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April 11, 2004

Blog Roundup

You all know me. I just have to fiddle with things. I can't let well enough alone. Take funny coloured comments as an example. Did you know that I can actually make all the munuvian comments a different colour? It worked bu the colour clashed and being colour blind I have a lot of difficulty once I step outside the base colour set (which I got off some web site somewhere). Anyway, back to the point - I was running the top10 and thinking that all the blogs look pretty much the same as usual. Which is strange because of all those new munuvians that have arrived via Ellis Island. Hmmm. Must be something wrong with my code..... time passes..... blowed if I can find it. Let's do this the slow way.... wget the page.... look at the source.... where is the blogroll.... ohhhhh. It isn't. What you think is a blogroll is really just a javascript. The javascript sort of fakes the blogroll on demand. Hmmmm. I went with php include files instead (generating them is done once at rebuild time instead of every time the page is loaded). The advantage of the javascript is that is is updated every time it runs, the disadvantage is that it gets updated every time it runs. More importantly, when you look at the source code of the page (which is effectively what top10 does) all you see is the script instructions without the actual blog names. Ahhhhh. Bother. Grumble..... Grumble..... Fiddle.... Fiddle.... Why don't I ask Pixy to change it? Nah. That will stuff it up for those who don't use php.... *lightbulb* why not just chuck the javascript directly into the program (as it was a web page). The code is looking for "a href" and they will appear in some form in the javascript. Bingo. Apart from a bucket load of errors (as yet unidentified blogs) it worked and according to the code there were 1,388 links to check which means that the top linked blog (LOL) is only worth about 7% of the total.

How does the link count work? Well it is a bit complicated but I'll try and explain it briefly. Effectively a link (the thing inside the "a href") is classed as one of four things: invalid (meaning it is not a blog), redirect (meaning it is an alternate link for a blog), self (meaning it links to a page of mine) or normal. The invalid feature takes care of links to quizilla or a news service like the Sydney Moaning Herald. The redirect allows be to define a canonical url for each blog but link variations to that blog so that the counts get added correctly. An example of this would be a blog that responds to having a www added before the blog name. On the off-chance that "www.blogname" appears it would be redirected to just "blogname". A self link counts to the person who does the linking not to me (hence my own blogs are excluded). This really only benefits those blogs which are actually scanned (see the extended article for the details - effectively my blogs and any blogs I host) but the intention was always to expand* that list (maybe to include the top 15 sites or maybe all of mu.nu).

What was the point of all that? Well it explains why I am so late with this roundup but it also explains where the heck Backstage comes into the picture. Seriously the chances of a blog with only one link seem pretty tenuous but this is a random system and such things must happen sometime. The first thing to note is that I know nothing about the world that this writer inhabits (i.e. backstage) but by golly, the problems sound familiar - bad specification, trapped between clients and suppliers and projects going over time (and over budget as well). Actually reading this I figured it seemed like a match for Mookie RIffic and sure enough, she is listed in the links.

Another candidate for the munu move was kingsley.blog-city.com (I recommended him) but his blog appears to have fallen into disrepair between the last time I checked it and the recommendation because it just has this banner and no posts. Since then I received a tip-off to suggest that he has moved himself over to Kingsley 2.0 which bears all the signs of being an MYT installation. Looks like I need to go fix some more redirects....

The random number generator seems to have been working overtime because the next blog is also a new munu blog: Beyond the Black Hole. Now I have to say, that with a name like that, I was expecting a SciFi type blog (and if that is what you are expected, go click on the link before you finish the review). It isn't. Instead it is written from the perspective of a dog, a mouse and a cat. Check this post by Bill Bulldog and this one by Miss Kitty. Given the editorial addition, it looks like the mouse is in charge of the blog and he has posted a joke he got from a church mouse.

Finally for this week, we have two links to All AgitProp, all the Time.... Paul has been ranting for a while now on the media bias when it comes to dealing with terrorist scum freedom fighters. Especially those misguided teatowel wearing lunatics adherents of the Religion of Peace. In his latest broadside ne notes that the correct terminology for "miserable criminal kidnapping terrorist scum" is apparently "daring rebels" (in the Star Wars sense). Mind you, the terrorists are not the only ones facing a barrage of common sense - take the whining 11/9** relatives and this very quotable comment directed at Bob (who was complaining that the government did not apologise to him):

Look, Bob, seriously, has it occurred to you that maybe, if anyone owes you an apology, it's Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda?

Hear! Hear! I have asked a similar question when confronted by Aboriginal activists trying to get me to sign petitions - ever think of asking the English government (instead of the Australian government) for an apology? My ancestors had as little choice as yours..... Finally, even if you have not clicked on any other links in this entire review, you MUST go and read this post where Paul talks about balanced perspective - what if the pope was encouraging terrorism and Catholics were crashing aeroplanes, blowing up trains and basically acting like the followers of the Religion of Peace. As Paul asks:

Would anyone on this planet (including those of us that live in the Free World) be terribly preoccupied with the "root causes", engaging in interfaith dialogue, or chalking this sort of thing up as a "cultural / language thing"?....Yet, oddly enough, when someone (like Charles at LGF) points out just what is going on in the Islamic world these days (and what the members of the lunatic fringe seem to have in store for us if things go their way), he's a "vehicle for hate speech"?

Go read (and comment).....

[* If you would like your blog included directly (i.e. scanned weekly), let me know. Currently the caching is turned off so it may result in more than one hit and the hit will appear to come from a spider which will only take your index page without any associated images or following any links - hence the load should be minimal.]

[** Dates (according to international standards) should either appear as YYYY/MM/DD or DD/MM. Only Americans use the weird MM/DD format. FOr a long time I assumed that Americans referred to 911 because that is what they dial in an emergency rather than as a date - the 9th of November]

Posted by Ozguru at April 11, 2004 12:00 PM

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Comments

Posted by: Mr Mouse at April 13, 2004 09:50 AM

Posted by: Paul Jané at April 13, 2004 10:29 AM

Posted by: Ozguru at April 13, 2004 11:07 AM