a 10Mb ROM, April 13 release for the top of the range $456 only in Japan... Why aren't laptops moving closer to this space? I need a phone inside my PowerBook, and a camera. I know I can get a phone card, I already use the infra red port and a Nokia 6210 at 9k, and a kritter. But it isn't something I take to the park with the kids, my Nokia is small enough but the damn key pad and predictive text, no copy/paste...

More to the point, imagine mobile blogging and surfing on the commute home, or intranet knowledge blogging, listening to the hum of the organisation as you're whizzed down the M6 in your chauffeur driven Merc. Maybe 5 years off in technical terms, but, many, many years before it's common place.

Of Weblogs, Websites and RCS

"(And no, Mom isn't stupid).
If I say to her, "just go write in the browser and here is a way of seeing the places where it has gone after you posted it" and "here is the place in the same browser where you go to assist the people who are coming to you" - RCS on her desktop-and-in-the-browser for the flower club work - she is quite likely to go, "ah, that makes sense."
Interesting article. I like it when people (techies) get down to this bottom level (mummies). This is the problem I have with "Radio" right now. There's too much interest in the high flying new and wonderful coding and development. Nothing about my Mum. And nothing, repeat nothing in the K-logging space is going to happen till developers come out of their own arses. (Me included.)
It mustn't matter where news items get posted, what's public, what's private. Until there are users, not coders, nor early adopters, there is no community.
I've a load of football meatheads currently forming communities of interest based around Manila. None of them care it's Manila. All they're interested in is the content, and a little of how it looks. I don't think many of them use the search facilities to look back into the archives, it's more a what's happening now type of gossip, who's updated their blog, who's getting most hits. There is little research, just commentary. I hate it, I've no, read none, zip, zilch interest in looking at fucking football drivel -- though I have to sometimes.
They are in fact mostly oar pullers rather than sail inventors . There are sail inventors there. Though of all their comments and suggestions re: the team, all get ignored, by the club, but not by their blogging peers.
Sail inventor EllisOut: Ambition For Villa - Manifesto: "I am standing for Parliament because I passionately believe urgent action is needed to make sport - not only football but other sports as well - more responsive to the needs and views of the supporters and spectators who are its lifeblood."
Oar Puller claretpimpernel : Round Holes, Square One: "Which brings us on to the midfield. Working from left to right, Barry had a sublime 5 minutes where his natural quality shined through."
Manila has my vote at the moment, it's mature and brings web writing to the bottom users -- football meat heads -- gawd bless 'em.

Yo blogFootball! I've added some adverts and created a new way of spawning sites under your own colonies.
The message is, if you know a company or organisation that wants one site, or many, I'm your man, and blogFootballers, if you could tell them, and drag them screaming to your blog, tell 'em how easy it is to look after.
I've got a bunch of cheques here, thanks guys, this goes straight over to the US to pay our very long-suffering hosters, the dudes. Whom I've owed money to for too long... Since my backer pulled out and stitched me for two grand I've had to sign back on the dole again. But, the good news is that I've finally clear of my bankruptcy ";->" I have the bit of paper from the court. So now, I'm out looking for contracts to keep these servers going... Soon as something comes in I'll start up a business. Currently, cold calling and mailing 'stuff.' Remember, I still don't like football.

Bad times at tea time today. The red times are mini outages, localised, in that probably other's could get through. But shows the system is under stress.