I desired the ability to list post labels

So I changed to a totally different template. I think I have brought over all needful content from the old template. I started searching for posts with common key-words and adding appropriate labels.

Good evening.

At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. -- Justice Anthony Kennedy.

This quote earned Justice Kennedy the condemnation of Focus on the Family

Today's updates

• I restored and added a few blogs etc. to the "other favorites" section of the sidebar
• Paul Krugman and Stanley Fish were added to the "favorite columnists"
• Strunk's Elements of Style Revised by John Cowan added to 'reference links'
• Sitemeter was unavailable over the weekend--so I added code for StatCounter just in case Sitemeter stops working. Sitemeter reports 5015 visitors since October 5, 2003.

Things I may do...

• Go look at the monthly archive and check for linkrot.
  
• Insert linkrot image for bad links.
  
• Edit old posts to add labels
• Delete pointless posts...
  
• Add a 'labels' section to the sidebar so Ghost Town Orange can work a little more like a filing cabinet. Now it is more like a diary ...
  
• Posts ... 'on this day in Ghost Town Orange history'...
  

God our security,
who alone can defend us
against the principalities and powers
that rule this present age;
may we trust in no weapons
except the whole armor of faith,
that in dying we may live,
and, having nothing, we may own the world,
through Jesus Christ. AMEN
--Janet Morley, All desires known, 1988

Last template fix for today

I have yet to update the 'Other Favorites' and "Stamp Collecting Links'--more updates to come!

I deleted the Ghost Town Orange Weather service and upcoming news service although the original posts they link to are still there...maybe I'll update it with my current location...

More columnists have been added to the favorite columnist list. I suppose I could add Paul Krugman and Stanley Fish from the New York Times...

I really need to update the picture at the top...

Peace

The technical imperfections occasionally seen in these posts are original flaws inherent given human fallibility. They are presented for their historic value and should be judged in that context. Loose threads and fraying seams are evidence of this handcrafted blog's extreme high quality.

Template changes in process

The Terror Banana has been deleted from the template...

Christian Links and Reference links have been checked and updated.

New link: Diacritic Decoration changed 'Ghost Town Orange' to 'Ǵh̉ờśŧŦóẃñỢŕåņg̣è'

"Most people I meet assume that Christian means very conservative, entrenched in their thinking, antigay, antichoice, angry, violent, illogical, empire builders; they want to convert everyone, and they generally cannot live peacefully with anyone who doesn't believe what they believe."
--from UnChristian by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons, a book presenting the opinions of many young people in the United States about the church. Apparently Christians are more known for what we oppose than who we are for...

Dusting out the cobwebs

I finally figured out how to change this blog over to my Google account. The last time I tried to post anything at the 'new blogger' my computer locked up...

The Terror Banana is gone.

I will check some of the links and update the template soon.

There has been an unusual spike in activity at Ghost Town Orange:




















The last 100 visitors to Ghost Town Orange appear on this map:

God our security,
who alone can defend us
against the principalities and powers
that rule this present age;
may we trust in no weapons
except the whole armor of faith,
that in dying we may live,
and, having nothing, we may own the world,
through Jesus Christ. AMEN
--Janet Morley, All desires known, 1988

Hitmap changed location

...and doesn't recognize Ghost Town Orange, so the Hitmap has been removed from the template.

Fortunately, Sitemeter can show a map of the most recent visitors too.
The map is a fairly good representation of the English-speaking Web--prosperous parts of the world, with more access to the Internet.

Looking more closely at Sitemeter, I discovered that the post on the Statue of Liberty on Postage Stamps attracted visitors from Taiwan, the Netherlands, and Iran. It also was viewed by students in public schools in Illinois and Michigan, and by someone at usmc.mil! [Semper Fi!]

[A digression in honor of our Marine visitor: from what I've read [I hope it's not just propaganda] the Marines have done a much better job than the Army with winning hearts and minds in Iraq. I could be wrong, but have any Marines been implicated in torturing prisoners or shooting unarmed wounded enemies? This pacifist Christian thanks Marines [and all decent, human-rights observing American soldiers] for your service to our country--I condemn the misguided and evil civilian and military leaders [i.e. politicians and 'brass' at the Pentagon] who continue to put you in harm's way for no discernable purpose.]

In honor of this interest in the Statue of Liberty, Ghost Town Orange is preparing another big post about the Statue of Liberty on US postage stamps. I hope to post it on January 8 to commemorate the new rate change Statue of Liberty stamps.

