I have been wondering why my GFC (Google Friends Connect) widget has been showing up as a blank box on my blog and frankly I thought that it was some issue on my end that broke it.  Turns out, and I am sure that I am probably the last person to hear this, that Google discontinued service for GFC if you don’t have a Blogger blog.

Ummm hello?!

Google, you have all my contact information.  You probably have more information about me than any other online service and you couldn’t send out a little email that said that you were discontinuing the service? You sent me all sorts of information about shutting down Wave, but GFC, which I used all the time and lots of my friends used, nothing. Screw you Google, why did you leave me high and dry on this one, the useful service, and give me lots of info about the crappy service?

The real problem is that it was actually a great service that allowed those of use self-hosters to connect with the rest of the blogging community in a very simple and easy way.  Google, you are good at making useful things.  NOw they tell me to use Google+ and make a page and put a widget, so I did, but there is no way for me to get my list of followers back.  Why should I use you? Well, I set it up just in case.

Then I searched the netz and found a new service, Linky Followers.  This is a new follow service that is completely platform independent, so you can put it on your blogger blog, or wordpress.com, or wordpress.org, or basically any other blog/CMS out there.  Of course it is pretty new and it seems to still be in Beta, but I think it has a lot of promise.  Plus it is not affiliated with Google, or Facebook, or a Facebook App, or anything like that.

So, for now, I have included a couple different ways to follow me again, and I hope that some of you will take a moment to re-follow me if you are still interested.  Pick the service of your choice, but give some serious consideration to using the Linky Followers as I have a feeling that it will have the most longevity of any of them.

So, it turns out that some people actually notice my blog that I have not been so faithful to this past year (along with some other things that I really should have been). I suppose that is neither here nor there though.

Anyway…. It turns out that last week I was contacted by a young author/blogger because her boyfriend has been by my blog to read about photography. Actually, I almost dismissed the email as SPAM because probably most of the email that I get in reference to my blog is SPAM. However, I took the time to actually look at this one ad reply to it.

The email was from Monica Leonelle from monicaleonelle.com and proseonfire.com, and it was asking if I would be interested in reading and reviewing her new book “Social Punk.” So, me being skeptical, wrote back a fairly skeptical response that was met with an almost immediate response. Made me feel better to know that there was a real person behind the emails.

So, I popped over to her blog, read some of the preview chapters and figured that it couldn’t hurt to sign up for the blog tour and write a real review. I am still waiting on the full copy of the book to read, but I am certainly looking forward to it. So, check back in the coming weeks for a real review of the book and possibly an interview with the author. In the mean time, you might enjoy the following snippet from the book:

After playing God for six years with the world he created, he couldn’t control any of his subjects, none at all. Over the years, he had watched them evolve and become the sum of their own choices rather than the sum of his; and for that, he regretted ever giving them life.

A small, blinking red light from just inside his eyelid reminded him of the news they sent him earlier that morning. The company had cancelled his funding and would shut down his project within three months. According to them, the project cost too much and took up too much space, and the inconclusive results couldn’t be published reputably, now or in the future.

Six years of his work, tens of thousands of lives at stake—and he could do nothing to save any of it. He bowed his head, letting his chin rest on the rim of his breakfast smoothie. The smoothie reeked of powder—crushed pills—but he supposed he had better get used to it. He wouldn’t be able to afford the luxury of real food after they canned him.

He closed his eyes and called up the camera view of one of his favorites, number 3281. She fascinated him; he couldn’t deny it. When he had designed her, her pre-teen rebelliousness lit fire in her eyes. A survivor, he’d thought. He’d meant for her to have it all—to grow up, to get married to the love of her life, and to have a beautiful family of her own someday.

But he had only given her sadness so far. Instead of creating a strict father, he had given her an abusive one. Instead of creating a loving boyfriend, he had given her a friend who could never love her. And instead of creating a strong, proud mother, he had given her a meek one, who watched the whole thing unfold and did nothing about it.

He looked at his last and final creation sitting in the chair across from him—his own son, not awakened yet. The law forbade him to have any children of his own, so this boy would substitute.

But he had done the unthinkable with this creation—he had bestowed on it his own thoughts, emotions, and decision-making processes. He’d given the boy his own mind, his own physical characteristics, his own wants and desires.

He had never done so with any of the others because of the dangers of investing too heavily in any one of his subjects. But who could he kid? He had not stayed objective thus far, watching some of his subjects more closely than others, wishing for the happiness of some at the expense of others. He had become an abomination, a monster of his own doing, who had created subjects only to watch them suffer.

He couldn’t forgive himself; not now, not ever. His eyes lingered on the vial that sat next to his breakfast smoothie, that he’d stowed away for the day when they destroyed all his work, his entire world. He would save it, tuck it away for now, for as long as he could protect them. When things spun out of his control, he would drink it and end himself the way he had ended them.

In the ancient stories, gods frequently gave their sons as gifts. Now, he would give his son as a gift to her, number 3281. So she could be happy in her last months on earth, before they destroyed her with the rest of them.

So, I have been having some ongoing issues with hosting of my blog and some my fiancee’s and my other sites.  We are in the playing with migrating web hosts and I have move some sites to a new host already.  Suffice it to say, this weekend was an interesting weekend.  I learned that even with the great support that my original host claimed to have, they were not very impressive. I might write a real review later after we decide if we want to complete the migration or not.  I have 30 days to decide if I want to stay with the new host or not.

