In the past month, I?ve done a lot of driving. 

For personal and work reasons, I feel like I?ve lived in my car just to get from point A to point B.  It could be worse; I could still be driving an ?87 Buick Century Limited.  But still, a four-year-old Mitsubishi Mirage isn?t entirely comfortable for long stretches for someone who?s 6?4?.

You know that old saying ?It?s a long and lonely road??  Or maybe it?s not a saying- maybe it?s a song.  Or maybe I?m just making this all up.  Just go along with me, okay?

Well, someone other than myself once said something to the effect that the road is long and lonely.  Well whatever they were trying to say is only half-true.  The road is definitely long. It takes forever to get to Gallipolis from Columbus.  But the road is most certainly not lonely.  It?s full of idiots.

I know I?m not the best driver. But I?m far from the worst.  And it?s those bad drivers who make driving miserable.

Maybe it?s because I learned how to drive somewhere else- the mean streets of New York and New Jersey.  The bad drivers out there are different.  There?s a state law in New Jersey where you can only use the left-hand-lane on a highway to pass.  Cops and troopers will pull you over if you?re out for a Sunday drive in the left lane and there?s no other traffic on the road.  I?ve seen it happen.

But here in Ohio, we have those people who go 50 all the way down the left hand lane of any interstate, state highway, scenic byway, county route or township road.  It is these people who are the bane of my existence.  I especially love it when there?s a truck in the right hand lane, and my friends refuse to pass them, but somehow don?t want to open up enough space to allow you to pass and get around the truck.

Another type of driver near and dear to my heart is the one that will be going along at a steady speed (above or below the speed limit, doesn?t matter), but the second you try and pass, puts on the turbo boost and all of a sudden it?s like a game of Pole Position.  It?s like they?re taking it as a personal affront that you?d like to get around them. 

Maybe we need to experiment with drugged driving.  Give the people who go 50 some uppers.  On the other hand, give the other ones some sedatives.  At least you have a chance of improving the conditions that way.

At least I don?t have any more major traveling for the foreseeable future.  Should make me a happier person.

Contratry to that last statement, Tom is really a happy person.  99 percent of the time.  Visit Tom’s blog at kingtom.thejamootz.com

I remember when Doom came out, it was 1993. I was in 7th grade, the shareware craze was at full tilt, and everyone had Doom on their computer but me, mostly because my computer wasn’t fast enough. I had to mooch the joys of shooting aliens from friends – but they had far better computers, so I really didn’t mind. They also had modems which is what made Doom Doom, people.

Way back when the Internet bubble was just starting to grow, Doom used the power of the network to its advantage. If you had a modem (or a network) you can play Doom with your friends, each having your own computer. The object, as with almost every video game since then, is to kill everything that moves.

While Doom wasn’t the first game to make shooting fun, it was the first that did it with style. Doom put you in the shooters position. You would control your character with only the barrel of your gun sticking out from the bottom of the screen – thus it was termed a “first person shooter” – far different that the previous generation of games that were Mario-esque in their happy jump-and-shoot characters.

As Doom got popular, there were even add-ons for the game that let you create your own graphics and maps. I probably spent more time making cool maps to play with friends that I did actually playing. I’ve always liked building then watching to see how others use what I built, it’s just fascinating. There were even hacks that turned game aliens into Barney the Dinosaur and giant Pac-mans. My favorite, to no one’s surprise, was the Star Wars hack that turned goons into Stormtroopers.

Doom added blood, gloom, and big guns – hell, even a chainsaw. I couldn’t even begin to tell you how many hours I wasted playing Doom. Even more so when I upgraded my computer and got a modem. It was awesome. Doom then opened the door for everyone else and to this day an entire genre owes its life to Doom. Today’s buzz-worthy games like Halo, Socom, and a series of James Bond games are essentially Doom clones, albeit with much better graphics.

Ah yes, Doom. Oh the days…those days being 1993! For those without an abacus handy, that’s 12 years ago. If there was a time when Doom hit its prime, it was probably 1994 or 1995-ish. By then it had been downloaded from BBSes and copying on disk a gazillion times by gamers everywhere, including myself. (In fact, I think I still have the disks somewhere.)

If there was a time to make a Doom movie, it was then in 1995. People of all ages would have come out in drones to wait in line. I would have been there. Today? Not so much. Not only has Doom lost its glamour and appeal, it’s pretty much ancient history. Especially when you consider computer years are measure in months. I fear to see the clientele waiting in for Doom with The Rock as the hero. The ultimate crossbreed of nerd: computers and wrestling. Awesome. The few, the proud.

