I think I’ve gotten all the remaining bugs and functionality worked
out on the email posting capability of this web log. I added the final
bit today to cause it to send to the subscription list when an email
post is added to the weblog. Now I’ll use it occasionally to verify that
the strange line breaks are indeed handled correctly. If that proves to
be the case, this will become the default process for me to add entries
to the web log when I only have access to email.

There is some other capability in the system that I’ve also turned on
and will see if that has any affect. The web log community have defined
a capability called “trackback”. This is the method of notifying another
website that it has been referenced in my web log. The idea is to create
a literal web of cross-linked web logs. If it had been turned on for
some earlier posts, the referenced web pages would also have a link back
to my web log. This trackback capability drives some of the Google
process where web pages that are frequently linked by other web pages
rank higher in the Google search algorithm. That capability didn’t go
unnoticed by people who publish their weblogs for very specific
political purposes. By cross-linking with many other web logs, the
Google search engine pays attention and that web log has a higher
probability of being found in a search. In the early days of the
presidential primaries one of the Democratic candidates make good use of
this capability to drive fund raising. It didn’t help in other ways as
he didn’t survive long in the primaries but definitely put a new tool in
the political tool bag. In the case of my web log, it does show up in
Google if I do a search on “rnsmith.com”. If I search on my name, the
web site also shows up, on about page 11 of the results. The early pages
all refer to a writer named Roland Smith who has had several books
published. He is, unfortunately, no relation so I have no possible claim
on his fame.

The only other capability that remains to be explored relates to Real
Simple Syndication (RSS). This is a process that allows people to
subscribe to web logs. Whenever they open their RSS reader, that program
queries all of the subscribed web logs to see if anything new has been
added since the last time the RSS reader was run. If so, the new content
is downloaded and displayed in the RSS reader. If not, the reader just
goes on to the next web log. I haven’t downloaded and installed an RSS
reader, but with the new release of the Firefox web browser and a very
nice RSS reader plugin, I think I’ll see whether or not this is a useful
capability. Many news websites, such as CNN and USAToday have RSS feeds
enabled and that may be interesting to try out. If it does seem to be
interesting, then I’ll try to get RSS setup on this weblog and see if
there’s any interest.

Over time as I’ve posted to the web log, I’ve begun to learn that
there is reason to be careful about the content of my postings. I’ve had
to become much more careful about what I say about my job, my employer,
and things that may be going on there. By posting to a web log, I have
become inadvertently a more public figure and possibly even an perceived
spokesperson for my company. Further I’ve begun to shy away from fully
naming people unless they also already have somewhat of a public
presence. Names of family members, for instance are now only first names
or references by relationship. Not everyone reads web logs with upright
intent! Further, I’ve had to change the program so that I review all
comments before they can be posted to the web log. Some spammers have
latched onto the blog comment feature and have blasted my web log full
of comments advertising gambling or porno sites. As that happens, I
block the poster entirely, but still have to review every posted comment
before allowing it to appear on the blog. So far, the overwhelming
number of comments have been spam with very, very few real comments from
someone reading the weblog. Either that means no one reads the entries,
or that they are so benign or mundane that they aren’t worth commenting on!

There’s actually a couple of conferences for people who do web logs.
One of them, perhaps the father of the web log conventions, is
bloggercon. This one-day conference was recently held at Stanford
University in Palo Alto, California (see
www.itconversations.com for recordings of some of
the sessions at that conference). One of the sessions was for “newbies”
and discussed reasons why people put up web logs. I fall into the “diary
or journal” classification, which is by far the largest category of web
logs. That essentially means that I’m writing to myself and allowing
anyone who wishes to kind of listen in and interject comments from time
to time if they so desire. Talking to yourself doesn’t necessarily mean
that you’re crazy — but if I start answering myself, then you can call
for the folks in the white coats!

That’s all the ramblings for tonight.

The blogging software I’m using (b2) has some capability that I’ve had a
lot of trouble with — that is, the ability to pick up e-mail from a
mail account and put it in the web log. Because it didn’t work
correctly, I wrote my own routine and have been using that for the
purposes of receiving email from my Blackberry and posting it to the
website. That works fairly well, but some mail forwarding programs that
my Blackberry uses breaks up the e-mail text in in arbitrary ways and
inserts some other characters. When this type of e-mail message is
posted to the blog, it really looks bad and I have to go back and
correct the post manually. Supposedly the native b2 e-mail processes
these e-mails correctly.

So, today I spent some time fixing the native b2 process and getting it
to work. Now I need to try it with enough different e-mail
configurations to see if it really does handle the funny lines
correctly. I’ve still got some work to do on this native process since
it doesn’t send out notifications that the weblog has been updated. I’ll
need to add this code. Anyhow, it turns out that there were two
offending lines of code in the native b2 e-mail process. By commenting
out those lines of code, it now at least works. Time will tell if it
works with strange e-mail relay servers!

This is the first post using the native process. Perhaps over the next
week I’ll be able to determine what else needs to be done to make this
truly a useful process.

