Site Updates

New features or changes on Michael’s Piece of the Web

15
Feb
2007

Slowing the flow

Spam is a never-ending blight on the internet. I understand what motivates spammers to plant spam in blog comments and guestbooks. It’s simple, they want to earn some Google-juice for their site.  (Of course, they go about this in the most unethical and slimy way possible instead of just creating sites that someone might actually want to read, but I digress…)

What truly baffles me is that they waste a lot of time posting spam comments and guestbook entries on a site like mine. NOTHING that anyone adds to my site in any way goes directly to the site. It all comes to me for moderation first. This means that they are simply wasting their time. This doesn’t stop them however, so I’ve been working on ways to slow the flow of crap. Some of the changes are behind the scenes, but you’ll be seeing CAPTCHA syle verification fields appearing on my forms and an AKISMET counter on my blog showng how many comments the software has caught.

Any all all suggestions are welcome. Before you say it, I’ve already thought of rounding up these weasels and setting them on fire, but apparently that’s not legal. Go figure. Maybe someday our politicians will help out out with this problem. I’m not holding ym breath, though.

Posted by Michael in Site Updates
04
Feb
2007

Fire and Ice Photos

I just posted some of the photos I took last weekend at the Fire and Ice Festival in Mount Holly, NJ. This chili cook-off and ice carving competition was a fun a unique event. I got there after the chili cook-off was over, but I did make it to the carving portion and the dog sled demonstration.

Check out the photos here.

Posted by Michael in Photography, Site Updates
14
Dec
2006

Even more photos

December has been a productive month for photography on my site. I just added even more photos. You can check out a bunch of photos from Christmas at Longwood Gardens in the Photos section.

Posted by Michael in Photography, Site Updates
11
Dec
2006

Huge Photo Update

I just arranged the Photos section of the website. I tried to better organize it by breaking my photo collection up by years.

At the same time, I also added quite a few new photos. The Winterthur album contains photos from my recent trip with Beth to Yuletide at Winterthur. The Hofbrauhaus album is from my grandfather’s 85th birthday celebration. There are also photos from the Adventure Aquarium in Camden, NJ as well as a ton of photos taken during a business trip to Hampton Roads.

Enjoy!

Posted by Michael in Photography, Site Updates
30
Nov
2006

Victor’s Voyage

After a very long delay, I finally have put Victor’s tale of his adventure aboard the Ukrainian schooner Bat’kivshchyna on the family tree site. It’s an fascinating story (with photos) told by Victor as only he could tell it.

Sorry this took so long. Victor sent me the pieces this story on 3 December 2005. It’s unbelievable that it took me almost a year to get it online. Sadly, right around the time he sent it to me, the Billy Gatti problem arose and the band of adventurous Ukranians took a backseat to several mean-spirited Italians! Then life just got too busy to get to it, but better late than never!

Check it out here.

Posted by Michael in Genealogy, Site Updates
27
Nov
2006

One more advantage

Now that I’ve moved my site off of VizaWeb, there’s one more advantage that I haven’t metioned yet. You can now view my site from many places that were blocking VizaWeb and their servers. This means that I’ll no longer have to be embarassed when my co-workers can’t find my website when I send them to my Spyware Guide.

Posted by Michael in Site Updates
23
Nov
2006

Done with VizaWeb

For the past few years I’ve hosted my website with VizaWeb. During this time my site has been offline at various times, but usually came back within a few hours. While this is totally unacceptable from a hosting company, I never bothered to change just because I didn’t have time to worry about it.

A few months ago they had a major outage that lasted a little longer. I still stuck with them. Then over Veteran’s Day weekend they had a total outage. Besides disappearing off the web, they were also unreachable via phone and e-mail.

I could care less about my data. I have full backups of it locally because I trust no one but myself with my data. However, what really scared me was the fact that they were also the registrar for my domain name. If I could not get a hold of them to release my domain name, I might never be able to transfer it to another registrar. Let me tell you, it was a VERY tense couple of days!

Luckily they did eventually come back online and amazingly did respond to my e-mails. I immediately transferred my domain name to another registrar (Dotster) and have now also moved my site to another host (Host Monster).

While VizaWeb seemed good at first, they received a lot of business because of being recommended by radio personality, Leo Laporte. That’s why I switched. Of course, Leo did pull his sites off of them a long time ago and recently also pulled his sites out of the same datacenter (The Planet) that VizaWeb uses.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to put this behind me now and move on with my new host. I’m out some money, but at least I’m finally rid of VizaWeb forever!

Posted by Michael in Site Updates
22
Sep
2006

New category – food

I figured that this blog doesn’t go in enough random directions, so I added another. 🙂

The new category is ‘Cooking/Food’. Cooking and food is one of my favorite hobbies. I just went back and added some of the old posts to the category, and i’ll be adding new ones in the future.

Posted by Michael in Cooking/Food, Site Updates
13
Sep
2006

Luau photos

I just finished posting the photos from the luau. Check them out now at www.michaelgatti.com/luau. Enjoy. If you’re in any of the photos and want an un-watermarked copy, let me know.

Posted by Michael in Life, Photography, Site Updates