The Sound of My Own Voice

A few months ago I got a new headset, which has a studio monitor quality headphone component, but I don't really know how good the mic is... I decided to test it with a video.

This is the youtube version, I'm also going to try uploading it via facebook video, and then try to compare both with the original recording, to see what kind of compression and processing quality loss there is across the platforms.

You Like Me... You REALLY Like Me...

At peak, my blog was averaging about 2,500 to 5,000 unique views per day... a few times I went as high as 25,000, and a rare couple of times I went over that...

But I nearly stopped writing on the blog in 2015... and had been writing a lot less since 2013. I wrote more than 3900 posts from 2005 through the end of 2014... I've written exactly 145 posts in the 5 years since.

... But there's something funny...

As late as the end of 2018, I was still seeing up to 2500 uniques a day, and now, 5 years since I stopped posting every MONTH (I've averaged about 2 posts a month in over the last 5 years), never mind every week or every day... I'm still getting between 500 and 1,500 unique page views every day... That's how much my writing is out there, circulating, linked and referenced in other peoples posts, on forums etc... And how often is shows up in searches for the topics I write about.

... And that feels pretty damn great...

Comments are fixed... sort of

Comments are broken, and have been for a while. I'm working on figuring out why, and fixing it, right now.

Hopefully I'll have them back up, before more than a couple people want to comment but can't.

UPDATE: Well, the first fix was easy... but you have to actually go into the posts own page to comment. I'm trying to see what I can do to fix that.

Travelling Back From Out Of The Fog

A few years ago, I decided to deprioritize the blog... for several reasons.

First, my life was all cancer all the time, and I really just didn't feel like I was writing much worth reading that wasn't about the cancer and the impact it had on our life.

Second, and more relevant to the current state of social media, is that in large part, people stopped commenting on blogs... They would comment on twitter, or facebook, or reddit, or wherever they found the post, or had the post shared with them etc... but they wouldn't actually comment on the blog itself.

... The discussion moved away from the platform... and that killed the entire point of blogs, which was to actively engage with readers and commenters. Otherwise, it's just a web site... or worse, a livejournal...

So, I moved my primary social media activity and most of my new writing, from this blog, to other social media... Mostly facebook, with a little bit of twitter, and eventually a little bit of MeWe.

... I still occasionally posted, as my loyal readers hopefully noted... but often I went months at a time between blog posts.

However, I am generally a long form writer... I've got several blog posts exceeding 10,000 words, and at least a couple exceeding 20,000 words... and across the last 15 years that Ive been writing in this space, I've managed to write a couple of series of posts exceeding 100,000 words, which is entire book length.

... And Facebook isn't exactly well suited to long form writing... though I've still managed to write a fair few long form posts anyway.

Well... For quite some time now, a lot of my readers and friends have asked me to start posting my longer FB posts back to my blog... at the very least because FB makes it extremely difficult to save and find posts later, and it can be difficult to link to or excerpt a post when you want to etc...

As it happens, I had already decided to do so... and few days ago I mentioned I was already in the process of doing it... But, you have been following both FaceBook AND the blog all along, you may have noted I hadn't done so yet (or at least not until a few minutes ago).

I haven't forgotten about doing so... I'm just in the process of collecting, cleaning up and re-writing in blog format, and then scheduling those posts to come out one or two at a time, so i'm not flooding the blog with tens of thousands of words all at once.

... So... why now?

Well, a few reasons... For one thing, I've noted that some people are starting to engage with long form writing and blogs again. Also, my life, while not exactly great at the moment, is at least no longer all cancer all the time, so I feel like I can write more about what I actually want to write about.

... But there WAS something specific that prompted me to act on the notions that have been stewing for months, where I was hesitating before now...

