Before the internet there actually did exist
an interest in many things among the humans...
This book represented a treasure-trove of knowledge-building entertainment for serious young readers in the early years of the twentieth century and - as a confirmed reader of encyclopedias - I find the inclusion of this work in the pages of BlogDogIt to be compulsory. We commend the University of California Libraries for their valuable contributions to The Internet Archive
It has long been my intent to continue running BlogDogIt.com on the Geeklog CMS platform; doing my best to utilize existing features and plug-ins to keep this place on the cutting edge. Not too long ago though, I waxed poetic over my wishing to do something with the platform that - to my knowledge - had never been done with Geeklog. (See:Getting Geeky With IT)
I am pleased to report that after having submitted my work to Geeklog.net, I was informed by them that my modification - which I have named "RSS Last Post" - has been accepted and added to their official downloads section under the heading "Add-ons" subcategory "Hacks."
Get only the latest post from your favorite blogs.
Display in side block or static page.
A great deal of my blogging efforts revolve around promoting others' blogs. For many years I would use the Geeklog Portal Blocks to share their RSS feeds. I soon got the idea to attempt to extract a remote site's latest post and feature it in a static page or block and set about cobbling together this hack. In addition to showing the last post for the blog it also gets the website's logo and link if supplied to their feed (some do, some don't.)
Click the image above to visit the RSS Last Post download page and download the ZIP file - chocked full of tasty PHP Soup. Look around BlogDogIt for several examples of this hack in action.
Space may be the "final frontier" but that does not mean you have to be an astronaut to scratch your exploring itch. You can climb a mountain if you have one handy or tromp off into the woods and attempt to get lost in nature (if she'll have you.) But if exploration is what you crave, take a tip from Dorothy: "If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own backyard..."
BlogDogIt is pleased to shine this (long-overdue) spotlight into the fascinating diversion of Urban Exploration and invite you to experience the Oblivion State. Oblivion State exists as an online forum for like-minded individuals to share their experiences in this most visually stimulating, awe inspiring, often melancholical quest for some really "big game" images.
Wherever humanity attempts to improve their condition the true impact of these endeavors is often best displayed in the urbanized areas their cities and towns. Begin your expedition here in the comfort of your internet browser (no tetanus shot required.) Think about those astounding sights you pass on a daily basis; those of which you have become numb to the beauty they possess. Open your eyes to the Oblivion State...
Enjoy!
Click On The Image To Visit Source Article
All images sourced from http://www.oblivionstate.com/ and remain copyrighted to the photographer with all rights reserved. Used Without Permission - I am hoping your visit to their website will get me off the hook.
This station is located a good 25 miles east of Indianapolis, but you can hear a good 60 to 100 miles away (from Terre Haute, IN, to the Ohio border, from parts of Northern Indiana to Southern Indiana) on a good clear, quiet night.
Not long ago the BlogDogIt article "Bitchkoemer and Friends Go to Fano" was inducted into the K+Club (a place of honor for posts that receive over 1000 hits.) This is a story featuring a travelogue wherein three "amigos" take a motorhome on an excursion to Fano for a week of Beach Buggy hijinks in conjunction with the 2009 Fano Kite Festival in Denmark.
As I was moving that article to the K+Plus hall of distinction I was devastated to learn that the original website I discovered - that commemorated their trip - had been taken off the air (yes, that is a pun.) I was however, relieved to find the embedded video (hosted on Vimeo) was still available. In the process of investigating this business I found that Michel "Bitchkomer" De Meester had recently added a couple of videos of himself playing saxophone in what appeared to be a dimly lit jazz club. One of these videos (featured above) is of a very respectable jam session among several talented artist coming together to cover the George Gershwin classic - "Summertime"
The video lacked a description and gave no indication of the location or purpose of this performance; if not for the presence of that quarky little leather overnight case, emblazoned with the hand-painted word(s) "HerbieBlues" - situated mid-stage - I might never have learned the identity of the harmonica virtuoso, who was conspicuously absent from his signiture sachel. It was a search on "HerbieBlues" that revealed the hidden world of this most unique performer.
