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Thursday, July 29, 2010

3…2...1…Ready or not!

Hide and Seek

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It feels like forever since I’ve blogged a recipe on House of Annie. I think the last recipe post was back in May when we did the Fried Pork with Evaporated Milk dish. Then it was a whole series of eating out in Singapore , from our trip to visit relatives during the Gawai holidays.

But that trip was back in June, and we’ve had almost two whole months of cooking and eating. In that time, we only put up 2 new posts! So why all the hide and seek?

Guess Where I Am?

I’ve talked and hinted in the past about me wanting to move off of Blogspot onto our own domain name. I actually bought it way back in November 2008 (if memory serves). But I didn’t get really serious about moving over until early 2010.

It’s been a lot of starts and stops, frustrations and lost sleep. But this week has seen the culmination of my effort. After asking for (and getting) help from some of our dear readers to beta test the site, I think it’s finally ready to be revealed to the Blogosphere.

House of Annie has moved to…

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www.HouseOfAnnie.com

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(well, it was kind of a no-brainer, right?)

No more Chez Annies. We’re not trying to be either Chez Pim or Chez Panisse. We never were.

The new site, www.houseofannie.com , has a similar look and feel to the old one, but I’ve made getting around the site (hopefully) easier. But don’t take my word for it. Try it out yourself!

Poke around and see what you can do on the site. If there’s something broken, missing, or just not working right, I’d love to hear from you through the Contacts page. Most importantly, update your Bookmarks and Blogrolls because in a few days, I’m going to turn on a redirection script on the old site.

And Chez Annies will be no more. (Crossing my fingers.) And then we can get back to doing what we really love – blogging recipes!

Aloha, Nate

Continue Reading: "3…2...1…Ready or not!"...

Labels: Posted by Nate @ House of Annie at 12:16 AM 3 comments

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Need your help with the finishing touches…

Rolling Out Sod on Our Old Backyard

IMG_4843 Back when we were moving out of our place in San Jose, we had to re-sod the backyard. It was back-breaking work. First, we had to remove all our raised garden beds, then tear out the old, dead grass. Then I borrowed my neighbor’s tilling machine and turned the hard, compacted clay into beautifully loamy soil with the help of some compost.
We brought in rolls of new sod, and, with the help of our neighbor, proceeded to re-carpet the backyard. I’m so glad that we had his help – we couldn’t have done it without him! His advice and generous donation of time and labor was invaluable.
Well, I’m getting ready to move again, and I need your invaluable help.


House of Annie is (virtually) moving

No, we’re not picking up our stakes again and physically moving from Kuching. (Not yet, anyway.) But the House of Annie is virtually moving to a new address…in Cyberspace!
It’s a process that has taken months, due to all the starts and stops along the way. It’s such a beast to take all our content (almost 500 posts!) off of Blogger, reformat it, and put it back on a new WordPress blog. I’ll probably blog about some of that experience in the future.
But for now, I am happy to say that we’re almost there and I am ready to get some help from some of our readers to beta test the new site before I push the big “switcheroo” button. I need to know where the kinks are, where things are broken, where edges and corners need sprucing up. I need your advice on what doesn’t work, and what could work better.
If you want to help beta test the new site, fill in this form below:


Sign up to beta test the House of Annie's new blog site design
Your Name*
Your Email Address*
Check here*
 I want to help beta test the new blog! 
Powered byEMF Email Form


I will then contact you with the web address to test out and instructions to follow. Sound good?

Aloha, Nate

Continue Reading: "Need your help with the finishing touches…"...

Labels: Posted by Nate @ House of Annie at 11:45 PM 4 comments

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Apologies and Announcements

*knock, knock.”

Anybody still here? Echo! (echo, echo, echo…)

Yeah, I know the blog has been a little quiet lately. Sorry ‘bout that. The past couple of weeks have been really busy and it’s kept us away from blogging. First off, there was the US tax season. (What, you mean I’m the only one who procrastinates doing taxes until the week of April 15???)

And then I was traveling away for work in KL last week, which meant that I had no access to the home computer where all the food pics are, and Annie was too busy keeping the household together with me gone. Therefore, no blog posts last week. But we’re back now, and feelin’ the need to get back posting regularly.

Oh, by the way, something really awesome happened last week while I was traveling:

According to our StatCounter, which has been counting hits since January 2008, House of Annie passed 1 Million hits this past Sunday! What a milestone! All thanks to you, dear readers. We couldn’t have done it without you.

Speaking of traveling, Annie and I and the kids will be traveling to Singapore at the end of May for a short holiday. We’re going to visit with family, eat, take in some sights, eat, meet up with friends, eat…you know, the usual. Any Foodbuzz Featured Publishers wanna meet up that weekend? Drop me a line via our Contact Page.

Something else that is going on: I have been spending more time working on the new blog. Yeah, the long-promised move to our own domain is getting closer. I just hope I can get the thing done before we hit 500 posts here on BlogSpot.

Aloha, Nate

Continue Reading: "Apologies and Announcements"...

Labels: Posted by Nate @ House of Annie at 5:23 PM 4 comments

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Hosed

Dear Readers,

I hosed myself. Twice. I am a double self-hoser!

A couple of months back, I found out that there was a scraper site (http://asianfood.aqimg.com/)stealing the House of Annie's (and several other food blogs') content. With no contact info on the owner, there was little I could do to get them to stop. It wasn't like the other scraper site I dealt with, who was hosted on Blogspot.

But I tried to file a DMCA report anyway, to see if the mighty Google could help.


Hosed


Unfortunately, I screwed up and told Google that the infringing content was located on the chezannies.blogspot.com domain, while the original content was on the scraper's domain. (Serves me right for not reading the form carefully.) When I realized my mistake, I sent an email to Google notifying them of my error. I also filed a corrected DMCA form. Then I hoped for the best.

Today, Google informed me that they had taken down the reported content...ON THE HOUSE OF ANNIE SITE. And then in a separate email they informed me that I can file a counter claim to get the content added back.

Say it with me: AAAAUUUUUUGGGGHHHHH!!!

I sent an email back to Google, saying I made a mistake and could they please reinstate my posts. Thankfully, they read the email and replied, saying I could take the posts out of Draft and republish them. Whew!


Double-Hosed


But then in my haste to get everything back online, I published all those posts without making sure they went back at the correct date. So that was why for about an hour, it looked like I had published about 20 posts today. And why a bunch of them got sent to you RSS readers.

I frantically went back and corrected the dates. I think everything is back to normal, and hopefully there was minimum confusion to those of you out there in RSS land.

To our dear readers: Sorry about that.

To the scraper site: I hate you.

To Google: It was my bad for not reading the form properly. Thanks for doing what I asked, twice.

To self: Get off BlogSpot, you hoser!

Aloha, Nate

Continue Reading: "Hosed"...

Labels: Posted by Nate @ House of Annie at 10:01 AM 16 comments

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