A new comment on one of my blogs says, “I have read a few good stuff here. Definitely worth bookmarking for revisiting. I wonder how much effort you put to create such a great informative website.”

At first glance, this very complementary comment might appear to be legitimate, but it’s just too vague, with no correlation whatever to the content of the post.  It’s comment spam.

The funny thing  about this particular comment spam is that it was left on a post titled “Hello World.”  The blog isn’t even active.

————————

When I went to update our virus protection software last month, I upgraded to a product that had more protection, and didn’t think anything more about it.

Friday, I was viewing my e-mail spam folder prior to permanent deletion and found a message from Norton telling me that my virus protection software had been automatically updated – the old software that was no longer on our computers.

Time to contact customer service.

I managed to get online and find the customer service link.  There was a note that said that the customer service online chat was the quickest way to resolve problems, which was fine with me.  I don’t care for dealing with customer service by phone and, with chat, there’s no struggling to understand the representative’s accent – and there was no way I was going to try to resolve this with e-mail.

The wait was just a few minutes and I “worked” on other things while I was waiting.  The customer service “expert,” to use Norton’s term for their representatives, was able to help in a relatively short period of time.  He did offer to apply the subscription time to our current product and refund 10% of the renewal price.  I told him,  “I would prefer the full refund instead.”

After he had processed the refund, he wrote, “I’ve noticed that you have been waiting for longer than expected. I’m sorry for this inconvenience and as a gesture of good will and to thank you for your patience, I would like to add an extra 30 days to your subscription. Is that ok with you?”  How did he know it was my birthday?

He didn’t, of course.  Funny thing, though, it was his birthday, too.

————————

It’s unfortunate that unethical individuals and organizations try to take advantage of people through the internet.

Imagine an online world where you didn’t have to deal with spam, viruses, phishing and scams.

Unfortunately, that innocent online world only lasted a few short years.

I was subscribed to a few genealogy online mailing lists that went silent in the 90s when a guy in Atlanta selling laser printer cartridges sent one of his ads in a mass email to the lists.  At the time, the mailing lists were hosted on a server at Indiana University.  The load from that mass emailing crashed the server and, eventually, that incident forced the mailing lists to find a new home.  That was my first exposure to the impact of internet spam.

Today,  staying protected from online attack requires spam filters, a good virus protection program and a firewall to prevent unauthorized access to your computer.

————————

How about you?  Any recent spam or virus issues?

I’m running another test of the settings of the plugin to send posts to facebook.

The figure provided with this test is a trend of satellite determined temperature variation for the lower atmosphere of the entire planet.  The figure is published monthly.  The temperature variation (or anomaly) is plotted as a temperature departure from the average value from January 1981 to December 2010.

The high peaks of the running 13 month average at 1998 and 2009 occurred from periods with strong El Ninos.  The drop at the end of the figure corresponds to La Nina periods

This is a second test of the feed from by blog to facebook.  It’s not intended to be a tutorial on how to set up a feed, though there may be some useful information for doing that.

There are a number of different ways to provide a feed from a blog to your facebook page (wall).

This is what worked for me.

However, that isn’t exactly what I wanted to do.  I wanted to the info to go to a page associated with my blog, not my personal facebook page.  I didn’t realize that I had to find something that would do that until after I had installed a WordPress plugin that would only send the post to a personal facebook wall.

Facebook Page Publish.

The second try was a plugin called Facebook Page Publish.  After installing the plugin, it took me a bit to find the link to its settings page.  Instead of being on the plug-ins menu, its under the Settings menu.

To connect the blog to facebook with this plugin, you have to create an app.  To get to the menu for building an app, use this link, or, if that didn’t work,

• go to the menu at the bottom of your facebook page and select Developers – or use this link.
• then at the top of the developers page, select the link for apps .

This post is intended to be a second test of the feed from my blog to facebook.  It’s not intended to be a detailed tutorial on how use the App feature or the WordPress plugin, so this is as far as I’ll go with it.

Many bloggers are now sometimes bloggers or former bloggers who I see more on facebook than on their blog or commenting in their blog.

So, now, I’m going to try to integrate facebook with my blog.

If this post stays here, it worked.  If it didn’t work, this post won’t be here, except in short term internet memory.

Lorem ipsum is dummy text long used for formatting layout in the printing and typesetting industry.  Today, it finds use in designing web page or blog layout.  Dummy text is used to eliminate the distraction of reading the content of the page and allows the viewer or developer easier focus on how the graphical elements, including the text, work with or against each other.

