Ch-ch-ch check it out.

shanankan.com

Finally got my arse into gear, bought the domain and configured a site. I've decided that I'm gonna use that domain as my main portfolio for my writing aspirations. Well, technically it's not just writing, it's all forms of storytelling, living up to my self-professed raconteurism. I intend to keep a record of articles, essays, humour pieces, short stories, poetry, lyrics, plays, screenplays, games and whatever else I can create in that portfolio.

There's also gonna be a blog section, which will *not* be replacing this, as this and that will serve a very different person. This one is, more than anything, a playground for my thoughts, ideas, concepts, and writing styles/techniques. That one is the "professional" (yes, I know I've argued ad nauseum that professionalism doesn't exist) one where I keep people updated on actual projects. Most of the stuff there will be edited and well-thought out, not the higgledy-piggledy, stream of consciousness approach I take here.

If you go there right now you'll note it's pretty much just all fluff content right now. I've got the template and layout all figured out. I've yet to actually make some actual social media'esque things, like Tweet buttons and sharing widgets and Facebook things. That'll come in due time.

There's a few blog posts on here I want to use. And that's not that surprising, as there are 600+ of them :P They'll be edited down and made more coherent.

A limitation of NameCheap, the platform I'm using, is that I can't change the A Record *and* give a redirect for the same domain, chiefly the main one, @. I'm not sure if other providers use it, but frankly  I'm not too fussed about it. I've made it so www.shanankan.com takes you to a landing page where it'll be mostly attractive to potential employers and shanankan.com takes you directly to the blog. There's not much I could actually do about it :P Outside of building like 2 Tumblr accounts that look identical, I don't see it working.

*gets busy populating it with content*

Backend changes

Just a heads up, ever since I put the blog back up online, I've been working a bit on the underlying code and trying out some new stuff. Most of it isn't technically noticeable, but obviously bugs will crop up. If you do see odd/out of place behaviour, or a drastic change from how things used to be lemme know plz.

At the end of the day, I have no intentions of this blog ever becoming a heavy traffic site and I don't expect anything here to ever go viral. That's not the purpose of the blog. I mean that'd be like calling a single tweet going viral ... just rarely happens. However, what I am learning are skills and tools that will eventually be useful when I do finally get around to make a proper official site ... for whatever comes my way. Good to have a 'working example', for instance, of the Tweetmeme badge in case I ever make a site where such a badge would be appropriate. This blog acts as a testing grounds for stuff like that.

Eventually I'd like to make a personal site that's not just a blog, but first I probably need accomplishments with which to decorate it, so I ought to get started. This year, particularly this semester, is definitely the time to do it!

New Banner

After a year and a half of that stupid smiling Shanan, I have replaced the banner with one of my own making. Of course, Gordon did say he would make me one ... numerous times. But like all Gordonian pledges, and do not think for a moment I begrudge him for it, this was left unfulfilled.  I'm still miffed as to why my previous employer made a specific request that I take down not only the blog, but ALSO the image as well. Were they just looking out for the psychological well being of people who view the blog? Or perhaps there was some legal reason... Either way, it's gone and this new one is in.

Thoughts? Feedback?

Do you think I should get rid of the text at the back? It's not like necessary, just the initial idea (without the running Bathosian me ...) was just the text. Then I added me, at the request of Nawaaz, and now it seems a bit crowded. Maybe later today/tomorrow I'll see what it looks like, a nice plain white background.

But a blog about the narcissistic story of my life without an actual photo of me?? I dunno, just doesn't feel right. Ideas for where a photo could be placed? D:

1 Year, 1 Month later...

231 393 words ;) Pretty much two good sized novels there. Now to embark upon my third saga ;)

YAY! I'm a lil' annoyed I missed my one month... but meh. So let's see... 1 Year + 1 Month = 366 (leap year) + 30 (June) = 396. Therefore:

584 words per day. I'm dropping my average, but that's too be expected, especially considering how I'm just skipping days at a time now :\

But YAY! nonetheless ;)

OH SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT

SHIT SHIT SHIT!

