One blog I’ve been a long-time reader of (so long that I forget how it originally got there) is Chuqui 3.0, written by Chuq Von Rospach. He recently published an interesting post regarding what he hopes to achieve in 2012 with his blog.

First thought: I enjoy Chuq’s blog is because he bounces between several subjects (something I do myself) — technology, bird watching,  and photography. Sometimes I wonder if having several blogs, each devoted to a particular subject would be preferable. But I find several subjects make the author seem well-rounded, and there’s an element of surprise when you see an unexpected post. And now that I think about it, many of my favorite blogs share this multiple-subject trait — John Gruber is a Kubrick fan, MG Siegler loves movies, Penelope Trunk posts about marital issues.

I also found myself nodding my head in agreement at one paragraph in Chuq’s post:

But one thing I’ve come to realize is how — careful — this blog’s gotten. If you look at the blogs I posted as influencing me the other day you’ll see one common trait is that they aren’t afraid to have an opinion and an attitude. Just by sheer necessity I was always fairly careful about what I said when I was at Apple (mostly), and that caution was encouraged at Palm and HP as well. For a company that paid me to be out there  and conversing with the developers, they were usually worried about losing control of the discussion, so “don’t say that” was a common refrain heard around the offices. I think that bled out onto my personal blog, too, and it’s gotten pretty bland. I need to change that, re-inject my personality and opinions into it more.

Like Chuq, I’ve long had a personal policy of not blogging about current employer(s), which I’ll stand by (mostly because my current job isn’t all that interesting or influential in regards to the tech world I blog about, and so I approach things as an end-user…) — but it does have me thinking other subjects I’ve avoided. I keep things pretty impersonal here, despite some large stuff going on. I’ve danced around any mention to protect those involved, but there are some lighter subjects that mostly involve just myself that could use some mention.

So — one new subject I may post about in 2012 is another hobby I took on in 2011 — running. I started exactly around this time in 2011 because of some health concerns — after so many years of shrugging off the doctor and always passing the physical with nothing wrong, a blood test revealed very high cholesterol — which frankly, freaked me out. I was also dealing with some general aches and pains and other physical annoyances that in retrospect, were pretty due to being slightly overweight.

I resolved in 2011 to do deal with this, using a pretty nerdy system — get an iPhone app, a plan, and start working on it systematically over a long period of time — and change my diet. Now, a year later, the cholesterol / weight is in the normal range and I’m looking for a half marathon to tackle sometime in 2012, around the time of my 40th birthday (yeah, just typing that date is a freaky reality check). The shift in not giving health much thought (because I was “young”) to a concern was a big personal issue during 2011.

Anyhow, part of the reason why I decided to finally do something about this was a series of posts by Chuq as well regarding health issues, pointing out how the stereotypical web-jockey work situation of sitting for hours behind a desk and poor diet is something that can eventually catch up to you.

So I guess another point of this post is how this whole blogging thing can silently influence others whether they’re aware of it not. And I hope to “pay it forward” and blog more about myself — beyond technology and movies, where I think it could benefit others — in 2012.

Looking back on 2011, happy with the ad revenue (still profitable!), but not as pleased with the amount of posts I didn’t write. Meaning, a lot of procrastination and aborted attempts — well-meaning posts that were never finished and later deleted. I tried imposing some order with a schedule but that didn’t work.

Now — in retrospect — it all boils down to too much conversation and not enough action.

New goal for 2012 will be to not care so much. Less friction — not “frictionless” to where there’s an oiled straw from my brain to your monitor — but less contemplation beforehand and getting bogged down in the editing or “what will people think?” phase. A shift from thinker to doer.

What I hope to achieve in 2012 (while trying not to think about this too hard or over-promise what I can’t deliver…):

• More off-the-cuff tech posts featuring personal biases / opinions.
• More app reviews.
• More movie-related posts (beyond my standard review format) — upcoming films for example.
• Slight redesign toward simplicity.
• Mad Men and Arrested Development (for real, this time).

Who knows if I’ll be successful, but it’ll at least generate enough drivel to fill your feed reader throughout 2013. Thanks for your continued readership.

I reserve the right to delete: comments that are blatantly obscene, abusive, racist, sexist, or homophobic, comments that other readers might find extremely offensive or threatening, or comments with no relevance to the post, contain self-promotion (spam), or links to splog websites or sites I wouldn’t visit myself.