If Hollywood wants to capitalize on videogames, they should be making Grand Theft Auto movies, a Halo movie, or a Legend of Zelda movie – of which I would definitely go see. Not only has the Zelda brand been added to annually with a new game, it’s just a good story and good characters. Zelda could be made into a Lord of the Rings-ish type film that could spawn many sequels.

I feel sorry for the person that suggested a Doom movie now. I would wager he got belted, or will get belted when the movie falls to DVD quicker than an Ernest movie.

The only defense I can give the film companies is that a Doom movie in 1995 might have looked pretty cheesy. Granted, with technology today you can make monsters and things look really good, at least in theory, although the trailer for Doom might prove otherwise. But then again, Terminator 2 looked awesome in 1991, so good effects were possible. I guess everything looks cheesy in retrospect, so maybe it’s not a very good defense.

Nonetheless, Doom remains best experienced as a game on your computer screen. Or even as a good book, of which I know there is at least one.

I’ve been asked more than once what the difference is between a “web site” and a “blog”. My quick response is “nothing,” and if you ask at least one person, he’ll say I invented the blog way back with Moogman.com – although I can’t agree there.

So what’s a blog? A blog is what used to be called a “home page.” There was a day when everyone had a home page like they have blogs now. Companies like GeoCities and Yahoo offered free hosting space on their servers where you could make your own home page with HTML code and some images. I had one. I actually had several; it’s where I started my love for building software.

And like blogs today, home pages were really nothing more than a place where people wrote about what they liked, usually with pictures and some MIDI music files. I remember my first home page (called “The Cave”) proclaimed by fandom of Guns N Roses, Spider-man, Nintendo, and HR Giger. It was full of pictures I found and some I drew, it had wallpaper you can download for Windows, and you could get more versions of “Sweet Child O Mine” in MIDI than you could ever want.

The Achilles heel of home pages was the manual labor required to make changes. In order to add a picture or even some text, you needed to know HTML code and how to upload/download and all sorts of stuff. That didn’t stop nerds like me, but it was a big barrier for many, a barrier which blogs has torn down very effectively.

The only difference between blogs and home pages (or as I call them “web sites”) is accessibility. Anyone can go sign-up for a blog and start publishing their thoughts and their pictures for all to read, and it won’t look half bad to boot. Blogs are also more or less limited to text and images. If you want more fancy things and more parts working together, you need more software and then you site has more to offer than a simple story and blamo – a web site is born.

And of course when technology becomes reachable by the masses you get all sorts of crap thrown in with stuff you might actually care about – and this site is no exception.

Mr. Nielsen and his usability cronies has recently published an article on the Top 10 mistakes of blogs. As a regular reader of his work and as one that tries his hardest to practice good usability, I study what he has to say and try to learn from it. This time, however, I think he happens to miss the boat in some places.

You can read the complete article for yourself, as I’ll just be covering a few points with my own two cents added in.

Rule No. 2, No Author Photo
He says a photo “connects the virtual and physical worlds,” and I agree, but I don’t see justification in its need to be a design rule for blogs.

Look, blogs are personal. They’re just some person’s ramblings on their life and the world around them. Their picture makes little difference in the long run. He claims it shows you’re not hiding, but I claim that no having a picture is not hiding, it’s a) keeping some things private, and b) shows the picture has no bearing on the content. Your picture on a web site doesn’t stop or keep me from reading what you have to say.

Rule No. 3, Nondescript Posting Titles
This one is a longer rule that really talks about headlines of writings, but it also hits on the point that “authors rarely follow the guidelines for writing for the Web in terms of making content scannable.”

Yes, there are times when content should be short and brief. In e-mails and PowerPoints, certainly not on blogs. Again, blogs are personal and thus are by definition going to be more in-depth into one’s life than CNN news brief. Blogs are an outlet for the “little guy” to say what’s on his mind. Sometimes that can be said in three sentences, sometimes three pages – here you’ll normally find the latter.

More times than not, if I got to a blog and find some one-liner and link to someplace else, I’ll click Back and be gone. Blogs are about personality through writing. A blog relates to readers through detailed experiences, not photos, and not solely links to other blogs of friends.

