novatownhall blog

Don’t ask. Just trust me the old one was not working right.

UPDATE: Oh, yeah … fellow bloggers, you will notice the current placeholder design does not show who wrote a post so if you want anyone to know who wrote it you will need to do something like the following at the bottom of each post:

Love,

Joe

P.S. Since the current placeholder design DOES have the feed working and also does not totally screw up formatting, and since as some of you know I am a little preoccupied right now with things outside this blog, I may end up letting this design ride for a while so we’ll have to get used to the workarounds and inconvenience for a spell.

We are getting a ton of “hannah giles photos” related search engine hits tonight. Thanks Hannah, and thank YOU, Stacy McCain.

The traffic spike does not seem to be affecting mobile browser access, because I can get to the site from my Blackberry just fine. Must have to do with scripts or something. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Since it’s almost 2010 I figured it was time to ditch the 2008 design and functionality – though I know we will all miss it, just like we miss the 2007 version. Wish I had saved a screenshot of the 2005 version …

Plus with the dawning of a new political era it might be the dawn of a new blogging era here, kinder, gentler, and perhaps more generally rational.

One thing you’ll notice is we have gravatars showing in the comments. If you have one it will show up, and if you haven’t gone to gravatar to create your own, our new software will very cleverly attempt to discern your personality based on your writings and will provide a design reflecting your inner self. So creating one or just having the inner self revealed – you can go either way, it’s all the same to me.

All the while, in the backs of our minds we have been trying to figure out “What is this thing, this blog?” How do I work this? And then from the mouths of babes …

Sir Bobby Fontaine, the resident seer, has revealed what, deep in our hearts, we already knew: We are a cult.

Thank goodness someone has the stones to finally lay it out on the table.

And let me just say, as the leader of this cult, I have a few bones to pick with all of you. For one, while I am sipping wine and the rest of you are swilling beer like feral hogs let loose in downtown Milwaukee, I don’t want to hear any more insinuations that cabernet is somehow less manly than your roadside lager. Secondly, this trash talk about the Dallas Cowboys being a confederation of overhyped criminals has got to stop. Finally, the upturned noses denigrating my beloved AK-47 will need to find some place else to snoot their snooty snorts of derision. Effete AR-15 elitism has no place here now, nor should it anywhere.

This cult is about guns that go bang, every time.

In sum, I want to warmly welcome our many followers, as always. And to our visitors I say please come back again because, in the end, most everything else in the universe is less interesting than the conversations we have here on this blog.

That is no hyperbole. As an official cult leader, I assure you that is a statement of fact.

I’d like to say we were painting it silver and blue, but sadly, alas, many of those present were not Cowboys fans. This is the burden I bear. So let’s just say we were painting it purple and gold in honor of the respective beverages being implemented.

L to R: No Relation, G. Stone, Joe Budzinski, Dan S., ACTivist (with his trademark one-finger salute), and Cathymac. Not pictured: Linda B. because she left early (which is very unfortunate because while Cathy elevated the overall hotness level of the photo to 11, Linda certainly would have brought it to 22), Brian Withnell and Jacob, because I am actually both Brian Withnell and Jacob, among others, but please ignore that clause and allow us to continue in our blogging conceit.

It was a very fun night, and I am happy to report that “Sterling Curling” will become a reality because we have determined that an intelligent group of people can dedicate themselves to an Olympic sport that can be performed with 1) a beer in one hand, and 2) a cigarette in the other, and 3) no additional physical fitness challenges required. Tryouts begin in Dan’s driveway next month.

Another important bit of news came from ACTivist, who let us know that the Mayan calendar has the Earth ending in December, 2012, when the axis of our planet will shift 90 degrees such that the latitude of Virginia will become the new North Pole.

ACTivist announced that he and Momma are moving to Greece prior to that time in preparation. We all wished them well, and have made plans to move to Antarctica, and sincerely hope that Momma has a say in that family’s future relocation, or at least buys ACTivist a globe.

