MacSparky 2 Year Blogaversary

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Today is the 2nd anniversary of the launch of MacSparky. It continues to amaze me how many readers there are. I started this site with no clear plan in mind except to have fun and, indeed, I have.
The numbers have continued to grow and while I remain a small outpost on the edge of the Interweb, I get an unexplainable amount of satisfaction from running the MacSparky empire and hearing from readers.
I’m hoping the third year will continue to bring more useful articles and new friendships. I am very excited about the new “Mac at Work” series and I have another significant announcement in the wings.
Regardless, I just wanted to thank all who come here for putting up with (sometimes dubious) grammar and my occasional incoherent babble. MacSparky and my participation in the Mac community at large is a joy for me and I look forward to another year.

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MacSparky One Year Blogaversary

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It was a year ago that I had this crazy idea to start a Mac blog and posted my first entry to MacSparky in all of its iWeb splendor. Since that time, the site has moved to wordpress, and now its own server. There are some interesting stats for the first year.
* Roughly 80,000 hits;
* 384 Posts;
* Over 500 Comments.
It really is amazing considering that I only had 300 hits in the first two months and now it is extremely rare for me to get less than 300 hits in a single day. In the overall scheme of the Interweb, I’m barely a blip on the radar but I still can’t help but be impressed.
Now all those clicks really are amazing but by far the best part of MacSparky has been all of the new friendships I’ve made. Between readers, other bloggers and podcasters, developers and other folks in the Mac-o-sphere, I’ve made countless new friends and shared many laughs and good times. I’ll never forget that first day at MacWorld when some random stranger looked at my pass and his face lit up and he shook my hand, “Hey Macsparky! I read you all the time.” My ego was so inflated, it took considerable effort to get my head through the Moskone Center doors.
So it has already been a year and I look forward to many more. For me, the blogging, podcasting, and screencasting has been a great way to unwind from the day job and truly a joy. Thank you all for reading, watching, teasing, laughing, and joining in the first year of MacSparkky.

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Server Transfer Complete!

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I decided to change the server Friday night and here I am on Sunday night with the new server live. I’m actually quite impressed with myself. Like all great feats however (and this is a quite an accomplishment for me), there were many people responsible for this happening. Especially the following:
Gabe Wilson
My pal Gabe Wilson, convinced me it was actually possible for someone as clueless about internet servers as myself to pull this off. Gabe also turned me on to a Dreamhost.com which leads to big helper #2.
Dreamhost.com
This web hosting service rocks. They are very cheap and offer tons of bandwidth and storage. Not only that, they increase over time. They are giving me an additional gig of space per week. Most importantly, these guys are super helpful. When I was having that “Oh c*^p, what have I got myself into” moment Friday night, I emailed them and they completely took over. They got my wordpress blog transferred onto the server and helped me through all the tweaks. Quite often my emails were replied to in less than thirty minutes. Frankly, I can’t imagine any better customer service.
Darren Rolfe
Darren is my graphics Sensei. The new three column format didn’t jive with my old banner. No problem, Darren fixed it in about thirty minutes. If you ever need a graphic artist, or just want to have a fun, go visit Darren at MacWingnut.
The Rest of the Gang
I received some very helpful emails and comments from readers. Thank you all. Also, my family let me spend the day on the couch, watching football, and tweaking the new site. Thanks Gang!
For those of you who read me via RSS please make sure to reset your feed. Now that I’ve got the basics up I’ll continue to refine it a bit. I am also going to be moving the podcast feed to this site and off Podbean. I’m getting requests for different formats of the screencasts (i.e. Apple TV, etc..) Now I have the bandwidth to pull it off.  Anyway, I’ll continue to try and make it better for everyone.

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