Batcave

A few months ago I dusted off this blog which I had not touched since 2011. The reason? I was prompted by an article written by Mike Elgan about how famed podcaster and internet host Leo Laporte was dropping social media all together. No Facebook, no Twitter, not even an Instagram. Leo retreated to the safety and security of his own blogs. A world totally under his control. That got me thinking about my terribly limited use of social media (i.e Google+) and why I even bother using it. My engagement on the once flourishing Google+ had all but dried up. I really only communicate regularly with three or four people on the platform these days. All of this lead me to examine the reasons I still bother to post anything to Google+ and the answers were pretty simple. The primary use? To share photos of our travels and grandpuppy with our family. The others? To read the news and to share and converse about things that I like and that matter to me. Then came the announcement that Goo...

In 1986 McDonald's released what might have been the greatest Happy Meal toys ever created. Jim Henson's Muppet Babies . They were just as awesome as the cartoon and twice as fun! :) They were the perfect size to fit into about anything we wanted to play with. They fit in the seats of most G.I. Joe vehicles and yet were small enough to be used as Monopoly pieces. We constructed all sorts of Lego vehicles and houses for them and created endless adventures for them in the backyard. (Yes, children in the 1980's played outside.) They went with us on trips and hide in our pockets to school. Possibly the best toys I even had. Flash forward to 2018, 32 years later. Today I found the first Muppet Baby figures created since the spectacular originals! Of course I had to buy them. :) They are a line of toys based off a new DIsney Junior show that isn't half bad. It's nowhere near as awesome as the original but still very fun to watch. The first wave includes ...

I mean really? Do people still post things to "blogs" or has everything totally gone the route of social media? Obviously I haven't used this thing actively since 2010. I was a bit surprised to see it all still here. Most of the images are busted as they didn't transfer over after Google killed Blogger FTP support but all the text is still hanging around. More about that fiasco here . I do wonder if we will see a resurgence in blogging with all the recent trends of abandoning the hate filled social media arena. That is honestly why I looked back at Blogger after not having touched it for eight years. It looks like Google has pretty much abandoned this platform as well. I wonder which product they will kill first? Google+ or Blogger? You never really know with Google... (Picture of the dog is totally unrelated. Blog post just need picture ya know.)

So how does this work? Good? Bad? Why should I even use blogger these days? :)

Mostly just testing to see if mobile photo posting still works.

I received an email today from Blogger informing me that as of March 26th they will no longer support FTP blog publishing. My blog has been powered by Blogger since 2004 and FTPed to my hosting service. I really don't know exactly what I plan to do. This site can remain exactly as it is but I will no longer be able to update it via Blogger. For the time being I plan to move this blog over to http://batcaveweb.blogspot.com . Google supports custom domains and such but I'm not really sure I want to continue to use Blogger after this change. I will loose all of my custom sub-pages and a whole lot of customization ability. The same goes for the Istari blog. I will be moving it over to http://istariguild.blogspot.com . I may at some point use the custom domain option to redirect batcaveweb to the Blogger server but I doubt it. I will probably have to start from scratch and move to some custom content system. However, I really don't use my blog all that much these days so...

In today's issue we head a little south of the border... Oh noes... Busted Bat-taco...

A friend recently linked this article on twitter so I thought I'd give it a read. I was expecting a logical, well though out argument about how Apple has drastically changed the mobile phone industry in the United States... That wasn't what I got. As I read on I thought he proceeded to mock the anti Apple folks, you know, the haters with out provocation? Well deserved, they should be mocked. People who rail on something without getting their facts strait (regardless of their views) need to be set strait. After a few more paragraphs I assumed I would start to see the logic and reasoning of the cleverly crafted article... It never happened... What I got instead was a completely biased and inaccurate list of things that only Apple themselves could do. So, lets look at the list shall we? (I'll add my comments below each numbered entry.) 1. Carriers ruled the industry with an iron fist (True, but only in the United States. Anyone with any will or knowledge could easily ac...