While I continue being too busy at work, run over to The Online Photographer and watch the video of the “Paintball Office” photo shoot. Sure the photo shoot looks long and difficult, but isn’t PhotoShop cool?

This is the Thursday edition of Open House, and comments and trackbacks are now open. If your site doesn’t support trackbacks, use the Wizbang Standalone Trackback Pinger.

If you’re wondering why blogging is erratic… you must be new here. If however, you’re wondering why blogging has been light, I’m in the last couple weeks of a significant project. This will of course be followed by several weeks of sitting around in a stupor wondering what happened. I like to call this “vacation”. Not entirely coincidentally, this vacation will fall over a major holiday, so that will suck out any blogging ambition I might possibly have…

On the plus side: I’m planning quite a bit of wandering in the next few months (Can you plan wandering?), so I should be able to post a lot of photos.  Midwestern travel mostly, but of course I have to get there too, so we’ll see what I can find along the way.

Now this is just hilarious. – BannerBlog : Apple: Sign

Matt Heaton is talking about Microsoft again. It’s not flattering.

Microsoft has done this to themselves because they are either incapable of producing a quality product or they don’t care anymore if their product is great. Either way its not a company I will do business with.

Do you disagree? Show me where I am wrong… I didn’t think so! – Matt Heaton / President Bluehost.com

I have to agree. Due to client requirements I’ve been using Office 2007 and MS SharePoint Designer a bit lately. Now I can see that 2007 is an improvement over previous versions of Office, but that really doesn’t take much. SharePoint Designer however, is in a whole class by itself. It is far and away the worst piece of supposed design software I’ve ever seen. The user interface is convoluted, the code it produces is crap. I’m really going to enjoy dumping it in the trash when this project is over. I won’t be using it again. I can see some benefit to SharePoint for people who need to collaborate and don’t share a workspace, but that’s the best they could do? I think Mr. Heaton is right, “they don’t care anymore if their product is great.” It’s a shame they’ve managed to corner so much of the computer OS market. It’s time someone took that away from them.

Trackposted to The Pink Flamingo, The Amboy Times, Allie is Wired, Adam’s Blog, and The World According to Carl, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

This is the Monday edition of Open House, and comments and trackbacks are now open. If your site doesn’t support trackbacks, use the Wizbang Standalone Trackback Pinger.

This is the Thursday edition of Open House, and comments and trackbacks are now open. If your site doesn’t support trackbacks, use the Wizbang Standalone Trackback Pinger.

Jan’s been shooting waterfalls again. Go take a look at Green Water, Flowing Swift and Cold and Still Pouring Rain at Franklin Falls. They’re spectacular.

I look forward to seeing how this turns out.

“While I am prepared to show they lied on allegation after allegation, you have generously offered to pay one million dollars for just one thing that can be proven false,” Kerry wrote to Pickens. “I am prepared to prove the lie beyond any reasonable doubt.”

“When you have done so, if you can then prove anything in the ads was materially untrue, I will gladly award $1 million. As you know, I have been a long and proud supporter of the American military and veterans’ causes,” Pickens wrote.

I personally think Mr. Kerry will be eating crow here, but I may be wrong. I find it heard to think that Mr. Picket would put himself in the position to loose a public bet like this. He seems like a betting man to me, one that doesn’t loose much, or often.

Another Monday, another Open House. I’m reminding on mornings like this of my favorite quote:

“Some mornings, it’s just not worth chewing through the leather straps.” – Emo Philips quotes

This is the Monday edition of Open House, and comments and trackbacks are now open. If your site doesn’t support trackbacks, use the Wizbang Standalone Trackback Pinger.

You may have noticed that blogging has been light. I’ve been busy this last week or so on several large projects. They’ll continue for some time to come. I’ll try to keep up. In the meantime, try browsing my sidebar links, or go visit some of my favorite sites, CascadeExposures and Where is Ben?. Then go read Lorelle’s post on Spinning Spammers Steal Our Blog Content .

This is the Thursday edition of Open House, and comments and trackbacks are now open. If your site doesn’t support trackbacks, use the Wizbang Standalone Trackback Pinger.

Roay Pearson, who I’ve mentioned once or twice, is in the news again.

US trousers-claim judge loses job

Roy Pearson’s term as an administrative law judge in Washington DC expired on 2 May and the selection commission voted not to reappoint him.

In 2005, Mr Pearson sued his cleaners after they refused to pay for a pair of lost trousers.

He said they had failed to honour a pledge of “satisfaction guaranteed”.

Apparently, the selection commission wasn’t satisfied. Don’t you love irony?

Somebody at Skinny Moose wants to know…

Some days don’t you feel like this guy…

No, no I don’t.

He is very funny however. Go take a look.

I won’t be posting anything else today, so check out the comments here to see what others are talking about, then go check out HotAir’s video about the Lumberjack in a Desert.

This is the Veteran’s Day edition of Open House, and comments and trackbacks are now open. If your site doesn’t support trackbacks, use the Wizbang Standalone Trackback Pinger.

