Gwinnett Buzz

As I was browsing an old article on the Buzz today, I came across an ad that was offensive and inappropriate for my site.  I have filtered this ad but similarly inappropriate ads could appear from time to time.  If you see any such ads, please note the site being advertised and let me know so that I can prevent such ads from being displayed on the Gwinnett Buzz.  Thanks for helping me to keep this a site that you would let your mother read!

Thanks to all who voted in the inaugural Gwinnett Buzz weekly survey.  The most common response for where Buzz readers live was Lawrenceville with four readers.  Grayson was second with two votes.  Buford, Dacula, Duluth, Suwanee, and Norcross each had one respondent.  Thanks to all the voters for helping me make the Buzz a better blog!

This week the survey question asks about how often you read the Buzz.  You can participate in the survey in the righthand sidebar.

Well it took a few days and quite a bit of trial and error, but I have got the Buzz back into a working state.  I have not had any crashing issues in Internet Explorer 6 with the new template, but if you experience problems please let me know.  There are still a few cosmetic tweaks I need to make but that does not prevent me from getting things cranked up again.  This has definitely been a vehicle to learn a little more (not much mind you!) about CSS.

Yes, this is the Gwinnett Buzz, even though it looks quite different today. I normally use Firefox, Safari and, lately, even a little Chrome. As you may note, what I do not generally use is Internet Explorer, aka Internet Exploder, a very apt nickname for what I found when I checked the Buzz in IE today. Something on the site was crashing IE regardless of numerous tweaks I tried.  Unfortunately, my normal theme has had quite a few little bugs with IE (you may remember the Disqus comment system I wanted to use but could not). Thus, I have temporarily ported to a new theme that does not seem to crash Internet Explorer. Not being a coder, I am not sure I can diagnose or correct what ills my primary theme. Thus, the Buzz may be getting a new look very soon. I just have to find a theme that I think suits the site!

If you have had any crashing issues, please let me know either in the comments below or via email.  Also, if you are a WordPress blogger and you know of some great theme sites, please let me know as well!

As the Gwinnett Buzz matures and continues to grow its audience, I would like to learn more about who is reading the blog.  In order to do so, I intend to publish a series of polls to learn more about you and what you would like to see at the Buzz.  By learning more about my readers, I hope to better serve your interests and provide more and deeper coverage of the Gwinnett topics that are important to you.  The first poll, posted in the right sidebar, simply seeks to learn in which parts of the county Buzz readers live.

If you have a poll suggestion, please leave a comment below or drop me an email!  And as always, thanks for reading the Gwinnett Buzz!

If you are receiving posts on the Gwinnett Buzz via email, you will want to take note of this message.  I have received a notice from the provider of the email subscription service, RSSFWD,com, of the impact of an update they have made to their website.  If you use this service, you have probably received a similar notice.  Regardless, to continue receiving Gwinnett Buzz updates via email, you will need to resubscribe by 28 September.  Just click on the new “RSSFWD” button in the Subscribe section on the bottom left.  You will be taken to a website where you will simply enter your email address.  If you have not yet subscribed to my posts via email and would like to receive them that way, you can follow the exact same instructions.

If you have any issues, please let me know, and thanks for the reading the Gwinnett Buzz!

This falls into the “Not too far from Gwinnett” Buzz. Sunday night, I was passing through Hoschton and I noticed that there were scarecrows all along Georgia Highway 53. To be honest, they were kind of eerie in the moonlight. I even began brainstorming the general plot to a horror novel! The next day a Google search revealed that the Jackson County town was attempting to set the world record for most scarecrows in the same place. A count of 5,441 scarecrows has been submitted to the Guinness Book of World Records. I was pleased to see that there are Central Gwinnett Black Knight fans in the Hoschton scarecrow community!

Last night, I met with a Georgia Tech Ph.D candidate who was conducting research on a very interesting new web-based tool that allows users to analyze and leave feedback on the information quality of an online video.  I don’t want to say too much about the tool because I do not know how much of it is public knowledge, however the researcher, Nick Diakapolous, has a blog where he discusses his interests.

I want to thank Buzz reader Buzz Brockway for pointing Nick in my direction.  I had a lot of fun participating in the study and would love to see this tool become available on the web for broad use at some point in the future!

Yes, the Buzz is still a live blog.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, things promised to be a bit slow and indeed they have been.  In fact, I was on vacation last week to travel up to the Northeast culminating in seeing my Yellow Jackets defeat Boston College college in Chestnut Hill, MA yesterday afternoon!  Go Jackets!

I probably won’t get to all the backed up stories simply because they are too numerous and some are simply dated at this point.  However, you can rest assured that I have some opinions on the cost overrun on the Gwinnett Braves stadium so watch for a wrap-up of my thoughts on that and other issues in the next few days.

Finally, I just wanted to give a quick shout-out to the Gwinnett Buzz reader I ran into at Tech’s season opener against Jacksonville State in Atlanta last week.  Nice to see you again!

I want to apologize to my readers for a paucity of posts this last week.  Unfortunately, this will probably continue to be the case for the next couple of weeks.  With football season upon us, I have some additional demands on my time during this time period (i.e. football games!).  I will try to update the blog as often as possible, but, rest assured, I have every intention of returning to my normal level of posting by mid-September, if not sooner.

Thanks for reading!