It just really bugged me that even though I got right through to a real person on the phone, there was nothing they could do to help me except tell me to email support.  I couldn’t get a direct contact information for one person to deal with, so there was never a time when one hand knew what the other was doing.  All a big mess really.

So, what does that mean?  Well, what would be really great is if some of my readers would take a couple minutes and poke around through the blog and tell me if they see anything not working right or if things are silly slow or anything.  Basically, I just need more eyes than my own to look at things and give feedback, it will help me to figure out if it is worth staying with the new host or if I should leave things as they were. Besides, you might find an old post that you like!

I appreciate the help!

So there is this really cool thing that I discovered thanks to Island Gal over at NYC Island Gal and that is a German organization that is working on neutralizing the carbon footprint of the blogsphere.  This is a pretty interesting concept, and the fact that it is free makes it even better.  Sure, many hosting services off the option to host your site on “green” servers, but usually you end up paying a premium for that service, and in the end, shouldn’t being green be something we just do and not have to pay for?

I can’t really tell you what else this company in Germany does on account of the fact that their entire website is in German.  I am not really sure how to even get to the english part of the site that talks about the project other than via the links that I have seen.  As soon as I started clicking around the site I was back in German.  I suppose then this would lead many to wonder if they are even legit in what they are doing.  I can’t speak to that, but as the program is FREE, then we, the end users, don’t have anything to lose other than one blog post.

So here is what these guys are doing:  First, you write a post about them (like this one), then you send them an email, and they will then plant a tree for your blog in a forest in California.  They also would like you to display a badge on your blog, which is fine with me.  Why does this work?  Well, according to them, the average blog produces around 8 pounds of carbon every year.  The average tree scrubs about 11 pounds of carbon each year from the atmosphere.  So by planting one tree for every participating blog, you actually neutralize more carbon than the blog produces.

Why do blogs produce carbon?  Well, you have to consider that no matter where your blog resides, be it on blogger or wordpress.com or on your own server or hosting account, that machine uses a lot of energy to host your blog.  Most of us are not on dedicated servers, even those of us who are self hosted are usually on a communal server in a server farm somewhere.  So, not only is the server itself using energy, but it takes a lot of energy to maintain the servers and keep them cool and functioning.  This all contributes to the carbon footprint of your blog.  I suppose you also have to consider the energy used by your own computer when you write posts as well!

If you want to read more and see the quoted research that all this information is based on, you can fid it here.  I didn’t think that I needed to take up too much space quoting them.  As I said before, they sound pretty legit about the whole program, and any little thing we can do to make an impact in helping out our home seems like a worthwhile cause to explore.  So, if you are interested in joining the cause or finding out more information, here is a link to the organization.

Just a few easy steps to make it green:

1. Write a blog post about the initiative + insert your favorite button
2. E-mail the link to your post to CO2-neutral@kaufda.de
3. They’ll plant a tree for your blog in Plumas’!

You know, for as much as blog awards are kind of the chain letters of the blogshpere, I don’t think it matters who you are, you probably still enjoy getting them.  I suppose it is partially the feeling that someone out there actually does read your blog and also that someone thinks enough of your blog to pass along the award.  So, this award comes from my friend, the lovely Wilmary of NYC Island Girl.  It is the “I ♥ Your Blog” award.  It doesn’t really need much in the form of introduction as you can tell by the name what it is pretty much all about!  It was certainly a nice thing to get to end this weekend (not that it was a bad weekend, just hectic).  I of course, have a few people in mind to pass this award along to, which I will do later on in the post.

Due to now having a second blog award I decided to make a couple little tweaks to my layout.  Odds are that most of my visitors will never notice since you probably just read my blog in your reader.  However, if you do visit my actual site you will notice that I added a little widget at the bottom of both sidebars.  One has awards and the other has sites that I am a proud member of.  I have shrunk the badges and linked them to the sites and the awards link back to the post of the person who gave them to me.  Maybe it is a little ego-centric, but I figured that it would be nice to display those things where people might actually notice them.

In other news, I spent the day yesterday running around in the rain in Vermont watching my mother run on the Covered Bridges Half Marathon.  Despite the rain it was kinda fun. I also got to play more with the puppies, who are a lot of fun, but they are little terrors sometimes.  After the race we headed over to Hanover, NH to have lunch with my siblings before heading down to Boston.  I got to see my brother’s new apartment in Boston when I dropped him off, and then I settled in at home to do some blogging and email and general catch up.

Without further ado, I suppose I shall now pass along this award.  I don’t know how many people it is supposed to go to, but here are a couple of the blogs that I think deserve some love:

• From the Stupidest Corner of My Mind by Ella Unread.  I love the way that she writes.  No matter what she is writing about, it is always a beautiful read.
• Tall Brunette: The Northwest Girl by Tall Brunette.  Probably one of the most eloquent bloggers that I read.
• There’s Beauty in the Breakdown by Penny Ann.  A relatively new blog that I just started to read after chatting with Penny on 20SB.

I am sure that there are more people I could give this award to.  Possibly almost everyone that read is a potential candidate.  I ♥ you all!

I am still so far from being caught up on all the blogs that I follow.  My reader has piled up a pretty sizable number of unread.  I am sure that I will get around to reading them this week, but it seems like one of those things that once you get out of the rhythm, it is hard to get back on.  So, for those of you who a I read, I will get to you eventually, I have not forgot about you.