A good thing about collecting the Statue of Liberty on US postage stamps is that most of these stamps are common, easy to find, and cheap. Everyone with an interest can have a 'complete collection' of them. The only exceptions are unused examples of the early 15 cent stamps. Ordinary letter postage was 2 cents--a 15 cent stamp would be the equivalent of a stamp costing $2.75 to $2.95 today. So not as many were used on mail; not as many were saved in unused condition. I'll have more to say about that Sunday afternoon.

In all our cares about worldly treasures, let us steadily bear in mind that riches possessed by children who do not truly serve God are likely to prove snares that more grieviously entangle them in that spirit of selfishness and exaltation which stands in opposition to real peace and happiness, and renders those who submit to the influence of it enemies to the cross of Christ.
--from the Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends, held at Philadelphia in September 1759, quoted in John Woolman's journal.

Resolution

Japanese New Year's Stamps for 2006
50 yen Akita dog postage stamp designed by Hoshiyama Ayaka
80 yen Sadowara clay doll 'dog' postage stamp designed by Kaifuchi Junko
I hereby resolve to update my blog frequently spend more time with my stamp collection in 2006.

A year ago, I purchased a nice lot of postally used stamps from Japan but I have not created an album for them yet. I print out pages from the CD-ROM disc I obtained from Stamp Albums Web. I'll be able to identify most of the stamps with the help of a used 1992 Scott catalog I recently found at a thrift store and the New Issues of Japan website for stamps after 1997. That may leave a big chunk of the 1990s a mystery unless I buy a more recent catalog.

Things to do at Ghost Town Orange:

• Summer vacation series needs to be continued for another 2 1/2 weeks worth of entries.
  
• Template needs to be tinkered with--why link to the NYT editorial writers who are behind the subscription wall?
  
• The archive needs to be tested for dead links, missing pictures, etc.
  

The soul in this body has two principal impediments.

First, it is drawn into many activities and much agitation, and its different activities weaken and obstruct each other, for it is very hard to apply the mind to different things at the same time.

Secondly, the soul is engaged in inferior activites much earlier, more attentively, and more often than in higher ones, not only because of the condition of its abysmal dwelling but also because of the corporeal service assigned to men for a time by God. . .

But whenever the actions of eating, accumulating, feeling, or imagining either entirely cease or are greatly reduced, then the vision of the mind will be correspondingly sharpened, so that whatever is observed by the mind is observed more clearly under the power of this light.

--Marsilio Ficino [1433-1499], from Meditations on the Soul: Selected Letters of Marsilio Ficino, translated by members of the Language Department of the School of Economic Science, London.

Template Tinkering

I've added 'Today in History' and 'Today's Birthdays' to the right sidebar.

Tinkering

I have been tinkering with Ghost Town Orange's template; you may notice a few new bells and whistles, and some old ones repaired. In particular, I restored the Weather and Upcoming News Sources pages--find the links to the right.

Ghost Town Orange is over a year old. I need to clean up the archives--remove dead links, restore pictures that are no longer hosted, and eliminate some obsolete information about prior versions of Ghost Town Orange. Developing...

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Yet more testing of the template

Style sheet tinkering.

This is Headline 1

This is Headline 2

This is Headline 3

This is Headline 4

This is Headline 6

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Template Tinkering

Following the advice found here, Ghost Town Orange is being spiffed up a little. Excuse the mess.

UPDATE 10:53 am

Ghost Town Orange has been successfully tinkered with! The improvements:

• Revised permanent link code and implemented post pages
• Updated page title code
• Inserted 'Recent posts at Ghost Town Orange" code at the foot of the main page
• Fixed Javascript for Random Quotes.
• Removed the odd link-to-nowhere that followed post titles

UPDATE 2--June 20, 2004 6:25 pm

I have tried viewing Ghost Town Orange with another browser (Mozilla) and it's a mess. I realize that I need to make my blog a little more standards-compliant. (Internet Explorer is too forgiving of bad code.) So major changes are coming to Ghost Town Orange.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

New image host for Ghost Town Orange

Finally, Blogger has enabled image hosting for cheapo blogs like Ghost Town Orange. We are so sick of arbitrary band-width restrictions by these free hosts that shut down images whenever they actually get used.

So here's a plug for Picasa's Hello Software with Bloggerbot. This, plus Blogger's recent revamp with new templates, comments, RSS feed, etc. means I have some template tinkering to do... :-}


To do's:
1. Find one of Blogger's new template for Ghost Town Orange's Archive.
2. Check links in old posts.
3. Move image files to new host and update in posts.
4. Clarify RSS feed. It seems that I promised to write about newsfeeds and never have...
5. Maybe I'll provide an alternative non-Javascript-heavy version of Ghost Town Orange.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

More template tinkering etc.