I’ve never seen it in video – but, why not:

The time lapse is from 899 photos taken over a period of about 75 minutes and compressed in the video to about 53 seconds.

Davina Haisell as more information on Lorem Ipsum in her post, Lorem Ipsum for the Smarty Pants.

We missed the big dust storm in Lubbock, Texas, on Monday by just a couple of hours. Even though we fought the wind all day, we managed to make it past Lubbock before the storm hit.

We were on the homeward leg of a 6 week trip and had planned to go further south, crossing Texas below Dallas and Fort Worth.  Saturday and Sunday nights, we had been camped near Carlsbad, New Mexico.  We were able to get online Sunday night, barely, and checked the weather forecast for where we were thinking of going – wind and blowing dust, with temperatures in the mid to high 90s.  The forecast for the Lubbock area was cooler and windy, but blowing dust was not mentioned. After talking it over for a bit, we decided to head north instead of east.

I did get a some video from our windy day’s trip and produced a short YouTube video.

On this trip, I decided that I was not going to try to keep up with a travel blog.  My intent was to keep a written journal and take lots of photos and video and to incorporate the journal and images into blog posts after we got home.  I was only partially successful.

While I did take lots of photographs and videos, the written journal fell by the wayside after only a few days.

I did read quite a few books over the last six weeks, though.

Yesterday we had a bit of wind and rain.  After the rain had passed, Karen spotted a rainbow through the skylight of the camper and I walked out to the highway to get to an open area where I could see it without trees, structures, or vehicles in the way.  I ended up on the edge of the median of the southbound lane of US 50.  The image is a composite of three photographs.

Nature is so amazing!

We’re traveling again.  My contact job ended about 2 1/2 weeks ago and we left home 2 weeks ago.  This time, I decided I was not going to try to keep up with the trip on a day to day basis.  Each time I’ve done that, I got behind and ended up skipping some days.

I’ve taken a lot of pictures and video, including several fairly decent time-lapse sequences.  Post processing is complete for about the first day and a half of our trip.  I’ll be posting about the trip in more detail when we get back home and I’ll be doing it day-by-day to get the whole trip published in sequence.

We planned to be away from the internet quite a bit this trip.  I pre-scheduled the videos that have been posted every three days or so through to the end of the trip.  Karen is posting pretty much as we go on her blog, but she is also pre-posting for some of the times that we will be away from the internet.

Most of the time when we have internet access, we are camped in an RV park that has wireless and is near or in a town, like Grand Junction, Colorado, where we are now.

Josiah Marshall
Favill

Image of unknown
man used for John
Beauchamp Jones.

Image of unknown
woman used for
“refugee” Judith
White McQuire.

Joseph Howland

Horatio Nelson Taft

William Howard Russell

Seven of the writers that I am including at Daily Observations from The Civil War wrote diary entries or letters on July 21, 1861 that related to the battle near Manassas Junction and/or the aftermath.  The following are excerpts from their writings of the day:

Josiah Marshall Favill – “In the order prescribed by the regulations, for a force feeling the enemy preparatory to an attack, we marched forward, passing over the open field and into a piece of full grown timber, apparently the slope of a considerable hill. As we slowly ascended the rising ground, suddenly a loud screeching noise overhead sent more than half the regiment pell mell the other side of a fence that ran along the road side. Here we crouched down flat on our bellies, our hearts in our mouths..,” – Diary of a Young Officer.

John Beauchamp Jones – “The President left the city this morning for Manassas, and we look for a battle immediately. I have always thought he would avail himself of his prerogative as commander-in-chief, and direct in person the most important operations in the field; and, indeed, I have always supposed he was selected to be the Chief of the Confederacy, mainly with a view to this object, as it was generally believed…” – A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary at the Confederate States Capital.

Judith White McQuire – “We were at church this morning and heard Bishop Meade, on the subject of “Praise.” He and his whole congregation greatly excited. Perhaps there was no one present who had not some near relative at Manassas…” Diary of a Southern Refugee During the War.

Joseph Howland – “On The Battle-Field Near Bull Run… Our brigade is making a demonstration in the face of the enemy and a fight is going on on the right of the line five or six miles off.” – Letters of a Family During the War for the Union.

Horatio Nelson Taft – “This has been the most exciting day yet. We have heard the guns all day from the battle which has been raging at or near Mannasses Junction. There is no news that can be relied on public tonight, only that a terrible fight has been going on all day.” – Diary of a Clerk in the U.S. Patent Office.