No Relation is back from his requested tour of duty in Iraq. NR’s appraisal of Iraq: “It’s over.” The good guys won. We look forward to NR chiming in here at some point.

When the history is written, I believe, GW Bush will get the credit. 2002-2009 has been a period of relative peace and prosperity here in the U.S. Considering all that is happening in the world, this is no small accomplishment. Thanks to NR and all the guys and gals who signed up to protect our country so that we can live our lives and make idiots of ourselves on the blogs.

There was a fair amount of discussion about the train wreck that has become the Republican party.  None of the “third parties” are viable. We are all individuals who have expended significant time and money on the behalf of the GOP, so what do we do now? Should we shoot for Democrat-lite or Republican-lite? Are the GOP’s problems traceable to too much influence by liberals or conservatives?

The only solution thus far arrived at is Sterling Curling. Stay tuned to this blog for news on further developments.

And welcome, MSN visitors!!

Long after the 2008 presidential campaign has been filed away, forgotten and all the shouting long since subsided, the one thing we shall ALL remember is the ungodly amount of traffic that Sarah Palin brought to our blogs. That, I assure you, is the story I will tell my grandchildren about.

continue reading…

Suddenly this site is messed up in Firefox on my laptop – like the style sheet got changed, so now you can’t see the whole page in a window without having to scroll horizontally.

Anyone else noticing this?

Well, I did not change anything, and I can’t fix it. However it does still open up in Internet Explorer just fine, so I guess that is going to be the recommendation: Switch back to the evil browser if you can’t view NVTH correctly in Firefox.

The “new” Sitemeter has been unveiled and, unsurprisingly, it doesn’t work. Following the fiasco earlier this year I am somewhat hesitant to trust it, anyway. (By the way, anyone viewing this on Internet Explorer? I’d like to hear some confirmation it still works).

Does anyone know anything about other solutions for traffic measurement and referral tracking? I’ve got a backend program running on the server but it’s too much of a chore to have to log in and view it and it is not current (cron job that runs once a day I believe). I’d rather have something directly accessible from the Web.

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds is soliciting the same info and chances are he will get more replies than me, so check that link periodically for updates.

I think Statcounter is another popular program but I don’t think it offers “open” stats (i.e. anyone can just click and see the stats without logging in) which is important to me for reasons of sheer laziness. And transparency.

FYI note to my fellow bloggers: If/when we switch away from Sitemeter, we will lose traffic data on all of the old Movable Type pages. Adios, sayanara, poof! all gone. It’s only 80-150 visits a day, and the vast majority are just Google searches, but please brace yourselves.

UPDATE V: Ok, I just killed Sitemeter. There should be no more errors. Hate to see Sitemeter go, but that seems to be the consensus fix around the Internets.

If you want to keep Sitemeter on your blog, read the rest of this post for instructions for your readers.

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FIX DETAILED BELOW TO MAKE INTERNET EXPLORER OPEN BLOGS WITH SITEMETER RUNNING!!

Switch to Firefox!

http://www.mozilla.com/

Hey, YOU: Just move that annoying Internet Explorer “Operation aborted” error window. Click on the top bar of it and move it out of the way without pressing the “Ok” button. Then, you will be able to at least read this post about the Internet Explorer error which is crashing it on many blogs tonight. It is not your fault, and it is not my fault, but it just might be Microsoft’s or Sitemeter’s fault. Switch to Firefox!

OK, here is the fix thanks to one of the magnificent lizards at LGF

The problem is an Internet Explorer conflict with Sitemeter, causing IE to give an “Operation aborted” error when trying to open a Web page with Sitemeter running. Obviously, this is going to affect the vast majority of blogs which depend on Sitemeter for their very mojo.

Procedure:

1. Open menu item: Tools…Internet Options
2. Click “Security” tab
3. Select “Restricted Sites”
4. Click “Sites” button
5. Under “Add this website to this zone”, enter “*.sitemeter.com” without the quotes
6. Click “Add” button
7. Close windows using “Close” or “OK”, not “Cancel”.

