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Are you seeing double?

Are you a subscriber to this blog, and if so, do you sometimes see duplicate posts in the feed?

To keep an eye on things, I subscribe through Google Reader and the FeedBurner email subscription service. I haven’t seen any duplicates, but loyal reader Paul S. wrote me yesterday to say he sometimes gets multiple posts.

I hope this isn’t a widespread problem, and wonder if it might be related to my posting procedure:

Think of a possible post topic.
Procrastinate starting on it for days, weeks, or months.
Finally, write something.
Become anxious to publish it.
Publish it before thoroughly proofing it.
Quickly make some minor changes immediately after publishing it.
Not long after that, wonder if I should have used additional keywords to snag more search …

Turning off trackbacks/pingbacks…

I don’t get a lot of legitimate trackbacks, but lately I’m getting an annoying amount of spambacks, so I’m turning them off for now. If you’re one of the few kind folks who occasionally point my way (I’m looking at you, Open Source Community) :-), please consider a “manual” ping in comments.

On the other hand, I’m getting almost no comment spam, which I credit to the Math Comment Spam Protection Plugin, previously mentioned in a post about my WordPress Plugin Binge last month.

Bad Behavior is another good tool and currently stops a couple of thousand access attempts per week. Akismet is super, but anything that it catches is something I then have to deal with. I’m not getting all that many spam trackbacks, but the …

Toil: Ethernet, Comment Previews, Trackbacks, and WordPress Updates

I love working with computers, but sometimes it can be a chore. You want to work on one thing, but other things break and you have to deal with them sooner or later. It can feel like such a burden. Petty distractions from what we really want to do. Do you ever get the feeling we’re building a big technological house of cards?

But it’s always satisfying to fix things and keep the night at bay for a little while longer.

Ethernet

My wife mentioned Friday she couldn’t get to her GMail account, which I mentally filed as a possible transient connection problem. I’ve had a couple of network hiccups lately where I needed to reset my router and a switch. She wasn’t trying when she told me, or trust me I …

Six Month Anniversary and Spam Milestone

“Moving to Freedom” is six months old! I haven’t made a huge amount of progress on my goal of moving to free software, but this blog has definitely helped keep my mind on it, and I think I’m going to make it eventually.

The writing of the blog takes a lot of time that could be spent on *doing* free software, but I like it. I’ve gone from craving thousands of readers and attention to just enjoying keeping this thing for what it is: a public journal of my thoughts and efforts on free software and related topics. And sometimes un-related topics.

So, thank you, to all my loyal readers. I hope to still be here in another six months. Let’s take a look at some visitor numbers from the first half year and …

‘Moving to Freedom’ Subscription and Social Bookmarking Notes

If you know all about RSS syndication and social bookmarking services like del.icio.us, this post is not for you. (Although you’re welcome to read it, if you’d like!)

This post is also not intended for someone looking for a complete and exhaustive introduction to syndication and social bookmarking. Instead, it is meant to be a gentle introduction and to get you started at least thinking about these useful services.

I’ve been meaning to write this for a while so I could link to it from the “Subscribe” area of the sidebar. My guess is that a lot of movingtofreedom.org visitors know these topics, so it hasn’t been a priority. But I found myself tinkering with the subscription …

Thanksgiving Holiday Post Promo

This is my first Moving to Freedom Thanksgiving, and while I didn’t have it ready for today when I might have had a bigger audience, I wanted to promote a special feature Thanksgiving post that should be ready by Thursday.

Please stop by tomorrow for something more substantial to “eat.” And then it may be a light posting weekend as I try to work on miscellaneous projects over the long holiday.