A site about programming, web design/development, social media, and other oddities.
Hello everyone!
As if things couldn’t become anymore hectic around here, I’ll be providing guest blog posts for the guys over at Web Movement, LLC and Point Zero Designs within the next few weeks. I’ll be providing information on the latest in web design/development trends, tutorials, and other tidbits of advice. Worry not, my friends, for I will still be writing and contributing here, even though some topics may now be reserved for my efforts with Web Movement and Point Zero Designs.
The arrangement started when a classmate and friend of mine, Adam Woloszyn, and I reconnected from a series of mutual friends. As we discussed our ambitions, we realized more and more that our motives, instincts and viewpoints in technology are very similar, which sparked an immediate drive to collaborate in some of our efforts. I’m really looking forward to contributing to the web and computing community through another group and organization.
For the time being, check out Web Movement and Point Zero Designs and see what you think!
More to come soon. 
In response to my previous post on blogs and pinging, here’s a definitive list of ping URIs I have kept in a textpad document over the past few months. Please let me know if you find duplicates, addresses that no longer work, or more that deserve to be on this list. Any new links will be added, with credit given to the person that submitted the URI. I’ll even throw in a link to your website or Twitter account, too!
Now… time for the list…
EDIT: The first list below are the services that DO work with WordPress right out of the box (or in this case, copy and paste)/ Enjoy!
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.myblog.jp
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
After spending a few months doing some reading and searching, I’ve put together a comprehensive list of ping URIs for blogs, specifically WordPress. For those unaware, a ping in the blogosphere is an XML-RPC service that notifies services that a blog has been updated. Mind you, that spammers have already found ways to abuse the system by excessively pinging services to drive traffic to their sites, which may not actually contain updated content, but rather links to products or ads. Such activity is not condoned nor do search engines tolerate excessive spam pinging (your site could get banned from some search engines). On the other hand, effective and legitimate pinging does aid in search rankings and search engine optimization because if search engines are pinged when new content is made readily available, the faster search engines can crawl and index the fresh content.
For a few other articles on pinging and SEO, check out
For those that use WordPress like I do and worry that your site could yield a false positive for ping spam, there’s an awesome plugin out there called MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer which will limit excessive pinging that can occur when a blog post is updated or modified. The plugin only pings services when new content has been published. Users can also limit the minimum pinging duration for added security. The best part of the plugin is that it’s free, but you do have to provide your email address in order to download and use the plugin.
I owe a HUGE thank you to my buddy Sam Chang tonight for pointing out a bug that caused the last list item in my navigation to be out of place. Here’s a screen capture of the problem…
What my site looked like in Chrome and Safari.
Sam addressed the problem to me and said that he had been using Google Chrome for his web browser, so I downloaded it (I’m a FireFox/Mozilla user by habit), and lo and behold, there was trouble in paradise. I immediately downloaded Safari and came up with the same results (reason being that both render pages nearly identical to each other).
After a little patience, caffeine, and willpower, the issue has been fixed!
As a result, I wanted to provide some of you with some tools to check your site across multiple browsers simultaneously so that this issue doesn’t creep up again. The first link is a web based service that I used when I first started working at Planet Label, while the other is a plugin that I’ve used in the past for class and client sites.
I’ve decided to update and fix some parts of the site in order to make the site easier to navigate. I revamped the Categories so they are as follows:
The reason for the changes was to keep things as organized on the site as possible. Also, these are the areas that I write about the most, but if I were to add anything else to the site, expansion would be simple based on the model I am basing my posts off of. This also makes it easier for readers who want to find something faster on the site or that would only like to subscribe to certain categories of content that I write.
Another large change I made was the exclusion of the archives section. I find them pointless, really especially for the nature of this website and how I’ve organized the categories.
Finally, I’ve begun adding some of my work to the site. Check the Portfolio section frequently, as I intend on updating it as much as possible within the coming weeks.
That’s all for now, folks.
I’m currently in the process of wrapping three majors at UWSP in Computer Information Systems (CIS), Web and Digital Media Development (WDMD), and Philosophy with emphasis in Religious Studies. Right now, I am a VB.NET programmer at Sentry Insurance, Social Media dude for Planet Label, and computer, social media, and web guy at the Stevens Point Brewery.
I specialize in .NET and the Adobe Flash platform, but also love HTML/CSS, JavaScript/AJAX, PHP, and SQL, to name a few. I have an appreciation for the design side of the web, too, and content management systems such as Joomla or Wordpress.
When I am not developing or designing, you can catch me reading about Comparative Religion, Philosophy, Physics, and the occasional fairy tale or two. I also love going to concerts.