For the last 10 years, I have suffered from what I, and other cancer warriors call "cancer brain"... I have had long and severe bouts of  overwhelming fatigue, lack of clarity and focus, writers block, and even readers block, where I literally can't concentrate or focus enough to read, sometimes for months at a time. I have spent days, weeks, months at a time, going in and out of what those of us who suffer from it call "brain fog"... where I can have seemingly normal function, even be reasonably intelligent and clever and seem to write reasonably well... but it's not me... it doesn't feel right, it doesn't... work... It's not good work and good writing, or at least not good enough. I try to grasp ideas and work with them, and they just slip away. I try to write the proper words to say what I really mean, in the way I want to say it... and I just can't.

... But there have been moments when I came out of the fog, and WAS able to do good work... even some things I thing are great. Among the best I've written... They're not common, but they have been happening more and more, as I recover more and more.

A few days ago, I managed to write about 20,000 words, on several different subjects, in just a few hours... I think maybe some pretty good ones, as I have strung them together.

My brain started working close to how it should for a few hours... Waking up after a good quality sleep with less pain and no reflux (for the first time in days) was undoubtedly a big help there... but sometimes, in the midst of the fog, I hit a clear patch, and can think, and write, and be productive, at least a bit like I used to.... And hopefully will again.

And in that clear patch,  I wrote wrote couple of the best things I've written in a good long while, as well as a couple of linked posts that are...

...Let's call them interesting seeds, that will hopefully grow from possibilities in peoples minds, to interesting realities in peoples lives.

So, I decided that I would stop letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, and at the very least, post here, whatever I may write that I think is good... or that may plant interesting seeds in peoples minds...

...If I can achieve that... it's something worthwhile... And you can't hope for much better than that.

Ten Years... That's Like a Billion Internet Years Right?

Ten years ago today, I wrote this:

Monday, February 14, 2005First Post!!!!! 

Ok folks, people have been telling me to write my own blog for two years now, so finally, here it is. 

Yeah I said I'd get around to it before, but I'm lazy, what can I say. 

The initial content is mostly going to be stuff I've written for other peoples blogs, and fora etc... 

Suggestions, praise, worship, and deification are all welcome.

The five years ago:

Yes, today is my fifth blogiversary. 

It's amazing how much has changed in my life in the last five years. I'm married, with children... wow... damn... 

I mean, at 16, I thought it'd be a miracle if I lived past 30... and if I'd gone on the way I was going, it would've been. 

Now I'm looking hard at "middle age"; having achieved nearly half of everything I've ever really wanted... and another 30 or so years... maybe 40 if I'm lucky... to achieve or acquire the other half before my ability to achieve is significantly diminished. 

Not that I don't have troubles, and trials, and difficulties and issues... perhaps more than my share... but I always have had, and I'm sure always will have them. It's the human condition. 

Moments like this, I just look around me and I can't help but think how lucky I am. How hard I've worked, how much I've sacrificed, how many people I've helped or hurt, or loved, or fought with along the way... but most of all how lucky I've been.
I simply cannot believe where I am, where I might soon be, and just how lucky I am for that. 

Thank you all for reading this stuff that spills out of my brain. It humbles me that so many people want to listen. I don't do this for you, I do it for my own sanity; but believe me, I appreciate you.

In those ten years, my words have been read at least 5 million times, by at least hundreds of thousands. 

Damn.

In those ten years, my life has changed so much. A wife and two daughters. Moving from Arizona to Idaho to New Hampshire to Florida. My son. Honestly, I just can't believe what a long strange trip it's been.

The last four of those years have been... pretty hard honestly. The cancer, the pain, the brain fog, the... everything...

Hell, it's been more than... 18 months I think, since I've been out shooting. But every day I wake up on the right side of the ground, is a good day.

I know I don't write here very much anymore (an explanation of that here). Most of what I'm writing is on facebook, and please feel free to friend or follow me there. I save the blog for the longer pieces, more personal or more details... But I'm still here. Still writing, still reading, still getting pissed off and writing a few thousand words, for whoever is still reading. 

So... I guess just... Thank you.

Blogging is Not Dead... Quite

I haven't exactly given up on blogging, but I have cut back a lot, and there's a couple reasons why.