What are you doing this Veteran’s Day?

The answer is probably yes, but I’ll come back to that in a moment.

There is a lot of confusion over what exactly an RSS feed is, and how it’s made available. An RSS feed is a simple XML file. As a blogger, you don’t need to know that. They come in one of several (7?) formats. You don’t need to know that either. The benefit of RSS feeds, is that they allow people to subscribe top your content. In other words, it lets people know that you have fresh content, and brings them back to your site. That’s the point you need to know.

Back to the original question. If people can’t find your RSS feed, is it still there? WordPress and other blogging platforms create and update RSS feeds automatically. Most blog themes have the feeds linked in the header in such a way as to notify browsers and feed readers of their presence. If you were to remove those links, intentionally or by accident, your site would appear to viewers as if it had no RSS feeds. The RSS feeds however, are still there. So if your RSS feeds aren’t visible to site visitors, check the header to see if they’re linked properly. It should look something like this:

<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”RSS 2.0″ href=”(your URL)/feed” />

There may be several of these, and the type and file name might vary, but that’s because most blogging platforms offer several kinds of feeds. If you’re looking at your theme files, you might see some PHP in there, so it would look like:

<link rel=”alternate” type=”text/xml” title=”RSS .92″ href=”<?php bloginfo(‘rss_url’); ?>” />

For a good example of an unlinked feed, look at the comment feed in WordPress blogs. It is part of the basic WordPress template, but isn’t linked to the header. So in effect, it exists, but nobody can see it. You want a comment feed on your WordPress blog? Link it to the header, and it will appear to feed readers. There may be a little variation in your WordPress installation, but the feed should be at:

<link rel=“alternate” type=“text/xml” title=“Comments” href=“(your URL)/wp-commentsrss2.php” />

Add that to your header, with your correct URL of course, and it should work.

Why would you want to remove access to your feeds? FeedBurner would be one example. By removing access to the normal feeds, and installing a FeedBurner feed, you direct all subscription traffic to FeedBurner. This allows you to track subscription statistics more carefully.

Feeds, no feeds, lots of feeds, or just one? That’s a question I’ll leave for another day. Until then though, at least you’ll know why they’re visible on your site, or why they aren’t.

“I see stupid strikes, and I see less stupid strikes. I see smart strikes,” Eisner said in the keynote, which was structured as a conversation with Neil P. Cavuto, senior vice president and managing editor of Fox Business News. “This is a stupid strike.”

The problem, Eisner said, is that the Writer’s Guild is lobbying for a bigger cut of the profits from digital distribution–and according to the former Disney chief, those profits simply aren’t there. – Michael Eisner

You can agree or disagree with Mr. Eisner on the stupidity of this strike. He lost what little credibility his argument might have had though, when his attention turned to Apple.

The studios “make deals with Steve Jobs, who takes them to the cleaners. They make all these kinds of things, and who’s making money? Apple! They should get a piece of Apple. If I was a union, I’d be striking up wherever he is.”

I don’t really follow either point he’s trying to make. Writers should strike at Apple? Where did that come from? His first argument, that I quoted in part, is the one that really stuck with me. He seems to be suggesting that since the business of online content doesn’t make any money, studios shouldn’t have to pay the writers… Do you think he uses this policy in his own business? The article mentions that his current company’s first venture with online content “didn’t make money”. How much do you want to bet that Mr. Eisner got paid despite this lack of profits?

This is the Thursday edition of Open House, and comments and trackbacks are now open. If your site doesn’t support trackbacks, use the Wizbang Standalone Trackback Pinger.

I noticed today that I wasn’t getting any comments. IN fact, I hadn’t received any for a couple of days. When I checked my site however, it wasn’t that I hadn’t received any, but that I hadn’t been notified of them. When I upgraded WordPress to version 2.3.1 recently, I stopped being notified of comments, pingbacks and trackbacks. My e-mail account was still working, and my auto site backup e-mail came in just fine, but those discussion related e-mails didn’t come in. Apparently, this is caused by a change in how WordPress handles these outgoing e-mails. The e-mail account it was trying to send them from was wordpress@(mydomain.com). I don’t have an account by that name, so my hosting service (Bluehost) was justifiably disallowing those e-mails. Adding that account at my hosting service, and the problem is solved.

I’d like to say thanks to Double Blind for showing me how to fix the problem.

As the second in my reviews of the Cowboy Code Marshal blogs, I’ve chosen American Truckers at War.

Style
My biggest problem with the style of American Truckers at War is that it needs more. The subject is passionately presented, and the blog theme needs to catch up. That may sound overly negative, but it shouldn’t be taken that way. Blog design should make a statement, and this design doesn’t speak loudly enough.

I like the red white and blue color scheme, it’s totally appropriate for this sort of site. This is one of the elements that I think could be pushed more. More red, more blue. It’s important with any design to present a balanced and unified color scheme, but with a red, white and blue palette, this is even more important. It’s very easy to let this color palette slip into disorder, which will significantly lower the site’s impact. The solution is to carefully control the range of colors used. By keeping the color palette carefully confined, the scheme becomes more unified, making the design feel more organized.

