Lisa and I go way back. I started out on Blogger.com in November 2003. I soon realized I needed my own domain and a new look. I searched for a blog designer, found Lisa at E. Webscapes, and learned she also hosted blogs (see Blogs-About).

The WordPress blog platform was fairly new at the time, and Lisa specialized in setting up WordPress blogs. Movable Type was the hottest platform, but I said, “Sure, why not? I’ll go with WP.”

Since then, Lisa’s created two designs for me (and I’m in desperate need of a new one for 2008), and she’s still hosting LBC. And I have no complaints. I highly recommend the very patient and generous Lisa’s design and hosting services. Since I first contacted her, she’s blown up. And still cool. Check out her blog, Just A Girl In The World.

Thanks for the mention, Lisa, and I look forward to reading your book.

I’m thinking about doing this myself, and I believe more bloggers should try it. Not only is it a great way to get more people to link to your blog (Kathleen kindly mentioned me) but it helps personalize the blog.

Feedback requested. Would you want to watch an occasional video blog post at LBC? If you “read” video blogs, let us know what’s out there and what’s good.

Perhaps video blogging will remind readers that there’s a real person behind this blog, risking unfair and sometimes nasty criticism from anonymous Internet freaks surfers. The negativity is, I must admit, vastly outweighed by the kindness of strangers.

I implore you, can’t we all just get along? Do it…do it for the children.

Addendum: Video commenting?

FFC is a hobby blog and an experiment in search engine optimizing and revenue generating. It’s already pulling in quite a bit of traffic because of the movie hype.

FFC will also function as a forum to discuss Narnia, Harry Potter theories, review fantasy fiction and related books for Christians, and similar topics. Fantasy Fiction for Christians is the first of several blog projects.

The template is a modified version of a WordPress theme called Journalized Sand. I’m partial to a three-column layout and soft earth tones. Check it out and tell me what you think.

This morning Matt Drudge linked to a story about the Webby Awards, the so-called “the leading international award honoring excellence in web design, creativity, usability and functionality.”

The Drudge Report’s breaking story about married president Slick Willie’s sexual romps with a woman not his wife was chosen as the second most influential Internet moment in the past 10 years (see Blogging Matt Drudge for background).

The decade’s most influential moment was the dot com booms and busts:

Launched by Netscape’s IPO in 1995, the boom spurred billions of dollars in private investment in the Internet, new technologies, marketing, and fiber optic cable and led to the development of such landmark sites as Google.

“Though now often synonymous with failures … the dotcom boom and bust was critical to fast-tracking the spread and popularity of the Internet,” the Webby committee said.

In 1995, there were 16 million people online, compared to the current estimate of 957 million.

I imagine that few of us take time to think about the importance of that occasion. In our lifetimes, we’ve seen a paradigm shift of dramatic proportions. The Internet, for better or worse, has changed the way we live, think, and view the world.

The globe is still a vast expanse in reality, but the world in our minds, shaped by the Internet, seems smaller. Yet it’s a growing collection of interlinking ideas, thoughts, documents, people, projects, locations — almost beyond comprehension. You couldn’t overstate it if you tried.

The Webby Awards article reminded me of the August 2005 issue of Wired Magazine, which highlighted a few of the most amazing events in the past 10 years that shaped the network we now take for granted, including the invention of the Netscape browser.

World Wide Web

In We Are The Web, Kevin Kelly writes:

The accretion of tiny marvels can numb us to the arrival of the stupendous. Today, at any Net terminal, you can get: an amazing variety of music and video, an evolving encyclopedia, weather forecasts, help wanted ads, satellite images of anyplace on Earth, up-to-the-minute news from around the globe, tax forms, TV guides, road maps with driving directions, real-time stock quotes, telephone numbers, real estate listings with virtual walk-throughs, pictures of just about anything, sports scores, places to buy almost anything, records of political contributions, library catalogs, appliance manuals, live traffic reports, archives to major newspapers – all wrapped up in an interactive index that really works.

