It’s the first day of summer vacation here at cleverhack, (well, for some of us) and a Wednesday, so here’s some Web aggregation for you.

A Comcast Technician Sleeping on my Couch. I know, it’s hit all the big sites already, but it’s still hilarious. I love the music.

Out of all of the .gov Web sites out there, I think the USDA Web site is great. Very nice, clean design.

Talking about useful blogs, I found monetize, a smartly snarkily written marketing/SEO blog earlier today while reading up about the spammer who managed to get billions of indexed pages onto Google and other search engines. A good read, although I will note that the blog isn’t on the front page of Google SERPS for “monetize blog”. Just noting. :-P

Two notes about podcasting and more podcasting. Here’s a shoutout to fluctu8, a podcasting directory that has my podcast feed on their front page at the moment. Yes, I do need a compelling podcast promo photo.

Also, as far as podcast receivers go, Juice Receiver is beating the pants off of iTunes as far as actual usage in my site logs. You people are just bleeding edge technologists, aren’t you?

Technorati Tags: You Tube, Comcast, .gov, Web design, Web Marketing, SEO, blog, podcasting, podcasts, podcast directory

One visitor over the weekend had no referrer and a user agent which started with the following: blocked by Outpost (http://www.agnitum.com). According to Google, this Outpost Firewall blocks referrers for “privacy”, but I could still see the visitor’s IP address. So yeah.

New RSS Reader: RSSPoint/2 (2b91;Windows XP) Info page here. I like seeing new RSS readers.

That’s about it guys, have a good Monday.

Technorati Tags: Site Info, User Agents, Referrers, RSS, New RSS Reader

The third cleverhack podcast is now posted. This podcast features introductory music by mathgeeks and was edited with the help of audacity.

Podcast topics include site news, the Philly blogger meetup, thoughts about software user interface design, CSS boxes and a pop culture critique of Rolling Stone Magazine.

Note: To follow up with something I noted in the podcast, I apparently need to use the WordPress rich text editor to use the podPress plugin.

Technorati Tags: podcasts, podcasting

Listen Now:

 edited with audacity [29:35m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Introducing the second cleverhack podcast, now with more interruptions and better volume.

Topics covered include 2005 Sofia Rose wine, updating my PowerBook’s RAM, cleverhack site news, blog updates via email, Google bashing, moblogging thoughts and ramblings about music, missing Postal Service singles and cruddy XM radio reception.

Technorati Tags: podcast, podcasting, tech podcast

Listen Now:

 Second cleverhack podcast - "screw it" [17:10m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I am pleased to announce (with not that much background noise) the first cleverhack podcast.

clever podcast 1 (17:58 4.3MB)

Topics include: Background noise, cleverhack site info, Technorati, tech news, my LG VX9800 phone saga, thoughts about current music and more.

Technorati Tags: Podcast, podcasting, my first podcast

Update: I’m trying to get the Mighty Seek Podpress plugin working- as you can see the flash podplayer doesn’t work. But the old school direct link to the mp3 file does. It’s something with the .htaccess file apparently and I’m a tad bit frustrated that the install docs failed to mention this.

Update 2: The flash player is working now. The whole mention of the .htaccess in the install FAQ led me on a snipe hunt, but all is well now and the only part of the plugin that doesn’t work is the stats, and at this point, they aren’t really that important.  Also, the flash player has a bug in which it requires the mp3 file to be encoded at 11.025 kHz, 22.050 kHz or 44.100 kHz.

Listen Now:

 first clever podcast [17:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

It looks like someone was trying to trackback me on the music geekery post, but it doesn’t seem like it worked. Dear anonymous blogger, if you’re willing to troubleshoot, drop me an email.

Technorati Tags: site info, blogging

User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (PSP (PlayStation Portable); 2.00)

PlayStation Portable- I didn’t realize they had Web browsers now.

Technorati Tags: site logs, user agents

Oh boy am I going to be grumpy in about 6 hours from now. Note: if messing with backgrounds or what seems to be simple vertical borders in WordPress, check the header.php template first to delete the background images.

Yeah, my first thought would have been to check header.php for a page background.

Technorati Tags: Wordpress, CSS

Looking at my site logs recently, I’ve found that most of my readers on Windows are actually using the most recent version (1.0.4) of Firefox. To be honest, I’m extremely surprised to see that folks are staying updated - especially since the updates are manual. Again, this could be because most of you who are reading this could be classified as tech savvy.

An interesting WAP User Agent from my logs…

LGE/U8150/1.1 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.0

Here are the tech specs of the phone and the phone’s browser…

My second mention in a slashdot comment this month.

Those of you who know me “off blog” know how much I enjoy looking at my logs and figuring out who is reading and where they are coming from (yeah, especially those of you who are now local to me). Since I’ve started posting (again) I’m thrilled to see new people reading, but I haven’t heard from some of you!

Anyway, for those of you who are new or are just really, really quiet, feel free to comment or to drop me a line at blog at cleverhack dot com…

You can thank the guy behind the script using hijacked IPs 66.193.64.163, 209.8.161.66, and 194.8.54.249.