Basically: I don’t care if you disagree with anything written here and feel the need to say so. I welcome contrarian opinions, and even those I disagree with, I leave up for all to see.

But I draw the line when the comments move into nonsense abuse, call me a moron, and verge into the realm of senselessly foul language. Disagree all you want, but learn how to do it in a manner with some civility above the fourth grade reading level. Deliberately using wussy attribution like “youreamoron@moron.com” doesn’t help things either. I delete comments of this nature without any hesitation.

This is my blog and I don’t have time or the energy to respond to crap comments.

Alright, back to the regularly scheduled programming.

Have gotten a few stray comments over the past few months that the blog has slowed down significantly. Since this blog is written by one (1) person it’s entirely my fault.

After several years, blogging is more habitual than anything else. I haven’t found the energy or time to push things forward, but am so used to writing regularly  that I can’t quite pull the plug.

So: am juicing the gears by imposing order. Will move to a weekly blogging schedule, as follows:

• Monday: iPhone / iPad app review
• Tuesdays: Television / entertainment related
• Wednesday: Tech notes
• Thursday: movie review
• Friday: Interesting website or gadget review

This leverages a vast amount of already-written posts and provides a clear path to queue up more, plus make off-the-cuff, timely posts only once or twice week. It also provides some order to entertainment and technology  (alternate days). You’ll know what to expect when. Also note the schedule indicates no blogging on the weekend — providing regular, needed breaks.

I think I can handle this.

That said — see you Monday. And thanks for reading.

• Less crap: everything in the sidebar now appears in a footer, and several plug-ins were uninstalled and subsequently forgotten.
• HTML 5: lots of good stuff from the Diving into HTML5 site.
• CSS3: rounded corners, text shadow effects, and some iPhone / iPad specifics.
• Videos: should play on iPads and iPhones (and as a sideways benefit, in Google Reader) when available.
• Still tweaking things to lighten the CSS and JS, plus the display on iPhone / iPad.
• Less ads for the time being. Sucks for my bottom line, but some anti-ad readers may enjoy the respite.

Anyhow it’s a good foundation for the future, in which I progressively add more useless things and decide to scale everything back yet again.

Core Reviews, Plus More Opinionated Tech

I shifted the top menu and side bar, keeping with the general trend of what I’ve been writing about for the past year: movie reviews, iPhone app reviews, and technology falling behind. But my overall goal is to have reviews as the core of the site with tech opinion pieces appearing sporadically, but more often. This strategy is looking more likely, as I have pre-published enough movie reviews to last until next year (shh, don’t tell anyone) and am doing the same with iPhone app reviews. That should free up more time for me to opine more about the state of digital video nirvana, respond to fellow blogger’s posts, and complain about celebrities taking over Twitter.

TV Show Pages

Created dedicated pages for each television show I write about, with links to episode reviews and pretty episode thumbnails. The TV Show page has links to said pages. I had fun creating the banners.

In the future, look for posts on Arrested Development, the next season of Mad Men, and Caprica.

iPhone App Pricing

Added standard iPhone price categories to the side bar so you can read only about free apps, or all the $0.99 apps. I have price sensitivity since dropping five bucks for a thirty year old video game.

Movie Reviews

Look for reviews of the Alien quadrilogy, all six Star Wars movies, and Woody Allen’s entire filmography — so much Allen I married my step — never mind. I started on Star Trek but got sidetracked playing Doodle Jump.

Contests

The monthly movie identification contest shall continue. I’ve been pleasantly surprised to find someone answering correctly right off the bat and so soon after I hit publish, reaffirming there are some readers after all. The prize will increase by $10 each month until an awesome $120 grand prize come December. It’s paid for by the advertising (Google, iTunes, Amazon) on this blog. I find some justice in redistributing money garnished from folks clicking on ads for Bride Wars.

That’s it for now, thanks for reading.

For the past few months I’ve been reviewing iPhone Apps here on Webomatica, and enjoying it immensely.

Well, Ross McKillop, a fellow blogger who authors the “how to” blog Simplehelp.net noticed, and offered the chance to contribute regular iPhone App reviews at Switching To Mac, a website chock full of Mac news and helpful “how to” info.

My first post is a review of the iPhone word game WordsWorth.

