The Reuters feed on my personalized Google homepage had this article in today’s lineup:

Why yes, I’m familiar with that model…
Thu Dec 29, 2005 11:54 AM ET10

BERLIN (Reuters) - A 44-year-old German businessman whose digital camera was stolen at a restaurant was relieved when he managed to buy exactly the same model on the eBay Internet auction site to match his accessories.

But he became suspicious when it emerged the seller came from his home town. It proved to be the same camera.

Police said Thursday they were questioning the 34-year-old vendor who, a statement said, “claims he got the camera at a flea market, but was also offering other cameras on the Internet.”

Hanep, may Recto rin pala sa Germany, online pa!

I once gave a mini-lecture to an office-full of computer newbies about the benefits of saving their work, telling them of the various yet quite simple ways of preventing the primeval scream that may be heard from a user whose work has disappeared because his computer has crashed. I enumerated everything from “clicking on the diskette icon on the menu bar” to hitting Ctrl+S on one’s keyboard every time your fingers become idle after typing, and capped it off with this well-known I.T. joke:

Jesus and Satan have a discussion as to who is the better programmer. This goes on for a few hours until they come to an agreement to hold a contest, with God as the judge.

They sit themselves at their computers and begin. They type furiously, lines of code streaming up the screen, for several hours straight. Seconds before the end of the competition, a bolt of lightning strikes, taking out the electricity. Moments later, the power is restored, and God announces that the contest is over.

He asks Satan to show what he has come up with. Satan is visibly upset, and cries, “I have nothing. I lost it all when the power went out.”

“Very well, then,” says God, “let us see if Jesus fared any better.”

Jesus enters a command, and the screen comes to life in vivid display, the voices of an angelic choir pour forth from the speakers. Satan is astonished.

He stutters, “B-b-but how? I lost everything, yet Jesus’ program is intact. How did he do it?”

God smiled all-knowingly, “Jesus saves.”

Things could be worse. We’ve had our share of computer mishaps from Coke on the keyboard to mice in the minitower. But this list from Ontrack.com tops all lists that I’ve seen so far.

The Ontrack 2005 Top Ten List of Data Disasters and Remarkable Recoveries

10. PhD Almost an F – A PhD candidate lost his entire dissertation when a bad power supply suddenly zapped his computer and damaged the USB Flash drive that stored the document. Had the data not been recovered, the student would not have graduated.

9. Suffering from Art – While rearranging her home office, a woman accidentally dropped a five pound piece of clay pottery on her laptop, directly onto the hard drive area that contained a book she’d been working on for five years and 150 year-old genealogy pictures that had not yet been printed.

8. Domestic Dilemma – A husband deleted all of his child’s baby pictures when he accidentally hit the wrong button on his computer. His wife hinted at divorce if he did not get the pictures back.

7. Bite Worse than Bark – A customer left his memory stick lying out and his dog mistook it for a chew toy. Ontrack was able to recover all of the data despite teeth marks all over the stick and a hole that went completely through.

6. Don’t Try this at Home – A man attempting to recover data from his computer on his own found the job too challenging mid-way through and ended up sending Ontrack his completely disassembled drive – with each of its parts in a separate baggie.

5. Out of Time – A clockmaker suffered a system meltdown, losing the digital designs for all of its clocks. Ontrack literally beat the clock recovering all their data just in time for an important international tradeshow.

4. Drilling for Data – During a multi-drive RAID recovery, engineers discovered one drive belonging in the set was missing. The customer found the missing drive in a dumpster, but in compliance with company policy for disposing of old drives, it had a hole drilled through it.

3. Safe at Home – After one of their executives experienced a laptop crash, the Minnesota Twins professional baseball team called on Ontrack to rescue crucial scouting information about their latest prospects. The team now relies on Ontrack for all data recoveries within its scouting and coaching ranks.

2. Hardware Problems – A frustrated writer attacked her computer with a hammer. When the engineers received the computer, the hammer imprint was clearly visible on the top cover.

And finally, the number one most bizarre data disaster of 2005…

1. La Cucaracha – In hopes of rescuing valuable company information, a customer pulled an old laptop out of a warehouse where it had been sitting unused for 10 years. When engineers opened the computer, it contained hundreds of husks of dead and decaying cockroaches.

http://www.pingmag.jp/2005/12/09/the-website-development-process/

probably the cutest way to explain one of the things I do at work.

http://www.netfreehost.com/

is another free hosting service that offers, among other things, free WordPress blog hosting.