I discovered the Internet in 1995, and the only words in my vocabulary to describe the phenomenon to those who didn’t use it were “layers, upon layers, upon layers of information.” As I surfed the web, I didn’t realize I was seeing only a microscopic tip of a universe-shattering iceberg.

In one form or another, the idea of an Internet has existed for years. But it wasn’t until the invention of a browser called Netscape that non-nerds would uncover a world that seemed to exist in another dimension.

Companies were resistant to investing in the Internet years ago because many saw it as expensive, hard-to-use, boring, and used mainly by teenage boys. In other words, nerds. After Netscape went public in 1995 with stock peaking at $75 on the first day, the World Wide Web expanded and blossomed, and companies began to invest in the development of a staggering amount of information.

Think about it. Where else could you communicate with people all over the planet and create a network of hyperlinks connecting similar and disparate web sites and ideas, owned by no one? The Netscape Navigator was so named because of its power to guide users from one destination to another. Surfers are figuratively transported.

As soon as you go online, you’re connected to a network. When you click on a link to view a web page, trillions of bits and bytes of information flow from one computer to another, and anyone — not just private companies, or the government or a privileged few — can create the content that flows through the wires and cables.

Don’t be too jaded to contemplate this mind-shifting and totally unexpected achievement.

Linking Makes the World Go Around

Did you know that Google, the world’s greatest search engine, began as a tool to analyze links? From The Birth of Google:

Page noticed that while it was trivial to follow links from one page to another, it was nontrivial to discover links back. In other words, when you looked at a Web page, you had no idea what pages were linking back to it. This bothered Page. He thought it would be very useful to know who was linking to whom….

He reasoned that the entire Web was loosely based on the premise of citation – after all, what is a link but a citation? If he could divine a method to count and qualify each backlink on the Web, as Page puts it “the Web would become a more valuable place.”

Larry Page built a “crawler” to discover the millions of documents on the web, and a primitive Google was born.

Linking is what makes the Internet useful, and the quality of links is becoming more important that the quantity of links on a site. If you’ve been blogging long enough, you understand and appreciate the value of links. If you say you don’t, you’re either in denial or not a true blogger.

The Stratosphere of the Blogosphere

You, an ordinary person, can create a blog for free in five minutes. You can play reporter and investigate people, places, and things, and self-publish your news stories. You can post pictures, sound files and video, too. If you build up enough traffic and linkage, people and companies will give you money to advertise on it.

Some people don’t like comparisons between blogging and the Protestant Reformation and printing press, but I do. For my take on blogging, read the entire blog. If you don’t have time, see the following:

The Information Reformation
Blogger Nation
Mini-review of BLOG
Easongate
Rathergate

I’ll conclude the post with one more quote from Kevin Kelly about the Internet:

Why aren’t we more amazed by this fullness? Kings of old would have gone to war to win such abilities. Only small children would have dreamed such a magic window could be real. I have reviewed the expectations of waking adults and wise experts, and I can affirm that this comprehensive wealth of material, available on demand and free of charge, was not in anyone’s scenario. Ten years ago, anyone silly enough to trumpet the above list as a vision of the near future would have been confronted by the evidence: There wasn’t enough money in all the investment firms in the entire world to fund such a cornucopia. The success of the Web at this scale was impossible.

At the risk of sounding corny or melodramatic, I’ll confess that the power of an awesome, expanding, and evolving invention (in my lifetime) like the Internet leaves me breathless.

How is the value determined?

So, if AOL or some other giant wanted to buy LBC, does this mean I can ask for $1 million with a straight face?

Addendum: TLA is worth close to $19,000.

(Hat tip: Business Blog Consulting)

Also see Top Ten Design Mistakes. My biggest pet peeves: 1) Blogs with no “About” section. You don’t have to write a multi-page bio, just tell us something about yourself, even if blogging anonymously. 2) Difficult-to-find or no e-mail address.