First, the cancer, treatment, and the... Aftermath and recovery I suppose is the way to put it... They took a hell of a lot out of me. More than I have ever talked about really... More than I even understood until I changed some of my medications and got a bit back that helped me see more of... Just how bad it got.

Combined with that, I haven't bought a new gun, or even been in position to talk about one in... I dunno, Four years maybe? Five? I don't even remember... I think... Yeah the last time I bought a new gun was a couple months before we moved to Idaho... So four and a half years ago?

Oh wait... I did complete two gun builds while I was in Idaho. I had the base guns before we moved, but I actually finished the builds in April 2011. So three and a half years. I've been selling guns off ever since actually.

Since Boomershoot 2011, I haven't been to a single shooting event, training class, etc... I've even missed the last couple gunblogger rendezvous, and at GBR in 2011, I was so sick and had tremors and pain so bad I couldn't shoot, or even go to the range events, except for a couple hours of the first one.

Bringing us to the next reason. Basically, other than the Boy being born, my life has been mostly suck most of the time since late 2010. When I felt something would be particularly interesting, or I really needed to get something out on "paper", or needed to vent, I'd write something... But I didn't feel like being the " all misery all the time" blogger.

It's not all personal though, there's also been a change in the environment that has significantly impacted my blogging.

There has been a massive falloff in the quantity and quality of both bloggers, and blog refers and commenters.

Blogging is essentially an interactive, almost collaborative process. Bloggers get inspired, or irritated, or motivated, by other bloggers, and the ongoing conversation with their readers and commenters.

Its a virtuous cycle of ideas and interests and inspiration and motivation and feedback and continuous expression and refinement of ideas.

Except its not so much that anymore.

There's much less of it, and what there is, just isn't as good.

Oh, there's still good stuff, but a lot less of it, and its fewer, farther between, and harder to find.

Then, when you do find it, the engagement and feedback and interplay isn't there, so it doesn't generate more good stuff.

The virtuous circle isn't happening.

Honestly, its just not as fun or interesting anymore. I've still got plenty to say, but saying it through blogging isn't scratching the itch like it used to.

People who used to be blogging and commenting and engaging in long and interesting conversations... Now they're "writing" text bytes 140 character at a time... And half those are used for hash tags. Or worse, they're just exchanging memes and info graphics that other people made.

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but you can't talk about things with any depth or in interesting and original and insightful ways with stock photos and pithy captions.

Likes, and shares, and retweets may gratify the ego, but a conversation they do not make.

People are still reading blogs, but instead of reading the interconnected web of posts and comments in the blogosphere, they're reading single posts linked off of facebook or reddit. Most importantly, they're not really commenting on the blog posts themselves.

So, instead of the blog, I'm writing most of what I used to put on my blog, on Facebook.

That may seem hypocritical and contradictory given the paragraphs above, but its not.

I write short and medium length posts on Facebook, and I get more comments, more feedback, more interaction, than I EVER got blogging, even in the glory days. With the ease of reaching large audience who otherwise wouldn't have seen your writing with shares and likes et al... More people are taking what I'm writing and being inspired by it or motivated by it.

Unfortunately, it IS much more shallow interaction than the best days of blogging were. Its shorter, its less in depth, whatever you want to call it.. But at least there is an active conversation. An exchange of ideas and thoughts.

So, I save the really long or really deep stuff for the blog...

...Which by the by, no matter how good the post is and how much traffic the posts get still almost never gets more than a couple comments, most of which are either "good post, me too" or ignorant rants about how wrong and evil I am. I had insty link a post of mine last year, and still only got 15,000 hits on it, and NOT ONE COMMENT.

In fact, as I said above, it seems that most people are finding blog posts through twitter and Facebook, or on aggregator sites like reddit these days. Instead of commenting on the blog post, and sharing the converting with the author, they're writing their comments on Facebook, or the subreddit, or in tweets; and the conversation stays there.