Rule No. 7, Irregular Publishing Frequency
Anyone that comes to this site knows I don’t write on a regular schedule. Unfortunately, life doesn?t run on a regular schedule either. Actually, strike that, life does run on a rather regular schedule, which is why the only time I write something is when something has changed (or is about to) and it’s worthy enough of writing. Of course, this varies per person, as it should.

Rule No. 10, Having a Domain Name Owned by a Weblog Service
In short, you need to have your own .com, and I agree. As I’ve written before, having a web address that includes 20 slashes and hyphens is not easy to remember or type. Even though your blog is a personal window into your life, you obviously want people to read it otherwise you wouldn’t even bother. So for heaven’s sake make it easy to type and remember. Your own .com web address will cost you less for an entire year than a week’s worth of gas for your car.
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Nielsen tries to provide an exception to his rules by saying, “Some weblogs are really just private diaries intended only for a handful of family members and close friends. Usability guidelines generally don’t apply to such sites, because the readers’ prior knowledge and motivation are incomparably greater than those of third-party users. When you want to reach new readers who aren’t your mother, however, usability becomes important.”

In some ways I agree, but I will always fall back on the fact that a blog is a personal journal. There’s no long or short way around it. People are complicated and don’t fit into scannable sentences and regular schedules.

If you’re trying to gain credibility or make money by publishing your thoughts on-line, you have a web site – not a blog.
 
Reaching new readers is easy. Inevitably, the people that are interested in what you have to say will find you, that’s the glory of the internet.

There’s nothing more comfortable than a pair of jeans, a comfy shirt, and a flannel, and only in the autumn can you dawn such attire. Plus you can be outside and be comfortable all the time – it’s not too hot, and it never really gets too cold. Case in point was the First Annual Autumn Gehrisch Get-Together.

Yes, with Big G’s fancy new pad way out in the boonies and the weather perfect for the weekend, a gathering was inevitable. Only in the Fall can you all gather outside and have everyone be comfortable and happy. Gather around the campfire, make some smores, and just laugh the night away under a very big moon.

Although I did lose in the First Annual Willey Road Horseshoe Tournament two games to one, but with a little practice I can make it up next year. There was a lot of wind this first time round, I swear.

(For a look back at the party, check out the Gallery)

And how do you follow-up a good old fashioned campfire? A trip to the pumpkin patch, duh.

The sign said “Pumpkin patch and Hayride,” and there was some hay, but I think it might have been a stretch to call it an actual “hay ride.” But there was a corn maze so that kind of made up for it. The pumpkin patch itself wasn’t too shabby either. We scored ourselves some nice, round pumpkins that will get the fancy trimmings before Halloween.

I’m not really an outdoor person by nature, but give me a clear, crisp night and it doesn’t take much to get me outside to do anything. I think people’s spirits are much happier when autumn finally gets here. Maybe it’s just because it means that Christmas is just around the corner, but I think it’s just because Fall has this comfort level that can’t be beaten.

What’s not to like about just enough chill I the air to warrant that old comfy sweatshirt and a cup of hot chocolate? (Marshmallows optional)

I know I’m not a world class chef – nor a world class nerd, for that matter – but I have a long history of “rolling my own” when it comes to almost anything. I was raised to be very self-reliant and self-resourceful. When I see something, I analyze it and wonder, “could I make that myself?”

More often than not I answer myself with a confident, “Yes, I could,” but never get around spending the time, money, or effort on making it. It’s a flaw, what I can saw?

When I came into my own as a computer programmer, I was able to write my own software instead of using someone else’s or (gasp) buy one. My programming skills are limited but have been honed well – my realm is the web. If it’s on the web I can make it, at least I think I can.

I’ve made web sites, publishing systems, billing software, reservation systems, timesheets, hell, even an entire corporate intranet with dozens of applications and services. But now all of a sudden I find myself ready to just take the easy way.

Fortunately this easy route is free and has to do with this very web site.

From the first incarnation of Moogman.com to the Morning Toast you read today, each has been driven by a publishing system I made from scratch. Every version had been better that the previous version, with additional features and enhancements. My first version was meant for me and me alone. The second version was aimed at forming a community. The most recent went back to the single model.

Now I’m at the point where I want to upgrade again, but I don’t want to take the time to make my own, or roll my own, as it were. Maybe it’s lack of motivation, or maybe it’s just the fact that I’ve been making publishing systems for years now and I’m never happy with the ones I make for very long. Maybe finding one already made will let me target my disapproval at someone else.

