The “Digital Choke” book is now available on Lulu.com in e-pub format! Here’s a nice little button I got from Lulu. Just click and buy!

That took a bit of work; formatting a book in e-pub format is a bit more tricky than formatting it for the Kindle. But it was a learning process, so the next one will be a bit easier. All I have to do now is think up a story.

Some minor changes to the blog area of this place. Additions to the menu, and a few new places of mine over in the Blogroll area – little projects that turned into web sites. Although you really ought to visit “the BBQ Grail” site….outdoor grilling season is coming up, and Larry Gaian’s site is a great place to learn about that. The pictures there will get you drooling.

A few nice comments about the Digital Choke book in the last post. I need to work on getting it in some other formats. That might be a weekend project. Although I need to do some beginning work on the outside: lawn to fertilize, and getting the little garden ready. Even though planting season around here doesn’t start until the middle of next month, it is time to plant some peas for the grandkids to pick.

But the big news: Stacy (youngest daughter) and Justin McEwan had their first child: Dominic Junius McEwan. Born 3/23/2011, 3:05am (notice all of the prime numbers?); 8 lbs 13 oz, 22 inches, very cute according to all the reports. We haven’t met yet, as I am recovering from a mild case of shingles. Congrats to them!

So the latest project is an update of a more than 8-year-old project. That was when I thought I could write a short story.

I had gotten interested in computer security (still am), and thought of a story line that was related to that. It turns out that writing a story takes a lot of time, at least for me. But my idea was to ‘publish’ it on a web site, which was the start of this “Digital Choke” place. This is the first domain name I purchased; over the years I have had about 20 domain names that were related to ideas I had. Some went away for lack of interest, but others are still around.

So the 8 year old story was first published in about 2001. I guess that makes me an e-book pioneer. Although not successful, since it’s not really clear that more than a dozen people actually read the story.

Now that e-books are getting more popular, I decided I would continue the trend I started, and e-publish my story. Which is why you’ll find a new graphic and link over there on the right side that will allow you to purchase a Kindle e-book of the “Digital Choke” story. And it’s priced so that you can easily justify spending a grand total of 99 cents. How can you afford not to buy it? You can be the first to own the first ebook written by me, the “Arthur”.

As for the process of creating the “Digital Choke” e-book, stay tuned. In the meantime, just click over there to purchase your very own copy of “Digital Choke”.

Now that the last web site has been completed (see previous post, or just go visit Faces of Suicide at www.facesofsuicide.com ), it is time to work on the next project. (There always seems to be another one, doesn’t there?).

This next project requires a bit of redesign around this site, along with a bit of reorganization. It’s probably time, since DigitalChoke got its start back in 2002. (If you are really bored, you can start at the very beginning here http://digitalchoke.com/daynotes/2003/2002-12-29.htm ). The ‘blog’ part has had a few changes over the years, but the site’s home page is basically the same.

This place was my first domain name; there have been many others over the years. A few of them are still around; some domains never got off the ground, and others were launched to minuscule fanfare (and visitors). Still others sort of faded away.

So it’s time to do a bit of revamping of this place in preparation for the launch of the next project.

In the meantime, I seem to have caught the ‘shingles’, which is a re-occurance of the chicken pox virus. Not too bad, got some anti-viral medicine to help control it, and am just a bit sore around the infection. But not serious enough to keep me away from work — or people.

The latest web site project is completed, and has been active for a couple of weeks. The project was another rewrite for the Friends and Families of Suicide Internet support group, as I lucked into getting their sites moved to a new web host, and rebuilt their sites because the old host wouldn’t give access to content or data.

This new site is called “Faces of Suicide”, and is a visual memorial wall of family and friends that have taken thier lives. It has quite a visual imact, I think. It shows a random selection of 100 faces from all those submitted, and when you click on a face, you are taken to a memorial page. All of the faces are submitted by friends and family members.

As you regular two readers of this place know, our son Jason took his life several years ago after a long struggle with bipolar disorder. So we (especially Pam) have been involved with the Friends and Families of Suicide Internet support group, which maintain several web sites of memorials. They also have an active discussion and support group. Each of the web sites has a ‘Outreach’ page of resources available to those affected by suicide.

So, the new Faces of Suicide (www.facesofsuicide.com ) web site is done. And it has gotten quite a few visitors. The site gets about 1200-1500 ‘page views’ every day, with almost 50,000 page views since the site was made public just about two weeks ago. Even if you haven’t been affected by this issue, I think that you might find the sites interesting. And perhaps you know someone that has been affected — there are some excellent resources and support links on that site.

Now that that site is done, it’s on to some other projects. A rewrite of a couple of existing sites of mine. Plus the continuing support of the FoodieFeeds (www.foodiefeeds.com ) and BBQ Grail (www.thebbqgrail.com ) sites.

Still working on that one web site; turns out the web site owner wanted a different way to verify and edit submissions. Thought that the site was ready to go, but that one requested change required changes to a bunch of other routines. So, still working on it.

At the other office, working on some new web application servers; getting ready for updating of various systems. Not terribly difficult to do, just time-consuming as I add (and tweak) the applications to the new systems.

And surviving the weather here. Not as much snow as back east, but quite cold for a while, with temps not getting above freezing. But the house is warm, so I just stay inside.

A three day weekend, courtesy of Martin Luther King. No big plans, other than some work on some web sites.

I finally got the RSS feeds working for my daughters “StickyFingerprints” site.  It had been bugging me for more than a month. Tried all sorts of tricks; turns out it was a misbehaving plug-in. I banished that plug-in from the site, and all is well. Check out her site: good writing and giveaways there.

Also been working on a new site. Making real good progress. I am very close to some final testing of all the functions of the site. That part takes a little while to do properly. But I am pleased with the design and functionality of that site.

Have also done some minor work on thePragmatica site.  The search engines are starting to notice the new pages, so have done a bit of search tweaking. It’s a great place to get some thought-provoking advice.

Other plans? Some changes to the network here at home. Need to fine-tune the server, and get the remote connection working to the server drives. That works fine on my computer, but Pam’s computer doesn’t want to see the server, even though her computer is a member of the proper workgroup/domain. Google and I will fix it, though.

And congrats to my youngest daughter Stacy – anniversary #1 with her great husband Justin. They are both such a cute couple. They are expecting their first child in April. Stacy is on modified bed rest, but she is doing well (other than being bored).