Hey, all the cool kids are doing it:

Create your own visitor map!

Theoretically, every visitor to my humble little blog from this point forward will be represented by a red diamond on that map, showing where he or she is located…

You may have already noticed that I’ve added a new feature to Simple Tricks and Nonsense. If not, take a look at the sidebar there on the right. You’ll need to scroll down a ways to see it, past the Quick Links module; it’s a “widget” that shows which DVDs The Girlfriend and I currently have on loan from Netflix. (We share the account, so the titles you see appearing there at any given time may reflect my tastes, her tastes, or our tastes. Try to guess which is which; it’s the fun new party game that’s sweeping the nation!) Kind of fun. Naturally, the three inaugural titles are a bit, well, uninspiring, but they can’t all be Wild Strawberries, can they?

I’m looking into a similar widget that will show off random titles from my LibraryThing catalog, and I’m also planning to prune down the Quick Links so you don’t have to scroll so far to see the widgets. Eventually, I’d like to change Simple Tricks to a three-column format and divide all the stuff that’s currently in the sidebar between two columns, but I haven’t had the time (and, to be honest, I haven’t yet figured out how) to do that.

In the meantime, enjoy my latest exercise in exhibitionism. Hey, I may not get around to writing reviews anymore, but at least you won’t have to wait a whole year to find out how I’m killing my free time!

[UPDATE: As promised, I’ve cleaned house on the Quick Links. I removed a bunch of blogs and journals that I read via Bloglines, as well as some sites that don’t update very often or that have outlived their usefulness. I don’t know if anyone other than me ever uses those links, but if I’ve taken away something you valued, just let me know and I’ll put it back.]

In the bright light of morning, my previous entry on Aaron Spelling doesn’t look like one of my better pieces, does it? I have to admit, I was forcing it. The ending especially… as if I could really sit through an episode of T.J. Hooker, even just to ogle one of my youthful lust objects. Right. No, the truth is that, while I’ve watched plenty of Spelling-produced shows over the years and felt like the man’s death warranted some comment, I honestly don’t have any deep fondness for any of his work. To extend that cheeseburger metaphor just a bit more, Spelling’s shows are more like the McDonald’s end of the cheeseburger spectrum than the huge, juicy, home-made, Jimmy Buffett “Cheeseburger in Paradise” end. They fill the hole when you’re hungry, but when you really think about it, they don’t even taste all that good. They were just there. Shows like Charlie’s Angels and 90210 were just there, a familiar and inescapable part of the pop-cultural landscape, enjoyed but not treasured. Televisual Big Macs.

Moving on to other subjects that I actually know how to discuss, I just want to point out that I’ve added a couple of new links over there in the sidebar, both related to that LibraryThing Web site I told you about a couple days ago. Under “Obligatory Narcissism,” you’ll find a link that’ll take you my personal catalog — currently consisting of 102 entries with God-only-knows-how-many to go — while the LibraryThing link under “Miscellaneous Coolness” will take you to the site’s home page so you can set up your own account. If anyone reading this does set up an account and wants to share it here, just let me know and I’ll post the link.

And finally, I noted a few days back that my photo gallery was going to be wonky for a little while in the wake of the server change. If anyone cares, here’s what’s happening: an upgraded version of the gallery software has been installed, which created a whole new directory in which to store my pictures. In other words, I’ve currently got two galleries, the old and the new. I’ve ported over all the stuff from the old gallery and am currently making sure everything ended up in the right folder, that all the captions and descriptions are there, that sort of thing. Also, as long as I’m puttering around, I’ve been uploading several all-new albums, which takes forever over my crappy dial-up connection. Long story short: I should have the new gallery up and running in a few more days. In the meantime, if you have a hankerin’ to see what yours truly looks like, I believe the link over there in the sidebar will still take you to the old gallery.

Back later…

My three loyal readers (and you know who you are) may have noticed that Simple Tricks went unexpectedly missing yesterday. That’s because my friend and webmaster Jack was switching the site over to a new server from the broken-down old ENIAC we’ve been using. He assures me the new hardware will be faster and more efficient on the back-end; I don’t know if you folks out there in InternetLand will notice any difference, but you may see some improvements in load-up times or something.

So far, it appears that the transfer of the blog has been carried off without a hitch. Everything that was here before is here now. I think. If anyone notices any problems I haven’t seen, please let me know. The photo gallery, on the other hand, is going to be in flux for a couple of days while Jack upgrades the gallery software and I perform some housekeeping I’ve been meaning to do for a while. I’ll let you all know when that’s back, too…

Why, yes, I have blogged quite a bit today, thank you for noticing. Work was a little slow and I kept finding more interesting things to think about. It’s been kind of fun, actually; I imagine my day has been similar to what the pro bloggers experience. But the Day of the Blog is winding down now, and I’m tired. Time for bed.

