Blog Review: 13 steps
13 steps is the name of the blog, but it's hardly the tip of the iceberg. Having been online for several years, "XIII" is knee deep into conversationalism. It's not just at his blog, but at his forum as well. It's interesting to note that he started out using f2s.com, a free hosting service from freedom2surf.net. I tried that service as well and like XIII, I didn't like the slowness and restrictions of it. I don't know if it's still a free service but it's not worth your time to find out. Just to let you know, I was tickled by the tagline "the quest for the sp00n". I don't think many people will get it.
The first thing I noticed when I brought up the blog was the latest article on the Iron Man movie. Of course, I then had to take time out and watch the trailer at the Apple trailer site, taking me away from the mission at hand. Back to the blog, I looked for the customary things that I always look for. I didn't find a contact form or link but I'm sure he wouldn't be hard to get a hold of.
Digging deeper, I noticed he's hosting blogs for a number of other people. Yes, each blog is independently operated by other people. I think he's lucky at this point. If one of those blogs suddenly gets tagged by Digg and makes the front page, I think all the other blogs will go down at the same time. That's the disadvantage of hosting multiple blogs on the same server. I'm doing two right now (I just started one) but I have plan if either of them ever make it to the front page again.
I know XIII speaks and writes Dutch and I'm guessing he's in the Netherlands, possibly Amsterdam. I read enough of his "about" page and history on another page to know about the Dutch part and an IP lookup told me it was in the country code of NL. Yes, I look deeper than just the surface sometimes. Anyway… the blog, the forum and the hosted blogs are enough to keep a person busy for quite a few hours. Take a look when you get a chance.
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Haha, actually we all live "pretty far" from Amsterdam (as far distance wise possible in the Netherlands). But most people know the big or known/popular places in other countries, which isn't bad at all. (One can't expect everyone to know about all the ("insignificant") places or facts in the world)
And my apologies for only commenting about this part of your entry (~°°)~
That why it was a guess. :lol:
No problem on the commenting part. I'm pretty lame when I comment on anything myself.
Thanks for the nice review. You're right, I think only about 2 or 3 people have ever understood the tagline. The whole thing is actually running on a Mac Mini at home on a seperate DSL line, so I'm not too worried about the server ever crashing, my line will be saturated way before that. I'm Dutch indeed, just from the opposite of the country compared to Amsterdam. I'm glad you liked the whole thing, and hope to see you around.
ps… still haven't added a contact form (it's on my evergrowing todo list), but with a nick of XIII and a domain of X111.com it shouldn't be too hard for most people to do the math.
I'll add it soon though.
Only very few people actually get their blogs on top of dig, and when they get there they don't stay for long. Yes, it's an added risk the the web server and to other sites listed there, but only if the server it's self in weak and cheap. Web hosting companies that offer shared servers don't usually have that problem. They just auto suspend such web sites as a preventive measure.
Beasides, hosting political sites is much more risky since they get ddosed every now and then. Same for irc servers etc.
I'm pretty dadgum far from The Netherlands in dstance, if not in spirit. Thanks for the review…very informative.
Interesting concept: a blog that reviews blogs. What's next, a blog that reviews blogs that reviews other blogs?