For those of you that were still watching cartoons while some of us found the internet back in the 90's, there was a great idea that came about.  It was the mid 90's and the internet was really just starting to gain momentum. Web pages were all rage since very few knew how to make them and even fewer had the resources to host them or have them hosted.  Hosting companies were a new thing as well.  Everything was new and alien.

Out of all of the came a hosting company called Geocities.  It was one of several that would host your site for free.  They also charged a small fee to shorten the URL to your site, a bit more web space and some extra web tools.  I, like millions of other fledgling internet users flocked to Geocities and started learning how to code in HTML

Those days are long gone now and I've also just gotten word that Yahoo!, who purchased Geocities some years ago, is shutting the project down and scrubbing all the site contained within.  I have to admit, I was actually saddened a bit by the news. Then I had to wonder if my old site was still there.  Sure enough, I punched in http://www.geocities.com/~calimus  and there it was.  A archived leftover from somewhere between 1996-1997.  That was the last time I can remember doing anything with the Geocities site.  The code that was there was made even well before then.

So for now, you can still get to the site.  I've made sure to save a copy of it for myself.  I'll add that to my digital scrapbook.  It's been a long time Geocities, and I hate to see you go even though I haven't visited for at least 12 years.  You were a big part of my life where I honed some of my earliest skills.  So long old friend.

Looks like bloggers will have to be a bit more carefull starting Dec 1.  If your a blogger and you plug a product on your site, or twitter, or facebook, or even myspace (is that place still alive?), and you were payed by the manufacturer in any way to review or plug said product, you had better tell everyone you got payed.  Fail to do so and it can result in a $11k fine.

It sounds much worse then it is really, but it's still a bit of a PITA legality.  For a better understanding, check out what the fine folks of at Arstechnica have to say.

Well, looks like Verizon isn't going to sit back and continue to wait for a deal with Apple on the iPhone any longer.  Today the announcement was made that Verizon and Google have made a deal.  This means Andriod based phones should make their way to the Verizon stores in as little as a few weeks from what the PR guys are saying.

Should be interesting to see what they come up with together.  Currently, I'm a BlackBerry Storm user, but maybe I could be swayed.

If you haven't heard about Google's new communications project called Wave, don't worry, you arn't the last to know.  This cat is still only half out of the bag.

Seems that the code monkeys over at Google have really been working some overtime. Wave will possibly be the next generation in on-line communications and is also looking to bump the current system of e-mail off the map as well.  it's kind of like, IM client meets, e-mail client, meets online forum, meets collaboration client and a few other tools tossed in for good measure.  While this is very interesting, I'm not sure if I like this idea.

However, I'm still learning about it and you should as well.  Ars Technica has this article on what they have seen from Wave as well as a nice breakdown of how it works.  So this article does a great job of explaining what Google's ideas is, but does get a bit technical along the way.  Even if you arn't the technical kind of person, read the article.  The super geeky part isn't very long but the rest will provide a lot of information.

Just sending out a nice Happy Birthday to bloodspite.  I've already texted him, but I figured this was in order as well.

Happy Birthday buddy, have one on me.

Does your windows OS have your down?  Mac OS not doing it for you?  Have you been thinking about giving one of the many flavors of Linux a try?  Well, if you have, Tech Radar has 25 tips for Windows switchers.

It covers questions such as "what is a distribution", "what is a live CD", "getting a grip on the file system" and several other really good topics.  This isn't an end all be all guide to Linux, however, for those that might be interesting in making the switch or taking it for a test drive, it's a great primer to get your foot in the door.

Much like Apple's "There's an App for that" iPhone campaign, it seems these days the script kiddies of the world should have one called "There's a Trojan for that".

Now Skype, that great VOIP and vid conferencing application now gets a trojan of it's own.  Symantec has recently said that it's identified Trojan.Peskyspy and have also found it's source code out on the internet.

The virus itself once on a system with Skype recrods conversations and then uploads to servers in the wild to be reviewed by whomever.  The real problem is that since the source code is out there, there is a great potential for the code to be modified to do far more.

Though I forgot about this place again didn't ya? Not a chance.  I've been busy with work as always, though, those days are numbered unfortunately.  However, I have been working on the backend of the site and getting Ol' Geeklog back into proper update.

So now, I'm in the process of phasing out all the articles and such that have nothing to do with Technology.  This is taking some time, but I do have new content brewing.  I've been playing with the server that I purchased back in July.  It's currently running Vmware ESXi 3.5 and has a Server 2003 built as well as an Ubuntu Server build.  I'm hoping to start learning Exchange with the Server 2003 build and I'm not sure exactly what I'll be doing with the linux install just yet.  I know I need to get my command line skills back up to snuff before I get in over my head though.  I've also been doing a fair ammount with Windows 7 RC.  It's certainly everything Vista was/is not, but it's not all perfect.  So look forward to some real meat coming down the pipe soon.

Oh, and if your still a fan of BloodSpites writtings, have no fear.  I'm in the process of setting up a whole new site just for him.  I'll be sure to announce it and link it as soon as everything is in place.  Untill then, stay tuned and check for updates.

Whats it been, 6 months now?  I've been trying to figure out what the hell I'm going to do with this site.  I could just dump it and go about other avenues, but I've had this site for too long to just chuck it.

So it's time to go back to what the site was originally for.  Helping others learn the way of the Geek.

So, to help kick start that, I've just purchased a HP/Compaq Proliant DL380 G3.  Sure, it's doesn't sound like much.  But this is a full blown server that I can do all kinds of cool stuff with.  I should be getting it in a few days, hope to get something going on with it this weekend.

So, stick around, I didn't just spend a bunch of my money for nothing.  I plan to do something cool with it and will do my best to teach you how as well.

With Bloodspite burned out on blogging, it has left the site with no fulltime content.  As always, I'm a slave to a corprate company which will come to an end in April of 2010, but then I'm sure I'll just have to slave myself out to yet another company.  If I'm lucky, I might find a company that doesn't need so much of my time.  Either way, it's going to be very difficult for much of anything to happen here for some time.

I'm not shutting the site down, so long as I have a spare $20 in my pocket, the lights will always stay on at Techography.  However, it may be a while before much content can make it's way to the surface.  I am however considering a total change in the site.  Geeklog has been a great CMS system for me, but it takes a lot of coding work to make it do the kind of things I want to do.  So, I may move to something else.  The issue there is that there is some damn good content in the site and I'd hate to lose that.  So what I very well may do is create an archive that will be reachable from the new site should I get the time to make it.

For all of those that visited the site in it's hay-day, I thank you and ask that you check back from time to time as you might just catch the rebirth when it happens.  For now, I can't put any kind of date on that, but it will happen.

Calimus