Did you know that 6.4 billion people are blogless? Oh, the humanity!

Update (10/19): I hope no one thinks I’m calling them out with my pet peeves. LBC has some design and usability faux pas, too. As far as design is concerned, I prefer a less busy-looking, more streamlined blog, for instance, but I accept ads, which tend to look flashy. Between the minimalist look I want and ad revenue I need, I chose revenue. Bottom-line: design your site to your specifications.

Lisa Sabin of Elegant Webscapes, who also designed my template, is highly recommended. Price page.

For your coding needs (every girl needs a good coder), I recommend Mark Jaquith of Tempus Fugit.

See the Geek Stuff category.

Update: I forgot to mention Mark Coffey at Decision ‘08. He left Blogger.com for WordPress.

Writing computer code for a living probably lost prestige a long time ago. Now it seems those and other tech jobs are being outsourced to the point where college kids are rethinking their career plans:

As an eager freshman in the fall of 2001, Andrew Mo’s career trajectory seemed preordained: He’d learn C++ and Java languages while earning a computer science degree at Stanford University, then land a Silicon Valley technology job. The 22-year-old Shanghai native graduated this month with a major in computer science and a minor in economics. But he no longer plans to write code for a living, or even work at a tech company.

Mo begins work in the fall as a management consultant with The Boston Consulting Group, helping to lead projects at multinational companies. Consulting, he says, will insulate him from the offshore outsourcing that’s sending thousands of once-desirable computer programming jobs overseas.

More important, Mo believes his consulting gig is more lucrative, rewarding and imaginative than a traditional tech job. He characterized his summer programming internships as “too focused or localized, even meaningless.”(Source)

Programming used to be geek territory, but with open source platforms like WordPress, even I know how to write code. And I’m not even that smart!

This is a little off-topic, but the story reminds of a Dell commercial that left me flabbergasted. I have a Dell desktop, and I’ve had to call support a few times. The first time I called, I couldn’t understand what the guy (Indian?) was saying. I’d heard that American businesses were outsourcing these kind of jobs, but my ears were unprepared. The other times I called, I got someone who had a better grasp of the English language.

So when I see this Dell commercial, I’m wondering if I misheard the word “Dell.” The support person was a white, Midwestern-looking guy with an all-American accent answering questions and cracking jokes. For shame!, I said to myself. Why don’t these computer companies make commercials with the kind of people who really answer support calls? Who do they think they’re fooling?

Thanks to a cool comment plugin, I can retrieve blacklisted comments from the database and approve legitimate ones (which also means I need to delete spam from the database). I just approved dozens from months ago, weeks ago, and today.
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Update II: The ultimate goal is strict XHTML compliance. If you’ve got the talent, I’ve got the need. Contact me.

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I’m supposed to be working, but once I start fiddling around with WordPress code, I can’t stop!

Last year when I moved to WP, I asked several users to critique my blog. The first template I had used tables. If you’re up on the latest web standards (and W3Schools), you know that tables are passé. Tables are great for data, bad for layout. Designing a site with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is the way to go. Wikipedia has a helpful entry about CSS. The current template is stylesheet-based, more flexible, and loads easier in most browsers, including tiny browsers on personal digital organizers.

Back to the critique. I got so much feedback about the tables and how sloppy the coding was, I spent two days learning about XHTML and how to clean up the code. I also learned that WP geeks are serious about their code. I use the word “geek” in a good way, especially now that I’m becoming one. I’m even citing Wikipedia, another geek paradise. The more I understand how my blog functions behind the scenes, the more I want to learn about WP in general, PHP, and how to find better and more dynamic plugin for added features. (Also see the WordPress wiki)

I’ve spent the last two hours tinkering with code and downloading plugins from Tempus Fugit, run by freelance coder Mark Jaquith, and Cold Forged. Every now and then readers ask if I plan to install a comment spell checker. Well, I uploaded the plugin and couldn’t get it to work properly. Maybe I’ll try again later. I also want to add comment preview.

