If you see this post it means that BlogEngine.NET 1.4.5 is running and the hard part of creating your own blog is done. There is only a few things left to do.

Write Permissions

To be able to log in to the blog and writing posts, you need to enable write permissions on the App_Data folder. If you’re blog is hosted at a hosting provider, you can either log into your account’s admin page or call the support. You need write permissions on the App_Data folder because all posts, comments, and blog attachments are saved as XML files and placed in the App_Data folder. 

If you wish to use a database to to store your blog data, we still encourage you to enable this write access for an images you may wish to store for your blog posts.  If you are interested in using Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, VistaDB, or other databases, please see the BlogEngine wiki to get started.

Security

When you've got write permissions to the App_Data folder, you need to change the username and password. Find the sign-in link located either at the bottom or top of the page depending on your current theme and click it. Now enter "admin" in both the username and password fields and click the button. You will now see an admin menu appear. It has a link to the "Users" admin page. From there you can change the username and password.  Passwords are hashed by default so if you lose your password, please see the BlogEngine wiki for information on recovery.

Configuration and Profile

Now that you have your blog secured, take a look through the settings and give your new blog a title.  BlogEngine.NET 1.4 is set up to take full advantage of of many semantic formats and technologies such as FOAF, SIOC and APML. It means that the content stored in your BlogEngine.NET installation will be fully portable and auto-discoverable.  Be sure to fill in your author profile to take better advantage of this.

Themes and Widgets

One last thing to consider is customizing the look of your blog.  We have a few themes available right out of the box including two fully setup to use our new widget framework.  The widget framework allows drop and drag placement on your side bar as well as editing and configuration right in the widget while you are logged in.  Be sure to check out our home page for more theme choices and downloadable widgets to add to your blog.

On the web

You can find BlogEngine.NET on the official website. Here you'll find tutorials, documentation, tips and tricks and much more. The ongoing development of BlogEngine.NET can be followed at CodePlex where the daily builds will be published for anyone to download.

Good luck and happy writing.

The BlogEngine.NET team

Ok, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration. But, I did get another one of my pictures published. This time, it was from my trip to Scotland. I took a few shots while I was in Edinburgh and one of them is now up on "Schmap Scotland". You can check it here... It's one of the "Our Dynamic Earth" shots. Sorry there's no direct link, but Schmap is a bit odd and they only give me a "widget", which pretty much just advertises them.  But, here it is anyway if you prefer that route...  I think if you mouse over the little marker it'll pop up my picture, but I can't be sure.

I've been using Live Writer in it's various versions for a while now.  The Writer team recently released the full version (previous version were "beta") and I've been using it for a couple weeks on my laptops.  Unfortunately, I've been fighting with it at work for a while now.

Fortunately, I think I've got it "mostly" figured out.  Before I kick you a partial solution, let me explain the issue first.

Someone on the Live team decided to make a "live" installer.  That means that you can't actually download any of the Live applications.  Instead, you download an installer and then it goes and fetches the applications when you run it.  It uses Windows Update to do this.  That means that if Windows Update doesn't work flawlessly for you, you can't install any of the Live apps.  Behind a corporate firewall?  Got a proxy?  Got a GPO smacked down on you that blocks Windows Update?  Too bad!  My opinion... this is stupid not to offer an alternative.

I hit http://support.live.com in order to see if they'd kick me an installer and got the usual "twelve step" fixing your computer script from the tech who replied...  The usual stuff... turn off AV, turn off your firewall, delete all your temp files, run Windows Update (hah!), remove all existing Live apps, reboot, etc.  I did all this, even though I knew I still wouldn't be able to reinstall any of the Live apps.  Sent back a lengthy reply stating the issue, all the steps I completed, etc.  No reply as of yet.

So... I simply copied the Writer directory from one my laptops.  Here's the bits you need to know...

1. The new version of Writer lives in C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Writer - go get it, copy it to your blocked machine.
2. You need to create two registry keys (both Reg_SZ) if they don't exist...  HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live\Writer\InstallDir
   HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live Writer\InstallDir
   Set both of them to your directory path (should be C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Writer\ if you're using the normal location.)

Note the two different keys in step two... one is "Windows Live Writer", the other is "Windows Live\Writer".  This is important if you ever install any plugins.  Plugins designed for the older version need the "Windows Live Writer", plugins for the newer version need "Windows Live\Writer".  Also note the trailing slash in the directory path of the value... required!

You'll probably have to reconfigure your blog settings, as they may not copy over.  But, at least it works!

One of the cool things I noticed about BlogEngine.net is that it shows a quick list of how many posts I've put up each month.  Unfortunately, the side effect of that is that it shows that I'm just a big 'ole slacker.