I enjoy the sliding layers of the template I'm using, but sometimes it doesn't load properly. So I am going to simplify it in the near future: just links to simple pages with the reference material.
I need to do another batch of link-testing to fix the images that villagephotos so courteously de-linked, etc.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

New template for Ghost Town Orange

Testing, testing
I'm trying to pack in as much as I can!

Have patience while weather banners load; if you click too soon, you may get an error message. Refresh the page if this happens.

Buttons on the left side lead you to other parts of the page:

Home: returns you to the main blog page.

Christian: takes you to a page of Christian links,

Reference: takes you to a page of reference links.

News and Weather: takes you to a page with the weather banners, links to favorite columnists and blogs, and background links for Iraq and Afghanistan.

Miscellany: takes you to a page filled with stuff that doesn't fit anywhere else--the German aphorism of the day (which is not changing daily!) and stamp-collecting links.

Archives Credits: takes you to the link to the archives and gives credit to the various web services that make this blog possible.

Ideally, web pages shouldn't have links that point to themselves, but the template I modified came that way and I don't know how to fix that.

Praise the LORD. Praise the LORD, O my soul.
I will praise the LORD all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.
Do not put your trust in princes, in mortal men, who cannot save.
When their spirit departs, they return to the ground; on that very day their plans come to nothing. --Psalm 146:1-4 NIV

Happy Thanksgiving

Tim hasn't been feeling well, so we didn't go to Joyce's sister's house for Thanksgiving.
I have spent much of the day tinkering with a new template for Ghost Town Orange. It's not quite ready for prime time, but you can get a sneak preview here. I just don't like the "instability" of the current template: pictures in the main column bump the sidebar down to the bottom; wide sidebar items don't fit or have to wrap in an ugly way. So I will switch to the new template soon.
One thing about the new template: I will not be able to use the checkbox to "open links in new windows;" the browser thinks the slide layer function is opening a link, tries to open a new window and can't find what to put there.

Don't be hateful to people, just because they are hateful to you. Rather, be good to each other and to everyone else. Always be joyful and never stop praying. Whatever happens, keep thanking God because of Jesus Christ. This is what God wants you to do. --1st Thessalonians 5:15-18 CEV

A little template tinkering

If only I could resist the temptation to put wide pictures in posts, I could have a side-bar at the side.
I think I'll redesign the title bar to include the "check box for links to open in new windows." At least that should be up top.
My "bottom-bar" has a news feed from allheadlinenews.com. Scroll down to find it, or maybe I'll post it here for now:


I discovered how useful RSS feeds are yesterday. More to come. I have found instructions on how to "syndicate" my blog; but they involve a can of beer and more time than I have now; I need to polish a rough draft for my final comp II essay.

UPDATE

The checkbox is up top; smaller pictures have returned part of the side-bar to the side.

Don't be hateful to people, just because they are hateful to you. Rather, be good to each other and to everyone else. Always be joyful and never stop praying. Whatever happens, keep thanking God because of Jesus Christ. This is what God wants you to do. --1st Thessalonians 5:15-18 CEV

Template tinkering

Ghost Town Orange should be more ORANGE .

Tinkering

I've been goofing with the template. See the left side of the page for the new additions:
You will be greeted with the salutation appropriate to the hour of the day.
You can check a box to have links open in new windows. (Code borrowed from Atrios, who credits randomwalks.com. I notice that they are featuring the bull-doze Iraqi fruit-trees story too.
What an outrage that we are responsible for this. Like imperial Rome dumping salt in Carthage's fields--we will reap what we sow.

Back to the blog

Here's some more about blogging:

a survey

about people who blog and

a quiz

for people who blog.

Here are my results for the quiz:

12.5 %

My weblog owns 12.5 % of me.


I'm not very typical: most bloggers are very young and female. About one fourth of all blogs are created and never updated (why bother to create one in the first place?) Many are abandoned after only a few months. The quiz results seem to indicate that I'll be likely to abandon my blog. But they don't know my commitment* to keeping this "news diary."
Only 50,000 blogs are updated daily. (I have missed a day or two since I've started.) I am still goofing with html tags html tagshtml tags!!! What happens if I do that?

I notice that some of the links have migrated to the bottom of the page. The Columbus stamp picture must be too wide? Perhaps they will correct themselves when Columbus scrolls down? I don't want to mess with the template today.

*My commitment is strong if I can continue to do this for free!

Staying up way too late

I found an image host that will store 25 images for free. I have tinkered with the template a little bit to see how I can put a picture there. And now I'll try it by adding a picture to this post:

Let's see how it looks.

UPDATE

Now I will need to design a Ghost Town Orange Banner!