My friends Jim and Lissa have gone live with their new site, appropriately titled, Jim and Lissa. I'm going to miss seeing Jim at work each day, but at least there's AIM. Congrats, you two. You are welcome to pool, and the pool, any time.

So some yahoo is now comment spamming in random posts about discount life insurance. Congratulations, ingrate. Get a new IP, because you've been banned. Granted, I'm flattered that you think my blog is so popular to be spam-worthy for you to waste time on. Moron.

I check my email this morning, and what do I find but some idiot has uploaded penis enlargement spam into the comments section of one of my posts (from October 2002, no less). Comment deleted, IP banned. Don't you morons have anything better to do?

SuperToad has redesigned the Pond, giving up his home-baked PHP model for a site generated by PostNuke. At least this way, his PHP knowledge doesn't go to waste. Now if I could just talk him in to another font for his logo... ;-)

iStockphoto saves the day for Eric. Though I haven't had much use for it lately, I have been a registered member since late last year and think it's a wonderful service. I have even thought about contributing photos myself, though I don't believe a majority of mine are at a high enough resolution to warrant inclusion. (via Michael)

Kottke has the 411 and an open letter to certain news entities.

Ben and Mena's latest venture is in the growing pain of going live, with a "Preview Release Launch" later tonight. Jon's been a beta tester, as has Raena. The features are impressive, and the pricing is really, really good. It's going to kick LiveJournal's butt, and, unfortunately, may steal business from friends. I have to agree with Raena in that I won't be moving my blog over to the service, comfortable in rolling my own, and looking forward to MovableType Pro. I have a sysadmin at my beck and call (pretty much) who owns and runs the server my site is hosted on. If I get in to any kind of Unix-ey or web server-related trouble, Jim's the man on getting it all fixed. Not to mention that we now have a nightly backup system in place, and Jim's 'net connection is a heckuva lot more stable, not to mention faster on the upload, than mine. Our "new" server went online over the weekend, and all of us type-A control freaks are happy with having the nuts and bolts so close. So lots of luck to the Trotts & Co., and all you TypePadders present and future!

One of the great things about working on a publication like ATPM is that the diverse staff we have. Raena and I are on opposite sides of the political spectrum, but we're friends because of our common interests in things Mac, blogging, and the Internet and technology in general. Some time ago I was lamenting how IE6/Win wasn't rendering the site properly when compared to browsers on the Mac. Raena speculated that the issues lay in my CSS, and offered to help. Earlier today, I took her up on her offer. I'm pleased to report that the font and sidescroll issues have been fixed, and the site now looks the same (albeit without the pleasing antialiasing one gets from OS X) on IE6/Win as it does on Safari or Camino on the Mac. For those keeping score, it appears there are no more font issues with Firebird, either. I haven't tried OmniWeb, Opera, or iCab yet. Best of all, the CSS validates. So mucho gracias, Raena-Raena-bo-baena. If you make it to the States, and Dallas, I owe you a brew.

Jim has upgraded our server stat software to AWStats, and I am mightily impressed. I determined long ago that I would not become obsessed with traffic, and by and large, I haven't. Mainly, this has been because I have avoided looking at any statistics any server analysis software installed might provide. Once I get over how wicked cool AWStats is, I'll likely revert to this habit. It is interesting to note that in 28 days of July, my site has moved 400 MB of bandwidth, twice as many people view the site on a Windows box than a Mac (surprising, considering the pro-Mac tone of my computing posts), and while, of course, IE is the browser used by most, Safari comes in second, and is used three times more than #3, Mozilla. Most people get to the site because they've bookmarked it, and for that, you have my thanks. The second way people get to the site....anyone? Anyone? Anyone? The answer we're looking for is Google. Google. Two things AWStats shows (and according to Jim, our old stat software did the same; like I said, I rarely looked at it) that fascinate me: the most common search keywords and keyphrases used to hit the site; and what IP domains pages are being served to. I can honestly boast of having a worldwide readership, though by a tremendous margin, most of the traffic is, not surprisingly, from the U.S. Australia is high on the list (thanks, Raena!), but I have served at least one page to the following: Slovenia, Malta, Argentina, Israel, Malaysia, Guatemala, Iceland, Slovak Republic, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Nigeria, Greece, Poland, Libya, Algeria, Indonesia, Croatia, and the list goes on. I know, there just may be some simple router-hopping going on that returns those values, but it's still fun to think about.

