The Real Blogger Status

This week, we've seen a number of reports in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , possibly involving use of Firefox. Hey Blogger, can someone fix the stats? or I keep getting the well known message . An error occurred while fetching stats. It tells me to reload the page. Well, reload after reload, I still get nothing. As we know from the acknowledgment from Blogger , they are aware of one or more problems within the Stats code base, and they are fixing those problems. Unfortunately, they won't be fixing all of the problems that are being reported - and the problems that they fix, they won't fix immediately. Some problems with Stats may be related to the browser version . Along with the browser name, this is a useful detail to provide - when you report your problem , in the forum. Firefox was recently updated to V3.6.13. Browser updates cause problems, periodically, for a few blog owners - though not consistently for all blog owners. Some problems with Stats we...

The concept of layered security , as causing various problems with Blogger logins, with commenting, with Stats, and with Template Designer, will make some blog owners so desperate, that they are willing to try mysterious incantations and maybe even sacrificing an elephant , to get any of those applications working on their computers. Some blogger "experts" are so helpful, that they have come with an almost equally mysterious hint Install the latest version of Firefox (Use Internet Explorer, Chrome, what have you, instead). I did that, and it worked for me!

One of the most frustrating problems reported occasionally in in BHF: Something Is Broken comes in very terse langauge. I can't access my blog. or slightly longer I can't access any blogs .or possibly I can't access Blogger. In situations where the blog owner, and / or any number of blog readers, are cooperative, and able to take a few minutes to perform some simple tests, we can conduct a Affinity based analysis - or possibly an Affinity / Differential Analysis.

I'm scared of elephants, if they're allowed to run wild. What time is it, when an elephant sits on the hood of your car? OK, Chuck, I'll bite - What time is it? Time to get a new car. LOL. Many years ago, when I moved to California, and having heard of the possible damage to your car (probably, an uninsured expense too) should an elephant sit on it, I put up a sign in my back yard. No Elephants Permitted Here! And, apparently the sign served its purpose - I haven't seen a single elephant in my back yard - or sitting on my car - since I moved here. An unlikely tale, you probably say. More crudely, you'd ask me What have you been drinking today, Chuck? So, what's the point of this narrative? Just this, that most bloggers may not waste time in putting up signs to keep elephants away - but they have other, stranger superstitions . My favourite examples of the latter would be advice from some bloggers about how to avoid the mysterious bX codes , the equal...

Computers today are simply another consumer product - and provide challenges accordingly. I, and others like me, can remember not so long ago, when that was not at all true . Blogs, which are in part a computer product, are simply another part of that scenario. Not so long ago, my personal web page, based on a web host called Angelfire , was just a collection of links to a few dozen web pages which I enjoyed reading, linked in a static community called The Line Around The World . I did all of that because it was kewl, and because other geeks like me were doing that. Now, people like my mother (who actually could do this if she tried) are creating online scrapbooks and diaries, and publicising their daily family activities online. My web page (which is now a domain cluster ) provides advice to thousands of bloggers, daily. And all of the above illustrates the expanding blogosphere - and the problems, too.

How many people know what etiology is? Wikipedia defines it as ...the study of causation It's a fancy term for cause and effect. Fancy or not, though, it can have useful applications in real life. In the medical world, it might be used in a study of the spread of an epidemic. In computers, we might apply its principles for analysing a chronic network problem, as in deciding if multiple people, reporting the same symptoms, implies the existence of a major, widespread computer problem. Have you ever been to a hospital, and seen many sick people? If you did go to a hospital, would seeing the many sick people there lead you to conclude that there is a worldwide epidemic in progress? Most people are too analytical to lead to that conclusion. They know that a hospital is where sick people are expected to be seen. Oddly enough, though, many folks who wouldn't make an assumption about a medical epidemic, based upon being in a hospital, will visit a technical help forum,...