If you want to talk about WP, CSS, PHP, Movable Type, XHTML, the web in general — whatever — this is the thread to do it. Also see Why Should I Avoid Tables (for Layout)?

The tables vs. stylesheets discussion has been going on for years. I found a 2002 article by blogger Dave Winer, inventor of RSS. To find out if your site is constructed with tables (and you care), go under “View” in the toolbar if you’re using IE and select “Source.” In Firefox, select “Page Source.” Firefox gives you a color-coded view, much easier to understand. If you see “table” and a bunch of “td” tags, the page is made with tables.

About XHTML, you’re probably more familiar with it than you think. For example, if you’ve noticed that more sites are replacing the bold tag (b) with strong (strong) and the italics (i) with emphasis (em), you’ve seen XHTML. The new standards are one reason I used to disable hypertext and most HTML tags in comments. I couldn’t assume commenters knew XHTML. Now WP 1.5 supposedly fixes invalid code automatically.

[Note: I didn't realize the article was written in 2002. I wondered why it was spoiler-free.]

I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed Sci-Fi speculation, analysis, and present-day analogies. Last turns the “Star Wars” morality play on its head, arguing that the Empire, not the Republic or the Rebel Alliance, is the best way to run a galaxy. He acknowledges that it’s a difficult case to make, given the Empire-in-black theme and apparently murderous activities of Darth Vader and his “Dark Side” minions. His argument is convincing, though.

At the beginning of the saga in 1977, we see a young Luke Skywalker, restless on his uncle’s farm, suddenly thrown into a galactic adventure. Episodes I-III (which I didn’t see) provide the back story, which is where Last begins. He discusses the ineffectiveness of the Senate and compares the Republic itself to our own ineffectual United Nations. The only “armed” protectors of the galaxy, run by the Republic, are Jedi Knights, whose power (The Force) is inherited. Separatists, who “seem genuinely to want to make a fresh start with a government that isn’t bloated and dysfunctional,” want to break away from the Republic and control their own destinies. Sound familiar?

Darth Vader’s “evil” Empire seizes control of the galaxy some time between “Attack of the Clones” and the 1977 movie. Last writes:

Lucas wants the Empire to stand for evil, so he tells us that the Emperor and Darth Vader have gone over to the Dark Side and dresses them in black.

But look closer. When Palpatine is still a senator, he says, “The Republic is not what it once was. The Senate is full of greedy, squabbling delegates. There is no interest in the common good.” At one point he laments that “the bureaucrats are in charge now.” [Sound familiar?]….Make no mistake, as emperor, Palpatine is a dictator–but a relatively benign one, like Pinochet. It’s a dictatorship people can do business with. They collect taxes and patrol the skies. They try to stop organized crime (in the form of the smuggling rings run by the Hutts). The Empire has virtually no effect on the daily life of the average, law-abiding citizen.

Also, unlike the divine-right Jedi, the Empire is a meritocracy. The Empire runs academies throughout the galaxy (Han Solo begins his career at an Imperial academy), and those who show promise are promoted, often rapidly.

Last presents evidence that the Empire isn’t the evil beast it’s made out to be, while acknowledging that it certainly appears so. For example, when the Empire destroyed Princess Leia’s planet, I remember gasping at the sight of it blowing up (80s-era special effects weren’t bad). A whole planet vaporized. Everyone on it, including those you loved, gone in an instant. But Leia was a rebel, liar, and lawbreaker who hid other rebels. And she was a spy.

About all the other killings, Last says, “Whatever the case, the important thing to recognize is that the Empire is not committing random acts of terror. It is engaged in a fight for the survival of its regime against a violent group of rebels who are committed to its destruction.” Good stuff.

After the Jedi prevail and the Empire is crushed, the galaxy is back to square one: Run by a disparate group of regional authorities who answer to no one. At least under Darth Vader, they had to answer to him (or suffer unpleasant consequences). Like it or not, he provided order and stability.

