NearlyFreeSpeech.net stands out among shared-hosting companies for many reasons, but its cost structure is one of the biggest. NFSN doesn’t charge a flat fee for an “unlimited” number of web sites, or a smaller fee for one or two sites. Instead, NFSN charges for what you use. Before I committed to switching my sites from Hostgator to NearlyFreeSpeech.net, I needed to make sure I wouldn’t be dinged for a Slashdot/Reddit/Hacker News-style traffic spike.

The one disadvantage of a static-site generator like Hugo is that after you create an entry and build your blog locally, you then have to figure out how to update your site on the server. And Hugo seems to change a whole lot of files with every run of the command hugo, even if you are only creating a single entry. There’s a heavy amount of encouragement to use GitHub to manage the blog and some kind of build utility to transfer the files to the web server.

I bought this plastic drain stopper called the SinkShroom from Amazon. I removed the original stopper from our sink long ago and have been using another easily removed plastic sink stopper that was supposed to catch hair but never did. It didn’t work too well at all, but it sells for about $8. The SinkShroom and its bigger cousins the TubShroom and ShowerShroom have a lot of marketing behind them.

I read Dave Winer’s Scripting.com blog every day. I subscribe via email. Like everything Dave does, it makes me think. Today I wonder if I should set up an email subscription service of some kind for this blog. Email is the new hotness in marketing. Email addresses are like gold. Dave recently wrote about how he feels he’s reaching nobody with his blog, especially as it pertains to the political issues of the day (e.

Electric guitars weren’t invented to make overdriven sounds, though they do excel at that. Made for electricity — and for the music of the day in the 1950s — the guitars created by Leo Fender’s company are capable of surprisingly sweet sounds that are as much at home in jazz as in country. I am particular struck by these Songbirds Foundation videos of guitarists playing stellar examples of 1950s Fender Stratocasters and Telecasters through amps that range from vintage Fender to a Dumble.