* 50 MB Web Space
* 5 GB Monthly Transfers
* FTP Access for Uploading
* Server-Side Includes (SSI)
* IE Based File Manager
* No Ads, No Banners, No Pop-Ups
* Hosted Message Board, Hit Counter
* Sub Domain Name (YOU.BizHat.com)

You get 53 (yes, you read that right) 53 themes to choose from. However the URL you end up with leaves pretty much to be desired:

http://blogs.bizhat.com/accidentalgeek/

Bizhat, as with wordpress.com, provides the user with a wysiwyg Preview screen, so you know exactly how your post is going to look like on your page layout before you hit Publish. And as with most of the free WP hosts I’ve come across with, all they ask for is what you want to name your blog, and your email address. It also allows you to create categories on the fly, which is a feature I would like to have on my own paid-for WP host.

Do NOT however, under any circumstances, click on the “Import” link that appears on the Dashboard. It will log you out and then refuse to recognize your password. If you’re lucky you can hit “Back” and still see the previous page you were on, but if not you will have to click on the lost password link and go through the reset password rigamarole. If you still click on it after this warning … you’re a stubborn ****.

and it’s pretty straightforward too. click on the signup link and in less than a minute (if you’re on a DSL connection) you will have a WordPress blog. It has everything a paid hosted blog has (haven’t found the FTP yet, but I know it’s there somewhere). Click here to have a look:

http://main.freewordpress.com/

It only has 10 pre-installed templates to choose from, but it allows you to edit the individual pages. So if you’re adept at mucking about templates, the limited number of templates should be a minor setback.

320 GB, 7200 RPM, 8 MB Cache (click HERE for more)

• Radical Design – Colorful, glows in the dark.
• Customizable – Select fast or slow kaleidoscope mode and watch
  the lights morph across the color spectrum; save color settings, turn off the lights, or power down with the touch of a button.
• Versatile – Features both FireWire® and USB 2.0 interface connections; works with both Windows® and Macintosh® systems.
• Instant Storage – Preformatted; simply plug it in and begin storing files.
• Fast – 7200 RPM and 8 MB cache performance for smooth digital video editing.
• Hot-Swappable – Connect and disconnect without powering off the computer.

Dear Santa . . .

http://blogzor.com/

here’s some goodies not offered in the other free wordpress hosting services:

You can select from 30 different templates so you can get the exact look that you are looking for. If you don’t like any of the templates included you can create your own or modify existing ones.

You can even log in to their demo site and get a good look at their blogging interface without having to register first. The interface is exactly like the freebie blog offered by superb.net to its hosting clients. It’s powered by LifeType which is is released under the GPL license, and requires PHP and MySQL to work.

Google sitemaps are also pre-enabled on the site, so you don’t have to work too hard to get your blog listed in the search engines. And best thing of all — NO ADS.

Why No Ads?

We feel that pop-ups and annoying banner ads are such a distraction from the content of websites that we will not ever have them on Blogzor.com ever!

Sounds like a pretty good promise.

One of the neat things you can do with blogzor that you may not be able to do on other free wordpress hosts without signing up for a new one is change the URL of your blog.

Signing up is a breeze, enter the usual data required (username, password, email address), then select a template (you can change this later), and voila, you get an email telling you your account has been activated and what you need to do next. i signed up myself and the entire process took less than five minutes.

the I3 blog runs on the same blogging machine so I have a lead on would-be blogzor newbies, but I would recommend it over blogsome (review coming up next).

http://blogthing.com/

what they offer:

• free hosting
• free subdomain (http://example.blogthing.com/)
• instant activation
• multiple template designs
• customise or create your own template designs using css
• ftp upload space
• powerful anti-spam features
• powered by WordPress 1.5

signing up:

We’re having database issues. New accounts will be available again shortly.

-the head goat
June 3, 2005.

so much for that.

next . . .

i hopped on over to weblogs.us and got more or less the same thing:

Weblogs.us -> WordPress Blog Signup

October 7th , 2005

Hi! Thank you for visiting

WordPress blog signups are closed for at least a few weeks a while.

The reason :

1. Before we add new users, I want to add additional servers to ensure fast blogs

Have a great fall!

PS Here are two other free WordPress hosts: Blogsome and Blogthing

-JD

a hilarious page by page journey into OS history.

Onecomputerguy