I’ll continue to post iPhone App reviews here, but the content at Switching To Mac will be exclusive to that site. So if you have any interest in reading what I write over there — you’ll just have to subscribe to the Switching To Mac feed.

• Technology: Continuing with all things Apple, digital video nirvana, and iPhone App reviews.
• Movies: More user-suggested reviews, “series” posts devoted to particular directors, and better movies as I re-dedicate myself to reviewing the AFI-100.
• Television: The final, fourth season of Battlestar Galactica. Season three of Mad Men. Episode reviews of Arrested Development.
• More contests.
• Not through any initiative of my own, this site is now hosted at “The Planet.”
• New blog design,with less cruft (widgets, scripts, extra code) to improve load time. It will feature dedicated landing pages for the most popular subjects.
• In keeping with the new blog direction, I stepped down as writer for The Blog Herald.

Lastly, if you have any great ideas for iPhone App or movie reviews, drop me a line at jason(at)webomatica.com. I’ve already received some interesting suggestions, which will hit the blog in due time. And thanks again for reading.

Anyhow, I think I’ve settled on more entertainment (movie, TV show, occasional music reviews), with the technology side taken up by all things Apple and my continuing quest for digital video nirvana. This is my story and I’ll do my best to stay focused on it all of 2009.

But an additional piece of the renewed focus is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time: review stuff that you, the readers, are interested in.

Just use my website email address: jason(at)webomatica.com to which anybody can suggest something to review. I’d prefer to get movie review ideas or iPhone App recommendations but anything that falls under the subject above is fair game. I’ll take the costs upon myself, which shouldn’t be difficult what with NetFlix and the relative cheapness of iPhone Apps .

By doing this, I hope to take some time off my hands in terms of deciding what to write about, and you folks start controlling more of the content of the blog. Through these subjects, I hope to continue blogging well until 2012 at the very least.

Rather bizarre Internet meme going around regarding a fellow who owed money and decided to pay it back by emailing a drawing of a spider. Read the email thread here.

Now we have folks trying to purchase The Consumerist with spider drawings and a crappy drawing of a spider playing Wii valued at $33,674.23.

Yeah, I find this funny, partly because of all the financial turmoil, resulting from people unable to pay back borrowed money. One can see how, as an act of total desperation, you’d resort to drawing crappy spiders and mailing them in as a mortgage payment. I mean, that makes *total* sense.

It’s a reminder that our money isn’t backed by anything tangible either. It’s all just pieces of paper that society has agreed is worth something. The Fed prints money, basically creating it out of thin air.

I’d love to see Henry Paulson throw up his hands in frustration and annouce a new bailout consisting of 72 trillion spider drawings.

So I’ve decided to my part to get a new economy off the ground, one based on crappy spider drawings. Send me a drawing of a spider. Tell me what to blog about and I’ll do it, no questions asked. I’m accepting spider drawings as payment and will blog for crappy spider drawings.

Here’s my email address: jason(at)webomatica.com

Or leave a comment to this post with a link to your spider drawing.

• Quit Facebook.
• Quit Twitter.
• Vastly reduced usage of Google Reader.
• Started ignoring my blog statistics.
• Went pretty much all FriendFeed.

Without time investment in blog promotion, keeping up with tech news, and tracking every little detail regarding the blog, I expected traffic to drop off substantially. Much to my surprise, this didn’t happen. May was the best month ever, traffic-wise, crossing 1 million hits in one month for the first time, and 52K uniques.

Some of this bump-up was due to writing a particularly stupid post, but in general, less quantity, more quality, and more time off away from the computer had little effect on traffic. And increased reliance on FriendFeed probably helped a great deal.

I’m pleased with this development, and hope it’s more than a one-month trend. In order to find out, I remain on “vacation.”

Who knows if any of you readers will actually make use of it, and I’m slightly skeptical about the utility of such an idea, but the option is there for those readers / commenters who just love filming themselves.

Big thanks to Seemsic and Disqus for making the activation so easy!

I’m no longer on Facebook but I know there are some bloggers who spend a lot of time cultivating their zombies and superwalls. Six Apart just launched a free FaceBook app called Blog It that may make your blogging more efficient. Basically, it lets you write posts and update your blogs while in Facebook.

