Monday, February 22, 2010

Computer Games

No, I'm not referring to video gaming, nor am I referring to the cult hit song from the Australian technopop group Mi-Sex. I'm referring the new standards thrust upon me by Blogger and my Internet service provider.

Some of you may have noticed, that my main page features fewer recent posts than before, This is because Blogger has seen it fit to curtail the amount of content that appears on the main page of my (and anyone else's) blog. It seems that Google, which owns Blogger, is phasing in a new pagination scheme that restricts the amount of content shown on a blog's main page. Why? Because the old standard Google took a survey and found that people wanted this new standard because showing more content on the main page meant longer downloads of main pages, resulting in . . . fewer readers.

I've been keeping track of my readership via SiteMeter.com, and I can tell you the downloading time is no problem for my readers. Nevertheless, this is the new standard, and I have to live with it. It doesn't necessarily reduce the number of individual posts on the main page, just the amount of overall content.

Not only is their less content on the main page, there's less content on the archive pages. I archive my posts by calendar month, and until yesterday an entire month's post were available on one archive page. Now, if you post more than thirty-six posts in a given month, the earliest three are not shown on the archive page. Anyone scouring an archive page will get this message, as seen below in this screen shot:



Dude, I kind of like having every post from one month on one archive screen.

My only solution? I'm going to stop posting so darn much, and try to emphasize quality over quantity. Well, after the Winter Olympics are over. :-D

Meanwhile, my Internet service provider (ISP) has decided to replace my current antivirus protection system with another one, even though I'm comfortable with the one I have now. Okay, a couple of spyware files have gotten on my computer before, but it's been mostly reliable. I don't expect antivirus software to be completely foolproof, and this is one of the best. My ISP is asking my mother and me - no, telling us - to switch over in three months to the one we had when we still had dialup. Hello? No one asked us what we thought of this plan.
Who's my ISP? Oh no, you're not getting that information out of me! I'm not going to let them give me a hard time by revealing their name on a blog millions of people can see!
We'll switch over before the deadline, all right, but I'm not too thrilled about it.
In either case, I'm being told to do as others say. I don't like taking orders from people when it comes to how my blog or our PC is run.

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