Apparently my first blog post was June 22nd, not July 22nd. It means I've been all excited for nothing. I can't believe I missed my first year anniversary :(

*heartbroken*

GotAbMo's housekeeping

If you use IE you should notice an increase in the general font size of the blog. I increased it after getting tired of reading the small font :P Plus I realised it was far smaller than what was standard to a comparable blog across the interwebs. I also did it so the little ShareThis and TweetThis buttons that appear on individual post pages would appear properly with the correct spacing.

Assuming one day I end up promoting the hell outta the blog, those buttons will help. If not, I learnt how to implement them for my future web-ventures.

I'm also thinking of removing the javascript Twitter widget in the sidebar and replacing it with the plain old RSS one. So while my tweets won't be totally up to date (an hour or so late), it will increase loading time dramatically.

As for the header banner, Gordon's still working on it. I'm hoping something comes of it soon, I'm getting really sick of it :D It's not funny anymore.

One or two administrative items

There've been a few changed I've made about the place. One of them implemented a few weeks ago and Colby pointed it out in the comments, it's the addition of a link bar of "Shanan Kan", which basically just leads here. In case it wasn't clear enough, it was a nice way of adding meaningful copies of my name of each page of the blog.

Secondly, you'll notice the 'title' of the blog will have had a wankatory message tacked on the end. I'm thinking of doing with something else, rather than "Shanan Kan's Personal Blog" ... something along the lines of the "Sanctuary of the Irrreverent Inanities of Shanan Kan". Dunno, will keep working on it, maybe make a few suggestions (so long as my name appears, I'm fine).

Finally, an appeal of help from my loyal readers. If any of you have Google accounts, I urge you to log in and do a search for "Shanan Kan". The link to the main page of my blog, that is http://www.gotabmo.com/ should be somewhere on the first page of results. If you're logged in, you'll see a whole bunch of arrows next to the results. I'd appreciate it if you could promote my blog by clicking the up arrow.

What this does is that it will indicate to Google that this is a good site to promote regarding issues about me, namely Shanan Kan. I do not want the first or second result to be the Friendfeed account I do not use or my personal Facebook profile. Many thanks :)

364th

This will be the 364th post I've made since I started the blog on the 22nd June 2008. With today being the 25th February 2009,  I will have been blogging for 249 days. Or 8 months and 4 days.

By the end of this post I will have written 173 251 words.

This means that I have wrriten approximately 696 words per day.

Yes, from the angst-ridden post previous, I have turned to the safe solitude of statistics and numbers to comfort my creative juices.

Word.

New RSS feed

Just a heads up to people. I haven't received any new items on the blog's old feed at all. That's the one at Feedburner. So if you're currently using that one, please port yourself over to:

http://feedproxy.google.com/GotAbMo

I was under the impression anything to the old Feedburner would automatically, and it seems to be working. It may just be Google Reader being weird, I dunno. Anyway, there's the new link, update it if you wish. Alternatively, you can just become a follower of this blog using Blogger's own following system, which guarantees immediate and full exposure to my feed.

Fancy new back-end stuff

Sweeeeeeet <3 GotAbMo.com is now retrofitted to display posts that have no labels. Prior to this, I had hacked into the code and done a half-arsed job, resulting in the mandatory labelling of each and every post (which was handy because it kept a nice lil' visible counter on the side bar in the Categories widget).

But this severely handicapped the blog. The only way to add labels to posts is via the dashboard on Blogger. There are a myriad of services and apps out there that can help post to the blog, such as Blogger's own e-mail function where I can just e-mail stuff in. And Dial2Do, which I implemented a while back, was dependent on just posting without a label.

Now with this new update, I will be able to do those. Perhaps just so I am able to blog whilst on holidays or something. Or integrate this with some app ... Say link my SWC/AW blog so that they automatically post entries here. I'd do that by taking their RSS, getting an e-mail client to thusly e-mail my sekrit addy and have it just post here. Perhaps there'll be other things ... depending on the things I do, I guess.

However, I will continue to label each and every of my blog posts that I post here :@ That's s'how I roll.

Facebook Connect implemented :D

It took me the better part of today, but I've finally got Facebook Connect working on the blog. I had to install a 3rd party commenting system. In fact, I did two: JS-Kit and Disqus. Both are great commenting systems and both support Facebook, which was the most important part for me.

