Recently in Meta-Blogging Category

I thought I'd spend some time today playing around with my blog.  It started out by deciding to find a plugin that would allow me to tweet my blog entries on Twitter automatically.  My search also led me on to discover another neat plugin called Zemanta.  It's a handy plugin that suggests links, pictures and other content that I might want to include in my blog posts.

I'm hoping this will be particularly helpful to me, as I've been trying to make sure I include at least one photo with every blog post I make.  I find while it's not necessary, it does make my blog much more aesthetically pleasing.  However, this has proven challenging, as I'm very concerned about not using copyrighted work. This has mean trying to find public domain images, which can be a challenge.  So if this new plugin helps make things better, all the better.  Here's to hoping.

Well, I've made more progress.  I can now successfully build my main indexes and entries statically.  This means that comments will show up immediately now.  I'm still running the monthly and category archives through the publish queue, though.  I don't think that's a bad thing.

To get things to work better, I've made a few changes, including caching widgets, enabling some widgets as server-side includes (I discovered the beauty of SSI when I started Ingvi's Corner, and am glad to use them here), and changed my archive widgets so they don't display a count for each category/monthly archive.  (I figure part of the problem was that trying to generate this data for each page was really thrashing the script's interface to the database during a database.)  Hopefully, all of these things will add up to much better experience for both myself and my readers.

I'm also starting to realize the MT is becoming an extremely powerful system.  In some ways, I suspect it's more than I really need.  I'm just a simple blogger, and I've found myself spending more time that I planned tweaking MT to get performance and stability.  In some ways, it's enough to make me consider going back to Typepad or blogger, where someone else can worry about most of that stuff.  But I like running my own blog software, so I don't foresee that happening.  Besides, who knows, I might find benefits to the increased power.

(Special thanks to Jon Sullivan for providing the public doman image used in this post.)

UPDATE:  Success!  I've found that by switching over to using the Publish Queue, I can manage to rebuild my entire site.  Of course, it's not done yet.  So far, the publish queue has only made it back to the entries for April 2007.  In fact, this update may not show up until the very end.  But for now, using the publish queue rather than immediately publishing seems to be the way for me to go.  Of course this means there will be a slight lag time (up to fifteen minutes) before a submitted comment will show up.  Ah well.  I can't have everything!

I've decided that it's finally time to upgrade my blog to Movable Type 4.  I've been putting this off, as I wasn't sure I wanted to go through the hassle involved.  But recently, I've looked at a few new features that are incompatible with MT 3.x.  So I decided it was time to make the switch.

Let me just say that if Six Apart plans to stay in business, they need to make certain aspects of upgrading between major versions of MT much easier.  I decided that it would be better for me to just go ahead and blow away all my old MT 3.x templates and start fresh.  The problem with this is that Six Apart provides no easy way to just tell MT 4.x, "Hey, take this existing blog, get rid of all its old templates, and start with a fresh batch of MT 4.0 basic templates."  Instead, I had to manually create most of the new templates.  (I was able to shoehorn in the five or six templates that actualy kept the same name between MT 3.x and MT 4.x  using the "Refresh Template" option.)  This meant creating a brand new blog and starting the comparison and revision process.

Now I just have to go back and add back in some of the extras I added to my templates, like the Sitemeter code, the MyBlogLog Widget, and a couple of other things.  Of course, I'm also thinking about getting rid of some of the add-ons (like Jiglu) as MT 4.x now offers similar features directly.

Of coures, I also need to figure out why my server won't let me rebuild the entire site.

For my readers (all six of you), this upgrade means a couple things:

1.  Any links from your site to posts on my blog are broken.  The way MT 4.0 structures everything has changed.  (Apparently, they decided to structure things more like Blogger and WordPres do.)

2.  My blog only allows authenticated comments now.  Now that MT 4.x offers many options for comment authentication, I decided to kill spam for good and turn off "anonymous" comments.  The good news is that there's support to leave a comment using your login from Typepad/Typekey, Livejournal, Blogger, and any other service that offers OpenID authentication.  Also, I'm allowing people to register an account directly with my blog.  So there's plenty of options for commenting.

So please bear with me for the next week or so if there seems to be any issues.  Hopefully, I'll get things straightened out from this upgrade quickly.

(Special thanks to Peter Griffin for the public domain image used in this post.) 

I think that it's safe to say that my question and answer exercise has wound down. It was a fun exercise, and I'm almost sad to see that it's already over. However, I'm hoping to try it again someday, perhaps in three to six months.

