Pye in the Face

In rare cases, insomnia can lead to surprising productivity. It’s nearly 6 in the morning and I’m still cranking. And cranky.

Let’s face it – one of blogging’s main charms is the ability people have to leave comments on your posts. A little community sprouts up and people can chat to one another or simply badmouth the original author (me). The problem I’ve been having is that until now it’s been quite a task to comment. You had to register with Blogger (Google), log in, provide a blood sample, etc.

As frustrated as ever with the limitations of the pedestrian ‘Blogger‘ software, I did yet another search for a suitable hack that would do the trick. And I finally found one! In a nutshell, you will no longer have to login to avoid leaving an anonymous comment. Just click through to the comments page for a particular article and fill in the form at the bottom. You can even preview your post or opt to have it remember your information. I am psyched – this is just what I’ve been searching for. Well done Ebenezer!

I need to make a few tweaks so it fits in better with my design, but it’s functional as of 10 minutes ago. So I hope that going forward even more of you will comment here on Pye In The Face. I’ve made it ridiculously easy, and you now have no excuse. Unless, of course, you have a life.

I wouldn’t be able to sleep right now if I paid someone to come by and hit me in the head with a snow shovel. Although I’m sure there’s a few people on this planet who would do it for free. So I’ve made yet another tweak to the blog. A “Classics” section, on the sidebar to the lower left, which I’ll update once a month or so. Think of it as a “best of” area where I’ll post stuff I think deserves a second look. Articles can get buried in the archives rather quickly. Some deserve it – some don’t.

In addition to my blogging nerdery I did do some socializing over the weekend. Friday I hung out with my friend Sarah for the first time in over a year. We had a great time leaning against the wall beside the SideBar’s jukebox and exchanging gossip about former co-workers. But I was dismayed to discover that the Tragically Hip song has disappeared. From the jukebox, that is. I don’t think Gord Downie has ever worked at TechTarget. But thank God the nine Jay-Z albums have remained intact.

Then Saturday night I ran into Christina whom I went to high school with. We talked for a couple hours and brutally judged the lives of our many mutual friends. She showed me a picture of her adorable baby son and I wondered for the eighteenth time this week if it’s not time to stop pretending I’m 22. Then I got back to my apartment to find it full of drunk, 22 year old girls – and decided I’ll put off the maturity thing just a bit longer.

Guestbooks were one of the first interactive website features and date back to the very early nineties. Heck, I even have an old one myself. But who needs a guestbook when you can have a guestmap? That’s right, folks. I’ve added a guestmap link in the new list at the very top of each page. Please have a look and then join the global party yourself.

So plant your pin, write your silly little greeting and join the www.davepye.com international community. You can select your icon, flag and then leave a message that pops up on the map when someone moves their mouse over you. It’s so nutty, I’m nauseous.

Over 5 years ago I started my first website – david.pye.com – and it grew into a silly little exercise that became quite popular amongst my friends. When I switched to the blog format, and changed my domain name, many of you were upset – having grown used to the larger galleries, the accompanying jokes and many other silly components. I was flattered yet torn, having decided the new format was really the way I wanted to go.

But as I’ve built out the new davepye.com, and ripped-off a lot of other people’s sites in the process, I’ve come to realize that a blog doesn’t have to conform to any convention over and above just exactly what I want. And there’s no reason I can’t work some of the former elements back into the new version of my own personal web shrine to… me.

You’ll notice a new series of links underneath the dot graphics of my face at the very top of each page. There’s now a link to an archived version of david.pye.com that will remain there for all time! The ‘gallery‘ button links to the old gallery pages (if you’re a new reader check them out – funny stuff) for the time being but will eventually become a new gallery much in the style of what I was doing before – with each photo having a funny caption, etc. I’ll figure out what else I’m gonna add in the months to come and for now there’ll just be placeholders.

As of this very afternoon, my old URL and email address are DEAD. Please update your favorites and address books. It’s all about www.davepye.com from here on in. I love doing this and am going to keep developing it into the most kickassiest of blogs, EVAH – I hope you stay tuned.

In a few days, my old email address (david@pye.com) will no longer function. I’ve been trying to wean most of you on to the new one, but some folks just don’t want to get with the times. So, if you want to stay in touch, update your records. One more time for the cheap seats:

My e-mail address is dave (at) davepye.com!

While we’re on the subject, some of you have probably noticed that people have stopped listing their email address properly, and have taken to substituting the @ symbol with something else. For example: bob@smith.com becomes bob (at) smith.com. In case you were wondering, this is because there are untold numbers of automated scripts out there, incessantly surfing the web just to harvest email addresses. These addresses are then sold to companies who will spam the bejaysus out of you. So, if you have a website, and you want your email to remain spam-free, disguise it somehow.