So, now that I have a "measuring stick", I'm going to see what I can do to rectify my post deficiencies.  This is one is all about the blog itself.

Two of the things I don't like are support and "features".  The support is kind of lacking at first glance.  There's a Wiki and a bit of online documentation, but that's about it.  The Wiki is also somewhat, uh, lacking.  There is some decent technical info there, but not a ton of it.  There's very little in the way of "how do I do this" stuff, which is what I'm really needing.  There is also a "forum" of sorts, but it's hosted on Codeplex...  which is not geared for forum discussion.  It's more like a glorified guest book.  But, I guess I'll hang out there for a bit and ask some stupid questions and see what pops up.

The "features" are a bit odd.  The product definitely needs some fleshing out.  For example, there's an option to build "pages" that aren't a part of the main blog.  This is cool (and very useful), but there doesn't appear to be any decent way of getting them IN the menu system without editing theme files somewhere.  I haven't figured out how to do that yet.  Guess I need to go squat in a Codeplex forum for a bit.

Anyway, that's it for now.  I'll probably slap up an non-techie post a bit later this afternoon.  L8rs!

There be some funkness going on here.

I'm at it again...  changing out the blog software.  This time I've decided to go with BlogEngine.net instead of Graffiti.  Graffiti was ok, but it had some quirks and limitations I didn't much care for.  I'm sure it'll rock eventually, but it's going to take a few revisions to get it right.  

Blogengine so far works nearly flawlessly and it has a LOT of features.  I'll go into some of them later.  In the meantime, expect to see the old content filtering in slowly as I update everything.  L8rs! 

Well, if any of you did try to get to the site today, you are probably aware that I hosed it completely.  Sorry 'bout that.

I don't even really need to tell you, since I'm still going ahead with upgrading the site, which will probably mean you'll be seeing a bit more of the cat until I'm done.  Much thanks go to Dave for doing some exploratory surgery and convincing me to roll back the site and attempt it again later (no link for Dave yet, I'll ask him if he wants me to post one about him later).  Anyway... if you're seeing this at all, things are relatively back to normal... for now.

;)

Ho hum...  another round of spammers have tagged me.  No big deal, it shouldn't affect you...  I simply don't publish anything that isn't worthwhile.

I did think this was kind of interesting though, so let me spill the basic premise to you. 

Just like you can leave comments on my blog entry, other bloggers can as well.  I got a notification that a couple of my recent entries have comments so I checked them out.  Basically they are "pingbacks", which are a somewhat enhanced version of "trackbacks".  A blogger copies the trackback link of one of my blog entries and posts it on their blog.  They enter some non-specific gibberish about how they thought the article was cool and supply the link.  Of course, the rest of their site is loaded with advertising and pop-ups.  The text often looks smthng like this:

I came across this post - General Stuff - and thought it was worth sharing. I hope you find it interesting too and take the time to read some of the other articles on their site.

Their blogging software sends a message to my blogging software telling it that there's a trackback.  My software converts that to a comment, and waits for me to publish it. In a reasonable society, it makes sense that our blogs have smthng in common...  which is why someone would link to me in the first place.  So, why not share?  Well, I (being the good blogger manager that I am), go check the other guys blog to find it's basically junk.  So I nuke the comment and you, dear reader, are none the wiser.  Spammers are foiled again!

You might actually be surprised by how much spam my blog gets.  It's rather ridiculous, especially considering that only a handful of people ever find me.  Anyway...

I know there are some other bloggers (and wanna-be bloggers - as soon as you install some decent software, you know who you are) so I figured I'd pass this along.  If you have a blog, don't automatically accept comments and verify what you're posting.  You've been warned.

BTW... you might be interested to know that "pingbacks" were created to help avoid blog spam.  Now, it just means that your spam will come from another blog instead of a dedicated web page.

Monday, October 15, 2007 12:20 PM

Ok, this is kind of off my usual range of topics, but it's a little too odd for me to ignore without posting about it.

As some of my previous posts have alluded to, I spent last Saturday taking pictures of a friend setting up his new bee hive.  I'll be posting up a separate (and long) entry about that soon enough.  If you want the entire process, you can check out my 222 photos over on my Flickr set titled Beekeeping 101.

What I find a little odd is that even though I have no real interest in bees and I don't subscribe to any bee-related RSS feeds, newsletters or websites, a lot of my feeds have been suddenly flooded with bee posts.  A prime example is this one over on The Online Photographer (I'll post some comments over there when I'm done with this).  The author (Mike Johnston) goes into some hypothetical questions about what we as a society would do if it was proven that cell phones are causing the decline of bee populations.  I have to note that this is not some chase of fantasy, as several other sites have mentioned the same thing...  CoolSmartPhone, Engadget, Sci Fi Tech (Sci-Fi Channel), Tribe, etc.  I'm guessing a vast majority of these started up because of the article that ran in The Independent on the 15th (although other major rags have run similar ones).