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UPDATE III: Whoa whoa whoa Nelly! Charles of LGF has identified this as a Web-wide problem. So it ain’t us. Jacob, I will restore your graphic.

UPDATE IV: Rumor has it the reason so many blogs are suddenly causing errors in Internet Explorer lies in a conflict between Internet Explorer and Sitemeter. Must have been a silent update from one of them. Well, I can tell you right now I ain’t throwing Sitemeter under the bus because it is one of my primary enjoyable timewasters, so IE – out the door with you!!

Human race: Switch to Firefox!

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As luck would have it, I am about to be away from the Internet for an extended period and the site has a technical issue: INTERNET EXPLORER SUDDENLY IS NOT WORKING TO BROWSE THIS WEB SITE. I have no idea why, except that something got changed – some code in a comment or post – since earlier today, and I may not be able to figure it out until a week from today.

In the meantime, readers may be forced to switch to Firefox or another browser. You will be grateful you did.

UPDATE: I have a little time to try and fix this, and the only thing I know to do is start deleting stuff until the problem stops. I apologize in advance if I happen to delete something you happen to love.

UPDATE II: Ok, I have sure deleted some stuff and IE still will not allow this site to be browsed. Looks like Redmond, we have a problem. After about 8:00 am tomorrow I won’t be able to fix it for at least a week. SWITCH TO FIREFOX!

Holy Hot Columnists, Batman, Michelle has done it for us again!

As a lower tier, C-grade blogger, I can tell you the one thing that makes it all worthwhile are those unexpected moments when you get a “spike” in traffic for absolutely no reason, and a whole bunch of people visit your site more or less accidentally. Ninety-nine percent of blog “marketing” consists of trying to pull various tricks that cause visitors to click on a link to your site. Whether through clever identification of popular google searches, or just trying to convince Glenn Reynolds you’ve written something worthwhile (tried many times and like the cycles of the planets it has ALWAYS proved beyond my control – if it ever works, I will know death is at hand), the basic idea is “Ha! Made you look!”

Once again, the driving force is my NRI photo of Michelle, because MSN has seen fit to make her their featured “popular search” of the day (click her photo then “See also: Images”). There she is, beginning of the second row.

(More form NRI, here and here.)

I know the vast majority of these folks will never visit here again, but occasional flood of gawkers is nice.

Thanks, Michelle! If you ever want me to return the favor, I’ll be happy to provide a head shot which you can publish with abandon.

UPDATE: Approaching 2500 visits. That’s a couple grand at least from Michelle, and counting.

Y’know what? When the Malkinator brings that kind of traffic, the lithesome one goes back on the front page again.

In keeping with our tradition here at NVTH of staying at least two years behind any given technological curve, I can hereby announce I am marching boldly into 2006 by incorporating Twitter into this Web site. What this means is, I can now send messages from my cell phone to the Twitter Web site, and theoretically they will be forwarded here to the “Twitter Updates” script at the very bottom of the righthand column.

I had to put it at the bottom so in case Twitter is down, as seems to be the case right now, the rest of the blog will still load in your browser.

Anyway, the point of Twitter is to be able to constantly broadcast the answer to the question “What are you doing?” I’m not totally clear on the appeal of that concept, because I can’t imagine anyone caring a whit what I happen to be doing at any particular time, and I know I sure as hell don’t care what any of you are doing at any particular time, but there it is.

One possible use I do see is being able to flash updates on things that people might happen to care about, like “I just saw a boatload of Chinese soldiers disembarking under the Woodrow Wilson Bridge” or possibly results from tomorrow’s RPV Convention.

Unfortunately, none of it will be too easy because I literally do have to use a cell phone – don’t have a Blackberry so the fastest I can create messages is by plodding through the telephone keypad.