A couple of days ago I listened to a podcast from Tokyo Calling where Scott described his Japanese holiday called Bunka no Ni, or Culture Day. It reminded me of an earlier Bunka no Hi holiday when Nina and I were living in Japan. The Stake had arranged in 1997 for an overnight group trip to Mt. Fuji to tour some of the lava caves in that area. Since the holiday was on a Friday, this would make for a two-day trip. The trip was for the older members in the stake and some 40 people signed up, including Nina and me. While we didn’t know exactly what to expect, it sounded like a lot of fun, and it turned out to be completely different than what we had expected and a whole lot of fun!

We boarded the bus in Ushiku, a nearby city, to drive into northern Tokyo to pick up members from each of the ward buildings. By mid-morning the bus was full and we were ready to leave from the last pickup location. However, since it costs money to drive on the expressways in Japan, and the fee for busses was very expensive, we took normal roads through Tokyo and south towards Mt. Fuji, along with twenty million other Japanese drivers. Overall I’d expect we averaged about ten miles an hour for the entire drive that day, and that might be generous! We didn’t arrive at the hostel until well after dinner time.

Now, most Westerners would have been very frustrated with that traffic and we would have immediately taken up a collection to pay for the expressway…. Not the Japanese! No sooner had we started than the karaoke started. The bus, of course, came equipped with a karaoke machine and TV’s all along the bus aisles showed the subtitled words to the music. A couple of microphones were attached to cables along each side of the bus so that the mikes could be passed from person to person. Four huge books of songs available on the karaoke were passed up and down the bus. Everyone came with treats to share (Nina had made chocolate chip cookies that were very popular), and they began calling out song numbers to the bus attendant who entered them into the karaoke machine. For the next nine hours we participated in the number one all time favorite Japanese activity: singing karaoke.

Even though there are karaoke bars in the U.S., they are nothing at all like how karaoke is done in Japan. In fact, if I had asked anyone on the bus after the trip what the best part of the trip had been, they would have unanimously said, "Karaoke!" It is infectious as well. Long before we arrived at the hostel, we both had been hooked into singing something as well. I was also amazed at the quality of voices and singing on the bus! It was very much a nine-hour concert.

The hostel was a kind of a community sleeping hotel where dinner and breakfast were supplied, but you had to go get it from the kitchen and then do the dishes afterwards. The men all slept on the tatami mats and futons in a couple of rooms and the ladies all slept in other rooms — no other arrangements for married couples. I don’t sleep well in the floor, but it worked out OK.

The next morning we toured one of the huge lava caves at the foot of Mt. Fuji. These caves are remnants of the cooling lava flows where trapped air bubbles had formed huge cavities. That was followed by a trip to a huge garden (which was almost devoid of plant life in November) and the inveitable group picture. Then we boarded the bus for the ride back home.

The next day the traffic was much different. What had taken nine hours the day before took about four hours on Saturday. Traffic made that much difference. But, again as soon as the bus moved, karaoke started. It didn’t stop until we were at the last drop-off point. The trip was one that we’ll remember fondly and vividly for the rest of our lives. It certainly was a "Culture Day" for us!

This weekend our niece Ashlyn came down from BYU-Idaho to visit. We also attended the blessing of a great-niece. I’ve posted a few pictures on the web page. Click on "Pictures!" on the right.

Election day has come and gone, Thank Heaven! This was certainly one of the most acrimonious elections in my memory although I remember the Goldwater / Johnson campaign in 1964 has being very harsh. Mostly right now I’m happy to have all of the advertisements gone from TV for all the local offices. Some of them were very nasty. Why must all campaigns be attack campaigns? What ever happened to talking about what the candidate stands for and what they will work for without having to attack the opponent at the same time? Anyhow, it’s now all over and I’ve certainly breathed a sigh of relief.

The forecast says we’ll got some snow or rain this afternoon. It looks too warm for snow, so the fact that the new snow blower is in the garage still in the box and in need of some serious assembly won’t become important. On the other hand, the wind never seems to stop blowing here! The hot tub sits kind of out in the open and as a consequence, in the cold weather it isn’t very useful. I’m going to have to put a gazebo or something around the hot tub so that we can make use of it during the winter!

The podcasting capability I’ve referred to in a previous post continues to be very interesting. So far I’ve found a couple of podcasts that are interesting enough that I’ve added them to the podcast aggregator iPodder. These are:

• Tokyo Calling: a reasonably regular podcast from an American living in Tokyo Japan. Some of the things he talks about are quite familiar to me and I find it very interesting.
• Geek News Central: Todd Cochrane’s speaking style is refreshingly amateur. He does spend a fair amount of his podcast talking about technical stuff along with his own views on the subject. It has a little too much music on the podcast, but I still find it interesting.
• Daily Source Code: Many will remember Adam Curry from the early MTV days. He’s kind of the father of podcasting. His podcasts are fairly long, but usually quite interesting and sometimes provoking.

I’ve also found some very interesting stuff on itconversations.com. These are either recordings of speeches from technology luminaries or interviews with these luminaries. I download the recording in iPod format, double click on the resulting download, and the file is moved into iTunes. I put it in the playlist I’ve set up for itconversations, and then listen to the talk or interview at my convenience. This is very cool stuff.

Finally, I’ve read some stuff on the web and on Slashdot about photoblogs. The idea is to put on the blog one photo periodically and then perhaps talk about the photo. I guess I should stop calling this a weblog and refer to it as a photoblog?