William Howard Russell – “The calmness and silence of the streets of Washington this lovely morning suggested thoughts of the very different scenes which, in all probability, were taking place at a few miles’ distance. One could fancy the hum and stir round the Federal bivouacs, as the troops woke up and were formed into column of march towards the enemy.” – My Diary North and South.

1. Crimes against butter – people imprison for selling margarine. (U.S. National Archives)
2. Stuxnet: Anatomy of a Computer Virus – this is the virus that shutdown the Iranian nuclear fuel enrichment centrifuges.
3. Göbekli Tepe – the oldest known stone human-made community and place of worship yet discovered.
4. Chihuly – fantastic glass art.
5. Tittle – a small distinguishing mark, such as the dot over a lowercase i or j.
6. Photopic Sky Survey – Fully interactive map of the night sky composed of 37000 pictures stitched together by one man.
7. Do nothing for 2 minutes.
8. Crossword Clue Solver
9. Portrait of America – Mobile free photo booth in an old VW van traveling cross country, capturing pictures of people.
10. Palouse Falls – an upper falls of ~20 feet (6.1m)  and a lower falls od ~180 feet (55 m ). (Wikipedia)
11. Code Talkers – American Indian heroes of World War II (National Museum of American Indians).
12. Butterflies and Moths of North America – collecting and sharing data about Lepidoptera.
13. Captured: The Ruins of Detroit – French photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre set out to document the decline of an American city.
14. J.K. Rowling Official Site
15. Reflections

This may become a regular feature – or maybe not.

1. T.G.I. Friday’s
2. Grizzly kills man at Yellowstone National Park, first fatal mauling since 1986
3. honey badger – The honey badger (Mellivora capensis), also known as the ratel, is a monotypic species of mustelid native to Africa, the Middle East and the Indian Subcontinent. (wikipedia)
4. In some cultures, Friday is considered unlucky. (Wikipedia)
5. Engineered from the finest genes, and trained to be a secret courier in a future world, Friday operates over a near-future Earth, where chaos reigns.
6. Hogweed – Heracleum Mantegazzianum — a plant more commonly known as the giant hogweed and native to Central Asia — is spreading fast in several states, and experts are urging some residents to beware. The tall plant with large, attractive flowers the size of umbrellas contains sap that causes blisters, burns, even blindness.
7. Kidnap survivor Elizabeth Smart joins ABC News as commentator.
8. Solar System Scope – Interactive 3D model of the solar system – interesting, but too busy with ads.
9. Katrina killed Six Flags New Orleans – Wikipedia
10. Your Paintings – a BBC website which aims to show the entire UK national collection of oil paintings, the stories behind the paintings, and where to see them for real. It is made up of paintings from thousands of museums and other public institutions around the country.

11. The Mountain from TSO Photography on Vimeo.

At Daily Observations from The Civil War, I publish daily writings from letters and diaries of 150 years ago, scheduling posts well in advance to keep from getting overwhelmed or behind.

While working with War Letters of William Thompson Lusk, I came across some familiar names.  On August 11, 1861, Lt. Lusk writes to his mother, “I have been fortunate in meeting several friends most unexpectedly during the last few days. Miss Woolsey was at our encampment on some errand of mercy yesterday evening. I saw her for a few moments, and promised to call upon her and Mrs. Howland soon, which I shall do if allowed to leave the camp. The laws are very strict though now, and I doubt whether I shall be able to leave the camp for some time to come.”

Miss Woolsey was Georgeanna Muirson Woolsey and Mrs. Howland was her sister, Eliza Woolsey Howland.  Many of their civil war letters – and those of other family members – are preserved in Letters of a Family During the War for the Union, another book I have been working with. There, Eliza Howland writes to her husband on October 1, 1861, “Very little to tell you about except a few calls, including one from Mrs. General Franklin to ask us to take tea with her to-night. Lieutenant Lusk of the 79th, whom we used to know as “Willy” Lusk, also came. He seems to have grown up into a very fine young fellow, handsome and gentlemanly, and with the same sweet expression he had as a child. He was studying medicine in Europe when the war broke out, but came home at once and enlisted as Lieutenant in the 79th, where he is now Acting Captain—so many of the regiment were either killed or taken prisoners at Bull Run.”

Georgeanna and Eliza lived together in Washington, D.C., while Eliza’s husband, Joseph served in the Union Army of the Potomac.  When the Army of the Potomac left the Washington area, they tried to get permission to travel with it.  However, they were unsuccessful until the Sanitary Commission gave them positions  on the hospital ship Daniel Webster.