So if Twitter is working, and I have anything of value to share, you might find some information of interest at the bottom of the right column of this blog, so please check back periodically.

UPDATE: Here is a video about Twitter.

Looking through our referral logs last night I learned that approximately 33% of our traffic at NVTH Blog is because of people googling this photo I took of Michelle Malkin last year. (Here is a larger version for those of you with poor eyesight.) Now, is that really “googling” or should it be termed “g-ogling?”

Anyway, special thanks to Michelle for wearing that skirt and those boots at the NRI Summit. We’ll take the traffic any way we can get it.

UPDATE: On second thought it looks like there’s just something weird going on right now. That photo is a year and a half old and in the past 24 hours there has been a huge increase in the number of requests from images.google.com. Michelle’s birthday maybe? I’m stumped.

Hmm, not a lot of new postings here lately while I’ve been traveling, fellows.

You know what that means.

Credit to the original.

Dang, it sure is quiet around these parts, with precious little BLOGGING going on. Well, my excuse is work and domestic responsibilities. And I know all our other bloggers have their own unique excuses.

But as they say, the key to keeping up the traffic level is to have continuous new material on the front page. So, in the interest of maintaining some semblance of currentness, I am going to make a command decision and establish the tradition that whenever the updates at the NOVA TownHall Blog are in danger of reaching a two day lapse, I will post my favorite ak-47 video again.

So here it is.

My guess is, you will be seeing more of it. (Credit to the original).

It appears we will reach a major milestone of visitor traffic today, and here inside the glass-enclosed nerve center of NOVA TownHall Headquarters you can be sure the fairy cakes are in the oven, the malt duck is icing down, and there are hours worth of ammo in the hall closet.

Yes, we are nearing our 200,000th visitor, and barring a power outage or rapid onset of global cooling, it will occur sometime today, Thursday, March 6, 2008.

I can’t tell you how proud I am of this moment and how far we have come. Back when we started this humble endeavor in Sept 2005, at the instigation of the notorious John Grigsby, it was just me, my good friend Paul, and the mysterious Yooper. (Sorry, their names don’t show up on those early posts anymore because I blew out Movable Type a few times – if the author ain’t Joe, it’s one of them). We finally hit the big time when the incendiary, sexually ambiguous Sophrosyne joined the crew in February 2006, and the trenchant Singleton shortly thereafter. And then, about two years ago, we won the distinction of Worst Blog from local heavyweight blog Too Conservative’s majordomo Vincent – an award we still esteem above all others.

But here we are in 2008, firmly in the big time. What a ride it’s been.

Most impressively, with our milestone of 200,000 visitors in 2 1/2 years, we have almost achieved the traffic level Glenn Reynolds gets in one hour. That, my friends, is nothing to sneeze at.

To what can we attribute this massive level of achievement? Well, from analyzing the data, I believe about 40% of our traffic is directly attributable to my legendary photo of the sultry Michelle Malkin, and another 40% to Sophrosyne’s remarkably perceptive take on the date of the 2008 Republican Convention. Nailing that date was a huge coup for NVTH. Thank goodness for Google.

And of course now with the outstanding additional line up of Jacob, Jack, Brian Withnell and ACTivist – and the memorable amnesties we have provided for our excellent liberal visitors – well it’s no surprise NOVA TownHall is one of the most wonderfully, oddly configured neighborhoods in the entire Internet, which none can deny.

Ah, sweet smell of success. Flowers and kisses to you all.

UPDATE: 6:50 pm Thursday. Only 166 to go! Besides Malkin or the Republican Convention, I’m wagering the most likely Google searches to bring us to the 200k mark are “Huckabee Logan” and “Angel Ann Coulter.”

UPDATE II: Well heck, whaddaya know? Our 200,000th visitor was not a Google search at all but just one of our regular visitors, someone coming in via AOL. They stopped by at 8:34 am this morning and stayed for 1 min. 17 sec. Thanks, AOL person, whoever you are.