frequently asked questions
Q: What is Am I Blog Enough For You? about?
A: I started this site March 2002 right after I quit my job with The Cosmodemonic Internet Concern. Originally I was only going to write about my thoughts on unemployment as I tried to figure out what I wanted to with my life, but soon I threw my back out and started writing about anything that came to my mind. Before long I was carrying a notebook and compulsively jotting notes in it to write about on this site later.
Q: Who are you?
A: My name is Todd. I was born March 1967 in Toledo, Ohio. I moved to California in 1989 to attend U.C. Berkeley. I lived in Pacifica with my wife Diana and my daughter Stephanie when I started the blog. Since then, we had a son, Van/Matthew, and moved to Elysium. I work at an Internet search company and have a weekly music radio show on KFJC 89.7 Los Altos Hills.
Q: What does X mean?
A: Inside jokes are the last refuge of the unfunny, not that I mind.
¶ Blog — Short for Weblog. The first web logs contained links to news articles with commentaries. Then navel gazers like me started using them for on-line diaries.
¶ Got Ham — A stupid way of writing goddamn It comes from a horrible Flash animation called “Goku’s Last Stand.” It is extremely offensive, yet funny to people with a certain sense of humor.
¶ Cosmodemonic Internet Concern — a fictitious Internet company loosely based on the Internet company that I used to work for until March 2002. Cosmodemonic is a reference to my hero Henry Miller, who worked at Western Union and called it the Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company. Internet Concern is a reference to Dave Eggers’s McSweeney’s Internet Concern.
¶ !!!!!111 — This is shorthand for !!!!!!!!, also from Goku’s Last Stand. It is meant to convey to the reader that the author is not coordinated enough to hold down and release the shift and ‘1′ key simultaneously.
¶ Plaguey — Plaguey has his own page and is sort of an alter ego for me and also sort of a metaphor for something I haven’t quite figured out yet.
¶”¶” — The paragraph symbol is something I noticed that the New York Times uses for lists. I think it looks cool.
¶ Elysium — Palo Alto
¶ THOTDAFOTRE — Acronym for The History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire by Edward Gibbons. An online version is here. I was reading this book for most of the time that I was unemployed. I recommend the Penguin paperback version.
Q: What software do you use for Am I Blog Enough For You?
A: The first version had lots of software, and I only paid 20 bucks for all of it
- Computer OS: Redhat 7.2 w/2.4 kernel
- Web server: Apache 1.3
- Perl: 5.something
- Blogging software: Movable Type 2.21 (The coolest software. I paid $40 to regisiter it for this site and another one I’m working on. Download it and check it out.)
- Polling software: Poll It by CGI World
- NYT headline software: Moreover (I need to get this working again.)
- Layout: Pretty much all stolen from glish.com
- Text adjustment javascript: Also stolen from glish.com
- Webcam: visionGS PE 1.21
Currently AIBEFY? is running on WordPress 1.5 on a hosted server. I have a brief 18 month flirtation with Typepad, but Jan 2006 I got a hair up my butt and switched to WP.
Q: Who posts comments on Am I Blog Enough For You?
A: Posting is highly encouraged, so please post unless you are a hell-ass spammer. Posters include: Angry Dragon, Meghann, Sparkles, Goldwax, Knightmare, Mom, and Japanned in Japan.
Q: The formatting on Am I Blog Enough For You? is messed up
A: Sorry, I steal my templates rather than write them myself. I wrote the MT templates, which was pretty straightforward. Now that I found out how painful upgrading and migrating is can be, I am loathe to customize anything too heavily. The current design is based on the White as Milk Theme designed by Azeem Azeez. I tweaked it a bit to move the column break to the left a bit and add my blank Plaguey image.
Q: What does Am I Blog Enough For You? mean?
A: It is a pun on the great song Am I Black Enough For You? by Billy Paul. Goldwax turned me on to this song. Ain’t Too Proud To Blog was already taken, or I would have used that for the title.
Q: Why don’t you post that much any more?
A: Well, I’m back in the work force at a fairly well-known company that is fairly well-known for workers that work a lot of hours. I am one of those workers. Plus I have 2 kids. Plus I do a weekly radio show. I have a theory that the radio show lets me vent in similar ways that the blog used to and that may have taken some of my impetus to post. I also have a theory that WordPress’s lack of feedback/stats/clunky interface was taking a lot of the fun out of writing. Also, I quit drinking in the middle of 2004. That has definitely cut into my posting time because I no longer drink a six-pack, veg out, and write a post while I enjoy the buzz. Also also, I have found that if I don’t get a thought on my blog right away, I get confused about whether or not I have posted it. Then I get too lazy to go back and check whether I did or not and then I forget the topic. But that’s a lame excuse because I’m rarely more than 20 feet away from a computer.
version information
Currently: AIBEFY v5.0
Featuring:
-A switch to WP1.5 and a hosted server
-A bunch of broken links on Google and Yahoo!
-Updated “about” pages
-The loss of many features and pages
Coming soon:
-Email notifications coming back
-Stats up the wazoo
-New links
version history
AIBEFY v4.1
Featuring:
-simpler interface
-return of the mobile edition
AIBEFY v4.0
Featuring:
-Hosted on Typepad after I lost my static IP address upon moving from Pacifica to Palo Alto
-Amazon wish list so that you can buy me stuff
AIBEFY v3.0
Featuring:
-New, non-elliptical about page
-About Plaguey page
-Cleaner AvantGo channel code
Slotted for a future release:
-Fix the NYTimes headlines
-Register a domain name for this site and fix all the links
-Finish my AIBEFY CD giveaway project
-Make the JL Ancient font downloadable so that AIBEFY can be viewed as it was intended.
AIBEFY v3.0:
-Ultra-professional 3 column layout
-Text adjustment capabilities, featuring text enlargment for older readers!
-Expanded links section in right column, featuring list of very special blog entries
-Constant left column for easy navigation
-Special page listing the last 20 comments
-Exciting divider between links and comments stolen from Microsoft’s clip art library
-New improved page without formatting
-Analog instrumentation
AIBEFY v2.1:
-Articles from the New York Times front page [Later removed because the code conflicted with the text adjusting code.]
-Polls to get your opinion on important matters
-AvantGo channel!
AIBEFY v2.0:
-Exciting Plaguey background
-Floating boxes for each entry and comment
-Old timey looking ‘about page’ featuring Plaguey
-New page without formatting for Netscape users
AIBEFY v1.1:
-Exciting multi-colored New York Times-style masthead. [Note: Taken down right after Meghann said it looked like the gay flag.]
AIBEFY v1.0:
-Exciting New York Times-style masthead
-Eternally accurate weather box for Pacifica: “Highs in the mid-50s, Partly cloudy”
-New motto: “Don’t let your meat loaf” lifted from my college memories of the David Letterman show.
-Lots of cartoon links
AIBEFY v0.5:
-Default Movable Type interface
-Exciting calendaric interface
-Analog instrumentation