All three survived the war. 

Eliza and her husband returned to their home in New York after he was wounded in 1862 at the Battle of Gaines’ Mill, effectively ending his military career. 

Georgeanna became very prominent in nursing during the war and after, including being one of the principle founders of the Connecticut Training School for Nurses. 

William took part in engagements at Blackburn’s Ford, First Bull Run, Port Royal, James Island, Second Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, and many other minor battles. He was also a staff officer of Isaac I. Stevens until Stevens’ death, and he commanded two companies during the Draft Riots of 1863.  When his command was sent to Delaware and designated as inactive, he resigned and returned to medical school. 

The tagline for this blog says that the blog is about sharing photos and images along with occasional commentary.

Lately, there’s not been much of any of any of that.

I’ve selected and randomly sorted a large number of my photos and collected images – and I’m going to start posting them on a fairly regular basis, starting tomorrow.  Some of the pictures will have appeared here before; most, though, will be posted for the first time.

I’ve always had the best intentions in the past for blogging about our trips, complete with descriptions and photos of some of what we have seen and done.  Unfortunately, with the seeing and doing, the blogging can’t keep up, I get further and further behind and end up not sharing all that I had hoped to share.

I  think on our next trip that I’ll take a different approach.  During the trip I’ll record what we do and see using the camera, a handwritten journal, and brochures from places we visit.

Blog posts will be developed sequentially from the journal entries and photos at some point when I have the time to sit down and write.  Sometimes a single day of our exploring, doing and seeing may play out over several daily blog posts.

Hopefully this will give me a plan for better sharing of our future trips.  I do intend to continue posting and sharing material from past trips that I have not yet shared or which has become “lost” over the years.

With my current employment situation, we won’t be doing as much traveling this year as we have in previous years, so my opportunities for trying this plan are going to be slim.

The photos on this post are from a 2007 weekend trip to Dallas, Texas.

This image is from Spearfish Falls, near Savoy, South Dakota — the falls are the backdrop. It was taken on  August 26, 2007, and is from another of the lost Exit78 blog posts that I am recovering.

These falls were pretty neat.  However, the lighting was bad.  It was about 2 in the afternoon and the falls were already in almost complete shadow.

Give me a break!

I hear now the board that’s used in a classroom can’t be called a black board or a white board. From what I understand, it’s derogatory to blacks or to whites if you use that kind of descriptive words – it’s either chalk board or marker board.

I guess it’s a good thing that there’s not anyone that might be traumatized by the use of the words chalk or marker.

I don’t know what you would call the boards then.

Read the rest of this October 20, 2004 post (recovered February 26, 2011).

A few years back, when moving the blog location, I lost many of my older blog posts and images. Recently, while exploring the Internet Archive WayBackMachine, I discovered much of what I had lost.  I’ll be restoring the lost material and will share some of the better “recovered blog posts.”

Today, I found and recovered my very first blog post – and have posted it here on the date it was originally published, September 14, 2004.  It was recovered from the Internet Archive’s WayBackMachine.

As best as I can tell, I abandoned Skedaddle’s Log after only a very few blog posts.  During the next month, I established 3 niche  blogs and North Farnham Freeholder, with all but that very first post moved to it.

I had been trying to make some income online for a while. At the time there was no way to place ads on blogspot  (which was also known as blogger).  After looking at several different blogging platforms, I decided to self-host and use WordPress, moving North Farnham Freeholder to the web host I had been using for a while.

A couple of years later, Exit78 was established, with many of the old posts being moved to exit78.com/weblog.  Then, in early 2009, my blogging at Exit78 was moved to the root directory, exit78.com.  Unfortunately, I made a change that wouldn’t let me access the original Exit78 location and, when I tried to fix that, I ended up losing many of the older posts.

I’ve been able to recover quite a few over time and, yesterday, found that many that hadn’t been recovered were available on the Internet Archive WayBack Machine.  I’ll be recovering those, republishing them here on Exit78 at their original publish date.

Do remember when you first started blogging?

Do you still have or can you find your very first blog post?

A lot of bloggers choose to blog anonymously, using a pseudonym or part of their name instead of their full name. Others choose to blog in full view, using their real names.

