Category Archives: Blogging

Thoughts and rants about maintaining an active, healthy blog.

…And We’re Back!

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Or rather I am back.  As in I am going back to blogging.  I apologize for the months of silence.  Moving houses, and migrating web hosting providers will do that to a person.  Migrating the web hosting to a completely self-managed environment was quite a learning process, and took quite a bit of time.  I did not realize at the time, that my websites would be down for months.  Fortunately everything is back to normal now.

I won’t commit to posting on a regular schedule, since that is simply not realistic.  However I missed quite a few excellent opportunities to blog in a timely manner.    Especially everything surrounding PyCon and all the new things I’ve learned since that time.  I will try to make that up by writing articles about events, knowledge and ideas.

It is good to be back.

Ghosts in the RSS Feed

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A few days back I noticed a new entry in my RSS for an old blog of mine: http://opensourcegamer.blogspot.ca/

I was really surprised, since I had left that blog and closed down account years ago.  I started that blog when still in university and before I could afford my own fancy WordPress installation.  Years later after moving my old content and closing down that site, I find a new post.  At first I wondered if someone had hacked into my account and started doing weird things.  However this would be not the case.

It seems that a certain gent (https://plus.google.com/106427604834859977346/posts) decided that they liked the name of my blog and run with it.  That I don’t mind.  In fact I wish him (or her) the best of luck!  However please note that I am not maintaining that blog, and all my focus on this site.  So don’t be surprised if you see said odd entry in your RSS.  Come to think of it, you want to hear more of me, you should subscribe to the RSS feed for this blog!

Website Hosting Migration

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You may have noticed the recent changes on my blog & portfolio website.  I am in the process of migrating my websites, domains and what not to a new hosting service.  A nicer hosting service provider who doesn’t support SOPA/PIPA for one.  Plus is much more responsive and nicer to work with.

Anyways a lot of things are up in the air.  Especially since I am still transitioning in terms of my new work.  Plus I am working on a grey op (not quite black) project, that I plan to reveal shortly.  Please excuse the sporadic changes and some issues might pop up while I get everything sorted out.

Comments Off As Life Picks Up

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Life, nature or  the universe has a perverse sense of humour.  The next day after I posted my last blog post, optimistic of the future and looking forward to approaching life in a slower pace… well everything happens at once.  And it seems like someone decided to fall asleep on the ‘drama’ button in my life.  So now things are exciting, moving quickly and require immediate and decisive action.  I am not amused, by this turn of events.

Since this seems like a prevailing theme and trend recently, I’ve had to make decisions to simplify my life.  I have to minimize the distractions and maximize the impact my action have on my surroundings.  If that does not happen, I will simply get swept away and get carried off by the next big wave.

Today I realized I need to take my tasks and projects head on.  That means do the most relevant, NOW.  It also means putting up a single list of to-dos and sticking to them.  And I have to simplify life and remove distractions.  One such distraction is maintaining my blog.  I love blog, I love writing and publish my thoughts.  But I do not like having to administer it.  Hence I migrated to WordPress a long time ago.

 

And also why I am turning off comments on my articles.  I am sorry to my readers, but the majority of you don’t comment on my blogs.  I don’t mind that.  Most of my articles and journals are not something one can or need to comment on.  And the majority of comments that get queued up are spam.  Even with Akismet running in the background, I get too much crap.  These days I have precious little time to blog or do anything outside of the urgent.  And I definitely do not have time to read 200+ comments all trying to commit various forms of link spam.  I want to use my precious time for blogging and updating my sites.  So no more open comments on my blog.  Some articles I will open for comments, but most will not.  Sorry but it is just something I need to do.

Now We Return to Your Regular Programming

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Any writer who keeps on promising to write more regularily but doesn’t is a scoundrel and a rascal. I leave it as an exercise to the reader about what that makes me.

So I tried microblogging, like all the cool Web 2.0 kids do. Unfortunately for me I can’t blog about many things for a multitude: legal, personal, client confidentiality. What gets left are random bits and the boring and mundane. Even the little experiment of Day X of 2010, was a fun way of writing good soundbites but honestly I ran out of creative and witty quotes. I prefer long form writing. And only at random time when my muse whispers something interesting in my ear. I know very artsy of me.

Short story long: I’m back to just plain old blogging, on no day in particular and not particularly long. Enjoy.

Out with the Old

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I’m preparing for what I hope will be a new phase in my life.  And one of the things I need for this change is a revised online presence.  I’ve experimented with various ideas and concepts.  And I want to try and implement them in my life.

One of the first to feel the changes, will be my blogging.  I deleted my old Blogspot blog.  All the content exists on this website anyways.   Also I’m planning to make this blog more into a portfolio, than just a blog straight up.  The blog obviously will be accessible, just not on the front page.  Also I’m thinking of doing some ExtJS magic and build a new AJAXy theme.  So if the site breaks, you know what I’ve been up to.

On another note, I’m getting back to developing justCheckers into reality.  And on the side playing around with the newly revived Pyzzle game engine.

Hmm… The Future Feels Clean

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So do you like it?  The theme on the website that is.  I decided to go with a variant of light greys, royal blue-purple and amber highlights.  It does have a spartan, minimalistic feel but I like it.  I considered rebuilding the theme as an ExtJS or jQuery UI powered on.  But honestly, this works and IMHO looks pretty good.  For a theme that doesn’t use any images.  I plan on tinkering with this theme as time goes on, but I think I like this theme as a base.  As promised, I will go through this theme, clean things up and release it out in the open once I’m done.

Whats next on my list?  Well a good chunk of work, and some partying this weekend to celebrate the coming of the end of the year.  🙂

A Clean Future

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The future is white?

Bob, the future has been white since the 60’s.

– Autotainment, Big Ideas

The future has been white for a long time, thanks to the likes of Stanley Kubrick and the folks at Apple.  Thats why the theme I’m crafting for this website, is called “Clean Future”.  I took the “Open Sourcerer” theme by Alan Lord, and modifying it until it suits my tastes.  I’m still debating whether it will look like a glass UI or hand-drawn doodles.  Maybe I’ll go all out and create a full AJAX powered UI.  We’ll see.  I’m sure it will remain white and light grey.  And I’ll take it as far as I feel it makes sense to do so.  So if anyone has any suggestions feel free to leave them in the comments below.  I’ll make the modified theme available once I finish working on it.

Excuse the Dust

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I apologize again for the silence earlier this week.  I meant to post a few posts earlier on, but I did not get around to it.

Also you may have noticed that I’m updating this blog.  In fact in general I am updating and cleaning up my “Web” presence in a big way.  Hence I’m working on refreshing the look and feel of this blog.  I’m plan on modifying the current theme into something I built myself.  And I’ll building out my portfolio, something I should of done ages ago.  Hence I’ll try to keep updating this blog frequently, but I might be a bit too busy for daily updates.  Also the e-mail subscriptions ARE going way, please switch to using RSS feeds.

Of Journals and Juggling

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I’ve found myself recently writing considerable amounts in my diary.  I’ve had many a thought, that I felt compelled to write down.  But such thoughts were fairly private in nature, so I will discuss or hint about them here.  One of thought that I would like to share, is my temporary withdrawl from daily blogging.  I’m trying to concentrate on writing my novel, A Collection of Shards.  And I’m concentrating on reviving the comatose justCheckers project.  Post daily updates to my blog just add more overhead to my day.  And I’ve so precious little time and so many tasks to complete…  So I’m going to take a break, and update this blog when I feel like it.