• Killed the "Retrolook" tab in the tab navigation bar
• Subsequently, killed the old style sheet and index2.html file; so now the look you see (if you're not just reading with NNW) is the only look available. Until I decide to start skinning the site...
• Have begun conversion from .html files to .php. This will help streamline the amount of work I have to do, along with continued use of CSS, for the look and feel of the site. So if your bookmark for the main page is _[www.retrophisch.com/index.htm...]([www.retrophisch.com](http://www.retrophisch.com)/index.html_,) rather than just _[www.retrophisch.com](http://www.retrophisch.com)_, you'll need to update with the latter.
• As part of this conversion, the Retrophisch Read(tm) page is now rendered via PHP as well and has the new site look. Other pages to follow.
• So far, it appears that the old archives have remained intact as .html files, as well as having .php peers. So everyone who has permalinked to me (Lee, Michael, Eric) shouldn't have to re-link.

If you have linked to me, and you find the permalinks breaking, the quick and dirty fix is to replace ".html" in the link with ".php". And my apologies if you have to do so; such is the price of progress.

The 9th Circuit actually gets it right this time, with an extension of libel protection to online self-publishers, like moi, and those who participate in online discussion lists.

The site will be going down for a bit this evening as we move the server. Should be back up some time after dinner time, CST. UPDATE, 7:30 PM CST: And we're back... Thanks for the quick move, Jim. This was just a physical move for the current server, as prep for our move to a new box in the near future.

Marc Marshall brings up the excellent point that Microsoft has come full circle with regard to Internet Explorer. His is the last post in Macintouch's Browser Future report for today:

The bottom line in this situation is this: For the past several years, Microsoft gave away a free browser to kill the competition, and succeeded. Now, they have stopped development of their standalone product, and are giving people exactly three choices to get their "standard" product: 1) Buy Windows. 2) Use MSN for Internet access. 3) Pay them $10/month or $80 per year. No free options, no free upgrades.

The price is higher than Opera or Omni's paid competition, and you don't have a free option, and you have an ongoing fee. In fact, if MS starts charging annual licensing for Windows, there will be no lifetime-licence-purchasable version of IE. This sounds like exactly the sort of consumer hostile situation that monopolies create, and governments are supposed to protect us from. Now that they've pretty much saturated the market, Microsoft has been scrambling on how to consistently generate revenue. They have long discussed subscription software licensing, and this situation with IE appears to be the first shot across the bow. Unfortunately, I do not forsee the mass sheep of Windows and IE/Mac users torpedoing the Microsoft Bismarck any time soon.

Ok, not really, but it's really ticking me off. Why is it that my site validates as XHTML 1.0 Trans, validates as CSS2, looks perfectly fine in Safari, Camino, even IE5/Mac, yet looks like complete dung in IE6? I know, I know, IE6 doesn't fully support the CSS2 spec, yet, so I'm sure that's playing a huge role. I suppose I could drop it to CSS1, but I'd rather be posting than fiddling with making the site look exactly the same in Microsloth's stupid Windows browser. In Microsucks' defense, there are some font issues with the site in Firebird, but at least pages scroll properly in that browser. I haven't tried Opera for Windows yet.

Speaking of the dress-code-aware genius that is Dan Benjamin (is that enough, Dan?), he offers up some delectable food for thought on the discontinuation of standalone IE development for the Mac. I say standalone, because it seems that IE will continue on in MSN for Mac OS X. Zeldman sums it all up rather well.

From here, as it has for several weeks now, it looks like a period of technological stasis and dormancy yawns ahead. Undoubtedly the less popular browsers will continue to improve. They may even gain in market share. But few of us will be able to take advantage of their sophisticated standards support if most of the market continues to use an unchanged year 2000 browser.

But enough, and enough, and enough. We are glad of the latest versions of Opera, Mozilla, Konqueror, Safari, and Omniweb. But on this grey and rainy day, this news of a kind of death brings no warmth. To Tantek and Jimmy and their colleagues on the IE/Mac team: for what you achieved on behalf of web standards and usability, much respect. When it arrived, IE5/Mac was the standard for web browsers. It shamed Netscape. Complacency and stagnant development, however, have left it behind technologically. Zeldman mentions reasons people switched from IE to Camino or Safari; I switched for all the reasons he discusses, including that it's one less Microsoft application on my system. There are choices people, and they're better than the "standard."

