Blogger.com: sayonara

I sent this plea for help to a blogger friend tonight, but I thought it was worth broadcasting in any case:

Blogger.com has been a rudderless ship for some time now. No humans are noticeably running that service since Google bought it.

Tonight they sent me 2 identical emails explaining that their "publish via FTP" feature is just too much darn work for their engineers to maintain (I'm not shitting you) [note that the current FTP standard is unchanged from 1985 - but is evidently nonetheless too challenging for blogger.com's engineers to handle] and so I'll have to stop hosting my blog at my own site and start hosting it over on their servers.

Despite the fact that I rarely blog, I say "fuk dat". My data is mine and stays on my server, especially since their service sucks in so many ways and I don't trust them. For something like a year I've had a warning on my control panel that says my blog will be deleted in 20 days because it's a spam blog (but the remedies they suggest go nowhere, and there is no way to contact a human).

Do you know of another service I can use that also has a working importing tool? I briefly tried wordpress (again, about a year ago) but their advertised importing tool seemed broken...

Help!

So there we have it. How can I get my blog off this service and on to somewhere safe, that works?

Blogger.com: sayonara if you say so

A few weeks ago, as I scanned my email Spam folder with my finger poised to click the 'delete all' link, I noticed an email from blogger.com*, the site that I use to manage this blog. It said that their robots had determined that my blog was a "spam blog". Further, it said that if I didn't click the supplied link and request an "unlock review", my blog would be deleted in 20 days and that until then, my readers would see a warning on my blog. Gosh, thought I, lucky I spotted that, or my blog would've been deleted!

I clicked the link. Broken. No messages in my dashboard control panel thing. I published some posts, but the promised warning did not appear. It seemed like a phantom email, or as if the robots had changed their minds about me in the meantime. I tried clicking around blogger's help pages, but there was nothing relevant, and there is no way to contact a human at blogger (when you eventually find a 'contact us' link, and start feeling hopeful, you are dismayed to discover that it has been disabled, and redirects back to the help pages). There are no people steering this ship**.

A couple of weeks later, in my control panel, a warning appeared:

This blog has been locked due to possible Blogger Terms of Service violations. You may not publish new posts until your blog is reviewed and unlocked***.

This blog will be deleted within 20 days unless you request a review [ followed by a link to request the unlock review ]

I clicked the link, and was taken to the following page where I was asked to enter a 'captcha':

Blogger's spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog. (What is a spam blog?) Since you are an actual person reading this, your blog is probably not a spam blog. Automated spam detection is inherently fuzzy and we sincerely apologise for this false positive.

Your readers are seeing a warning page until one of our humans reviews it and verifies that it is not a spam blog. Please fill out the form below to get a review. We'll take a look at your blog and unlock it in less than two working days.

OK, fair enough, I thought: a computer made a mistake and a person will soon set it right in less than 2 working days. I think you can probably guess how the rest of the story goes from here: A couple of weeks went by, but the message persisted. After that, it was replaced by the original message (though no email this time) asking me to unlock my blog or lose it within 20 days, and promising that they would review it within 2 days. I went through the procedure again. This evening, a couple of weeks later, it happened again.

OK, the unsupervised robots running blogger.com want to delete my blog. Fine, effing let 'em, I'll use another service. I'm not going to let myself be bullied by a badly-written computer algorithm. Sayonara if you don't want me, though I have a sneaking suspicion that it's just an empty threat, and that their blog-deletion system is probably broken too. I guess I'll find out in 20 days.

[ * It's ironic that an email from blogger.com (who are owned by Google) accusing me of spam would end up in my Gmail spam folder ]

[ ** If a human who works for blogger.com ever actually sees this message, please leave a comment - with proof! - and I will post a photo of me eating my shorts ]

[ *** The fact that you're reading this post proves the statement is untrue ]

Well, it's been a while since I've won an award...

Here's something nice. My partitioning software, Partition Logic (based on my operating system, Visopsys) has been chosen as one of PC World magazine's "The 100 Best Products of 2008":

"Each year, PC World chooses the 100 top technology products available to consumers. Some of the products are brand new, some have been on the market for years. What they have in common is attractive and efficient design, outstanding features and performance, solid usability and smart innovation".

OK, so mine is only number 96, but it's still an honour:

Our July issue will feature an extremely popular cover story, The 100 Best Products of 2008. (formerly the World Class Awards) PC World editors selected Partition Logic as one of the best products of 2008 ! This special issue sells very well on newsstand, (the issue gets a lot of media play), and it's well read by our readers (this year, editors will include reader's favorite hardware, software and services in a sidebar of the feature). Congratulations again on this important industry award!