I checked out the demo video and one of its strengths is to post to multiple blogs and publish a Twitter tweet or update Pownce simultaneously from within the confines of Facebook. This may be useful for bloggers who post links to their blog posts using Twitter. The more notable sites supported are Blogger, TypePad, Twitter, Movable Type, Vox, and WordPress.

Says David Recordon of Six Apart:

“Blog It is one of the few applications that takes content created inside Facebook and makes it available for use outside Facebook… this is a concrete step away from the silos and walled gardens of the past and toward the open web of the future.”

I’m all for that.

Additional Reading: CNet, TechCrunch

Lately, I find myself agreeing with “technology avoidance” articles like Scoble turning off the Internet, Hugh quitting Twitter, Mark Evans declaring RSS feed bankruptcy, ignoring TechMeme and Mashable, and tech bloggers overwhelmed by stress.

I wrote about the New York Times article on the Blog Herald and mused about taking a “blog vacation”. Well, I’m going to take my own advice and do so.

I’m not completely down on blogging. I still enjoy writing, reading, and participating in conversations (wherever they may be). I’m really enjoying participating in the L33t Podcast and the Blog Herald.

It’s the pressure to blog constantly that I’m tired of. I don’t enjoy the feeling of having to chime in on everything. I don’t enjoy using the computer in the evening after work. I don’t enjoy tracking page views, RSS subscribers, and ad revenue.

I don’t enjoy this hobby becoming like work.

Last weekend, I went up to Marin where there was no television, no cell phone access, and I didn’t take my computer. Just my wife and I, hiking in the woods. It was the best weekend I’ve had in quite some time. And I want to do that every weekend — not just occasionally.

Lastly, I once read a post by engtech which had some really good blogging advice:

Two key things I learned over time were to avoid the echo chamber and stop repeating news stories with a slight spin, and to write new content instead of always linking to other people and blockquoting.

I plan to blog less, but when I do write something it will be of better content. I like how I do my “links of the week” as a single post on Saturday to keep the signal to noise ratio low. I will focus on better titles, telling stories and covering the four different kinds of learning. I will write more software, how-to guides, and book reviews as I read to learn.

The second paragraph is inspiring to me. I want to do better at adding value to the web and not just filling it with noise. I’m not exactly sure how I’ll do that or if it will be any good — but I’d like to try.

I’ll still write about tech, but only major events that really move me. The Techmeme chasing, the page view baiting, the “look at me” stuff, will decrease substantially.

If this description sounds like a bad idea and you’re moved to unsubscribe, I totally understand. Otherwise, see you on the other side.

Please read Tony’s first article: Breaking! TailRank Exposes Massive Number Of Blogs Hacked and UPDATE: Has ZDnet Been Hacked As Well?

You may be wondering, how can one tell if their WordPress install is hacked? YugaTech has some tips, the most critical ones I’ll reiterate below.

• Look critically at your blog pages in a browser and see if there are any ads or links to sites you most certainly didn’t put there.
• While in a browser, do a View Source Code. Look for any strange links to sites you don’t recognize, more specifically in the header or footer code.
• Popular and free themes can have PHP scripts intended to be manipulated remotely. Really look at the code to see if there are any “hooks” — I would imagine URLs pointing to scripts stored on other domain names.
• Look in your “cgi-bin” directory to see if there are any odd scripts on your server.

Other tips I can recommend:

• Work on a local copy of your theme and upload it periodically, replacing what’s on your server. Hackers would be hacking the online copy, and not the one on your local machine.
• Update to the latest version of WordPress — as of this writing, 2.5.
• Periodically change your WordPress password.
• Read Deep Jive Interests.

This past weekend I had the opportunity to record a podcast with the L33t Tech News “gang.”

The Reddit L33t Tech experiment is a sub-Reddit where several of us self-designated “B-list” bloggers submit links to cool tech stories found during satiation of our feed reader addictions. That L33t sub-reddit recently passed 1,000 subscribers.

Anyhow, doing a podcast made sense since some of the L33t Reddit “gang” has substantial podcast experience. It was set up and moderated by Mashable’s Mark “Rizzin” Hopkins, and features MG Siegler of ParisLemon, Frederic of The Last Podcast and myself. Hopefully, we’ll continue doing this on a weekly basis.

Others who may appear in future episodes are Louis Gray of LouisGray.com, Steven Hodson of WinExtra, and I’m holding out hope for Tony Hung.