The only thing that really annoys me is that it doesn't publish your comments onto your Facebook feed. I'd like for messages like "Shanan commented on Got AbMo" ... That's half the reason why I installed these was the extra exposure the blog could get from that.

In case you'ven't noticed, there's a distinct lack of readers of the blog. Or at least readers.

I'm trying to figure out why it's not publishing 'em to the news feeds... I'll e-mail the two systems tomorrow regarding my problem. Hopefully it is possible to get it enabled. If so that'd make me ever so happy :)

Connecting the blog

I've been slowly looking at two different options of making this blog far more accessible.

Google Friendconnect.

You'll notice that I have a Followers widget in the sidebar. That's basically a preliminary version of Friendconnect. As far as I can, Friendconnect allows you to create a mini-social network around your site, using the accounts of existing google accounts (and a few other affiliates). This means people can make 'friends' on the site and interact, possibly upload photos and other stuff, making the site far more social and interaction.

It also gives everyone an account to post comments on posts, rather than the weird randoms I have floating in every now and then.

Personally, I see this as far more a tool for sites outside of personal blogs. If I were, say, trying to build a mini-social network and that Nerdfighting blog I always think about could potentially use it, right now Got AbMo isn't one so there's not much point. Plus there aren't that many gadgets around to make it worthwhile.

Facebook Connect

Essentially similar to Friendconnect, except not by Google and uses Facebook accounts. For a personal blog, like this, I definitely far more potential for that here. Basically get the power to post comments here under your Facebook account, potentially even publishing that into your news feed for other people.

That of course turns the blog into a bit more integrated with all my Facebook friends. It's also a way to easily build a larger audience if people comment and it happens to go into their feed. I'm not precisely sure how thorough the capabilities of Facebook Connect is (as in taking Facebook info and displaying it on the blog, so it sort of feels like an extension to Facebook).

Eventually, I'd like to be able to import Facebook's chat/status bar at the bottom onto the blog. I really think that's the next step.

Naturally I can't do any of this. Right now Blogger (where Got AbMo is hosted) does not support Facebook Connect in any viable shape. I suspect all I can do is get people to authenticate their accounts there with their usage of this site. I can't actually post any content under their guise. Especially as I don't have a database of any sort to keep that info...

I really hope Google and Facebook man-up, suck it in and realise that they should just join the two services - it'll eventually mean more for each company. It'll also add so much more viability to the whole thing.

I see this as steps towards Facebook turning into a scaled down Friendfeed but for the masses. Which is great - I'd use Friendfeed, but no one else does, so it'd be pointless. Fair enough, I may blog and twitter to the voidful abyss, but they aren't solely interactive mediums (well, I follow like 70 people on twitter so it's useful. Dunno why I update, as I have like 4 followers :P).

Only thing I've thought about worth blogging today. I'll try to make tomorrow more interesting for your luverlies.

Converting to comic site

I'm unsure as to whether I am going to continue hosting Bathos on gotabmo.com or if I should get an independent domain for it.

For the time being, however, if you wish to just access the Bathos comics, go to bathos.gotabmo.com and it'll redirect you to the comic index. I spent a few good hours figuring out how to get the navigation bar at the top of the comic to help you go back and forth through the comics.

Still haven't got the "First" button working. It'll take you to the 2nd comic.. not sure if that's because it's the latest or because it is the next one over from the last. We'll see.

As for an archive, as much as I'd love to have one, I'm not sure if it's actually possible to collate all the relevant posts into a table..

WAIT! I just had an idea. Perhaps I'll be able to use the archive system to my advantage.. I may go do that now once I finish this.

Bathos #002 took a lot longer than I had anticipated. Again, still trying to find my way around InkScape, which as I've found for myself and numerous sites have documented, has a rather steep learning curve, epsecially for a newbie to vector based graphics. But I'm getting there, picking up a few tips and tricks along the way.