This is a three column site, with a lot of links and images. The site is using twenty one scripts, most of them blogrolls. This has the potential for wholesale chaos when it comes to site organization and structure. Chaos however, is held in check. While the organization could be improved, it is nowhere near as bad as could be. There is room for improvement though. Making an effort here to unify the format of the various blogrolls would pay off with a cleaner look and improved usability.

Most of these blogrolls come with their own image. This is another area that could be a horrible negative, but is at worst a neutral. Making an effort to unify these images in some way would go a long way to cleaning up the sidebars.

One of the things I like about the design is the unified look over all. A common error in this kind of web design is failing to keep the various parts of the site looking like they’re supposed to be together. This site doesn’t make that mistake. The whole site holds together nicely. Defining the sidebars a little more might improve the overall look, but care should be taken not to loose the unification that currently exists.

The sidebars are a too wide in my opinion. They are encroaching on the content a bit too much. While I can see the reasons behind this, a little more width in the content, and a little less in the sidebars would make noticeable difference. This could be done by removing or altering the wide elements which are forcing the sidebar widths. The left sidebar is being forced wide by a single image, which could easily be edited. The right sidebar is being forced by several elements which are more difficult to edit, but it might be worth it to either force this change, or remove those elements. An alternate option would be to move wider elements to one sidebar. This would allow for an increase in the content section, while also allowing for the retention of the wider elements.

Structure
Site structure is reasonable. While there are a number of validation issues which I personally would address, none of them are significant. Most of these issues are the result of a DocType which doesn’t match the HTML coding. Not too serious, but worth fixing. Another issue is some extraneous code that appears to be part of the blog design. This also is insignificant, but would likely be easy to fix.

This blog is powered by the Serendipity Weblog System. While I’m not familiar with this system, it is somewhat similar to WordPress in that it is a PHP based blogging platform which uses themes to control style. It should be a solid platform if executed properly.

This is also a site which uses frames. Not good from a search ability point of view. Frames are notorious for interfering with search engines. In this case it also must be interfering with the ability of other bloggers to link to this site. This is caused by the framset disguising the URL. If you go to the homepage, it shows the URL as www.americantruckersatwar.com. No problem there. If you go to any other page in the site however, it still shows that same URL. I don’t know whether the use of frames is utilized here because of hosting issues or the blogging platform, but I would give some thought towards rectifying this. Removal of frames should improve traffic from search engines, as well as other blogs. If for some reason this change isn’t possible, I’d make a few minor changes to the frameset in order to improve it’s functionality. My strong preference however, would be to dump the use of frames.

Content
Content is what you’d think from a blog called American Truckers at War. It’s always good to have a site’s content match it’s name, and this is the case here. Nothing annoying like a designer’s site called something silly like High Desert Wanderer.

What would I change
I’d unify and amplify. Unify the images, color palette, and blogroll structure, and amplify the style. The various unification schemes would simplify the overall site. It would improve readability, usability, and flow. I’ll clarify the unification points a little bit later, but here’s a short list.

1. Unify color scheme
2. Unify blog roll images
3. More clearly define sidebars
4. More clearly define content sections

A big part of the unification would be to get the various blogrolls with their associated images into some sort of consistent organization.

I’d increase the content section width. I’d do this by decreasing the width of both sidebars. While I’d attempt to keep them symmetrical initially, there’s nothing wrong with asymmetrical sidebars as long as they are neat, clean, and functional.

I’d consider reorganizing the sidebars. Ads on one side, blogrolls on the other is one option. Making the sidebar content more intuitive would be the goal.

I’d amplify the style by adding more red and more blue to the content section. I’d do this by adding color and graphic elements to the individual post template. I’d add more negative space between posts, and increase the size of the blog titles in order to improve flow.

The big change I’d make, would be to the header. This site needs a stronger header. It’s talking about and to truckers, it needs to make a strong and unwavering statement. Some sort of truck or trucking associated image seems obvious, but I’d work with site author to see what would be most appropriate. My first choice would be to use an almost abstract image of a truck. It could be an extreme close-up, or an unusually angled photo. You don’t want to go with a traditional or predictable photo of a truck here. Drama and impact are important, and this is the place for it.

Summary
This review may sound overly negative, but that’s not how I see it. I see the style of this site more as a blank slate than anything. The style current style isn’t a negative, but it’s not as much of a positive as it should be The site structure is much the same way, not a negative, but not a positive enough. This site needs to make a stronger statement.

In some ways this site’s style is being pushed too much by various blogrolls and associated images. They each make a statement of their own, and it confuses the overall style.

The key here is unifying the various site elements, and amplifying the overall style. Easy to say, not always easy to do. However, the improved usability, functionality, and dramatic effect that will come from an improve design will be well worth the effort.