Lucky for you that the hard part is over, all you need do now is click the play buttons on the clips that follow. So prepare to be entertained. If this selection serves to "whet your whistle" click on the HerbieBlues logo below and visit Harbert Grezel's website and get to know this mouth-organ master.
BlogDogIt has been running on the Geeklog CMS platform ever since our inception in 2010. While I have many other sites going that run on various platforms it is BlogDogIt.com that gets most of my attention these days in terms of modification / customization. It is the sensible organization of files and functions within Geeklog that makes tinkering around in the code so much fun for those so inclined. Add to that a great group of developers eager to help and you will understand why the thought of moving this website to another platform has never crossed my mind.
As I am sure any frequent visitor of BlogDogIt will attest, we exist mainly to highlight interesting findings from the "web less traveled" and through the years have found many interesting purveyors of content and have made it a point to show appreciation in the form of gratuitous promotion by sharing of content and providing links to these virtual friends of BlogDogIt. On several occasions I have featured the RSS Headline Feed of many of my favored internet sites so that I could stay abreast of activity from this collection of bloggers and content creators.
RSS (Rich Site Summary - also affectionally known as Really Simple Syndication) is a method for making available regularly changing web content. An RSS Feed is a specially formatted file that is created by default by most blogging software platforms and by accessing this file anyone can see a summary of the latest posts without even having to visit the source website proper.
Geeklog CMS comes with a feature known as "Portal Blocks" which allows the webmaster to add an RSS Feed "widget" for any known website by simply entering the URL for that special website summary file. For example, the address for BlogDogIts' Feed File is http://blogdogit.com/backend/BlogDogIt.rss and by using any of several various so called "Feed Readers" a person might follow the posting activities of this website without necessarily visiting us directly.
The "Portal Blocks" feature will typically deliver a list of the headlines for a site, displayed as linking text to each article. I have long wished for the ability to capture only a sites latest post and have it reproduced in a dedicated widget to add this syndicated content directly into the page here at BlogDogIt.
Rather than wait, I have begun working on the development of an extension for the Geeklog platform that will allow the creation of a customized widget for featuring the latest content from a selected website. The working title for the project is RSS Tail.
The project is coming along nicely and the results will be exhibited among the left and right columns in the BlogDogIt Topic Area. Using the RSS Aggregator Function hack as a starting point for the source code I hope to develop this feature into something useful for the many Geeklog aficionados.
If I am featuring your site and you would like that to stop please let me know. If your site is featured and you would like to offer advice on how you would like to be featured we can have that discussion as well. Your own website should offer several configuration options for how your RSS Feed file is created but the actual options are platform dependent. If your RSS is featured here feel free to tweak your RSS settings and see the results by checking right here.
If you would like to see your RSS Feed featured here please let me know and I will see what I can do. If you are interested in obtaining the code for use on your own Geeklog site I will gladly make it available to you on request - that's why it's called Open Source :D
My bookshelf has long been home to one of my all-time favorite non-fiction books: "Pirating Plants: The Gardener's Guide to Getting Something for Nothing" (1975 - Tobey Publishing Co.) This is a book I refer to often for both the information it contains as well as the swashbuckling entertainment it provides. In a purely innocent "where are they now" internet search for its author, Peter Tobey, I found myself emerged in some of the most enjoyable internet I have encountered in quite some time.
Thanks to his LinkedIn profile, I discover that not only is Peter Toby alive and well (a genuine concern often expressed toward those of my contemporaries who tend to exist mainly in my memory) but find him to be the CEO of an East Coast boutique marketing agency by the name of Fuse & Company. Among the impressive display of clients listed in this companies portfolio section of their website is one aptly (if not redundantly) named "EncoreAgain."
After exploring the highly effective e-commerce solution developed by Fuse & Company for EncoreAgain, I immediately sought and secured permission to share elements of his self-described "Tobey-esque" website with the readers of BlogDogIt and encourage each and every one of you to visit this most unique creation and by all means take full advantage of the "Once in This Lifetime Offer" presented therein (and only hinted at below...)
Everyone understands, intuitively, that death is bad. So are misery, grief and hopelessness. Yucky conditions, each, that doom some lives, gone wrong and headed nowhere. Until now. Suddenly, for a limited time only, change your universe, putting a move on destiny, free.