This “pilot” episode covers some amusing subjects like an orgasmic MacBook Pro unboxing, FriendFeed, Google, and WordPress 2.5.

You can listen to the podcast via this feed or at Frederic’s website.

Below is the orgasmic MacBook pro unboxing video mentioned in the podcast. It was first noted by MG and Frederic; it’s worth a watch / listen if you’re into this Apple nerd kind of thing — I certainly am.

The top comment-people for March were:

• Mike: Told me about SimplePie, for which I am grateful.
• Dave: Mr. Fanpop
• John Do
• Fahad
• Houserocker

Top comments for future months will be different now that I have installed Disqus.

The look is best described as cleaner, with a lighter blue and attention paid to usability that was absent before, through work with Happy Cog. Some new features are improved embedding of media (say, YouTube videos), image galleries, and an improved uploader.

I have admit, after regular use of WordPress for the past two years, some changes are rather bewildering. My physical mouse memory moves to click “edit” for a post but this now requires a click on a post’s title instead.

But many of these changes seem made for usability reasons. For example, the “timestamp” setting requires a click on “Edit,” no longer requiring the terminology “timestamp”. Tabs more commonly used (Write, Manage) appear at the top left, and the less used Settings, Plugins, Users, and Choices appear at the right and appear in smaller type.

Other changes will take getting used to. The category check boxes now appear beneath a post, requiring more scrolling. The options for various plug-ins seem corralled under “Settings.”

My upgrade was reasonably smooth, except I had to update many plugins in preparation, and I messed up the upload to two folders containing the heart of WordPress. But all is now working fine.

For the full list of what’s new, please read Matt Mullenweg’s announcement.

Several features that should be pretty cool for readers:

• Comments are threaded so you can reply to specific comments.
• Comments are rateable — you can vote up them up or down.
• There is now a Webomatica forum of sorts (webomatica.disqus.com) where you can see all this blog’s posts in one place and have your way with them, comment-wise.
• If you create a Disqus login you can create an avatar, and be able to comment on the other 4,000 or so blogs that use Disqus, such as Mathew Ingram, WinExtra, Scripting News, or Fake Steve Jobs.

For more info, check out their tour.

What’s in it for me:

• This should mean less time haggling with spam comments.
• I can remove several comment-related WordPress plugins — namely the recent comments, top comments, and most commented ones — and replace them with Disqus-stuff.
• Moderation and replies to your comments should be easier.
• Most importantly, less wrangling with spomments means more time to write blog posts.

Big thanks to Steven Hodson and Mike for convincing me to give this service a shot. Feel free to test it out in the comments below.

I already have something on my list of stuff to buy at Amazon: Season 3 of Battlestar Galactica.

It’s kinda fun to get random prizes that way. I should do something similar on this blog. DVD giveaway number #3, coming right up…

I’m generally okay with my real name being out there, although I started blogging as “Webomatica” since that was the name of this website, and well… I didn’t really know how far this blogging thing would go and to what extent using my real name would be a detriment or a positive in terms of privacy.

But now that my name is out there, it’s become a moot point. I can’t really pull it back. So I’m taking ownership of my real name and moving ahead. I changed the author field on this blog from “Webomatica” to “Jason Kaneshiro” and also purchased the domain name jasonkaneshiro.com which points to this here site. I don’t think I’ll use that domain name at all except as a pointer, but it’s my way of solidifying the name for whatever the future may bring.

Another reason to “take ownership” is there is another “Jason Kaneshiro” whom I have never met and is not me, who writes sports articles for the Honolulu Star Bulletin. Believe it or not, “Kaneshiro” is a common name in Hawaii where I grew up. So a Google search presently mixes us up and in addition, there are some online profiles that are totally messed up. I need to associate my name with this site so it isn’t more confusing than it already is.

Here are some handy tips for future reference:

Not Me: Spoke Profile
Not Me: Actor in IMDB
Not Me: Personal Homepage

Anyhow, nice to meet you if you didn’t already know my name.

This morning, TechCrunch floated a rumor that Digg was about to be purchased by Microsoft or Google for around $200 million. As expected, tons of tech bloggers piled on with speculative posts. But a few hours later, Louis Gray Twittered a link to a post Digg’s blog itself from Jay Adelson — declaring the acquisition rumors completely false.

