bignoseduglyguy

Yesterday evening, my buddy Chuck and I were talking over the variety of RSS aggregators available out there and what we prefer to use on which platform.  Earlier today, I had a similar chat with Jason.  All three of us now use both Windows and Mac machines on a daily basis and between us, we narrowed our preferred apps down to NetNewsWire Lite, Firefox with the Sage plug-in and the web-based Bloglines.  It was, therefore, with interest that I saw whilst reading The Office Weblog feed just now I clicke-through on a link to discover that the NewsGator has acquired NetNewsWire.  Regardless of the particular RSS client app I end up using, I will certainly create a recurring to-do on my PDA to periodically synchronise the OPML file in the client with one of the web-based feedreaders.  That way I get to read my favourite feeds from anywhere and I also have my subscriptions backed up if the worst happens.

I suspended blogging here a few months back in favour of more spasmodic output over at No. 8 Wire whilst we emigrated to New Zealand, secured a job, sorted visas and found a house to live in.  Whilst I have never been the most consistent of bloggers, I now intend to resume blogging here as well as continuing elsewhere. 

This decision is prompted by the fact that I am back on a broadband connection after four months of email and internet access via Bluetooth connection to a 3G smartphone.  Having said that, there’s a lot to be said for regular paychecks, sleeping in the same bed every night and familiar surroundings too.  After at least two minute’s thought, I am pretty sure that I will now split my blogging across the two sites. 

No.8 Wire was always intended to be a collection of impressions and recollections centered around our experience as migrants in New Zealand.  This being the case, I hope to keep that focus as the core of my writing there whilst broadening it a little to include things of interest to friends and family around the globe.

bignoseduglyguy will resume where it left off – as a stream of bits and bobs, comments and critiques, fun and philosophy – namely a common or garden blog.

As for writing elsewhere, I was involved in the London launch of the ever-growing Metroblogging franchise and still intend to post there occasionally as a ‘foreign correspondent’ though, now I have sorted shelter, food and warmth for the family, I might just have time to work on something else with Sean and the crew.  Last but not least, I still hold out a small hope for making time to work on something with my good friends Chuck, Jason and Roger.  Though we are all more than busy with our various lives, careers and families, I still fondly recall the fun we had writing for Chuck’s most excellent but now-dormant happypalm.com.

I have had enough of the latest rash of pop ups and pop unders that seem to circumvent Firefox’s Block Pop-Ups option. An hour’s reading and research has led me to implement the hosts file solution detailed here, using Dan Pollock’s hosts file text posted here. As well as seemingly halting the annoyances, it was also a useful first introduction to working in Mac OSX’s Terminal app.

Click through to the Flickr version on the photo above and have a look at why I am having trouble remembering which mouse is connected to which computer…

Dave aka funkypancake has posted a couple of photos that I snapped last week. If you are not familiar with his work, his photoblog is well worth perusing.

We had open house yesterday for folks to pop in and say goodbye before we leave so I feel a little fragile today.