If you are one of those unfortunately soul who visited this page while scowing the depths of the internets for the meaning of the word Hyperbally, you are now in luck. Truly I'm surprised how how often I find keywords a long the lines of the title in my Google Analytics listing and thus this explanation ought to be counted as a public service. In addition I'll explain the mysterious meaning of this blogs nom de plume which according to some is "odd"

Hyperbally is a quirky alternate spelling of the English noun Hyperbole, derived from the Greek word for excess. According to the Seventh Websters collegiate Dictionary, Hyperbole is an extravagant exaggeration used as a figure of speech.

Hyperbolic has many meanings but everyone agrees that is is an adjective.

1. of, characterized by, or given to hyperbole.
2. of, relating to or analogous to a hyperbola.
3. of, relating to, or being a space in which more than one line parallel to a given line passes through a point.
4. of, relating to , or being a function related to the hyperbola as a trigonometric function si related to a circle

Hyperbola From the Greek hyperbole, a plane curve generated by a point so moving that the difference of the distances from two fixed points is a constant, or conic section speak, a curve formed by the intersection of a double right circular cone with a plane that cuts both halves of the cone.

Hyperbola have equations similar to ay² - bx² = 1 (Verticle opening) or ax² - by² = 1 (Horizontal opening) where a and b are positive constant real numbers.

Hyperbola have equations similar to y

 

Hyperbolic Hyperbally is the title of this blog and it should evoke the visions of extravagant rhetoric streaming off to infinity like a hyperbolic trajectory

Last week I stumbled across Blog Engine and installed it to test out its properties.  I immediately liked it's Masterpage based theming and WYSIWYG editor, so I've made the switch from Subtext.  The install process was simple, download the code and then upload onto my web Host into a Vertual directory and grant write access to the App_Data folder.  The only pitfall was that, like my subtext install, I needed to comment out the Trust entry from the web config.  My host, GoDaddy,  doesn't allow application to run in full trust or even to set there trust leval at all.  Since Blogging Engine uses XML files to store it's data by default I all set to start blogging. (Blog Engine also has the option to Use Sql Server as it's data store if you need to get better performance.)

Afer installing I played around with the blog and was impressed by the add entry page.  It had a nice editor as well as an easy method to change post dates and add tags.  All of this was much improved over SubText or even my old Wordpress blog, neither of which had a built in feild to easily enter tags.  Blog engine doesn't appear to have any kind of support for photo galleries like SubText, but either I can keep my old SubText galleries, or perhaps they will be supported by blogging Engine in the future.  As a third option, since Blogging Engine supports Extensions, perhaps someone (even me) could create an extension that could be easily added to subtest.  I plan on adding my [spoiler][spoiler] functionality as an extension in the near future and life will be good.

Creating my theme was relatively easy, I just took the Standard theme and customized to appear the way I wanted.  Blog Engine are based off the standard .Net 2.0 Masterpages, so you start with your master page and you can easily customize your theme without needing to learn a custom skinning system like SubText or WordPress.  The real nice part is that I managed to get Blog Engine running locally so it was easer to code without having to keep uploading to my server.

Importing my old data has proven to be somewhat difficult.  I tried to use the build in blogML importer, but it kept failing, claiming my user name and password were incorrect.  I have my doubts that it is a problem with my typing, since once it actually did add a post from one of my old BlogML files.  I fear it is either the fact that GoDaddy disallows Full Trust, or my content a little screwy from at one time being on Wordpress.  So I've been manually transferring my old posts, and it's a long process, although it is nice to clean up some of the old posts that had been created by Wordpress' bugy editor.

All in all I think Blog Engine is a solid platform and I look forward to finally finishing my Higurashi Reviews.   

Now on Blog Engine.  After working for a month trying to get subtext to look they way I want I discovered blog engine, which has a much nicer Text editor and actually uses Master Pages.  :)  So I've now switched bloggin platforms.  I'd like to write more, and perhapse on the marrow I'll elaborate on this post, but sadly I need to turn in for the night.  Hopefully over the next week or so I'll have transfered my old posts, so this blog will have some actual content.

I have now been blogging mostly unsuccessfully for over a year! During that time I've had a lot of fun playing with blogging options and platforms. Currently I have around 97 or so posts, which isn't too shabby considering my writing skillz. Sadly I lot of that number involve video postings and far too much whining about my aforementioned lack of writing skillz.

Blogging Platforms: WordPress

The Good:Wordpress was a good place to start blogging since it my former web hosts took care of setting it up and it seemed to have a lot of active support. Once I learned to turn off the buggy WSIWYG editor I could blog easily. The admin was fully functional with sections for links editing links and comments, and I feel intuitive. One of the greatest assets of wordpress is the wide variety of pluggins, I loved my pluggins, since they helped fill in missing features. I particularly liked the plugins, wpPolls, wp-Ajax-Edit-Comments, Akismet Spam filtering, Google analytics and All in One SEO.

The Bad: The main problem with it was it's use of PHP and mySQL for its code. I don't know much about PHP other than it's syntax looks like the bastard child of C and Pearl, and as such isn't the most fun to work in. This made extending Wordpress much more work than was worth while. So when it came time to switch hosts I decided I'd rather go the .Net rout. Another problem was even though I love the pluggins, there was no standard place for plugin authors to place admin options, so you'd have to search through the main menu to figure out where the developer had decided to stick it.

