I simply do not use these services any more. Although I’m not necessarily planning to completely delete the accounts, I am removing external links that point to my profiles, starting with the links column right here on this blog.

Gowalla—I had been on the fence about this one for a long while anyway. Collecting items (as stupid as that was) pretty much was its only fun feature, and that’s gone. Version 4.0 is weird and I simply don’t like it. I only connected to 14 people (a fraction of the number to whom I’m connected on Foursquare). With only a single exception, none of those have checked in for at least four months—when Gowalla 4.0 debuted. Some of those people haven’t checked in for more than two years! And to top it all off, I just discovered that Facebook acquired Gowalla and the service is completely shutting down.

MySpace—do I really need to say anything here?

LinkedIn—I’ve determined that I completely missed the point of LinkedIn from the start. I created my profile to treat it as something of an online professional reference for people with whom I wish to interact. Ergo, I only connected to people I already knew who probably already had most of the information on my profile, anyway. I’ve never had a wish to use it to branch out and make connections beyond those I know. I don’t want a bunch of unknowns having access to my detailed work history. But that appears to be what LinkedIn is for—making those connections either for business deals or job searches. I’m interested in neither, so I’m putting LinkedIn on hiatus. It is probably the only service that I’ll ultimately/literally delete the account.

Google+ is on probation. I’m not ready to blast it yet, but it’s close. It needs a full API for third-party developers NOW. It also needs a mobile app that does more than the miniscule subset of Google+ features—especially ability to share links and access/update business pages. My social media blasting cannon will make preparations to target this service soon if something doesn’t change even sooner.

• TV Media Entertainment Center – $100
• CD Storage Towers – $30
• Corner Computer Desk – $50
• TV Stand with Shelves and Media Storage – $25
• Sony Trinitron 24″ television – $25

Cheers!

I doubt this will concern anyone since there have been only two others besides myself to sign up for an account since I started this site last year. The purpose of doing so is to not have to fill in your personal information when posting comments. Logging in keeps that filled in for you.

However, there’s very little comment activity here, let alone the fact that even the blogging that occurs is sparse. And I’m getting sick of the upsurge in the past few weeks of spam systems signing up for user registrations. So bam! I turned them off.

This does not mean I’m unwilling to allow someone an account. If you’d like one, contact me and I’ll set it up for you.

My query is whether anyone has had any experience doing this and might be able to lend a hand, if needed.

Either way, once I finally get it done, the old URL will eventually be phased out. But I’m not publishing the new URL until I get things working.

BAM! (with apologies to Emeril)

If you see anything wonky, please let me know, but upon my own cursory browse, everything appears to be fine.

Today marked my 6th anniversary of blogging. Okay, you may have some cognitive dissonance over the fact that I don’t reliably blog any more ever since getting into Twitter, but the fact that I’m posting a blog entry about the anniversary should help quell any disparagement. Indeed, I don’t believe I’ll ever soon completely give up operating a weblog. I’ve only diminished how often I use it, because of Twitter.

In 2003, my first blog was D.T.P. by Lee. I had just barely managed to set up a Blosxom-powered site in time for the Superbowl which fell on the last weekend in January vs. the first Sunday of February as it does this year. That blog later gave way to The Second Initial, and then to this WordPress engine on ALBj.net which is used just for occasional thoughts that are too lengthy for the confines of a Tweet.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Here’s the addition I found for .htaccess:

<Files xmlrpc.php>
SecFilterInheritance Off
</Files>

Just fill in a comment with your name (or an alias I’d recognize) and say either whatever you want, or just “I’m here.”

Let me also take this opportunity to let you know that if you have any thought that you might periodically post comments in the future, feel free to sign up a user account on this site. That way, it’ll remember your information for future comments. Just use the Log In button in the left column, then use the Register link.

UPDATE: It was brought to my attention that I should’ve offered a link to Twitpress for those who wanted to check it out.

But here’s the scoop. Second Initial was created with the primary purpose of being a blog. At that time, blogging was an exciting new thing (well, new to me) that I really wanted to do. I had already begun posting entries in a more limited fashion at D.T.P. by Lee, but I wanted to set up a new page that was better managed. I also wanted to to get away from @dtpbylee.com as an e-mail domain. You can’t imagine how difficult it is to try to convey, “dee tee pee by lee dot com” over the phone! “What did you say? gee vee cee?”

So, here I am again making another break. Not that “secondinitial.com” was terribly hard to say, but that domain represented my intent to be a full-bore blogger. Yeah, full-bore, as in full-boring. I’m pretty sure no more than just a dozen or two people read my entires with any regularity.

Therefore, this time, I’m getting back to basics. I decided I wanted a site that catered more to my own needs than one that tried to be something that other people wanted. This new site is more like an online calling card. You’ll note right away that the front page doesn’t even have the index of my blog entries. Instead, it’s an online version of a college dorm room white board with pointers to the online venues I use more regularly.

Sure, I’ll keep posting occasional blog entries, but they certainly won’t come with anywhere near the frequency I tried to maintain on the older blogs. In fact, the motivation behind nearly all the entries will be that I can’t (or don’t want to) boil down what I want to say in a 140-character tweet.

So there you have it. If you’re into RSS subscriptions and want to keep up with me, you’ll certainly want to pick up all the feed links on this site’s sidebar—especially the one for Twitter. If you’re on Facebook, give me a ping there, but note that I tend to only follow back people with whom I have some sort of vague acquaintance. Ditto with Twitter.

I’m glad you’re here. If you have any advice for adjustments I should make to this new endeavor, I welcome your feedback.