So, I write the long deep stuff on the blog, and then I facebook it and tweet the link. I get no comments on the blog post, and dozens of comments and shares and likes on facebook and twitter, and other people write posts in response or are inspired...

...Which is kind of the point of blogging... at least for me.

3287 days? Damn, that's like, a million in internet years

Today was my 9 year blogiversary.

Damn.

Seriously that's like, a million in blog years.

Doncha know, blogs are dead now... it's all about the instagram, and the snapchat, and the tweets.

And I admit, this blog has been damn near dead for the last couple years.

Once I was heavily into the cancer treatment...

Well, you blog about what bugs you, and what's going on in your life... and what was going on in my life was kinda depressing.

Lately, I've mostly been doing short posts on facebook... mostly because that's where I see the stuff that irritates me most ;-)

But I'm still here. And I'm still writing... every once in a while.

Thanks for sticking around.

I'm not actually dead

I'm just exhausted, burned out, braindead...

I went almost an entire month without writing something on the blog, because... Life has been less than great for too long... we're worn down.

Anyway, I've either been "all cancer all the time" or just writing the same crap over and over again ever since Obama was elected the FIRST time.

Same shit, different day.

Lots of time's I've had an impulse to write something real and substantive here... for about 20 seconds and either I decide "it's not worth the effort", or I write a short comment on twitter or facebook or one of the forums I frequent... then I go try to work, or try to read.

Blogging isn't dead... far from it... it's just not very interesting right now... It doesn't pass the threshold of apathy and energy expenditure.

Eventually, it will again.

Don't Feed Me No Lines

And keep your hands to yourself...

And I wish off my Google Reader... Unfortunately, Google has decided to stop giving us that particular flavor of free ice cream, and I am most displeased.

July 1st, Google is shutting down the Google Reader RSS feed reader... which is the only feed reader I've ever liked, and the entire reason I switched from a tab system.

Before I switched, I bookmarked everything I wanted to read periodically, in folders based on how often I wanted to read them (daily, weekly etc...); and would "open all bookmarks in tabs" or "refresh all tabs", when I wanted to read my blogs, news sites etc...

My problem with RSS feed readers has always been that I hated the interface and reading experience.

Until Reader.

Now that it's going, I can't find a reader that I like.

I really LIKE the Google Reader interface. For me, it's simple, it's clean, it lets me do what I want to do.

I read my feed on multiple computers, my tablet, and my phone; so I need a cloud based reader. I want it accessible from all those devices, across multiple platforms.

I sort my feeds in groups, so I want to have an interface that handles groups well.

I like to read the full post in the reader, not just the subject line; particularly for my webcomics; but I also want to be able to switch views to compact etc...

And I'm broke, so free would be good.

So far I've tried Feedly, the old reader, NewsBlur (which they charge for), and NetVibes.

Of those, I hated the Old Reader, and NetVibes the least. Neither really does it for me though...

Any other suggestions?

So I'm like... a million in blog years

Today is the 8 year blogiversary of The AnarchAngel blog.

So... like... a million in blog years.

I suppose it still qualifies as a blog even though I'm only writing one or two posts a week most weeks right now....

My collection of pieces in "draft" status keeps growing, me just... not finishing them...

Honestly, to celebrate on this 8th blogiversary... I think what I'm going to do is completely drop out of the internet for the rest of the day. Read a book that isn't on a screen maybe.

Have fun y'all.

No, this blog is not hosting malware

Sometimes googles malware detection gets a little stupid; and they flag completely benign sites as hosting or distributing malware.

In this case goggle malware detection is reporting that I am hosting or distributing content from "cooking issues" "a known malware distributor".

Well, first of all I'm not hosting or distributing content from them; they are (or were, I just removed it) a link in my blogroll nothing more.

Second, they aren't a known malware distributor, they're the blog of a few instructors at a cooking school who like to mess around with unusual and interesting techniques for producing food. Very good site, I just wish they'd update more often.