I actually did this exercise on three different blogs or diaries and got different questions and answers at each site. I decided that it might be fun to post a link to each of the resulting entries. So below, you will find a complete list, organized according to the blog or diary they appeared on.

The Musings of a Confused Man
Speak not of such things for the frighten me!
A rose by any other name?
The things kids discuss during class! (Content is somewhat mature.)
Spiritual Sexuality and Sexy Spirituality

Passions and Reflections
My biggest purchase
Sounding off about a clapping hand
How embarrassing!
As if I need any more changes!
Driving down the polytheism highway
Engendering differences
God-bothering etiquette
Okay, so some might think me a morbid god

Jarred's Slice of Heaven
Plus it strikes me as a REAL mockery of marriage
Start spreading the news...
Happy bundle of sticks

After many emails with StartLogic, their technical support finally determined that two tables from my blog's MySQL database up and disappeared. This means that my only option was to restore from a backup. Fortunately, I created a backup back when I was first having problems, but before the errant tables decided to run off together. This means that I was able to restore almost everything.

In fact, the only thing I ended up losing was two blog posts I posted during the window when everything seemed to be okay again. The good news about that is that they are both posts I also put up on Multiply. So I didn't lose anything.

I apologize for how long it took to resolve the problems. I hope to be back up and running at full capacity soon.

Oh, and as a sidenote, apparently if you need to restore from an old backup of you MT database, you're better off dropping all the tables from the database first. I skipped that step in my first attempt to do a restore and got nothing but grief as a result.

About once every two weeks, I like to run the index page for my blog through the HTML Validator. I like to try and keep my page as clean and properly coded as possible. (Now some day, I just have to tackle cleaning up my style sheet and feeds.)

For the most part, I get a fairly clean report and it just takes a couple of minutes to clean up any errors the validator does report. Fortunately, the templates I use have already been cleaned up, so any errors I get are actually introduced by my posts. Considering I don't use much HTML in my posts, I don't make many mistakes with it. In fact, my most common mistake is posting a link that has an ampersand in the address and forgetting to replace the "&" with "&" in the address.

Then there are those times when I post the results from an online quiz. Today, when I went through the validation process, the results for the "What Color is Your Soul" quiz alone generated eighty errors. And I had to spend several minutes reading through those errors and making the minor updates that would make each little error go away in turn.

Even these errors are relatively minor. They usually involve not adding the terminating slash to a tag that doesn't have a corresponding closing tag or not enclosing an attribute's value in quotes. The hard part is reading through the dense burst of code that make up the quiz results and finding the mistakes. And when there's a few dozen such mistakes, working through each one can be tedious.

I hope there eventually becomes a day when online quiz creators start doublechecking their HTML against the latest specification. It'd save me a bit of time and trouble. Not to mention any other erstwhile quiz takers that like to keep their blog's HTML clean.

I figured I'd get at least a PG-13 or even an R. But I never expected this!

Is this why I get so few comments? Are y'all in just a hurry to get away from my smut as fast as possible?

The past thirty six hours or so have been very busy and creative for me. The astute person may have noticed a few new links on my sidebar. Basically, I decided that after almost three years, it was time to start doing something with the main Northern Grove site. I've left an "under construction" page up there for way too long.

I've decided to turn that site into a series of static pages with information that I'd like to keep readily accessible at all times. Currently, I've added a brief autobiography, a short explanation of how I came to write and why I do it, and the story of how Precious came to live with me. I'll probaby add more pages as ideas come to me.

I'm also thinking about reviving One Pagan's Heart. If I decide to go through with it, I will probably go through and edit all of the pages to match the design I use for this blog and the main site, which should be a bit of a challenge.

And of course, I'll continue to update this blog. I've grown fond of it, especially over the past few days I've felt increased inspiration for things to write about. I must say, I love it when I get creative.

At some point in the last twenty four hours, one of my favorite liberal Christian bloggers made an update to a post he made about claims that the National Park Service staff were prohibited from giving an answer about the Grand Canyon's age. This claim was made based on a statement issued by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, aka PEER. Bob's update was to let everyone know that these claims appear to be unfounded and to apologize for being duped. He also provided a link to a lengthy explanation and retraction posted by Skeptic Magazine, who had also been duped by the story.

This is a clear case where some relatively simple fact checking (namely calling the National Park Services and asking whoever answers the phone whether they could comment on the age of the grand canyon) could have saved both Bob and the folks at Skeptic Magazine the trouble of wiping a considerable amount of egg off their face. Both parties admit this. But I don't wish to be critical of them, as I can completely empathize with their position. Truth be told, this could have happened to me as easily as it happened to them. I've been known to trust sources without much fact checking as well, and I certainly don't want Bob or the folks at Skeptic Magazine pointing their fingers at me and laughing should our roles ever be reversed.

