This looks like a pretty neat idea. Not only can I create a comic strip sans talent, I can share it, let people comment, let them edit it – this seems like fun to me. This seems like a lot more fun than “super-poking” someone or sending them a virtual banana for a real dollar.

I finally got around to switching my timbu.org email to be managed by google apps. It’s a much nicer interface than the cPanel front end I use now. Having google manage my email server doesn’t really give me anything new, rather it means that I stop worrying about the size of email on my web server – which has been a problem in the past. At the moment, they don’t really advertise themselves like an ISP, but you could easily cobble together something exactly like a hosting account by putting all their services together.

I still love my ISP and wouldn’t be willing to switch … yet.

I was doing some overdue blog house-keeping today and headed over to the google code page to see what new widgets were available. It saw a link to a chart api. It’s pretty good stuff. You can make all the usual charts like pie, bar,scatter and line charts plus venn diagrams.

Here is an example. This image you see below is being generated on the fly, look at the source for yourself if you don’t believe me. You can even plug it into your browser and start playing with the parameters for yourself if you are skeptical.

The “code” for that little diagram is amazingly simple.

<img src="http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chs=400x300&chd=s:Chart Preferences&chdl=People Who Blog|People who Like Charts|People who read my blog&chf=efefef&cht=v&chd=t:1000,250,10,50,7,6,10" />

It might look like goobledy-gook to you, but if you head over to the documentation it’s pretty simple.

It has been a long time since my blog either accepted comments. First it was due to problems with comments spam, then it was an issue with new blog templates. Now I hope all is finally working properly. Feel free to leave a comment if you like.

I think my blog is back on the air!
I still haven’t checked out comments, but I am much relieved I can probably publish again.

Jennie pointed me to www.truemomconfessions.com. It’s a good read, think postsecret, but shorter and a little more desperate sounding. This website really validates moms on those difficult days. When I know people are having children, as some of my loyal readers are, I’m feel happy for them and I also have to stop myself from saying things like, “You have no idea ofwhat lies ahead …”

Randall from xkcd.com has really been outdoing himself lately.

BTW, I am writing this from the future.

Comments are back on. I need to implement a captcha one of these days to prevent spam.

So I am posting this via Windows Live Writer. This beta  blog posting software is pretty amazing.

Liked

• spell check
• preview
• lists work like they should
• posting photos from the web works
• pure html view works
• the discovery of my blog software was perfect
• super easy to include a map (unfortunately it is a map that doesn’t work right for me)

Didn’t Like

• it always bugs me when a Microsoft product looks good and works
• the drafts aren’t saved on the server, although you can publish a draft to the server
• ugly smashed together html

Compared to other Blog posting software I’ve used I have to say this one is one of the best. There is an integration with IE like you might expect. If there was a Firefox plugin I might never use anything else to blog with.

Here is an example map.