Robert Accettura's
Fun With Wordage

Despite this year actually knowing it was coming, it still sounds strange that I’ve had this site up and running for 5 years now. That’s a half decade. In all honesty when I started I didn’t expect it to last too long. I’ve had the domain for nearly 10 years.

From Then To Now

This started out as a few static pages over 5 years ago, and eventually turned into a blog in March 2003 as a college Freshman. Generally I’ve kept the format pretty much the same, the most notable change was switching from more “random” posts to mostly tech related posts in recent years. This wasn’t intentional, it’s just how it worked out. The reception to that change has been overwhelmingly positive. Though I’ve been asked from time to time, to bring some humor back.

Just since graduating college in 2006, I’ve been mentioned on numerous blogs, made the Digg homepage, quoted on Ars Technica (more than once), linked on Gruber’s Darling Fireball. Most of that is pretty recent too. Daily traffic has been increasing pretty steadily during this period.

Now 1,323 posts and 3,481 comments later, I’ve been contemplating what I want to do next…

Where it’s going

I’ve given a fair amount of though as to what I want to do here at the 5 year mark. I’ve decided to make the following changes slowly over upcoming months as I think it’s a better approach:

• New Design - The current design has been live since about 2005, with only minor tweaks. It’s to narrow for many images I’ve wanted to use, and there’s a lot of wasted space. The new design, already in the works is optimized for 1024×768. Also pushing content up further by removing that stale image from the header. I initially though I’d change that more often, but it’s not happening. I had hoped to have this done for today, but that didn’t happen. Instead “it’s done when it’s done”.
• Features vs. Regular Posts - The biggest change from a content perspective is I want to make is to distinguish what will be more notable posts from the daily posts. These posts tend to be a dozen a year. Both in terms of development, giving them more time and thought, to how I present them. I’ve yet to decide exactly how to accomplish this.
• Post Regularly - I’ve always posted in bursts, it’s become a dirty habit. I’m going to give it yet another try to be more consistent. I think being regular makes things flow better and results in a better thought process. Will my mind work like this? I don’t know. But if it can, that would be awesome.
• Going Off Topic - This is clearly a more technical blog (where else do you find holiday SQL and other code jokes), but it’s time to bring some off topic stuff back. Not sure when this will start, but it’s a goal of mine.
• More On Topic - I spend a fair amount of time lately on current news. I’m thinking of slowly downplay this a little more and focus on real development stuff.

There are other changes planned, some large, some small, but there are the ones that I think are worth mentioning right now.

The focus on technology, in particular web development, and business will remain, I have no intent on changing that. I just want to improve how I do it, and what surrounds it.

Before someone asks, I’ll still cover all Firefox and Thunderbird related news both big and small as I always have. Nearly half the posts on this blog fall into that category. They are among the most popular ones, and some of my personal favorites.

Like anything else in the world a website falls into three categories: it grows and matures, it dies, or it sits like a rock. I like the idea of growing and maturing.

So here’s to the next 5 years.

I’m semi-quiet lately. A cold last week kicked my butt for pretty much the entire week. That’s always fun.

I’m also working on some changes to this blog. It’s been a long time since that’s happened. Hopefully I’ll have it out of dev and running by the end of the month.

As a result I won’t be posting to much during this time.

That sprained wrist… turns out it’s broken. So now (again) 100% one handed typing for the moment.

Speaking of broken… Bug 389131 could use a hand (pun intended). Same for 389128. Anyone want to assist? Both have patches, may need tweaks/cleanup still. I just can’t manage extra coding until I get patched myself.

It’s a bit quiet around here for the past week because I sprained my wrist pretty bad. As a result I have been avoiding typing more than I already do at work. I am slowly resuming and getting back to normal as it allows. Been down this road before. Not as much fun as it sounds.

A week ago I came back from St. Maarten, an island known for it’s weather and beaches. There are a few ways to tell a good beach from a great one:

1. Clean beaches.
2. Evidence that topless tanning is allowed.
3. Signs like the one to the left warning you of death by heavy metal.

A beach with an active runway for an international airport makes for a good time. So much so I got to this beach a several times. Equipped with a camera phone I took some video’s of the fun. The video’s are slightly grainy since it was taken on a phone, and a bit shaky since the jet blast could be pretty strong at times.

For the record, sand does go through clothing at that speed. It was strong enough that I wasn’t able to watch a takeoff live as I had to turn my head and close my eyes. Only afterwards could I watch the video replay.

Noteworthy

Boeing 747 takeoff (can’t even keep the camera up).

Almost being hit by a DHL plane

Side Shot of a landing

There’s about a dozen videos and a few pictures.

I was away last week… 3700+ emails (thankfully mostly spam) to process.

Have some video and photo goodness to get up here at some point, but that won’t happen until this weekend at the earliest since I’ve got some catching up to do. I suspect I won’t be blogging much this week as I do some catch up.

Damn you wet weather. Closing roads and making things a mess. 8 inches of rain in Central Park. The irony will be drought restrictions being posted later this summer.

Is bacon considered red meat? I saw this on TV this morning wile flipping through the morning news. During some stock video of various red meats it was mixed in with mainly shots of beef. It comes from a pig, so I guess under the definition “anything from a mammal is red meat” it is. Though pork is traditionally white meat.

Bacon… meet tomato a vegetable fruit.

It’s now 2007 for an hour already. So here’s to a great 2007!

On the plus side, it’s nice to see at least this blog updated the copyright on it’s own (though an hour off since the server is GMT -6 rather than GMT -5 like I am. I’ve got to make the rounds and do the rest now, and make it automatic for the future. Every year I forget until the last minute.

Happy Festivus!

Just in case anyone was wondering, I made the Festivus Pole in this post using Inkscape, which did a pretty good job at making it easy enough for even me to do silly little work, and I’m far from an artist. It even lets me output SVG, though I uploaded a PNG since not all browsers support SVG at this point. Thankfully I didn’t have to draw any tinsel, but as we all know, that’s not allowed, since it’s distracting.

For those who are interested in the real thing, there is a video about a company who makes Festivus Poles.

As usual the web has quite a few things out there about this amazing holiday. Just search Google News this time of year, or check Wikipedia’s Festivus article.

There is even a new book on the holiday: Festivus: The Holiday for the Rest of Us.

Frank Costanza: Many Christmases ago, I went to buy a doll for my son. I reached for the last one they had, but so did another man. As I rained blows upon him, I realized there had to be another way.
Cosmo Kramer: What happened to the doll?
Frank Costanza: It was destroyed. But out of that a new holiday was born: a Festivus for the rest of us!
Cosmo Kramer: That must’ve been some kind of doll.
Frank Costanza: She was.