Anyway...  Stories like that have been popping up all over my RSS subscriptions over the past few days.  I just thought it was rather strange that I'd just finished shooting the install of a hive right before all these starting flooding in.

So, what do I think about the whole "bee death" issue?  Well, I don't really think about it at all.  Honestly, this is just not something I really care about.  I'm not saying that I won't care in the future, it's just not really a pressing concern for me (yes, I'm kind of shallow at times... this is one of them).  Personally, I don't like bees.  They sting (duh).  They're not cute.  They interfere with my outdoorish activities.   Seriously, what's to like about all that?  Sure, the whole pollination thing is going to be an issue, but it's not enough of an issue (to me) to get past my whole general dislike of bees. 

Don't get me wrong, the whole bee photography thing was kind of cool (even though I did get stung), and there are a few shots that I'll probably always be relatively proud of, but it didn't make me a "bees are cool" convert or anything. 

Ack, I'm rambling again.  Ok, I'll sum it all up...  The whole bee death phenomena and the timing of it in regards to my recent photo shoot is weird.  It'll suck if bees everywhere start dropping dead and it'll probably have a huge impact.  But, I just don't care that much about it... yet.

Note: In case you want to comment on this, rest assured that I'll approve any comments from unregistered users as long as you keep the following in mind...  If you use fowl language, I'll edit it.  If you use enough foul language, I'll just nuke the post.  If you are selling something or want me or my readers to go to another site not related to this topic or my blog, I'll nuke the post.  If you enter the same comment multiple times, I'll nuke the post.  It's my blog and I can manage it however I see fit.  Deal!  My family reads this, be reasonable.  Disagree and post your opinions all you like, just don't be a jerk about it.  I'm pretty liberal, so chances are I won't nuke anything that doesn't directly go against the above. I'm only posting this because I used far more external links than usual and Google seems to really pick up on that, so it's possible a number of people who normally wouldn't come here will want to flame me based on this one post. All your bee are belong to us!

Monday, April 16, 2007 9:55 AM

Err... due to some "minor technical difficulties", I may not be posting a picture for a few days.  I'm still taking pictures, they're just not anywhere I can get to them.  Basically, I hosed up smthng on my system pretty good and can't get anything off my camera right now.  I could use my laptop, but the display is pretty bad for editing photos, so I'll save everyone the agony of looking at bright green pictures... "But, it looks fine if you tilt the laptop another couple of degrees." 

However, I may post the odd rant or two.  I might also possibly dig up some older pics that I've already imported just to keep you all occupied.  Laters!

Ok, I know I'm now three days behind on posting an actual picture.  There's a good reason for that...  It's called "Daylight Savings Time".  This year, the date that DST starts has been moved forward three weeks.  Sounds like no big deal until you understand how much this affects our servers and users at my work.  The amount of work our team needs to do in order to make sure users don't have totally messed up calendars in Outlook is incredible.  I've been pulling 12-16 hour days all week.  So, I've had zero time to even get pictures off my camera, let alone edit and post them. :(  I'm at the office right now and am only writing this because my brain isn't quite in gear yet and I'll mess smthng up if I start banging on servers right now.

Anyway...  due to my work schedule this week, I haven't had much time to take what I would consider to be "good" pictures.  I've stuck to my guns and still managed to shoot every day since I started my whole Camera365 thing.  But...  I know that MANY of the pictures I took this week stink more than three day old carp.  So, I'm going to kind of cheat on myself and toss in a "disclaimer" of sorts. 

While I still learn when I take bad pictures, no one wants to see them and I don't really want to waste time editing and posting them, explaining why they're bad, etc.  So, on the days that I only manage to get "bad" pictures, I'm probably going to post a picture from another day.  This works out pretty well, IMO.  Some days I may get 5 good pictures.  If I have to pic only one of those to post, the other 4 never get seen.  So, by posting "older" pictures on my "bad" days, I get to spare you from the agony of looking at my junk and you get to check out some of my "runner up" pictures.  All in all, I think it's a good thing.

Disclaimer: I may post pictures from other days if I have nothing worthwhile to post.  I'll make it abundantly clear in the description if this is the case. 

Okay, that's out of the way.  One last thing for you...  I probably won't get ANY pictures posted till I'm done with the DST stuff.  That might be Monday, it might be Wednesday.  Sorry, but I only gots so much time.  Cyas!