I'm afraid Bathos #003 will be another time travel joke ... It introduces one of the recurring characters that I hopefully will be able to use in the future. Well, so does #004 :D

I'm thinking maybe a every second day type schedule. I dunno. The bad thing is that this comic took so long (and the pimping the site for it) that I didn't get to write chapter 3.2 of the Spiral Project. But I shall attend to that first thing in the morning!

Wait, I may have to go pick up medicine and other stuff tomorrow. Major eugh!

Something incredibly nerdy.

Nerdfighters!

I recently bumped over the 250 post mark (this is the official 253rd post). My first official post to this blog was the 22th June 2008. That was nearly five months ago. In five months I've written 250 posts. That's about 50 posts a month. That's not too bad :D

And we all know what that means! It's time for statistics!

I have overed 110 000 words written. Fucking AMAZING :D That's like a whole novel. If I could somehow transform my life into a great literary novel, that'd be great. But it took my five months to write 110 000 words. That's a LOT of time. No doubt I'll have to up the ante. Just kidding :P I know there's already a lot of stuff coming from me as it is. No no, these projects are meant to deflate that.

WORD USAGE:

• Fuck: 58 times D: D: D: D:! I was definitely hoping for way more.
• Cunt: 6 times only D:
• The: 4040 times
• And: 2549 times
• Philosophy: 46 times
• Connor: 45 times
• AJ: 38 times
• Gobbi/Gobi: 7 + 37 = 44 times
• Youtube: 38 times
• Gordon: 142 times >___________<
• Shanan: 181 times <-- See! I'm not that narcisstic.
• Me: 719 times ^_____________^
• :P : 84 times
• Mum/Mother: 6 + 114 = 120 times
• Dad/Father: 5 + 19 = 24 times .................
• Sex: 1 time ....................................................................................... -_-

And now for something really nerdy and fun...

LETTER USAGE:

• A: 35 734
• B: 7 297
• C: 12 183
• D: 15 417
• E:  51 069
• F: 9 048
• G: 10 524
• H: 24 196
• I: 36 013
• J: 1 183
• K: 4 090
• L: 18 405
• M: 13 018
• N: 31 337  (Notice the 1337 :D)
• O: 36 098
• P: 9 215
• Q: 400
• R: 22 863
• S: 27 952
• T: 45 166
• U: 13 231
• V: 4 807
• W: 10 567
• X: 711
• Y: 10 519
• Z: 198
• 0: 1164
• 1: 847
• 2: 765
• 3: 372
• 4: 464
• 5: 344
• 6: 151
• 7: 185
• 8: 458
• 9: 193

Now, here's an interesting thing I thought that I really ought to do. I'm going to compare my letter frequency with the average letter frequency in the English language. To see how I compare. I'm using the letter frequency table on the wikipage. Based on my total character count of 451241 and these frequency tables, I have calculated how many instances of each character should be present in my writing. From there I've constructed this graph.

Click it to see the graph in it's full glory.

I definitely have some interesting findings here. In a five month period, with over 110 000 words written, it's interesting that my numbers seem to conform rather nicely with that of the English language. There are several conclusions to draw from this. One, one could conclude that this blog has covered the full depth, colour and complexity that the language affords, thus forming congruous results. Another one is that my choice of language and vocabulary, even as flamboyant and generative and playful as I make it, doesn't seem to change the distribution of my letter frequencies very much. Which can be taken as a bad thing, implying my language does not have enough variance.

One interesting result is that my e's are down about 5000. Not sure if that's a significant number. But I'm glad that my E's are a whole 2% lower than that found in English. This makes me happy :) I'm not as conforming as I would it appears at first. I'm a rogue user of E's!

Anyway, all this 'statistics' is making me tired. I might go to bed. This lil' study has given me rather interesting linguistic insight. If any of you had a substantial amount of writing to analyse, I'd welcome it, but somehow I doubt you do :P

Voice recognition software :D

Today there was a very interest post in my news feed, about a service called Dial2Do. Basically it's a service that I can call with my mobile and it will open up a whole array of different things I can do. It offers a transcription service, translating anything I say to text.

I've done a few quick tests over the course of the day and I have to say, I a very, very impressed. The only problem I found was when I tried putting on a Texan accent, they converted the word "call" as in "I got a call" to "I got a cow", which was a meaning changing typo.