Instead, I want to focus on the frightening (to me, at least) reality that this could happen to anyone. It's easy to spread information simply because a source we trusted had an off day or otherwise got their information wrong. Perhaps their source was incorrect. After all, misinformation can get spread even when there's no deceitful intent on anyone's part. I'm reminded of Bogaert's statistical study that I blogged about back in August as a prime example of that. An aquaintance had blogged about an LA Times article on the topic. After searching for the original study and reading it, I concluded that the newspaper article was somewhat misleading about the conclusions of the study. Granted, that writer hadn't gone as far as repeating blogus claims, but I feel it's still an issue.

So I find myself wondering what level of responsibility I, both as a conscientious individual and a blogger, need to take on when it comes to verifying my sources? The ultimate solution would obviously involve me checking every fact for myself as directly as possible. Unfortunately, I'm not a paid journalist. I have another full time job. And even my free time is split between multiple projects. So while the ultimate solution is attractive, it's simply not feasible. So what would be a more reasonable solution?

Another obvious albeit vague solution would be to only use reliable sources. But how does one determine what sources are reliable? And don't even reliable sources make mistakes? (I suspect Skeptics Magazine and any other journalistic group whose had to publish a correction or retraction would answer that question with a resounding "yes.")

I don't think I have an answer to my questions. I'm not sure anyone does. (Though I'm more than willing to listen to them if they do). But I suspect I will struggle with those questions for some time now.

I'm pleased to announce that this blog is now back online. I'd like to apologize to my readers for the lengthy delay. The original plan was to move to a new hosting service over the weekend before New Year's Day and be back up in time to celebrate 2007. Unfortunately, the best laid plans of mice and men...

Originally I had everything downloaded from my previous service by December 28. So on December 29, I contacted the new service I had decided to go with. I had some experience with their services, as they currently hose the website for Paths of the Old Ways, and a friend had nothing but wonderful things to say about them. Unfortunately, my experiences were radically different. Let's just say that despite charging my credit card for a two year subscription on December 29, they had not provided me with the details to log into my account and upload my site when I called and demanded a refund this morning. And this was in spite of the fact that I contacted them several times via email and phone to get this information. Each time I talked to them, i was assured that the matter would be taken care of "immediately," only to be forgotten immediately instead.

Fortunately, I spent today finding a much more attentive and responsive company to host this blog and my other sites. Indeed, despite the fact that I only signed on with them today, they've worked with me to get everything set up in under eight hours. So to my new hosting service, I say, "Thank you and may the gods smile upon you always."

Beyond that, I hope everyone had a pleasant New Year. Mine was okay, though somewhat darkened by a family tragedy. But I'll go into more details about that in an upcoming entry.

Howdy, folks. This is a quick entry to let you know that I'm getting ready to change webhosting services. I will spend the next day or two downloading all of my webpages on three subdomains, creating a backup copy of my Movable Type database, aquiring hosting elsewhere, and restoring everything to the new site. I hope to have everything done by the start of the new year, but who knows what will happen.

From your perspective, the change should be transparent. I'll still be located at the northerngrove.com domain. So once I've gotten set back up and the new DNS information has propogated, things will be business as usual.

In preparation for the move, I'm disabling comments and trackbacks. That way, nothing gets lost once I start the moving process. I hope all my readers have a wonderful new year, and I'll see you when the dust settles.

It appears that setting things straight with my domain name registration went smoother than I expected. Within 24 hours of demonstrating I'm who I say I am, my registrar cleared everything up so I could renew my domain.

The other good news is that this time, my renewal is for two years. Which means I don't have to worry about this until 2008.

My domain registration expires on Wednesday. I'm working on renewing it, but I've hit a bit of a speed bump. I'm not sure everything will be resolved by then, so this blog (and the whole NorthernGrove.com domain) may disappear for a while. I apologize for this inconvenience, and promise to get things back up and running as soon as possible. If you wish to keep following any thoughts I may have during this downtime, I recommend that you check out my Blogger.com blog.

I realize it's been a while since I posted anything. To be honest, life has been a bit crazy, recently. My project at work has hit a critical point, and I've been putting a lot of time and energy into sorting through some difficulties we're having. In fact, in about half an hour, I need to leave to spend a few hours at work this morning. Yes, I have to go into work on a Saturday. But I refuse to pity myself over this.