TechCrunch updated the original post with an “update” paragraph acknowledging Jay’s post, and claiming their source is “very, very good”. But there isn’t any way to shake the huge clot of blogs linking to the “Digg selling” story, and commenting on old — possibly untrue — news. This will all work itself off over time, but right now — I find it amusing.

Also today, Jason Calacanis posted 17 money-saving start-up tips. I thought most of the tips were decent and certainly had some useful insights (not buying a phone system and investing in dual monitors for example). But there was one tip about firing workaholics — that non-workaholics shouldn’t be in the startup “game” and would be better off working at Starbucks or the post office.

When I first read this, I figured Jason was just joking, but in his defense, there’s a kernel of truth to it. Passion and devotion at the expense of all else is one reason why I personally don’t currently work at one (too jaded after two startup implosions — I’ll take salary over stock options any day).

Anyhow, perhaps his post was dashed off without full thought as to the reaction of the tech blogosphere at large. Techcrunch in particular latched onto the negative implications — with the inflammatory headline “Calacanis Fires People Who Have A Life”, as well as others, with headlines I can’t really repeat here. Jason responded with a post explaining what he really meant, but those harsh words are out there already, in the form of the original post, now tops at Techmeme.

So at the end of the day, both examples demonstrate the worth of slowing down — resisting the urge to rush onto the “Techmeme pile up” or rattle off a blog post without re-reading it and just… pause a bit. Techmeme isn’t going anywhere, and your post will still show up when the time is right.

I’m currently working on adding FriendFeed to the sidebar in lieu of Google Reader. I was previously adding Google Reader Shared Links and Twitter, but have recently decided just embedding one feed that pulls in all the other social stuff I do makes much more sense. Mike gave me a good tip of SimplePie which I hope to get working, as soon as I can figure out why it keeps complaining about my WordPress cache. Ah, technology.

February Top Commentators

• Dave is always on top of this list
• Mike of Flammable Animals made his presence known regarding Mac users and FriendFeed.
• Liza makes some cool glass art; check it out.
• Fahad is a new to the blog.
• Ditto suicidalsam.
• and Ditto Stefanie.

About a month ago, my scourge was trackback spam from many blogs that were nothing but shells copying blog posts and providing a link back. Most of those splogs calmed down with the new version of Akismet.

The latest annoying spam I’ve noticed is definitely a human. They look at my list of top commentators and leave a comment that is of the same name, but links to their spammy site. Luckily I know the type of comments either Liza or Mike would leave and so a spoofy comment sticks out like a sore thumb. So ultimately the best strategy is to moderate by hand.

At the end of the day, spam is just one of those things any blogger has to deal with on a regular basis. I’ve come to a resigned feeling that it will never end but I try to stay a few steps ahead. Thanks for hanging in there as the battle rages on behind the scenes.

• Added Gravatars to the comments. These are little icons that represent individuals across different blogs. If you don’t have one, visit Gravatar.com. They’re owned by the same company that makes WordPress. The plug in I’m using is called Gravatars2 which you can get at Zenpax. It supports image caching.
• Installed WP Super Cache which is a souped up version of WP Cache.
• Added some styles to create borders around images with CSS. No idea why I didn’t do this earlier.
• Embedded as many YouTube movie trailers as I could find, for the movie reviews. I’d say the James Bond ones are the most amusing.
• Will update as many movie and television images to 500 px wide.

That’s about it for now.

• Sunday: Classic movie post — I’m moving all my really old, non-AFI movie reviews into the blog proper. These are old articles (some several years’ old) but I doubt any regular readers of the blog have read them.
• Sunday: I’ll start with Star Trek The Original Series episode reviews sometime in March.
• Monday: Twin Peaks. Until I’m driven mad by the backwards-talking midget.
• Tuesday: Interesting website review. Most likely a Web 2.0 site but it could be a blog or other fun web property.
• Wednesday: The IT Crowd Season One, followed by weekly music reviews.
• Thursday: Link Sharing. I hope to find more unique content via the feeds of MyBlogLog community members, Twitter, FriendFeed, and blog commenters.
• Friday: Battlestar Galactica Season One and Two. When Season 4 starts I’ll follow that as well.
• Saturday: Webomaticomic.

This will lay the foundation for regular, non time sensitive posts, over which will be the usual mix of technology and other random stuff.

