CogBlogged from ‘November, 2003’

On the URL name alone, it seems like the Learning Content eXchange (LCX) is of interest- it sounds like it has to do with reusable learning content. And the parallels in name/acronym alone to our own Maricopa Learning eXchange (MLX) are eerie. But I cannot figure out anything tangible from the LCX site, even past the annoying, information scant, fading text flash intro. It is hard to take a web site seriously where the content is no HTML, just graphics of text (Someone send Bobby over right now and club this site with the 508 stick). The demo is behind a password. Shall I go on? But beyond that, the pictures of text (same 1980s technology as the FAX machine) is just marketing gobbledy-gook: “LCX is an in Internet-based exchange that provides markeyplace services to content owners and content consumers for Web-based e-learning materials. LCX provides a reliable and secure [...]

Out of coincidence, I was recently reminded of one my most important, early literary influences. No, not Dickens, not Dostoevsky, not Thoreau… it was P.D. Eastman’s timeless classic, Go, Dog. Go! (GDG). In fact, I still have a copy of GDG in my office. Not the one I had as a kid, all marked up with crayons, ripped, dried food, and shoddy, no this was one in pristine condition I must have picked up later in fond memory. We were having an office lunch conversation about great books for young kids, and I remembered GDG, and loaned it to a colleague with a child just starting in his own reading adventures. So yes, the dogs got to me as a toddler. But there are so many parallels between those madcap, partying, busy multi-colored dogs in GDG and the crazy blog world now…

Just when you thought it was safe to blog…. 3 pairs of blog spam comments came in over night, and STOMP, STOMP, STOMP, they are gone thanks to Jay Allen’s MT Blacklist plugin. But the pattern is disturbing. Each of these came as faked comments to the same 2 blog posts, likely ones that have cropped up on Google. Each came in pairs with about 60 seconds between them (makes me want to toss Google into my robots.txt file). Each had the same stupid approach, trying to insert a link for some sort of corrupt service or body supplement: Nice Site, I would like to show you mine sometime. I would not count on it. Keep yours to yourself, roach…. Anyone Seen That Movie >a href=”http://www.LOWLIFEXXSPAM-ROACHXXX.com”>Xxxxxx<a> ? I hear it was real tight! Nice Site BTW….. Sorry, spam-roach, I do not watch your kind of entertainment. I think your spam [...]

Wow, the sound of my own hand slapping my forehead with a loud, “duh!”. The TweezerMan (not sure if I want to know the story behind that name) has provided easy to copy templates for creating RSS Feeds for Trackbacks and RSS Feeds for Comments from MovableTyple weblogs, all using available MT template tags. Although I get e-mail notices of these items, an RSS feed makes it nice to toss into my aggregator to scan these add-ons to my blog. I seriously doubt anyone esle would want to subscribe to these feeds, but hey, they are there: CogDogBlog MT Trackbacks RSS Feed: http://cogdogblog.com/alan/trackbacks.xml CogDogBlog MT Comments RSS Feed: http://cogdogblog.com/alan/comments.xml I guess one could then employ the MT RSS Feed plugin to deploy this info elsewhere on the site. But wait, there is even more from the TweezerMan! He provides a rather sneaky but sensible way to create static HTML content [...]