ok - so keeping in tune with the "end of the year" evaluations - here are my favouritest videos for 2007 from youtube (well, after that aly & aj one i posted a couple of months ago, and everything by eddie izzard). 

regular everyday normal guy: ah, gangsta rap for those of us with no serious angst to deal with. i can relate to this video because "i make pretty good spaghetti sauce too, muthaf**ka!" (oh yeah - serious language warning here)

ryan vs. dorkman: best lightsabre battles anywhere anytime.

dc/marvel after hours: it took some random guy with a bunch of action figures and a video camera to elucidate the problem of superheroism in the 21st century and the loss of status of the big blue boy. go to 4:10 on the timeline - it's crazy brilliant! and if you have time, you should watch the whole "dc/marvel after hours" series on youtube - spidey is hilarious!!

ok - i admit - i was a  little bored last night and spent some time on the old blogthings site taking ridiculous tests lacking an credible authority.  but it was kind of fun.  18% evil... hahahaha!!!  - g

You Are 18% Evil

You are good. So good, that you make evil people squirm. Just remember, you may need to turn to the dark side to get what you want!

You Are 50% Feminine, 50% Masculine

You are in touch with both your feminine and masculine sides. You're sensitive at the right times, but you don't let your emotions overwhelm you. You're not a eunuch, just the best of both genders.

Orange County

You're rich, pretty, and living a charmed life. (Or you seriously wish you were.) From Disneyland to Laguna Beach, you're all about living the California dream life. Just make sure to marry rich - so you don't have to work for it!

ps. i went back and did some more this afternoon. i totally suck. i could totally be doing something useful right now, instead of these stoopid quizzes. sigh.

You Are a Bad Liar

Sorry, but no one is really believing any of your lies. You're going to have to chill out and practice a lot before you can really deceive effectively.

You are 73% Leo

You Are: 40% Dog, 60% Cat

You and cats have a lot in common. You're both smart and in charge - with a good amount of attitude. However, you do have a very playful side that occasionally comes out!

Your Inner European is French!

Smart and sophisticated. You have the best of everything - at least, *you* think so.

Your Sexy Brazilian Name is:

Bruno de Roraima

Your Blog Should Be Green

Your blog is smart and thoughtful - not a lot of fluff. You enjoy a good discussion, especially if it involves picking apart ideas. However, you tend to get easily annoyed by any thoughtless comments in your blog.

You Are 74% Non Conformist

You are a pretty serious non conformist. You live a life hardly anyone understands. And while some may call you a freak, you're happy with who you are.

- g

for the past three years, i've been using my own homemade content management application to blog.  as part of my new years resolution to relax more effectively, i went to the open-source community to see if i could give myself a few days of spare time by not reinventing the wheel in replacing my blog engine, and i couldn't be happier with the results.  i installed the blogengine.net application on my website, and this is the result - a far more fun blog to use and to browse than i could possibly have crafted myself over this holiday break!

i wanted to include a tool that would enable user comments and ratings, and this engine came with those features built-in!  i wanted a tag-cloud so that you could browse the postings by keyword and subject matter - and that was built-in also!  i wanted a site that i could tool in .NET and reskin in CSS, and that was no problem either!  and i wanted a new look and feel that was more glossy and less dark and gloomy and i managed to use all the time savings coding to make that happen also!

this new site has so many goody features - even i don't know all the things that it does yet!  i imported the last year's worth of entries to get a feel for how the thing should work, and it's super-fantastic (in my humble opinion).  i have to apologize a bit for the immense tag-cloud though - i will try and trim that down to a more reasonable collection of keywords as time goes by.  in the meantime however - holy crap!!!  i love it so much (as only a programming geek can)!!

on a personal note, the holidays have been good.  i've relaxed and taken things at a very comfortable pace.  i've had lots of projects (replacing my blog engine being at the forefront of these) to do this week, and i'm getting through them spectacularly - more on that in subsequent posts.  life still isn't quite perfect, but it's mine, and i'm doing it the way that i want and choose - and things rarely get better than that.

- g

song of the day for making things go your way: heaven in my hands, level 42 (with one of the best bass players ever to grace the face of the earth, mark king).

(and i'm trying to think if i've used this title before??)

no seriously, what have i done?  one of the reasons that i didn't go home for the holidays, and please don't tell my parents this, is that i like having a few days - a week? - to myself where i don't have work to do, people to see, drinks for which to go out, or any of that.  it sounds pretty solipsistic, but really, there is an upside.  i get to settle into my head a little bit (more than is usual or safe) and take account of what's gone down in the last year or so.  this isn't the really BIG accounting post for 2007 - that one will be coming in new years.  this is sort of the warm-up.

this year has been really really positive for me, and even i am having a hard time denying it's recuperative effects.  although it started out a little bumpy, and in some ways, stayed bumpy up to now, i managed to straighten out a lot of doubts and fears about myself and about my life this year!  i took a much more involved approach to life - with my little adventures and a slightly more adventurous social attitude than i'm used to - it really has made a world of difference to enjoying life.  my work life has never been better.  i have fabulous friends here who are amazing and admirable.  i have truly spectacular friends all over the country, some of whom i've had a chance to see this year, and others with whom i've only been able to abstractly communicate over facebook or email. i'm stronger and faster than i've ever been, and even my wavy superman-hair is back.

i drew this picture for a christmas card five years ago, and it's interesting for me to fish it out now. i had just returned home from a failed year in toronto and was feeling miserable, alone, jaded and defeated.  it's been five years (of pretty intense messing things up just to get things right again), but i feel like i've come so far from that point.  i'm still sort wandering the city alone and appalled at christmas commercialism, but my colours are so much brighter now.

that's my christmas wish for everyone this year - may we all take the time to see the brightness of the life all around us sharper and more vividly than before!!!

- g

song of the day (as if there could be any other): happy xmas (war is over) , john lennon.

ps.  if next blog entry is delayed, it’s because i am going to try and build a new blog engine for 2008 that will be more powerful and have more features than this aging, decrepit thing that i wrote years ago. - g

If you see this post it means that BlogEngine.NET 1.3 is running and the hard part of creating your own blog is done. There is only one thing you need to do from this point on to take full advantage of the blog and that is to set up the first author profile.

Write Permissions

To be able to log in to the blog and writing posts, you need to enable write permissions on the App_Data folder. If you’re blog is hosted at a hosting provider, you can either log into your account’s admin page or call the support. You need write permissions on the App_Data folder because all posts and comments are saved as XML files and placed in the App_Data folder.

Username and password

When you've got write permissions to the App_Data folder, you need to change the username and password. Find the sign-in link located either at the bottom or top of the page depending on your current theme and click it. Now enter "admin" in both the username and password fields and click the button. You will now see an admin menu appear. It has a link to the "Users" admin page. From there you can change the username and password.

On the web

You can find BlogEngine.NET on the official website. Here you'll find tutorials, documentation, tips and tricks and much more. The ongoing development of BlogEngine.NET can be followed at CodePlex where the daily builds will be published for anyone to download.

Good luck and happy writing.

The BlogEngine.NET team