Blogging Platforms: SubText

After perusing the available .Net blogging platforms, I settled on subtext since it seemed easy to port my current content from Wordpress. It more or less went smoothly and now I have a pretty nice skin created from my old Wordpress theme with some features added form the Redbook theme.

The Good

Subtext is written in .Net so its much easier for me to work with. It was also very easy to set up by myself and I could import my old blog via blogML. Creating my Skin was much more intuitive because I could edit the UserControls for my specific skin along moving/editing any tags I wish. For Wordpress I was mostly stuck with css and image changes

The Bad: The admin has fewer features, and while subtext's rich text editor is nicer, I'd still rather turn it off and just write my posts in html. (although if the editor gave me syntax highlighting life would be good) It would also be nice if Subtext had a save and continue writing option since then I could save my work more conveniently

Conclusion: I hope to continue bloggin in the new year, and maybe I'll even get a few more comments. Soon my theme will be perfected and life will be good.

Statistics

• Most popular post: My Kanon Review
• Number of Unique visits: 650
• Most Popular browser: Firefox
• Site Most Referred from: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
• Most common Keywords: Hyperbally followed by Anime Demotivators
• Total Number of Posts: 97

I've finally got all my posts up on this new blog!  It was a bit tying although I found an extremely helpful post on RedGreenBlur, Subtext, Godaddy and redgreenblur, to guide me through installing SubText on my cheepo Godaddy hosting account. The directions were ideal and soon I had the blogging engine set up.

Now importing my old posts from Wordpress took a bit of work since the blogML plugin for Wordpress didn't create ideal BlogML and my Higurashi no naku koro ni Post kept breaking the import. sadly it took me far too long to realize this.  Ultimately I just had to comment out that post, copy the text and enter it into subtext as a new post.

After that I only had one more issue involving the entryList.aspx file was missing from RedBook skins control directory in the 1.9.5 Install. Once I pulled the file out of the source I could browse my archives

Finally, I need to get a redirect set up so the few links to my old blog will no longer be broken. And I need to start customizing the look of this blog to resemble my old version.  It would also be good to get the [spoiler] Some Text[/spoiler] functionality back as well....  So much to do....

My Wordpress problems have caused me to look into alternative blogging solutions. Now I could always write my own, but that would be rather inefficient if other people have already done so. I've been looking into Sub Text and Das Blog. (What's with the nautical theme?) I'm much more comfortable writing in .Net (No more Lame PHP editing!) so adjusting the code will be much easier plus I could actually use my main hosting account, which shouldn't have the server issues that this side blog suffers from. These are two .Net blogging frameworks that seem like they'd be nifty to try. Now the only thing preventing me from a trouble free blogging experience is my laziness.

Sadly I've not been writing much on my blog of late. I've been too busy fiddling with the blog styles and adding plugins. I feel almost hardcore, since I managed to upgrade my Wordpress from 2.0 to 2.2 as if it was my job. I fear I've still much work left on the theme,as it still doesn't measure up. Perhaps someday, I'll upload a generalized version to wordpress themes collection

Things on the list to change

• I need to strain my graphics skillz and make some kind of Header image, so my blog is less plain.
• The bullets for unordered lists should be different. What happened to the Red circles?
• I Need to adjust the position of the Digg & share links, they look odd left aligned.
• Font - the current font is more generic than I can quantify
• Headings. (h1,h2,h3 etc) They are all messed up with no hierarchy that I can see
• Buttons - Do I want to create images or keep the Css versions? Also should I fix the Hover for Internet Exploder?
• Make the Vote Button match my other buttons(either as images or css)
• Add a hover image to the wp_spoiler tags
• Do I really like white for my meta text on posts?
• Should visited links hover the same as normal links? And why are they grey?
• In general where should Images be aligned when I place them in posts? Currently they are left aligned which is lame
• Why is in St. Georges name is the Poll text white?
• Organize the stylesheet which has no logical method to it's madness

That's probably more than enough for now

Yes, like a bad television series I'm going to have a recap post.

So far I've been blogging since October, and at least 170 people has visited my small corner of the internet.

The my most popular post was my kanon review Followed by my origional demotivator post.

My goals in starting the blog were to improve my writing ability and to attempt to log my thoughts for the future. Worthy goals and I think ideally suited to a blog, but do to my lack writing ability has been doomed to Failure.

Some other statistics.

• I've made 55 more or less successful posts.
• Over half my visitors use Firefox to view my site.
• The mosts visits on one day: 7 on April 29
• Top Reason people visit: They searched for the word hyperbally.
• Only Known Links to this site: Scrambled Toast's Despair.com--More Desperate than Ever post
• One comment from someone other than me.

Summation: This experiment failed.

I've finally stumbled upon a search that willl show wireless hotspts near a given address. The best part is that it also filters them by Free or not as well as distance. So go here and find a place where you can be "outside" but still be blogging on the web. MSN WIFi Hotspots

So far I've been blogging a week and it hasn't been all that hard. It just takes some willing to sit and type out stuff as opposed to ranting at the ether. Maybe I ought to try and get people to actually read my blog... hmmm....