The biggest factor is simply time and pay off. Any side business I do will be for web site design (making it pretty) or custom software that is very industry/market specific – not generic publishing systems. The only benefactor from the system is this web site, and what does that bring me? Only entertainment and satisfaction from writing?which aren’t bad, but aren’t worth the hours and months of headaches trying to get my publishing system just right.

All that being said, I’ve pretty sure that the next publishing force to drive the Toast will be WordPress, an open-source publishing system aimed at bloggers. (Although I do have a hard time calling my web site a blog. I don’t believe it fits the true definition of a blog, but it does share some similarities. It depends on where the line between blog and web site are drawn. But I can elaborate on that later).

I initially went to Moveable Type to try that system out, but it required some technical setup I wasn’t prepared (or excited) about doing. So I went around to a few of the blogs I regularly read to see what they used. Eric Meyer’s site pimped WordPress, so I checked it out.

Wonderfully enough, WordPress is written in PHP, my programming language of choice. I gave it a whirl and found installation incredibly easy and within 30-minutes I was making test posts all over the place. Then I spent a few more hours learning the design and templates. Before the night was out I had a reasonable copy of the Toast in WordPress templates – and I have the testing on-line right now.

In fact, I ask anyone that reads this far to check out the test domain for the new system and give it a whirl. Anyone can sign-up for this testing period and help me put WordPress through its paces.

Now WordPress isn’t some fringe publishing system, it has quite a following and a lot of support all over the place. But as I didn’t make it, am I still testing the waters before I go at a full blast conversion.

WordPress will be used for composing articles, links, and all those wonderful text-based content items. The media gallery is still on the to-do list. I might end up rolling my own gallery unless I can find a good third-party one that works as well as WordPress does for text.

So a working demo of WordPress is available for you to try. Please give it a shot and post an article or comment on the demo site with your thoughts and review.

I’ve recently found myself using my GMail account to mail myself web site addresses from work to home. I don’t have a laptop or any other mobile device, I’m stuck on desktop computers at home and at work, and frankly, where ever else I go, like the library or a friend’s house. Especially between work and home, a lot of the same sites I find are useful. The ones I find while at work I can use at home, and vice versa.

So instead of using GMail for bookmarks as well as e-mail, I made my own bookmark manager and called it MarkMate.

MarkMate is quick and dirty right now because I needed it now. It may look familiar to you GMail users. I like GMail, so sue me. Actually, the one thing that GMail does really well is allow for multiple categorizations of messages. This is really where I saw the need for a bookmark manager; the interface and layout were just easy to copy to get it on-line and working.

I have my bookmarks are organized in folders in my browser, but over time the labels lose a little meaning and I find myself unable to find what I really want. Since the browser doesn’t have a “Search bookmarks” feature (which would be nice), I’m left with the standard hierarchy of folders. This is good for lots of things, but I tend to over-catalog things because one day I’ll think in terms of “design” while on other days I think “logo,” and folders only let you put marks in one place, unless you want to bookmark them twice – which just seems silly.

GMails method of labeling (which I mimicked), lets you quickly add and apply labels to multiple records at once with a handy dropdown menu. So fast and easy it was silly. This lets me create my many label names and cross-catalog to my heart’s content.

So I spent the weekend working on the foundation for MarkMate and just got the finishing touches and a coat of paint to get it up and ready. It’s still very basic and not as full-featured as I want (like no search as of yet), but they will all come in the future as time permits.

MarkMate can be used by anyone, just provide your common username and password and you’re good to go.

But where’s the sharing, you ask?

Plain and simple, I don’t care to share my bookmarks with anyone. MarkMate started as a solution for me and I figure if I want, others might to. Plus finding a good way to allow for sharing of bookmarks without having it turn into an advertisement bonanza was just too much for what I want to start. Maybe in the future.

Nonetheless, MarkMate is available and ready for anyone to use. Please take a look and even try it out, you might find it handier than you expect.

Upcoming features include:
- Searching of bookmarks (really soon)
- Maximum record list, which matters once you have gazillions of bookmarks
- Better response messages. They are all very ghetto right now, but it works.
- Some sort of toolbar, either web-based or browser extension (once I learn how)
- A logo. There’s one on paper, just not in pixels

If you try it and can think of things you expected but didn’t get, or would like to see, just reply here or send in mail using the Feedback link provided.