The comment thingie is working now, and as soon as I have the chance to propagate the changes across the entire blog, it should be live on all pages. Cool. This takes some time, though, now that I've passed the century mark of entries, since iBlog posts everything as static HTML. 100+ entries, plus archives, category pages, etc., takes time to upload.

That said, I actually really like the fact that iBlog does everything as static HTML. Unless you've got a really bloated page design, the storage requirements are small (this blog takes a dozen megabytes, including all the images and support files), and you avoid a lot of problems--like buggy blog software which contains security holes, and slow responses when lots of people hit the blog. This site handled a slashdotting without even breathing hard.

On the downside, stuff like comments are hard to do with static HTML, so these comments are actually powered by a cool service called HaloScan . I prefer the HaloScan method, which uses popups for comments, since then the comments don't clutter the main entry page, and it is a much less tempting target for things like comment spam.

On the whole, I've been very happy with iBlog, but I'm starting to hit some frustrating limits. Some of this is because of my weird background: I'm a geek at heart, but I've always been very sensitive to barriers to use. I've been coding raw HTML for ten years (has it really been that long? Geez), but don't do it for a living.

So, I really appreciate the friendly interface of iBlog, which makes it simple to set up a basic blog with no knowledge of HTML, CSS, or other geek-speak. I also appreciate the fact that iBlog allows those of us who are interested in tinkering to create page templates in something very close to raw HTML and CSS.

But....I want it to do just a little bit more. For example:

1. The mechanism for inserting raw HTML code into a blog entry is clumsy and buggy. It is much harder than it should be to do things like drop-caps.

2. Some text attributes are defined in multiple places. For example, the default font for entries and abstracts is set via a preferences window, and overrides anything in the CSS file. This is great for the novice, but unexpected and frustrating for the expert tinkerer...and makes it much harder to create a site which looks the way I want it.

3. Right now, there is no intermediate between inserting raw HTML into a blog entry (which is, as I said, clumsy and buggy), and letting iBlog handle everything (which is limited). I would love to be able to control-click on a text selection and assign that selection to a CSS ID or class. No dice....but such a capability would provide almost complete control over the output.

On the whole, I really like iBlog, and I expect it will only improve, especially with Apple's sponsorship. In fact, it has already improved meaningfully since I started this blog back in September. I just want it to be perfect, that's all.

On another topic....I haven't spent much time looking at the site logs since I started writing, but I did today. Some interesting observations, based on the log for December:

The RSS feed for this site has been downloaded almost 300 times a day in December. Now, I know there are some jokers out there who have their newsreaders set to update every half hour, but even if everybody does that for 8 hours a day, there are still at least 20 people out there checking my RSS feed on a daily basis. For the benefit of those people, I've changed my RSS feed to include the entire body of articles (so you don't have to go to the site to read the whole thing), and more of the older articles.

My Cult of the NDA article is the second-most common entry page to the site (after the homepage itself), which isn't too surprising since that page got widely linked after being slashdotted. Next most popular entry pages are articles about Social Networking Software , Insider Trading , and--surprisingly!--Mr. Wonderful .

Mr. Wonderful was twice as popular as The Death Penalty . All I can think is that I've been picked up by some underground talking plushies network. All of these most popular articles are more than a month old, by the way, so what we're looking at is traffic from people who are not regular readers of this site.

Number ten on the most popular is Jose Padilla . This entry is the only one on the top ten less than a month old, and it has only been posted for five days....so I'm guessing that it will be a shoo-in for top-ten status in the future.

The search strings which led people to the site are almost as fascinating. Number one was "NDA" with 69 searches since the beginning of December. No surprise. But variations on "Social Networking Software" led people here 45 times, and....here's Mr. Wonderful again, who led people to the Frozen North 35 times. What are you people looking for?!? "Death penalty" came up in several variations a total of 17 times. Under "Least Expected Searches Which Led People to the Frozen North," we find "crackling fire" (10 times), "Minnesota's Climate" (4 times), and "Chuck E Cheese" (3 times).

And one other thing....to the 60+ people who've posted my URL in their own blogs, thanks. Another one of my chores is to start posting the URL's of the places I read regularly.