Recently in Interesting Websites Category

My sister has started yet another blog, Daily Dose of Bilbo.  She's uploading a daily picture of one of her cats, Bilbo.  Feel free to ooh and aah.  This goes along with her other daily picture blog.

edit: I wonder how long it will be until her other two cats, Bossa Nova and Rosco, will demand their own step up to stardom.

reedit: I miss my own cats.  Thanks Angie.  Where ever you are.

So what happens when you take Garfield, the cat, out of Garfield, the comic?  You get an "even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life."

Garfield Minus Garfield

edit: Discovered here.

Edit: Oops forgot the link.

Bruce Waginslaw left a comment awhile back on my post where I was asking folks to suggest some webcomics for me. He suggested two that he does. Gotta admit that I'm more into story line webcomics like Multiplex, MegaTokyo (which I still have problems spelling) and Order of the Stick while these are more one panel works but I did get a chuckle out of them so I'll give him a plug and add them into the links page.

Savage Chickens and WebDonuts

Give them a try today and let me know what you think.  When you visit Savage Chickens, to flip through the comics, take a look at the Cartoons box along the left hand side.  That lists the current comic you're looking at as well as the previous ones.  That's the only way I could figure out how to go through the previous comics.

If anyone else cares to suggest a comic, please feel free to do so in the comments to this post.

OK, the domain renewal issue got fixed for this domain and it's been renewed so I guess you're all stuck with me for another year.  Gotta admit though that I'm still annoyed that it took four support tickets, a number of comments on a number of blogs, and general fussing to get it resolved and I've still never received anything besides a general "It should work" bit at least it's been resolved now.  My complaint about Automattic employee conduct from back in June is still not resolved and I doubt it will ever been answered but at least I still have this domain.

Anyway, I wanted to make a quick plug for assembla.com.  They offer free trac hosting along with a system for such extra features like tickets, wikis, etc for programming projects.  I use it a lot for our own projects and as well as keeping base installs for open source projects as well as the pre installed upgrades and plugins for our clients.  Makes life a lot easier and we don't have to host trac ourselves.

edit: One extra feature that you get for free is that you can mark any project as private.  That's why I'm not giving folks any links to our own tracs as most of them have non-GPL'ed code that we're not allowed to give out.

A long while ago, King Matt the First blogged about his experiences with Amazon Grocery and his attempt to get some toilet paper out of them.  I'm still scratching my head over how can one *NOT* have room for a four pack of toilet paper (um, one roil on the dispenser and the other three under the sink?  That should work.  Does in my bathroom.) but I had to chuckle when a Google Adsense advert came over the blog here for toiletpaperworld.com.

I did have a second look though over their shipping policies.  They don't appear to list many full case packs for sell on the site.  I did find this one though.  Kind of strange that their  case price is $71.84 while they offer free shipping for anything over $75.  Makes you have to order 2 cases for the best price.  Hmm, I wonder where we could put all those rolls...
 

Just a quick note of thanks to Nosysnoop and another anonymous person for the July 4th donations. They were very much welcomed. I didn't get them in time for the 4th but I'm sure I'll be able to use them sometime soon.

While you're here, check out Nosy's big dick. ;)

High Adventure Games gives us a link to Terraonova: The Planet of the Day. You may recognize the author of that program. It's John Walker, the founder of Autodesk, Inc. and co-author of AutoCAD.

The cool thing is that he's given me permission to use the script that powers that feature as part of my project, Colonies and Empires. Maybe I'll work on it someday.

As an aside, I would this as well. Might help me with my work with C&E.

Link

I gotta admit that I agree with most of these. One of my biggest pet peeves of working in the wordpress.com support forums along with other forums is when folks write these big long novels as support requests and don't get to the point or clearly state what the problem is. Or even the folks who don't want to give you details as to what the actual problem is. Bloodly hell....

You want help? Here's the method I wish folks would use in requesting help:

1) Read the tools already provided to you. We have a search bar at the very top of the forums. Try dropping in some keywords into it. Chances are someone else has already had the problem before you. Something broken? Take a look at the front page of the forums. It may already be reported. There may already be a solution.

2) Say hi to start off your post. Chances are someone is going to go out of their way to help you. Be polite. Works wonders.

3) State specifically what the problem is in under 20-25 words. Stating specifically helps. "I'm having an issue with adding a new link to my blog roll" works a lot better than "Something doesn't work." "My CSS file is missing from x-y-z.tld" works a whole lot better than "My blog looks funny." (Although I'll grant that one since many new users might not know what CSS is)

4) Got an example? Link specifically to it. If it's a general issue, provide a general link so we can see the issue. Specific issues need to have specific links. Never assume that we're going to see the exact same thing that you're going to see. If I could read minds, I wouldn't be sitting here answering support questions on an online forum.

5) Thank the folks who will help you.

6) Wait. Chances are there are other folks also needing help. Give them a chance to help you.

And if you're a webbased business who relies on volenteers to run your support forums, thank them once in a while. Give them the tools that then need to do their job help your clients. Listen to suggestions made by them to you. Pop in once in a while and show some interest in what's occuring in the forums. Publicly thank those who go out of their way to cover your asses. (I'd give you a link to that but that hasn't occured.) Drop a tshirt into the mail when you have a big get together and the volenteer can't attend. Sure, comping them for stuff is nice but doing something nice for them is even better.

And if one of those volenteers tells you that you're wrong about something, take a second and think about what is occuring. They may be right.

Else you may discover those volenteers slowly drifting away...