So once again – david.pye.com and david@pye.com are ancient history. There will be a time-capsule-esque link to my old website from this one. Update your address books and your browsers, or risk losing me forever.

There are a lot of exchanging hosting for your small business including computer servers that provide a storage for your email hosting and other information. Exchange outsourcing services are dedicated exchange hosting that is monitored by professionals.

Since I was apparently channeling the creative talents of Jayson Blair earlier tonight, I thought that any further time spent working on the blog should be devoted to some structural improvements. I found two useful Blogger ‘Hacks’ and have added them to the template. If you care, keep reading. If not, keep reading anyway. If you’ve made it this far you obviously have nothing better to do.

Archive Dropdown Menu:

If you look to the lower left, you’ll see that the archives can now be reached via a handy-dandy dropdown menu. This works double duty – by both saving space, and reinforcing my female readers’ resolve to never date me.

Recent Comments:

Where the aforementioned improvement saves more space space, this next one is simply a colossal waste of it. But we’ll leave it up for a while and see if people actually begin to use it. It’s a list of the most recent user comments since your last visit to Pye In The Face. I hope this will increase the likelihood of people registering with Blogger in order to not have to leave anonymous comments (which drives me bananas with its sheer laziness). But I also think that’s as likely as me seeing a one-legged cat bury a turd on a frozen pond over the coming winter months.

Four months and 115 articles later, it’s officially time to add search functionality to Pye in the Face. If you’d like to revisit something you read weeks ago, and don’t know where to look, simply type an appropriate keyword into the search box on the left and see what happens. It’s surprisingly accurate, powered by Google and just an absolute joy to have around.

If you want to “kick the tires” on this new feature, here are some recommended silly keywords you can type that will bring up some of my personal favorites.

• Inka
• Littlest
• Oompa
• Tragically
• Puking
• Masshole
• Graceland
• Poutine
• Saget
• Puckey

You can also move the button to “web” and it will return a regular Google internet search for whatever you might be looking for. I hope you all find it useful. I have some catching up to this week, so stay tuned for lots of bloggy activity in the days to come.

Big changes are imminent at davepye.com if you remotely care. I’ve been turned on to a new publishing program called WordPress, and am subsequently sold on the idea of jumping the Blogger ship. It’s more complicated, clunkier and difficult in terms of graphic design – but so much more versatile. If I roll up my sleeves, learn some code and make it happen, it’ll make this site a lot more fun and dynamic for everyone who surfs it daily.

So if my blog entries become less frequent, you know why. Bear with me.

I’ve always hated my crummy domain name. It’s actually a subdomain, hence the annoying dot between David and Pye that’s been confusing and throwing people off for 5 years. The clunky and hard-to-remember david.pye.com has gone the way of the dodo, and you’re now loving life at:

www.davepye.com!

I have redirects in place at the old site that should automatically send you here, but that site will close down in a few months – so update your bookmarks!

I’ll also archive the old, grey site somewhere in the background too. But from now on, the blog will only be updated here at the new site. Why the change? I accidentally let davepye.com expire last month, and it was quickly snapped up by a woman in Florida whose husband shares my name. I emailed her in a panic and pleaded with her to give it back to me. I fully expected her to ask me for an extortionate, cyber-squatter sort of amount for it’s return, but she took pity on me and sold it back for the $20 she’d spent to register it. Thank you, Kimberly Pye. You’re a doll.

Anyhew, I took it as a sign, bit the bullet and moved everything over to the new domain last night. I hope you enjoy it, and I know it’ll be easier to remember. My email will be changing accordingly too, from david@pye.com to dave@davepye.com – so please update that info as well.

I hate moving day. Welcome to the new digs.

My website, david.pye.com, has been a labor of love for the past 5 years and a great way to keep in touch with those that give a budgie’s hindquarters. It takes more time than I have to keep it properly updated – and believe me, when I don’t add anything new for a long period of time I hear about it. It’s nice to be wanted. Not like in a Dr. Richard Kimball sort of way, but… I’m sure you get my point.

So the site is evolving, and this blog will be center stage from now on. I’ll add the odd gallery and keep everything in place that’s currently part of the site, but this page will become the heart and soul. The epicenter. The Matrix. Ernest Goes to Jail. Ishtar. Where was I?

Right. I can share my musings when they strike, post photos I think y’all might like to see and even interact with anyone who chooses to post a comment. I can do it quicker, easier and more frequently than when my site was just clunky HTML.

So hold on tight and brace for the blogging. Or don’t. In fact, watch this video clip instead. It’s one of the funniest things I have ever laid eyes on, and my gift to you.