A Blog for Graymad

Anyone happen to know what's up with Longhornblogs.com? Is it down temporarily, or dead? I noticed a couple days ago that my aggregator was choking on those feeds, so I checked the main URL manually, and it's not coming up. Any info would be welcome.

Thanks to a recommendation from Scott Watermasysk, the father of .Text, I just downloaded a web server log analyzer called SmarterStats, and gave it a try. This is a sharp tool, built with ASP.NET, and very useful, from the little I've played with it. You can try the online demo to get a feel for the kind of information you can get from your logs.

Michael Howard may not blog quite as often as some, but he's always worth reading, so if you haven't subscribed, and you care about security, you should.

Peter Brunone, in his latest article on ASPAlliance.com, shatters a commonly-held belief of web developers...that you can't use script to close a browser window you didn't open using script:

Have you ever needed to test a site using the site's actual domain name, before being able to actually point that domain name to the server on which you're developing the site? As most of you probably already know, testing a site using http://localhost/mysitename/ in many cases is less than ideal, and isn't even possible in some cases.

It was fun while it lasted, but it looks like BlogShares, the fantasy stock market for blogs, has bit the dust. It was a cool idea that I'm sure helped both entertain and promote blogging, and its creator, Seyed Razavi, is to be congratulated for his efforts.

Here's how I look in full-color ASCII (link via Brady Gaster):

For those who may not have noticed, in the frenzy to prepare for Thanksgiving here in the States, Dino Esposito, one of the foremost authors on all things ASP.NET (and a fellow MS Press author to boot!), has joined .NET Weblogs. Welcome, Dino, and subscribed!