It appears they haven't updated since August... and it's entirely possible that in that time someone has snuck some malware onto their site... But much more likely is that they also have a link to a site, which has a link to a site etc... etc...

This is the weakness of automated malware detection, automated intrusion detection etc... In fact, this can even be used as a deliberate denial of service attack, getting "content protection" services to block a site (it can be VERY difficult and annoying to get unblocked).

Anyway, I've pulled the link off my blogroll and everything seems to be fine now, with no more false alarms.

Oh damn... I missed another traffic milestone...

Apparently, according to the increasingly irrelevant and inaccurate sitemeter, I went over 3 million unique visitors sometime in the last 24 hours.

Or at least the widget on my sidebar says so... when I drill down into the stats I'm like a week or so away...

...and as we all know by now, sitemeter isn't even a rough guess anymore...

But what the hell, it's what I've used since day 1 so I'll go by that.

Oh and it also says 4 million or so pageviews... something like two weeks ago.

I'm a month short of 8 years on this blog (first post was valentines day 2005), I average something like 35,000 sitemeter uniques a month, with 45,000 page views (google stats say it's more like 65-75,000 pageviews a month)

And of course that doesn't count RSS readers, which I would guess would be about double that (about 3/4 of my regular readers are feed readers, and about 1/3 of my hits are regulars).

Also, a surprising number of people seem to use Lawdog, MadOgre, and Borepatch as their own personal gunblogger reading list. Like a couple hundred people a day, including folks I know are regular readers, always seem to reach me from their links (them, and the firearms blog, and gunblogblacklist are my top referrers other than google. Google runs something between 1/3 and 1/6th of my total traffic on any given day).

Before "all cancer, all the time" two years ago, I was close to double that... and frankly I think people were reading blogs more then anyway...

I'm actually surprised I've retained that much readership given how little content I've been posting, and how little quality of it... Thanks guys, I appreciate it.

Having this little problem

Over the last few months, I've had this little problem.

See... I've started writing dozens of pieces... and I just haven't bothered finishing, or posting them. some of them I've actually finished, but still... I just can't seem to get motivated enough to bother.

I've written some decent stuff... It's just that I feel like I've already said it a dozen times; or that the issues have been covered a million times etc... etc...

A couple things I wrote that I thought were really good, but I didn't want to deal with the morons who would be commenting on them...

Actually more than a couple...

Not my good regular comments and most of the commenters of the gunblogosphere and libertarian blogosphere; the "truth brigade" idiots and the paulbot types and 9/11 truther types... THOSE idiots.

Part of the problem is that the leftist idiots have got to the point... in fact they're way beyond the point... where I can no longer tell their actual positions and rhetoric, from ridiculous over the top satire of their actual positions and rhetoric.

We have reached a point in this country, where it's not just that headlines from "The Onion" are entirely believable; but that the entire articles are not only believable, they are in fact more reasonable... and better written... than the "real" thing.

I've actually got a bunch of pieces sitting in "draft" status right now that I could publish... but yaknow, I just don't feel like bothering.

I do have a megapost on the AR10, and a couple of non-gun posts that I will probably hit the button on in a couple of days....

It's just that if it isn't something really big and important, or really quick, or just fun... I just feel like it's not worth the time or effort right now.

A lot of it has been the cancer of course, and I think a lot of it is election fatigue.

I'm REALLY hoping that I'll feel different after the election.

Comments were broken for a few days

They're fixed now.

Mel was messing with the template and accidentally killed comments, around Thursday sometime. We noticed last night, and fixed them this morning.

Why do this?

As has so often been asked by bloggers around the web, Og asks "Why do you blog":

Why?

Because shit pisses me off 

Because shit amuses me 

Because really gross stupidity needs to be refuted so others don’t make the same mistakes 

Because if I didn’t I’d be even crazier than I already am

Yes, I know formatting is screwed up

Blogger is doing something stupid, not exactly sure what, but the post code that it generated for the last post is all hosed up. I'm going to fix it later.