I'll have to remember to buy a copy of that. :))

Vista's a stinka

I own two (legit!) copies of Windows Vista. One I bought shortly after the launch, because I needed to ensure that people could use my partitioning program, Partition Logic, without destroying their computers [a-ok]. I installed that one 'within' my Linux machine using the VmWare emulator. Being generally unimpressed, I eventually deleted it.

Then another copy of Vista arrived through the post, as promised, a free 'upgrade' for my new laptop. I stashed that in a drawer somewhere, and haven't given the sparkly new Windows product much thought since then.

Until last night, that is, when I had to try and use the Vista that's installed on Kim's work laptop. She has complained bitterly about it, and asked the IT guy at work to install XP. In the meantime, someone had turned off DHCP in her Vista network settings, and I wanted to re-enable it so she could connect to our home network.

I'm a computer geek, and I seriously got lost trying to find that one magical dialog box with a 'use DHCP' checkbox. I went through layer upon layer, cycling back around to where I started at least a couple of times. Some dialogs showed the setting I was interested in, but wouldn't let me change anything. I had to click through at least a dozen security warnings. Eventually, I stumbled my way through the maze and made the change, but I couldn't tell you how I found it. If I had to do it again tonight, I'd probably end up chasing my tail once again.

That's just shoddy. Listen, XP is fine, right? I mean, if you have to use Windows... Microsoft has promised another new operating system in a few years, so why not wait and see whether it's an actual improvement? In the meantime, if you wanted to try something new, you could always try Linux, or get a Mac.

Visopsys and Partition Logic 0.67

On Tuesday I released version 0.67 of my operating system, Visopsys. Wednesday came the corresponding release of the relatively popular little tool Partition Logic which is based on Visopsys. What, you thought I sat around writing blog posts all day? :-)

Most people don't have much use for a hobby operating system (hey, I don't even use it for daily tasks yet). But Partition Logic is, I've found, a way to make Visopsys useful to regular people. Well, okay, slightly above-average computer users, that is, who like to do a little of their own system administration. Partition Logic is a tool for reconfiguring the layout of your computer's hard disk so that you can have separate data volumes, for example, or install multiple operating systems on one machine.

There's a little blurb about the Visopsys release here on OSNews.

Yet more good news from Google

For years we've heard about Google's "dark fibre" purchases -- unused fibre optic cable, but now we're finding out they've got plans for our dark porcelain as well:

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced the launch of Google TiSP (BETA)™, a free in-home wireless broadband service that delivers online connectivity via users' plumbing systems. The Toilet Internet Service Provider (TiSP) project is a self-installed, ad-supported online service that will be offered entirely free to any consumer with a WiFi-capable PC and a toilet connected to a local municipal sewage system.

It even comes with a self-installation kit (pictured above).

"I couldn't be more excited about, and am only slightly grossed out by, this remarkable new product," said Marissa Mayer, Google's Vice President of Search Products and User Experience. "I firmly believe TiSP will be a breakthrough product, particularly for those users who, like Larry himself, do much of their best thinking in the bathroom."

Can't wait to start pushing out blog posts from the bathroom.

Gmail paper

Another good idea from the boys in Mountain View: Google introduces "Gmail Paper", a service where you can choose to print all your email and have it delivered, for free. How about attachments?

All part of the deal. Photo attachments are printed on high-quality, glossy photo paper, and secured to your Gmail Paper with a paper clip. MP3 and WAV files will not be printed. We recommend maintaining copies of your non-paper Gmail in these cases.

But what about the environment?

Not a problem. Gmail Paper is made out of 96% post-consumer organic soybean sputum, and thus, actually helps the environment. For every Gmail Paper we produce, the environment gets incrementally healthier.

Partition Logic 0.64 released

And following from my Visopsys (operating system) release yesterday, today I've released the corresponding version of Partition Logic, which is a hard disk partitioning and data management tool that runs on Visopsys. It's by far the more popular of the two, since it does something specific and useful that people need. Plus, it's got a much cooler name. Click here to download it and give it a try.

Visopsys 0.64 released

Today I released version 0.64 of my operating system, Visopsys. There's a little news item up on OSNews.com as well. Click here to download it and try it out.

Visopsys 0.63 release

Version 0.63 of my PC operating system, Visopsys, was released the other day. It's a maintenance release with bugfixes and loads of small tweaks throughout the system, but also a few new little features, including the ability to format and resize Linux swap partitions, more reliable OS loading, better CPU detection, and a simple text editor. Detailed change log and downloads.