Dan Olsen’s Weblog

I decided to see how much comment spam my blog had. To my surprise it is almost 13,000 spam comments that have been caught. I was expecting to see a number around 500 or so.

My blog is now Open ID enabled for comment posting. So, if you have a comment you can now login using your Open ID URL.

Technorati Tags: Open ID

I decided that I wanted to find out what browsers people were using to view my blog. I figured Firefox would be the top on the list but I also thought the number of visitors using Firefox. However, it was only a little over 50%. You can see the stats in the image below.

Technorati Tags: Blogging

I am currently redesigning my blog. I finally decided to come up with my own Wordpress theme. It is still a work in progress but it just feels good when it’s your own work that displays on the page.

I was reading through my feed subscriptions and found that President Bush mentioned bloggers. He says that bloggers can help show the good going on in Iraq as opposed to the negative stories the media shows us.

A video of the President’s question and answer session in West Virginia where he mentions blogs can be found here.

For anyone who follows Kim Cameron’s Identity Weblog you will see that he has made it possible to login to his blog using InfoCard. His blog runs WordPress which is written by PHP. You can find his announcement post here. Although the InfoCard hasn’t been active for very long the first attacker has already appeared in his subscribers list. Kim mentions how this first attack is not a bad thing.

I’ve been following the InfoCard technology with some communication with Kim Cameron and Mike Jones. I didn’t think I would be that interested in Identity when I started working for Phil Windley. However, as I’ve watched InfoCard and by attending the Internet Identity Workshop last October I have found that I have a bigger interest in identity than I thought. Speaking of the Internet Identity Workshop (IIW), this is where I will put in a plug for IIW 2006 Part A. Don’t forget to go and register today!

For those who are looking forward to the new movie “Superman Returns”, you might be interested in “Bryan’s Journals: Video blogs from the set“. I ran into them while looking at the list of video blogs on iTunes. I have watched a few of them and it’s fun to watch what goes on behind the scenes of a major motion picture. Each video is about two or three minutes.

Superman Returns is being shot digitally. In one of the videos talks about the speed of getting the scenes to the editors and I was a little surprised. They talked about how with regular film they can get the film in on Monday for developing and to the editor’s Wednesday. With the digital video, if it gets submitted on Monday it takes them until Thursday afternoon at the earliest. Bryan Singer starts drilling members of his crew on how they can make digital faster than film. He said the point isn’t only getting better pictures but also quicker production. It has been interesting.

As you can see on the left, I have added a map that shows where my blog is located geographically. I got this map using feedmap.net. I think it is a cool little tool that gives you a map and the number of bloggers nearby. This is a good way to find others in your area that may be blogging about simliar issues.

Technorati Tags: blogging

Well, I made a switch today. I switched to WordPress as you may have noticed by the way my blog looks now. I liked MovableType but I wanted to blogging software where I didn’t have rebuild the pages when I made changes. I know MovableType has that kind of functionality but I couldn’t get it to work on my server. I also like how you can create static pages within the system as well. I hope I don’t regret the change. So far so good.

Technorati Tags: blogging, WordPress

Well, I just read David Sifry’s recent post on statistics taken from Technorati. The post talks about the booming world of blogs. Go check out has post and see what I am talking about.

Technorati Tags: blogging, internet, Technorati

Yesterday I installed the MT-Blacklist plugin in order to turn on trackback pings again. I checked the logs for MT-Blacklist when I got in this morning and in less than 24 hours it has already had to block over 200 spam trackbacks. Although some still have got past MT-Blacklist, it has still removed a major burden from my blog.

I had installed MT-Blacklist before I moved servers but it was hardly blocking anything so I never installed it on my new server. Yesterday I figured I would check to see if the plugin had improved. Well, it has! The newest version of the plugin actually exceeded my expectations.

Technorati Tags: blogging, internet, MovableType, spam, web

Alfie Dennen, a web designer in London, has started the site werenotafraid.com.

Technorati Tags: blogging, internet

Joseph Duncan

As I was looking at My Yahoo! this morning and catching up on the latest news I found a story talking about Joseph Duncan, the man arrested in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho for killing and abducting members of the Groene family. It turns out that Duncan had a weblog that should have triggered some suspicion before anything happened.

Duncan talks about how demons were taking over and how he had already gotten away with some other things. You can tell that his blog was read by more than just a handful of people because of the number of comments on earlier posts. The last post has over 1000 comments from people commenting on how they are glad he is now in jail and that reverence should be observed for his victims.

I would hope that people who have read or end up do reading such blogs from known offenders would report such behavior in order to prevent such things from happening. Did some of those people who commented really think they were doing him a favor but trying to console him over the internet? It is sad what has happened and I hope a lesson will be learned from such a tragic situation.

Technorati Tags: blogging, internet

Well, here it is, my one hundredth post!

Technorati Tags: blogging, internet, MovableType

The latest version of Ecto is out. I have downloaded that latest version and I must say I like the new look. I have been using Ecto for almost a year now and it has been the best application for posting to my weblog that I have used thus far.

I am interested in figuring out how the Technorati tags work but I haven’t found much help on the Ecto web site. I haven’t had a whole lot of time to look up information about the tags but I hope to figure them out soon.

If anyone is looking for a good application for the Mac to post to their weblog, I would highly recommend Ecto!

[Posted with ecto]

I have changed to the new server. Unfortunately I am having problems with the domain name dan-olsen.net. So, in the mean time I will be using http://www.dan-olsen.org/weblog in order to provide access to my weblog.

In the next moth or two I will be changing servers. This will mean my blog will be down for a day or two while I make the changes. I will post again right before I make the change.

I am currently in my Middleware class and Dr. Windley is having us listen to an edition of IT Conversations with Dave Sifry. Dave Sifry is the founder and CEO of Technorati. Dave talks about the blogosphere and how it is growing and how information is becoming available earlier on blogs than in the main stream media. He also gives some interesting stats. I’ve listed a few of these stats below.

• A new blog is created every 7.4 seconds.
• 48% of blogs are abandoned.
• There are approximately 4 entries posted every second to blogs.
• 31% of blogs use RSS and 28% of those are full text RSS feeds.

If you are interested to hear what he had to say you can go to http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail313.html.

It finally happened to me. I have been hit by comment spam. I have disabled comments except for registered users. I will turn it back on in a week or two in hopes that the problem will be gone for at least a little while.

Phil Windley has given his blog a face lift. He has switched from Radio to Movable Type and decided it was time for a new look.