Okay, that's a new low for me...

I managed to go a full five days without a post... really six actually... when I wasn't on vacation or sick.

That's how busy I was this week. I've been leaving the house around 7:30am each day, coming home around 7:30 or 8, because I haven't been leaving work 'til after 6 most nights.

That won't be a normal thing once I get settled in; I've just got lots I need to do while I'm getting up to speed, and I lose track of time etc...

At least I'm coming home in daylight.

And of course, as usual, I haven't been sleeping enough; averaging about 3 hours a night for the last two weeks. Combined with the 2.5 hours a day in the car.... yeah, I'm not exactly at the top of my game. I've barely even READ blogs this last week, never mind written anything that wasn't work related.

Thankfully, I'm getting some stress relief, and relaxation on the weekends; post about that to follow soon.

Internet has been spotty here since Monday

Which is why I have not posted what I wanted to the last few days.

As I've mentioned before, I'm on microwave internet service. A small microwave antenna sits high on the side of my house, pointing to the top of a 7,000 foot mountain about 10 miles slant range from me.

It's March. It's windy, and it's still snowing on the mountains, and unfortunately, there was a power outage on the top of the mountain for a day or so; and some intermittent network issues since then.

Unfortunately, I've been having some major internet problems generally for a few months; ever since they "upgraded" to new radio equipment late last year (including a radio "upgrade" for me).

Finally, after a few months of refunding me for service (I have a QOS guarantee) they decided to use the opportunity of the power cut to replace the node on the mountain, which they did yesterday, and this morning; and also my radio.

Analog RF engineering geekitude ahead....

They've upgraded me from a single band radio with a horizontally oriented plate radio, to a dual band, MIMO unity capable radio, with cross oriented poles and a dish instead of a plate.

That has upgraded me from a single 28Mbit wide channel to two 56Mbit wide channels. I also went from 18db above the noise floor to 28db above the noise floor.

My contract says I should get a minimum 1.5Mbit synchronus sustained with burst up to 8Mbit.

On the old radio gear I was MAXING out at 1.4Mbit, and only averaging a couple hundred Kbit.

That's why I've been getting refunded on my service since December.

On the new gear I'm maxing out at 8Mbit with an average of around 2Mbit.

I'm a hell of a lot happier about that. Of course, now I have to start paying them again.

Oh and my latency is spectacular by the way. I'm getting under 20ms to a commercial server in Seattle, under 30ms to Dallas, and under 100ms to London.

That's rather important since my "landline" is VOIP over this internet connection. Anyone who has called me in the last few months knows that my landline was iffy. Near as I can tell now, it's pretty good.

Blogdinner in northeastern Massachusetts

Mel and I, JayG and hopefully a half dozen others (lots of interest so far not a lot of confirmations) will be having a blogdinner meetup in northeastern Mass, this Saturday, around 7pm til whenever.

I'm leaving the restaurant pick up to JayG since I haven't eaten at a restaurant north of Boston and south of Nashua in 13 years. He should have a pick for us later today, and I'll update the post then.

UPDATE: The dinner will be at Angela's Coal Fired Pizza in Saugus, MA.

Theres another dinner on Sunday for Ambulance Driver. Unfortunately we're flying out at 6pm so we won't be able to make it to that one, thus a second dinner on Saturday.

If you're going to be in the region and want to drop by, let either me or JayG know via email or comment.

Testing Google+ integration

I haven't really done much with Google+ since it started up; mostly because most of my friends and family only use facebook. Also, when Google+ was started, there wasn't a simple way to automatically crosspost from my blog into G+. Then Google did a stupid thing and removed the post to plus function from its websites, (you can only +1 things, and even then only on some sites, or with certain browser plugins) and I basically ignored it from then on. Well, they came up with a way to automatically crosspost some time ago, and I finally got around to testing it now, with this post. Let's see how well this thing works shall we?