If you've ever been interested in how your email gets from your computer to someone else's, or how your browser knows how to load up a web site, you need to read Dan Benjamin's excellent DNS primer at MacDevCenter. It's geared toward Mac OS X users, but anyone can learn the basics of DNS, IP addresses, routing, and all that other techie stuff that makes the Internet work, boiled down in to simply terms by Mr. Benjamin (of Hivelogic/Hiveware fame). Oh, and hire this dress-code-aware guy, if you have the need. Too much talent to not be getting paid well by someone, somewhere.

As I mentioned previously, I've been working on a site redesign. I decided today to take it live. (You can ignore the links in the archived post; they're flip-flopped now.) The entire site does not, at this time, reflect what you see here on the main page. I had planned to wait until it did to switch over, but at this rate, if I continued to wait, it would be a long one. So here it is, hope you like. If you hate it and just have to see the site the way it was (and updated just like the main page), click on the Retrolook tab above and enjoy. Not that those of you who stop by regularly really care; I know you're reading with NetNewsWire anyway. :)

Business Week Online has a good article on the growing pervasiveness of weblogs, and what they mean to mass media and consumers. I like Nick Denton's term of "open-source media."

Ric notes a News.com story about the impending expiration of the patent that controls the GIF file format, and what that may mean for the PNG graphics format. See, LZW compression forms the basis for the GIF format, and Unisys owns the LZW patent. A few years ago, Unisys began to flex its muscles in enforcing the LZW patent, and this basically meant the death of free and cheap shareware GIF creation/manipulation software. To compensate, the PNG graphic format was created, and a movement to rid sites of all GIFs was born. Well, Unisys's patent expires in the U.S. later this month; in the rest of the world, next year. The PNG format, despite many advances over GIF, has not caught on heavily outside the geek community. And it doesn't do animation, which GIF does. Personally, I like the PNG format, and use it when possible over GIF. (Unless I'm using someone else's graphic, though I have converted them in the past.) Most modern browsers support it, though perhaps not fully (viz: IE). So after the patents expire, are we going to see an explosion of activity in the GIF creation/manipulation software market? If so, you may see the PNG format remain a second-class graphic file citizen, or worse.

DNS address, that is. In preparation for the move to our "new" server, we're changing out our DNS name servers some time late this afternoon/evening/weekend. So if you can't get to the site later tonight or over the weekend, it's just because the DNS is repopulating, and that kind of takes a while.

Is there anyone that Microsoft doesn't see as a competitor? bq. "We do view Google more and more as a competitor. We believe that we can provide consumers with a better product and a better user experience. That's something that we're actively looking at doing," said Bob Visse, director of marketing for Microsoft's MSN Internet services division. What's wrong with the Google user experience? I think it's great. I love the simple, minimalist interface on the main page. If you need more advanced features, they're a click away. If I want a bloated, crufty, way-too-much-happening-at-once search engine, I know where to go already, thank you very much. But I'm sure Microsoft is doing some sort of "innovating" in the search engine sector.

I am working on a redesign of the site's layout and navigation, a preview of which can be found here. That page also automatically updates, just as the main page does, so if you already prefer the new look, you can temporarily bookmark the new-look page. Comments and criticisms are welcome, especially from those of you whom I did not previously email on the subject.

There are now some screenshots of the TypePad interface up at the main site, including the photo albums feature. Having just recently moved over some of my own photos, this is interesting. I may hold off on any more conversion/moving until after TypePad pricing is announced and/or it goes live.

IE/Win doesn't fully support the PNG graphics format, and Zeldman points to an online petition that is now just shy of 7,000 signatures. (Yours truly is #6977.) Every modern web browser with the exception of IE/Win has full PNG support built in, including beta browsers Safari and Camino. Please sign the petition and let's hope Microsoft will listen; they've only been promising this since IE 4.

So I had put off two minor projects for the site for a while: a colophon, and moving all my photos from my .Mac account over to this domain. As of now, those two projects have been finished. More photos will be forthcoming, as I will likely move the photo albums from my old domain over to this one, so that everything is in one place. Permanent links to both are in the new Navigate tabbed menu at the top sub-menu to the right. Enjoy!