Other changes: I’ve simplified movie reviews into four sections: Synopsis, The Good, The Bad, and Conclusion. Bullet points are quicker to write and easier to read.

Contests: I just had a contest number 4 which came and went much too quickly. I hope to have several more this year, based loosely on the rate at which those Google checks keep arriving.

Anyhow, thanks for reading and I hope to make your visits worthwhile.

Luckily, I actually mostly enjoy my work which is web design and Flash development. So the biggest fun time-waster is fixing some problem or learning something new — for example I only just got started figuring out ActionScript 3.0 which I should have begun on months ago.

As for video games — I have a large library of classic video games in ROM format that I occasionally fire up via MacMAME. I also got back into StarCraft, and sometimes do online games like Desktop Tower Defense or crossword puzzles. All of these run on an average computer.

Then there’s always watching DVDs, an endless supply provided by Netflix.

But when I do get out of the house:

• Movies on the big screen. I have two on my short list that I want to see (Juno and Atonement), and one upcoming one, too (Persepolis). Our apartment is within walking distance to a decent movie theater but for the more “indie” flicks we have to be in San Francisco proper or trek down to Palo Alto.
• Finding a new restaurant and giving it the old college try, either at lunch with co-workers or an evening out.
• Hanging out with friends I haven’t seen in a while. I need to improve on group socializing in 2008.
• Scoping out a neighborhood in the Bay Area (Noe Valley, Inner Sunset, Cow Hollow, Burlingame, Palo Alto, Temescal, Berkeley, etc.) that we can just drive to, park, and spend an afternoon milling about, checking out the stores. I have a weakness for bookstores, comic book shops, and antique stores, or some strange treat like Indian ice cream or a strange cheese.
• I collect bottle caps so I’m always popping into groceries looking for new ones.
• Museums — been a while but I’m always game for looking at some weird art. The last cool one we went to was Joseph Cornell up at the SFMoma. The serious geek one to go to is the Computer History Museum.

Nothing here is a big surprise — pretty run-of-the-mill stuff for urban dwellers. But it’s important to find balance between work and play. I nearly burned myself out late last year with too much work, which was thankfully balanced out with a holiday vacation to another state where I spent a fair amount of time doing absolutely nothing.

Now I’m back in the swing of things and it’s all due to taking some time off away from the computer. So my short response to time-wasting — do something different from your usual routine. Even if it’s as simple as trying a new flavor of ice cream.

• Essentially most readers want me to continue as I have been, meaning sticking to technology, movies, music, and television shows.
• You’d like to see more Webomaticomics.
• I’m going to cease food reviews, Webomaticast, and pretty much everything unrelated to the above four.
• For series posts, I’ll write about Star Trek The Original Series, Battlestar Galactica (whenever the heck new episodes appear) and Twin Peaks. The one music series will be Led Zeppelin.
• People were overwhelmingly not into a blog about cat news, and rather “meh” about geek frugality. I’ll take that as a sign to remain focused on Webomatica and not get ahead of myself.

In addition to the above goals from the reader survey:

• I’m hoping to get much more involved in the “blog community” which means reading more new blogs, commenting, linking to them, and twittering / digging / stumbling all around.
• As a step toward the above goal, I’m adding RSS feeds to Google reader like crazy. I just added a ton from my MyBlogLog community, and am doing the same with the Twitters.
• I’m hoping to double all my stats in 2008.
• Contests are in the works.
• I’ll be doing some general blog clean up to get stuff a little more direct in terms of organization — nothing major.

Thanks for reading, and have a great 2008!

While this sucks, David wants to learn from the experience and spread some words of caution. He believes that the hack was timed as he announced he was going on vacation via the blog. Second, it’s good advice to make all your passwords very lengthy and change them on a regular basis. Both are great advice, and if you’re looking for some new year’s resolutions, those might be ones to start with.

Basically, I’m trying to plan ahead for yet another year of blogging. This will hopefully be one way to make things a little more organized and less “gee, what do I write about next?” I’d also like to get more focused on a few subjects and not continue with the shotgun approach.

So have at it. All results are confidential and no email addresses are collected. I’ll post the results and how it will impact this blog in 2008.

Thanks for your participation in advance.

FYI the WordPress plug in I’m using for this dealy-o is Survey Fly.