I have a number of blogs that I write in (or at least create content for) and a number of other blogs that I’ve set up for other people. This particular blog has been active since April 2002 (close to eight years!). I started putting entries from a hand-written journal from 1975 into this blog and then decided that there must be a better way for that journal to be put online. Maybe sometime in the coming year I’ll get back to that.
I like writing in the blog. As I’ve said on a number of other entries, my process is to write with me sometime in the future as the audience allowing anyone who wishes to read along. The format is generally OK and the process has certainly gotten a lot easier as the WordPress software has gone through additional releases. I installed the latest release (2.9) on this blog a week ago to test it out and immediately got bit by a new bug. It seems that scheduled posts don’t get released! I had written a number of “2009 in Review” entries before we left home on our Casual Trip East and scheduled them to release on the planned date at 8 p.m. Mountain Standard Time. I suddenly noticed a few days ago that the release wasn’t happening. There’s a release 2.9.1 coming in the next couple of days that will fix this bug. That did give me a chance to reschedule a couple of entries and write some new ones to replace them.
My other blogs that pertain to me include:
Raised Bed Gardening – I built this site last Spring to support my effort to sell some raised garden beds at the local farmer’s market. I did get a little business and a few visits to the website, but not nearly like I was hoping. I’ll do some revisions to this website in February. I think that there’s still some opportunity to sell stuff at the market, just need to figure out what I can make at a less-than-thirty-dollar price tag that would sell. Suggestions welcome.
My Twitter Stream – This website is automatically maintained by a program I wrote that pulls down everything I send to Twitter and everything anyone on Twitter addresses to me. The program runs a little bit after midnight each day and puts the results out as a blog entry. For the most part the site has worked fine. Every once in a while, Twitter changes (without any notice) how their program interface operates and I have to modify my program. This same program also captures the twitter stream for my favorite brother (Perry) and my oldest son (James).
Get My Ham Radio License – I put this website up in November to document my process of getting my ham radio license. I’m completely revamping the website. It started off as a blog, and I will continue writing blog entries, but the focus will change now that I have the license (I’m officially K7OJL!). I haven’t found any really good websites oriented around the “how-to” of Ham Radio. For instance, I’d like to try some of the data modes of communication. What I’ve found on the web has not been helpful to me at all. So, the new version (which should be out in early January) will be much more of a how to do something along with the blog of my experiences with ham radio.
Blogging still isn’t as easy and straightforward as it needs to be. The basic premise of blogging is that the most recent post is at the top of the list. However, the archives should be organized oldest first to newest (they aren’t at present). Tagging isn’t particularly easy. Being able to grab stuff directly from iPhoto, SmugMug, or Flickr would be very helpful. Being able to automatically generate a table of contents and an index would be delightful (more along a book model). I expect that some of this will happen in the coming year, which will definitely be goodness.
Ta ta for now!