In Anonymous Blogging 101: a Quick and Dirty Primer – a  July 2010 guest post on Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger –  Treacle from The Lingerie Addict expounds on three reasons for anonymous blogging

1. Privacy & Safety
2. Honesty
3. Personality and character

Treacle also also writes:

The only foolproof way to keep from being found out is to never blog at all. Therefore, you should start blogging under the assumption that you’ll be discovered one day. It’s depressing, I know, but it’s important to think about. One day, someone will recognize you and very possibly expose you. So, before blogging about anything, think about the potential consequences of that exposure. Whether it’s losing your jobs, losing your kids, or losing your freedom be prepared for the worst possible outcome.

Anonymous blogging is not a free pass to be an asshole. Aside from the possibility that you’ll eventually be found out (see above), you are what you blog. Nice, nasty, or in between the people you attract are going to reflect what you write.

When I first started blogging, way back in 2004, I did like many others, posting my blog anonymously.  Then, at some point, I decided to use my name instead.  I remember reading the pros and cons of anonymous blogging and came down on the side of blogging in full view.

So far as my personality and what I’m willing to say online, I’ve found that there is very little difference in how I blog now compared to when I was blogging anonymous.

I’d be interested in hearing the thoughts of others on anonymous blogging.

(continued from Our accident)

I remember Karen talking to one of the EMTs like she knew him.  It turned out she did – sort of.

I think the encounter went something like this:

Karen immediately recognized one of the EMTs when she saw him through the windshield as they were coming around the front of the car.

As they started checking her over, she asked, “Are you Larry?”

Somewhat surprised, he said that he was.  When Karen told him, “I know your wife, Vivian,” he asked how she knew her.

Karen replied, “Blogging, email, quilting.”

He responded with another question, “Are you C.J. or Karen?”

Karen, C.J., and Vivian had been commenting on each others blogs for quite some time.  Last year, they met for lunch and had arranged to do it again this week – tomorrow, in fact.  Karen recognized Larry because Vivian had just posted a photo of him making Christmas breakfast.

On her blog, Karen says, “– it felt really reassuring to me even though I had never met him.  It was like I knew I was in good hands.”

———-

Karen is getting around a lot better today.  Her chest still hurts a lot and she has pains all over, kind of like the all over pains you get from the flu, except she doesn’t have the flu.

Yesterday, I went to the wrecker yard and got all of our stuff out of the car.  It’s seven years old and I’d be very surprised if it could be fixed for the approximate $5,000 the car is worth on Kelly Blue Book.  Unfortunately, I don’t have any of the insurance information for the driver of the other car.  It’ll be in the police report, which my insurance company is supposed to obtain.  The other driver was cited by the police officer which establishes fault for the insurance purposes.

This car was the one we towed behind our motor home, so if it’s totaled, we’ll have make sure to get a replacement that can be towed.

Have you been seeing a large increase in the amount of spam comments on your blog?

I sure have…, and I’ve taken temporary action to limit it.

I went to the discussion link under Settings on the WordPress dashboard.

Once there, I enabled the  option  to automatically close comments and, for now, I’m setting the time period to 4 days.  After a post has been up for 4 days, comment will be closed.

I had had this option set for a long time to limit the amount of spam, but, for some reason, a few weeks back, I had disabled it.

Hopefully, this surge of spam will fall to more normal levels and I will reset the period that comments are open to a somewhat longer duration.

Most of the online work that I have been doing lately has been associated with my civil war blog, adding entries that will be posted at some point in the future.  The following is cross-posted from that blog.

Introduction to some of the letter, journal and diary writers from 1860 and 1861 who will appear on the pages of Daily Observations from The Civil War.

A major part of my approach to the war is to present observations made in letters, journals, and diaries by people living the war and its impacts. My hope is that this will often result in our being able to “see” the progress of events from a variety of perspectives.

In most instances, I will be including all of what was included in the published versions of their writings, no matter how mundane. Some will have entries for almost every day while, with others, there will be long lapses without writing.

I have a large number of posts already scheduled for future publication in “Daily Observations from The Civil War,” including material from the following writers:

Dora Richards Miller, "War Diary of a Union Woman in the South"

Mary Boykin Chesnut, "A Diary From Dixie"

Lincoln Administration Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Wells, "Diary of Gideon Welles"

Susan Bradford Eppes, "Through Some Eventful Years"

Horatio King, Postmaster General at the end of the Buchanan administration

Catherine Cowles Richards, "Village Life in America 1852 - 1872"

The Woolseys of New York, "Letters of a Family During the War for the Union"

DNC Chairman August Belmont, "A Few Letters and Speeches of the Late Civil War"

John Beuchamp Jones, "A Rebel War Clerk's Diaray at the Confederate States Capital." (Image is from 1845 political cartoon)