All my domains (said like a monarch) were down for about a week or so, but I have finally found a new server home and still getting things configured. Looking at their sorry shape, it is also making me think that they could use some love. Ideas? What about your old websites? Still keeping them up? Moving on to just having your online presence being on "social media"? (Hey, weren't blogs supposed to be social media?) [Read more…]

Anyone reading this blog anymore? I've heard from other friends that their blog readership has dropped way down, and my logs seem like they show mostly search engines stopping by. Or is subject matter discussed here just too boring? Discussion comment forms not working? Everyone using RSS these days and not going to the webpages? (RSS is a double-edged sword.) Blah blah blah. Echo!…

This latest rewrite has been coming for a while, but things haven't lined up until now to start making progress on it. The current incarnation of the engine runs this website in addition to several others, and it works fine, but as with all programming projects, it becomes clear how things could be better and that they should be so. The new rewrite will be initially written in Python, taking the best from the current PHP and Objective-C versions, which are the two most mature versions currently in service. Each has gotten tweaks over the last couple of years that ended up being unique to them, but which all versions should benefit from. [Read more…]

Only rarely do blog entries start much of a conversation, and blogs become more like an odd, nearly formless form of magazine. It's more self-publishing than conversation starter. There is something essential to how blog sites are set up that seem to doom them to a cultural curiosity of the early 21^st century. [Read more…]

Somehow beer drinking led to expanding the small list of books that I'm currently reading into its own expanded page. Not a big whoop, but could be interesting. Should I attach a discussion page to each book? Might do that soon. At any rate, it includes comments on each book, so could be trivially transformed into a basic book discussion page. Perhaps tomorrow. It's true that I need to clean up the alignment on the page. The Unibroue has me happy and sleepy. (Such a good Canadian brewery.)

Update : The books now all their own forum pages, as with this example.

Years ago, long before "blog" was a word, I kept a work log online. It wasn't interesting to anyone else but me, so I took it offline and kept it running for a while on my local machine, but served up as webpages to myself. There was something really good about the feedback and it encouraged me not to get lazy and keep the pace up. I haven't done it for years, but think about doing it again. It would need to include some things like a bibliography, book progress chart (something like % done), goals for the month/year, &tc. But I'm not looking for an outlining or project management tool, just a basic logbook. Something like this exist? Would others be interested in having it, or in helping make such a thing? (Image shown of log page from '97.)

I find I need breaks from the computer more and more, though too many of my non-computer thinking ends up making me think of neat computer projects I'd like to start. For some reason, I also thought I'd start blogging again after a break. Why? Dunno. I see lots of downsides to blogging. The main one being that there are sites that try to archive the entire internet all the time, so there's no undo. And there are no privacy settings to the archive. One must blog things that you are happy to be found in the search engines, and happy to be seen by someone, anyone, years from now, etc. Gaah.

Perhaps someone should develop an unarchivable blog? Something always ephemeral. Or at least a way to mark any specific blog item as ephemeral. Hm. Thoughts? Anyone out there? Anyone want to leave a comment from the year 2016? [Read more…]