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The Us of Us: Aristotelian Politics in the Age of Unreason

We live in odd and curious times where politics are more performance than punditry and more perfunctory than professional. How did we get in such a mess of unequal consequences? We won’t just rise or fall and find the mean when this comet ride is over — we’re heading into a catastrophic tumble of immortal termination — just as the Gods before us fell from the temple and humankind stopped looking to the heavens for confirmation of the merits of their lives in the glow of the clouds and decided to forgive their own sins while skipping the punishments.

In critical moments, I turn to my training, and seek the greater mind, and the more universally sophisticated aesthetic for guidance and comfort. As, Aristotle wrote, in “Politics” —

Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god.

Continue reading → The Us of Us: Aristotelian Politics in the Age of Unreason

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Evaluating Lost Blog Readers: Ten Million vs. One Million

We reached the One Million — 1,000,000 — reader/hits/visitors milestone for the first time (again!) here on BolesBlogs.com since we became the consolidated Boles Blogs a year and five days ago.

Reaching a million of anything is an accomplishment and a joy, but it also forces you to reflect on what was and where you once stood as you wonder if you’d stayed the course and kept a finite focus, readership would likely be over Ten Million — 10,000,000 — reader/hits/visitors today instead of just a million.

In November 2007, when we were only the Urban Semiotic blog — we were close to smashing the one million mark — and we did just that a few weeks later!  It’s hard to imagine how many millions of readers we’d have tallied by now if we’d stayed a single blog.

Continue reading → Evaluating Lost Blog Readers: Ten Million vs. One Million

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1Password Protects and Prevents

We live in a threatening and dangerous world where we cannot even trust our own government not to deceive and disappoint us.  Security of our proprietary information is paramount in the vulnerable warp and woof of our social fabric, and that’s why — even when I first reviewed 1Password way back on December 8, 2009 — I knew securing all my passwords in a single, super-hardened, space was not only important, but necessary:

It took me several days to change and update all my passwords — but once that dirty deed was done, I was able to relax a bit in my core knowing I now had randomized and much more secure passwords covering my life — and the great thing is I don’t have to remember any of them!

1Password remembers all those passwords and usernames and automatically logs me in with the touch of a button on my web browser.

1Password also has an iPhone app that will sync — unfortunately via WiFi only, and both your computer and iPhone must be on the same WiFi network — your desktop accounts and passwords back and forth so you can be safe and secure when you’re online with your iPhone as well.

Continue reading → 1Password Protects and Prevents

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The pair Networks Virtual Private Server Review

All of my non-blog websites, and all my Boles Blogs Network images, are hosted on my private server.  Over the years, I’ve bounced around from webhost to webhost searching for the right fit.  In the past, I’ve tried LunarPages and Media Temple and Mosso (now rackspace CloudServers) found all of them lacking.  Then I happened upon pair Networks — located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania — and I finally found the right webhost for me; I’ve been a proud, paying, pair Networks customer for over three years.

Continue reading → The pair Networks Virtual Private Server Review

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Moving Back to Media Temple From Mosso

UPDATE:  April 23, 2008.  We wanted you to know this Urban Semiotic blog — and all of David W. Boles’ domains and blogs
are now solely hosted by Pair Networks!  We will update this article as circumstances demand and we’ll leave this article online to protect the
chain of understanding.

One of the signs of insanity is doing the same habit of action over and over and over again while expecting a different result each time. This time, however, I think I have broken free of expectation by beating my head against the Grid Sharing Theory of Website Hosting wall one too many times.
After three months of struggling to overcome the limits of Mosso hosting, I decided last night to move back to our old favorite — Media Temple — and my previous Dedicated-Virtual (dv) hosting setup:

Continue reading → Moving Back to Media Temple From Mosso

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Why Urban Semiotic Moved from WordPress to Movable Type

UPDATE:  April 23, 2008.  This Urban Semiotic blog — and all of David W. Boles’ domains and blogs
are once again, and now solely, hosted by Pair Networks!  We will continue to leave article online to protect the
chain of understanding and we will update this space as necessary.

(UPDATE 4/18/08:  We are now using Movable Type Open Source 4.1 on Media Temple.  Here is the story why.)

Hello, and welcome to Urban Semiotic!  This blog is now running — racing, really — on Movable Type 4.1 hosted by pair Networks!

This blog used to run on WordPress and then on WordPress.com and you may be wondering why we decided to move to the MT4 platform.  We’ll tell you the whole story now.

Continue reading → Why Urban Semiotic Moved from WordPress to Movable Type

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Moving Movable Type 4 to Media Temple

UPDATE:  April 23, 2008.  This Urban Semiotic blog — and all of David W. Boles’ domains and blogs are now solely hosted by Pair Networks!  We will give you more information soon.  We are leaving this article online to protect the chain of understanding and we will update this space as necessary.

As you know, we recently moved this Urban Semiotic blog from WordPress to Movable Type 4.1 and we were hosted by the fine folks at Pair Networks. We are grateful for their previous love and support as we announce today yet another move of this blog – as well as RelationShaping.com and WordPunk.com – over to my pre-existing Media Temple 3.5 dv-Rage server and Movable Type Open Source 4.1.

Continue reading → Moving Movable Type 4 to Media Temple