Last concludes with perhaps an unintentional comparison to present-day politicians who fancy themselves rebels — Democrats (the way I see it, anyway):

In all of the time we spend observing the Rebel Alliance, we never hear of their governing strategy or their plans for a post-Imperial universe…Their victory over the Empire doesn’t liberate the galaxy–it turns the galaxy into Somalia writ large: dominated by local warlords who are answerable to no one.

Isn’t order preferable to chaos even when scores of people (rebels) are killed in the name of “Empire?” The rule-of-law concept has proven to be liberating and better than any other system of government. Agree or disagree?

I could tell Last was really into writing this article, which made it all the more fun to read. Does that make me a Sci-Fi nerd? I can live with that.

Addendum: SPOILER ALERT! John Podhoretz hates the new movie. Very funny. But if you plan on seeing the movie, DON’T READ HIS ARTICLE.

Totally Unrelated Update: For someone on hiatus, Andrew Sullivan sure gets a lot of traffic.

He and I had a brief e-mail exchange a few months ago on the issue of homosexual “marriage.” We’re both firmly fixed in our respective positions, but I appreciated the dialogue.

Read Star Wars Memories.

(5/6) — Thank you for the birthday wishes, everybody!
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(Photos courtesy of Lucasfilm)

A long time ago, in a theater far, far away, an impressionable ten-year-old stared up at a movie screen filled with images of flying space machines and swords of light.

She was introduced to places she’d never seen before and not likely to see in real life, but she knew even at that age how awesome special effects of movie-making could lift her from the mundane world she inhabited to a faraway galaxy where Luke Skywalker and Han Solo would protect her from the evil Darth Vader and his minions.

When Star Wars came out in 1977, I saw it so many times, I’ve lost count. I don’t remember which friends were with me, but I know my two sisters were there. My “baby” brother was still in diapers, I think. It doesn’t matter. All I remember is the movie and how much I wished I lived in that exciting universe. I had crushes on Mark Hamill (who is still married to the wife of his youth) and Harrison Ford, and when The Empire Strikes Back came out, my crush on Billy Dee Williams was renewed.

While I don’t think anyone should cite Wikipedia as a primary source (especially newspapers), I have to give them credit where it’s due. They have extensive entries on the whole franchise. Be careful, though. You can lose hours reading this stuff. From there you can link to all six movies, but the first movie, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi are the only ones of interest to this “old head.”

I was in high school when “Jedi” came out in 1983. I thought I was too “grown” for that stuff, but I went to see it anyway. I had to find out how my boy Luke was doing and whether Han and Princess Leia ever got together.

I didn’t realize George Lucas had three additional “Star Wars” movies planned. When The Phantom Menace came out in 1999, I knew I wasn’t going to see it. The movies were part of my childhood, and new “episodes” with new actors weren’t appealing (especially actors younger than I am).

By that time I was immersed in a new universe, one in which Starfleet was running things (Did you know Wil “Wesley Crusher” Wheaton was a blogger?). “Star Wars” had long since played out.

Episode III is scheduled for release later this month, and I’m sure it will make Lucas a lot of money. Check out the full coverage.

This will be my only post today. I’m leaving for BlogNashville tomorrow, and I’m making final preparations.

And today is my birthday.

Addendum: The “Star Trek” reference reminded me of a post I wrote last year on the old blog, Is Man’s Search For Extraterrestrial Life Futile?

Another Addendum: You guys are making me say it out loud. OK. I’m 38, not 37. I was 37 yesterday. Today I’m a day older and a day wiser.

Update: Several Bloglines users told me that images on my blog don’t show up in the feeds. I disabled hotlinking a few months ago, but I’ve made an exception for Bloglines. Images should be visible now. To copy images on this blog, you have to save them to your hard drive and upload to your site. Linking to an image directly from this site is bandwidth “stealing.”