They also store the audio on their servers, so it ends up being a nice lil' podcast feed too. Not exactly sure *how* I want to implement this just yet. I think there is a limit to how long I can talk for but it's not specified. It seemingly just cuts me off about 50 seconds into a message.

But the possibilities here are pretty intriguing. I can have them text the transcription to me or anyone (so it's a nice quick way to do texts ... possibly to groups of people, meaning the only cost I pay is the call itself), or e-mail it to anyone, post it on Twitter, Tumblr, onto a blog ... So many fascinating things. I don't want to add another widget to the blog 'cause it'll become cluttered. I think this system is good because it means I can keep things updated without necessarily needing the internet, which I can imagine being really fun.

But right now, it's not worth it if I don't have the audience. Meaning I probably want to stick it onto Facebook. So that means I can either update my status that way or write notes.

I was thinking I ought to write more notes on Facebook, a far more personal blog, but also using the tag feature to keep relevant people up-to-date. I don't know anyone who actually uses that application properly.

Anyway, if I want to dynamic my Facebook status via this phone thing, I'll probably need to set up a Twitter account for the phone to post to, and then add the Twitter application which can update my status that way. Thus my messages can be broadcast to my 350 odd friends. Easily keeping everyone afloat of all my activities, as long as I have my mobile with me.

OMG new follower

How sad is it that I looked in the sidebar and saw that this blog now has three followers, and I actually got excited?

Welcome Colby :D It's quite the party here, what with James and me :P




ps. Things to get next time I'm down at the shops: A life.

Follow this blog!

I've just implemented "Followers", which was a feature introduced by Blogger awhile back. I wasn't too sure about it. It seemed a bit like trying to turn it into youtube for blogging. But whatever, I think it'd be pretty awesome to have a nice list of people who follow this blog for others to see.

I do have the RSS feed, but I suspect my small (albeit awesome) audience have much need for RSS feeds and such.

So if you so wish, click the follow button over in the side bar and make a Shanan happy :)

New Banner?

I get sick of the above banner. As love-uh-ly as my face is, looking at my smiling at myself grows tiring. The joke wears thin when I see it every day.

Tossing around different ideas in my head, from different "artistic" type shots, whether it be me as a punk or as some other creature, but nothing definitive. Which is why I decided to outsource it. To Gordon.

I'm going to have him draw a banner for me. I'm giving him complete and total control over the thing, to do as he wishes.

This is his first draft.

*epic face palm*

It's official, I'm a collab whore.

Just a quick bit of general maintenance: I fixed a bug in my script which stopped the "| COMMENTS |" thing from appearing.

***

You'll've noticed that the past few posts have all involved collaborations or projects, as I use the terms synonymously, and that would be because they've consumed my life now. I suspect I've always been the sort of person who works well with projects with life, it reminds me of school and assignments.

These things are not only productive, but they are also highly hilarious and involving and engaging and fun. Most of all it's fun.

Right now I'm working on:

• The BaroBot with Baro
• Possibility of a game with Comit + SWC crew
• A song with Beau
• A graphic novel with Gordon, maybe an anime

Life is definitely good right now. In fact, I've spent the past two days talking to a lot of people, asking them about their talents and seeing what we can gain from it. It's definitely a great way to deepen the friendships I have with people.

I mean socialising with people is lots of fun, having coffee with AJ and Gobby last nigth was so awesome (though the conversation was a bit .. unAbMo-like :P), but I think collaboration is the way to do with these things.

Definitely hope I get some good responses from people.

GotAbMo.com :D

Finally got around to getting myself the domain. This is my first domain ... so forgive me if I'm just a tad excited. I sort of feel like a legitimate web identity now, with a domain and everything.

Nifty thing with using google is now that I have the whole Google Apps suite at my fingertips, and that's damned amazing. I now have e-mail addys for the @gotabmo.com domain. I dunno what I'm gonna do with them, but that's pretty awesome. I get sites and docs and pages as well :D That would be a lot more useful if like I had a whole lotta traffic and my own lil' community.

Maybe that will come next... maybe that will come next...