We offer a remedy for every woe. Not just a better life, not merely 'improved.' We're talking a whole new ball of wax: Reincarnation.
Normally, our double-your-money-back offer guarantees the future of your choice for a measly $2.95. But, for a limited time only, you can request a 60-Day Free Trial Reincarnation. If you aren't happy with our service, pay nothing. And, for simply trying us out, keep the glorious Certificate of Guarantee with our complements.
The Re-do Guru
P.S. Finding a better life is just the start. You can also give a really nightmarish existence to some deserving louse. (Can you think of anyone?) Check out our "Send a Scum Some Doom" gift program. This too is free for a little while, certificate and all. Better hurry.
Neophytes to the reincarnation process should review our How It Works section.
Step by Step - In easy to understand terms, we review the requirements for pondering, selecting and securing a rich and rewarding future life.
Gifts - Giving a new existence is different from shopping for yourself. We offer some cautions.
Scum - If you know someone whose ethical DNA is directly descended from the stuff growing on the surfaces of ponds, we have a plan for you.
Start now. All you have to do is click How It Works.
I have been keeping an eye on this lady for a couple of years now and feel the time is right for shining the BlogDogIt Spotlight her way. As a self-described interdisciplinary artist, Bri - I hope I can call her that - has her hands in many media of self expression.
With a flair for the upbeat she imparts through her art those properties we all associate with sunshine. With warmth she illuminates her world, highlighting the colorful nature of her creativity. Like those rays of sunlight we have all seen breaking through a sky filled with clouds Brianna breaks through the internet with a fresh and honest presence; a truly spirited artist and skilled internet artisan worthy of attentive patronage.
"...I’d like my work to contribute to fond memories and reflect the world around us in a whimsical way."
-- Brianna Wray - [Artist Statement]
On the WraysOfSunshine.comwebsite Brianna has interviewed several of her local compatriots in the art world - gain insight into her love of art as she celebrates others who are driven to create. Perhaps one of the best introductions to Brianna Wray herself is in the form of this video self-portrait; Brianna: Wray of Sunshine - Final Project for Art360: 30:60:90: Identity & the Moving Image.
For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man - for precisely the same reasons.
Few folks would argue that to commit oneself to reading a 12~1500 page novel is a daunting assignment, to say the least. This is however, something I have intended to do and something I am pleased to say I have finally accomplished.
In the interest of full disclosure: Rather than curl up in some well-lit nook to pour over this monumental tome in hardcover form, I chose rather, to listen to the "Golden Voice" of David Fredrick Case (a.k.a. Fredrick Davidson) read Leo Tolstoy's - "War and Peace"aloud to me - via the Blackstone AudioBook - on my daily commute. At nearly 60 hours of playing time this too proved to be a serious commitment to task. ...
Still | Video Image - Updated @2 min. int. Video Mode - 5 fps
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In February of last year, Titan Books announced it would be publishing three new Firefly novels that would be set in the canon of Joss Whedon’s original television series, with Whedon himself serving as the consulting editor. The first of those books, Firefly: Big Damn Hero, was released in November of 2018, just in time for the holiday shopping […]
Jesus Christ is everywhere during Holy Week, but one Orlando woman thought she was going crazy when she saw his image in the bark of a dead tree in her front yard. “It’s Treesus,” the homeowner, Kim, said on the eve of Resurrection Sunday. “I find it very odd. For me, it’s unmistakable, and I’m … Continue reading The Face of Jesus Appears in the Oddest Places
This book represented a treasure-trove of knowledge-building entertainment for serious young readers in the early years of the twentieth century and - as a confirmed reader of encyclopedias - I find the inclusion of this work in the pages of BlogDogIt to be compulsory. We commend the University of California Libraries for their valuable contributions to The Internet Archive 
Geeklog CMS comes with a feature known as "
Rather than wait, I have begun working on the development of an extension for the Geeklog platform that will allow the creation of a customized widget for featuring the latest content from a selected website. The working title for the project is RSS Tail. 
Everyone understands, intuitively, that death is bad. So are misery, grief and hopelessness. Yucky conditions, each, that doom some lives, gone wrong and headed nowhere. Until now. Suddenly, for a limited time only, change your universe, putting a move on destiny, free.
Them All!
;)
