Not Dead, Resting

It's no secret that this blog, like so many others, doesn't get the attention from its scribe that it once did. However, let me reassure you -- and it -- that it's not dead.

And on that note, I've done a bit of updating. Most notably, I've enabled a mobile view, which the good folks at Blogger finally got around to implementing a couple of weeks ago.¹ I also updated to a matching "new" template² and tweaked it to my taste. Finally, I couldn't help but notice that all my links were ancient and most are now defunct. So they're gone, and replaced by an index of my posts by label. I may, when I have a few spare minutes, post some new ones. Or not.

Oh, and I have now, almost four years later, made good on my expressed will to start using footnotes.

Happy New Year!

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[1] Blogger users can enable it via Blogger in Draft.
[2] "New" in quotes because these were actually introduced back in June.

Footnotes

Note to self: use footnotes in posts. Others do, and come across terribly well. They're a splendid way to manage tangents.

Oh, and continue to use more British expressions.

The Heavy Digital Pen

Is there some kind of statute of limitations for blogging?

Something interesting happened weeks ago, and I meant to write about it. But, things got busy, yada, yada, yada...and I never got around to it. Now, the digital pen just seems too heavy. I can't motivate myself to do it.

Well, maybe I'll start a draft...

Reruns in Syndication

If you're subscribed to my Atom feed, my apologies. I just switched over to Blogger Beta, and it seems the only negative effect was a modification to the entry IDs in my feed. The result is that your feed reader will probably see duplicates of my last 25 posts or so.

I wonder if I should try playing around with a new layout?

Shout Out to MSN Search!

A few weeks ago, I started using Tracksy to collect stats on visitors to my little blog. I figured it would be interesting to see how many people are actually reading it, where they're coming from, and so forth. Actually, it hasn't disappointed. Today, I found that one visitor had been referred by search.msn.com. Looking closely at the URL made it apparent that he or she had simply searched for "human being". I decided to give that query a go, and the results surprised me!

Go on. Try it.

Yup, that's right: Another Human Being is the number 7 result for "human being" on MSN Search! How is that even possible?

I tried the same search on Google and looked through 10 pages of results before giving up on ever finding myself.

Anyhow, if you used MSN Search to find me today, a special "halla" to you! Oh, and some advice: use Google. As I've just demonstrated, it's clearly the superior search engine.

Link Check

I added that nice little link to Rick Mercer's Blog a couple of months ago, and I just want to be sure you're using it. He stopped updating about that time, so you might have given up on checking it but, honestly, that's what an RSS reader is for!

He's back and he's in fine form. Just a teaser, in case you're not convinced:


Once you get past all the fun with photoshop, you'll find an uplifting summary of his recent trip to Afghanistan, which is well worth reading.

See the hoop? Jump through it!

I just enabled word verification for comment posting, a nice little feature that Blogger provides to reduce comment spam. I apologize for the inconvenience, and I hope it works.

Blog Spam

Seriously, what's the deal with all these spam comments? I mean, who's fooled by them? Does anyone actually make money off of them? Or do they just live to be annoying?

Well, fuckers, bring it! You just keep on posting your spamtatsic little comments, and I'll just keep on nuking them as fast as you do.

Generous Linkage

I've added some more links to my blog, for your surfing pleasure. Well, maybe that's not quite true: I think they just might be for me, too. At some point, I think I had the brilliant idea that if I had links to the sites I frequent most often, I'd be more inclined to make my blog my home page. Then, maybe I could do away with bookmarks altogether. And, in the process, I learned a little something new about CSS.

Anyhoo, you'll find a few more of my links, some of my friends' blogs, a couple of famous Canadians' blogs, and some different news sites I read.

Most of the links are quite self-explanatory. Swingin'OUT is a queer swing dance club that I belong to, and I maintain their modest site. Groklaw is a legal news/research site covering The SCO Group's spectacular death by legislation. I was severely addicted to Groklaw for a couple of years, but I'm much improved these days. Just yesterday, I was able to glance at a new transcript of a deposition and not read the whole thing! No, I'm not actually suggesting that you should read Groklaw, just admitting that I do.

Well, obviously I'll add new links when new sites strike my fancy. Enjoy.

first p0st!

Welcome, my little chickadees, to my inaugural post at Another Human Being.

Here it is, mid-2005, and I'm just starting my first blog. Given that I'm both gay and Jewish, I'm quite used to being late to a party. So, I guess it's appropriate that I'm a couple of years late to this particular one. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not some kind of technophobe or neophyte: my first taste of "online" was the local BBS scene in Vancouver some 15 years ago, and I graduated to a shell account with Internet access just a few years after that. I've been posting various thoughts in various forums (message boards, newsgroups, and the Web) all that time. But the idea of keeping a running journal of my thoughts never appealed. More than anything, I couldn't be bothered to start, since I was a bit afraid I'd never keep it up. But, I've read some really great postings lately, and I've been thinking that those pepole will get to hang on to those words forever. I wonder how many opportunities I've already missed. So, today's the day to get started, and we'll see how I do.

I'm not sure exactly what kinds of things I'm going to write about; I guess we'll find out together. I work for a large, navy-coloured technology company, which has recently been encouraging its employees to blog, both internally and publicly. I just can't get at all excited about the idea of doing a blog that's purely about technology or, worse, business. So, this page probably won't be showing up at work on the Blogline any time soon. That said, being a geek is a pretty large part of who I am, so don't be too surprised if you find you have to don a propellor hat to appreciate some of my posts. Heck, even this title of this post was a reference to Slashdot (if you missed that, perhaps you should consider yourself lucky). Needless to say, this blog represents my personal thoughts only; I'm in no way speaking for my employer.

One promise to myself: keep the ranting under control. It's so easy to focus on the things that piss us off -- there's no shortage in any given day, and often there's a comical absurdity to them, which make for great stories. But I don't want you, dear reader, to think that I'm bitter or unhappy. I'm not. I'm quite possibly at the happiest point in my life so far. So, I'll try not to neglect the things that delight and amaze me.

That said, it's time for my first rant, about my BlogSpot address. Somebody already took anotherhumanbeing, and they're not even using it. Isn't that kind of rude? I mean, how much effort would it take to pick a template and throw together one post? So, now I'm stuck with the hyphens. Or maybe I'll change the name altogether at some point. The name is the title of a song by one of my favourite artists, Jann Arden. It was the first thing that popped into my head when Blogger asked me to choose a name. I guess I was thinking about how big the world is; how big the 'net is; how insignificant, and how significant, each voice is. I like it, but I'm not overly attached yet. If something better comes along, something that I don't have to hyphenate, I could easily change it at this point.

So, that's enough for one post. Once again, welcome. I hope you'll be entertained.