Sean’s Blog

This weekend I was working to setup a new blog that I have been getting ready.  I had the wordpress installation all set and ready to go and I ordered the domain name from GoDaddy.com.  I then pointed the new domain at the directory on the webserver that would be hosting the new site and set it up as an addon domain.  Everything looked good until I tried to navigate to the site.

When I actually when to the new site (we’ll call it addon.com) it redirected me to the front page of seanelavelle.com.  Now I know that the new blog was set up correctly on the webserver at http://seanelavelle.com/addon/ and the DNS record should point to the subdomain as addon.seanelavelle.com, but going to that address also seemed to redirect me to the main site.  I was at a loss.

After talking to Bluehost support we determined the problem was not DNS, but the Wordpress installation.  More after the jump

Read more »

I’ve added some more services to the social page.  Check it out here.  I’ve got my twitter, facebook, flickr, del.icio.us, and more accounts out there.  If you know me and use one of these services, go ahead and ping my on them.  If you don’t know me, ping me anyways.  I always like meeting new people.

Since we’re on the subject of being social, I’ve been using Twitter for about 2 weeks now.  I gotta say, I didn’t expect much out of it, but I really like it.  There is a active community and most everyone s very friendly.

The learning curve beyond the basic posting and replying is a little confusing sometimes thought.  There are groups that you can follow, retweeting, a whole bunch of other stuff that you really need to see in action to get a basic understanding of what is going on.  Actually, the best way to get a feel for twitter is just to dive right in and try it out.  You get the hang of it very quickly and it has really opened my eyes to the local technology scene here in Columbus.  I haven’t yet met many people in real life via twitter, but I definitely plan on checking out the next Columbus Tweetup when it rolls around.

So if you are thinking of trying, jump in.  Don’t know anybody?  Ping me at @seanelavelle on twitter and I’ll follow you. (At least as long as your not following 45,000 other people.  Just looks like spam to me)

I know it’s been a couple days since I’ve posted anything, which is unusual, since I’ve been pretty good about doing one post per day.  I’ve been pretty busy and we had a big storm that came through and flooded the streets and knocked out the power for almost 24 hours.  We had some water in the house and sent a good amount of time cleaning up.

I also have been working pretty hard on content for the new technology specific blog I am looking to launch next week.  Plus I’ve been twittering like crazy which is just a really awesome service.

I’ll be getting back on to a more normal schedule here in the next week or so since I do have some posts I want to do, but I just wanted to make sure the blogosphere knows I m still alive.

I really like the word whinge. As an American you can’t use it without sounding like a college kid who just came back from a week in London (or Madonna), but it is a good word.
Google defines it as:

whinge:
To complain in a particularly annoying manner.

Actual Poll at MSNBC

I’m really busy today, but I ran across these and I thought they were great.  I totally want Mr Giggles to play with my kids…

Many, many more (14 pages) here.

I’ve always loved astronomy.  I never had the discipline for descent practice of it and my math skills are kind of shaky, but as something casual, i find it a lot of fun.   BoingBoing has a link today about an awesome picture taken from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter looking back at the moon and the earth.

Link to the NASA page with details and a larger image.

One of my favorite things about owning a house is just sitting in the backyard with my camera taking pictures of the birds and animals that are running around. Being that we’re around 2 miles from downtown, it is not exactly the Alaskan Wilderness. But we still get some neat birds and it is a nice way to pass some time.

Here’s the link to the gallery.

Recently I’ve been noticing an interesting trend. I’ve been seeing more and more entities (people, companies, movements) give out a Google “keyword” instead of a URL. For example, the Ron Paul campaign has a lot of placards that just say “Google Ron Paul” instead of just giving a website address (ie www.ronpaul2008.com).

Apparently companies in Asia have been doing this for a while now. I’m not sure if this is because of the difficulty of acquiring meaningful domain names, or if the subject is just easier to remember.

This means a couple things (to me). One is that while I don’t think premium domain names are going away anytime soon, they may definitely become less important. The other is that namespace crowding is going to be come much more of a problem.

What I mean by namespace crowding is the the inability to control how you rank in your search results. If you are the poor guy who owns Bill Gates Windows and Door Installation, you are never ever going to be able to Google that and be anywhere near the top of the search pile. A unique URL is the only choice at this point.

Your ownership of this phrase becomes even more important. Non-related pages or bad pages become much more of a problem, and one that is sort of out of your control. If the folks at boingboing decide that they want to write a post saying “Sean Lavelle is a tool” that is going to crush whatever Google ranking I have built up. That is sort of an extreme example (Cory, Mark, David and Xeni don’t do it! Please! ) but you can see who this lack of control would give someone who is invested in a particular brand fits.

What this means for me right now is that I am still pursuing a domain name that I want, but keeping an eye on how Google (and other search engines see me) is a very important part of maintaining your brand.

So go ahead - Google “Sean E Lavelle”

So Saturday night Jess and I went to see Iron Man. You know what I thought? Meh. That’s right I said Meh. Now I didn’t go in expecting high art ( the art not the terrible movie), but I had some expectations since THE ENTIRE INTERNET said it was “teh awesome!1!”

I thought that the first part in Afghanistan was really good, but it just kindof went downhill from there. Maybe I’m just not that into superhero movies. I liked the X-Men movies, the Batman with Christian Bale, and Hellboy (but that’s probably because I am a Guillermo Del Toro fanboy), and that is about it. Did I miss something?

I am really looking forward to Hellboy2, as well as The Happening, and I will probably see the new Indiana Jones, but so far the summer movies have left me, well kind of meh.