I’d like to leave you with one final note before I call it a night, though. FYI, I have added some more sub-categories to help you find entries on specific topics. Under Film Studies, you can now go directly to all my movie reviews, my various Star Wars-related ramblings, and my tributes to those in the film industry who’ve passed on, if you’re into any of those things. I’ve also created an “In Memoriam” sub-category under The Glass Teat heading, which comprises my entries on television (the name comes from a Harlan Ellison book I’ve got kicking around the Bennion Archives somewhere), but I haven’t populated that one yet, so don’t expect to see anything there for a day or two. Oh, and I’ve also added an “Egregious Corporate-speak” sub-cat, just as I’ve been threatening to do. I don’t know if you folks in InternetLand really find the entries about proofreading all that amusing, but it amuses me to catalog the linguistic wreckage I come across during my day job. It lets me vent about them, anyhow.

I’m planning to add a number of other sub-cats, too, including one on all the memes and Internet quizzes I enjoy doing, and maybe one to collect my references to Star Trek. If you have any suggestions for additional ones you’d find useful, just leave them in comments below.

And now, to bed. Good night, all…

I don’t know if anybody pays any attention to those category links over in the sidebar, but lately I’ve been wondering about their usefulness, or lack thereof. In particular, I’m thinking that a couple of the categories — “General Ramblings” and “Esoterica” — have degenerated into catch-alls that cover way too much ground to really provide much of a service to anyone, including myself. So, in order to give these things a little more functionality for anyone who may actually use them (not to mention improving my own sense of organization), I’ve decided to experiment with creating some sub-categories. The first of these, “Final Frontier,” is now live and ready for your perusal. It encompasses, as you may surmise from the name, all my entries relating to space flight or space exploration (as it turns out, that’s about half of the content that I’d previously filed under “Esoterica”). I’ve gone back and re-categorized everything that fits under this new heading, so you should be able to quickly scan my ramblings on what goes on “out there,” if that’s a subject that interests you. I have a couple of other sub-categories in mind as well, and I’ll be adding them as I find the time and inspiration.

As always when I make a site change, let me know in the comments below if you have any strong feelings one way or the other. Also, any suggestions for sub-categories (or top-level categories, for that matter) are welcome.

The latest blogging innovation seems to be embeddable video players, like the one you see below. (Evanier, in particular, has become very fond of this new gimmick in the last couple weeks.) I wouldn’t want to miss out on a happening new Internet trend, so I thought I’d give the technology a try and share with you all this vintage music video that a friend sent to me this morning. The clip is more effective if you’ve got sound, but even if you don’t, just sit back and bask in the surreal (and curiously sexy in a dopey kind of way) imagery. I especially like the scrawny little guy in the zebra-skin collar who is stirring his big, bubbling cauldron of luscious girl-singer stew. Freud would’ve loved that sequence…

Let me know how this player thingie works for you all and if you’d like to see more of this sort of thing here at Simple Tricks.

We’ve reached a milestone here at Simple Tricks and Nonsense. As you may have surmised from the title above, this is my 500th blog entry. Not too shabby considering that when my buddy Jack presented me with a website for a Christmas gift, my initial reaction was something to the effect of, “Cool! What the hell am I going to do with it?”

Continue Reading…

I just happened to drift past the ol’ blog here and I couldn’t help but notice that the turkey photo looks much better against this new background than it did last year against the old dark version of Simple Tricks. All that 70s-style brown and gold seems really warm and inviting now, whereas I remember it being kind of sickly last year. Hmmmm… maybe there’s something to this whole change thing after all.

Okay, kids, here’s the scoop: since the upgrade to Movable Type 3.2 about twelve days ago, I’ve had very little spam activity, and the small amount of crap that did come in was handled quite efficiently by MT’s filtering protocol, which means I haven’t given the matter a lot of thought. This morning, however, the filter let me down, and I got hit with some 50 junk comments in a little under an hour. Rather than let it stack up and become totally unwieldy, I shut down the comments feature while I did some research on what I can do to stop this nuisance once and for all.

As I mentioned a while back, the most secure option would require anyone who comments here to register with an authentication service called TypeKey. This is a third-party organization with which you create an identity and prove yourself to be a human being (easier than you might think for us genuine humans, but bloody difficult for software masquerading as a person), and then you can use this identity to log in to blogs and other Websites that require this form of authentication.
TypeKey authentication would give me lots of control over what happens around here, but I fear it might also discourage some people from commenting, and I don’t want to do that. I know some of my readers aren’t especially tech-savvy or involved in the online world, and I can see how it could be off-putting to be forced into signing up for something that might have limited usefulness for you. My concern is that, if this is the only TypeKey-restricted blog you visit, you might choose to simply stop commenting here rather than register. Or you might stop visiting altogether. So before I do anything drastic, I’m going to ask anyone who regularly comments here — and even anyone who may be lurking out there but thinks they might commment someday — to give me some feedback now. What do you think about this TypeKey idea? Would it be a pain or make you uncomfortable to have to register for this service? Leave your thoughts below, please.

In the meantime, I’ve cranked up the sensitivity of the Movable Type spam filter and set the system to hold all comments for moderation before they publish. Maybe this will turn out to be enough anti-spam protection and I won’t have to go to the TypeKey option, but I’d still like to know what y’all think…