Needless to say, by the time I get home, I just don't have the mental capacity or motivation to sit down and write. I certainly don't have the capacity to write something interesting or witty, which is something I still feel I need to work towards whenever I write. I hate to feel like I'm writing something that no one -- not even me -- will ever want to read.

However, my life hasn't been devoid of all things non-work. I did manage to get a few odds and ends done around here. This past Wednesday, I took a two hour class in bead-making. The class used Italian glass and a propane-oxygen torch. Amazingly, I made it through both hours without burning myself a single time. Being the clumsy person I am, that's saying something. It was an interesting experience, and I think I kind of like bead-making. The instructor was quite pleased with many of us. She said that some of us (including me, apparently) were already showing a certain level of control in the process (learning where to hold the bead in relation to the flame so that the glass is malleable but not flowing uncontrollably is a bit of a trick) that usually takes several hours of practice to develop. This afternoon, I'm going back to the studio to pick up my beads. I'm anxious to see how they turned out. Maybe I'll even post pictures.

I enjoyed the experience enough that I'm seriously considering signing up for the next class and participating in a few of the "Open Torch" classes. Open torch is actually more of a lab where you get three hours with a torch to work on your own at your own pace. These sessions are good for experimenting more and improving technique. Also, my mother's interesting in giving it a try, so I'll probably end up taking the intro course with her again in a couple months.

I also had a bit of a personal conquest here on my MT blog. I have MT configured on this site so that I can set up blogs on multiple subdomains. This means that the CGI scripts are set up in the main domain. Well, due to Internet Explorer's attempts at security, the Typekey comment validation system wasn't quite work right. Basically, people could sign in with their Typekey account, but the comment page would never show them as logged in. All SixApart offers as a solution for this problem is instructions on how to set up IE to get around the problem.

Now, I'm a stickler about certain things. I'm strongly opposed to the idea of asking readers to adjust their web browser's settings -- especially their security settings -- to make my web page work correctly. So I did a bit of research, studied the MT code, and found a workable hack to fix the problem on my end. So now, if you're using IE and choose to use Typekey to comment, everything works beautifully.

As an aside, I highly recommend using typekey. For starters, it's free. Also, by using it, I can make you a "known good commenter," which means that your comments will never end up in the junk comment bin by mistake. (So far, I've never had that problem, but I've heard of other MT users finding "real" comments in the junk filter enough to be concerned about it.) Plus there's also the handy fact that if you use Typekey, I can actually view all of your comments on a single page. I like that kind of functionality.

So that's my life in a nutshell. Maybe I'll have more to write later this weekend. After all, I am going to a psychic faire this afternoon (weather permitting).

Beginning things is usually the hardest part of any endeavor. Finding the "first" is the most tricky. This is mainly because it seems like such a daunting task. Finding the first word in an entry, the first entry of a new blog, or the first thing to say to that cute guy across the room that you're practially drooling over can seem fearsome.

I think this is mainly because we realize that much of any endeavor is overshadowed and defined by that first step we take. It is that first step which sets us out on a solid path or leads us into the mirky depths of a morass -- or worse, the rubble-strewn path that leads to destruction. But perhaps I'm being a bit melodramatic with that last part. It's entirely possible. I've never denied my love for a bit of melodrama. (Denying such a thing would be a dangerous thing to do.)

But in this case, my melodrama serves a purpose. I think we often do see things that way, which is why we fear beginning anything. We see those first steps not just as something which will overshadow the further endeavor, but as something which fatalistically determines the final result of the entire endeavor. We tend to see the "false step" as the harbringer of inevitable annihilation. And it is up to us to realize the falsehood in this.

The false step, while it may have some negative and lasting effect, is not the end of the world. Instead, it is merely a step which needs to be corrected for. Once we step into the murky swamp, we must realize it and seek a course that will take us back to more solid ground. But at least we are already moving. Even a brief walk down the supposed "path of destruction," is better than being frozen at the crossroads unable to make any move out of fear.

It is with these thoughts that I open this new blog. It's the reason I worked to get it up so quickly. When I originally started looking at setting it up, I started looking for skins and designs to have set up. I almost made the error of letting my search of the "perfect setup" stop me from action. It was only when I got thinking about it that I accepted that instead, I should simply get the blog rolling. Now that I am making this post, I can turn my attention elsewhere. I can now start the research and study I want to do in order to make a more personal design. But I can do this knowing that the real work of the blog -- the writing -- has already begun.