Yes, in just seven posts I will have hit 5,000 (over a 19-year period). The pressure is on to write something spectacular/moving/funny/insightful.
But it will probably be a picture of a cat.
But not this one:
Yes, in just seven posts I will have hit 5,000 (over a 19-year period). The pressure is on to write something spectacular/moving/funny/insightful.
But it will probably be a picture of a cat.
But not this one:
What can I say about people?
People are:
But also sometimes:
I have nothing else to offer tonight except this cat acting fierce toward its own shadow.
On Mastodon, Geoge Takei linked to a story about a Jeopardy answer (that is, question), that got the “real name” of Sideshow Bob wrong. Sideshow Bob, as any longtime fan of The Simpsons (now in its 800th season) knows, is the murderous sidekick of Krusty the Clown.
The incorrect question as it appeared on the show:
The inspiration for the character’s name, from the writers of the episode that revealed his real name:
All well and good so far. Jeopardy put in some u’s instead of o’s. But the site (comicsands.com, which is part of Takei’s media holdings) then went on to include this:
Good ol’ Krust the Clown1Takei got repeatedly dunked on Masotdon for this, in case you were wondering. I’ve used screenshots because the typo will likely be fixed in the future. The internet never forgets..
Anyway, this is a long way to go to point out a minor typo, but I gotta get the post count here up. Also, Krust the Clown just sounds funny.
That is all.
Spring is starting out strong this year, as it is coinciding with the last bit of the unusually warm weather we’ve had over the last few days. It’ll be back to seasonal or seasonal-ish after that.
For now, though, it is pleasant and sunny and things are getting greener (in a good way).
And now, a spring bunny:
It’s my annual post celebrating the arrival of Daylight Saving Time, which should totally be permanent but isn’t because politicians are dum-dums.
I will cherish that extra hour of light this evening by going out and revelling in the lightness of it all. Unless it’s raining, in which case I’ll be inside and hiding.
This is from the 10-day weather forecast. As I post this, it is March 9, 2024.
The normal high on these days, the last of which is the final day of Winter 2023/24, is 11C. As you can see, they are predicting a high up to 20C, which is almost double that and is legitimate t-shirt weather.
Even better: Only the first two days would establish new records, as we hit 20C on March 18 five years ago, in 2019.
Anyway, it will make for nice running weather if it happens. Unnerving, weird and unsettling, but nice.
In Part 2, I offer some takes on platforms I skipped, summarize my experiences with ones I’ve tested, and offer some alternatives to blogging altogether.
Here are a few sites I skipped because they focus on text over images, though some do support images.
Some of these may seem pretty obvious, I include them, anyway.
For Part 3, I will be doing more research and narrowing down my choices a bit more.
Here is another cat GIF. The cat is industriously working away on its blog, All the Mews Fit to Print.
I can think of one:
NO!
We got snow last night, and it had the temerity to start sticking. There’s still some left this morning. Who decided it would be funny to flip January and March around? Why is Mother Nature being such a jerk?
The 10-day forecast claims that it will be 14C on March 13th. WE’LL SEE.
In the meantime, I’ll be here, huddled next to the heater.
Back in January I wrote that I was contemplating moving off of WordPress for various reasons.
Back then, I posted four possible options:
I have narrowed down these options to one (and a half):
The next question is: Which WordPress alternative? Because it turns out there are a lot of options. Like, a lot. Oodles. Too many.
But since my needs are specific and known, I can winnow down the list. If your needs are like mine, this might be useful for you, too. If not, there is an animated GIF of a cat at the end of this post.
My needs (also in the linked post above, but paraphrased here):
Pretty basic stuff, really. If I eliminated photos (I will not do this, but let’s pretend), my choices would be nigh-infinite. I could go for one of many super-minimalist blogging sites. But having no photos would also mean no drawings, which are like photos I put together with my hands and brain instead of a camera. This is a dealbreaker. I don’t want to revive my old Flickr account.
That clears out the wide array of minimalist, text-only sites. What’s left? Still oodles!
Important note: I am omitting blogs that lean into more technical, nerdy skills to set up or maintain, so there's nothing here that installs from a command line or runs from a folder or requires scripting, etc. These follow the flow of: Write a post Click a button Your thoughts are on the internet
Here’s an incomplete list:
And a quick summary of them, with some emphasis on what I’m looking for:
This is probably the most WordPress-like, and it takes the most direct aim at WordPress and its features, claiming to be better/faster and, in some cases, cheaper.
The biggest con is that it’s $9 U.S. per month minimum1All prices listed here are in U.S. dollars. This is a lot of money to record my inane thoughts that could just as easily be typed into Notepad for free. You can also self-host Ghost, which is cheaper, but not exactly a simple process.
Ghost does have another notable pro, though–it can import from WordPress, so the nearly 4,000 inane posts I’ve made here could be carried over.
This is reasonably priced at $5 a month, but has an emphasis on community (not a bad thing if you’re looking for that) and while longer pieces are possible, the focus is more on short, quick posts.
There’s a free plan, with some reasonable limits, so you can try before you buy (note: as of this post, the free plan is listed as “Closed for now”), and it’s $6 per month after if you pay annually. It supports not just photos, but albums. It has a blog community and supports newsletters, which suggests it has started moving away from its personal blog roots.
Pika has a free plan that is essentially a trial–you can make 50 posts, and then you’re done. So if you only ever have 50 things to say, you don’t have to pay! It’s otherwise $6 a month. It emphasizes a great writing experience, has some simple themes, and supports images. It’s also really new, as it just launched at the end of January 2024.
With a name like Blogtastic, you would expect this to be a good blogging platform. It has multiple plans, including Starter for $20 and Expert for $50. Prices are going up on April 1st, though (no foolin’), with new names like Hobby for $50 and Startup for $100. I don’t think the old $20 and new $50 plans match up, though their chart doesn’t make it especially clear.
Anyway, this platform seems to offer everything and has been running for about three years, so it’s still relatively new. It feels like a Ghost competitor and, indeed, they compare themselves directly to Ghost, stating that they are more focused on writing and less on “secondary” things. They claim their gallery management is “robust”!
There’s a $5 per month Founder Plan (good for 10 blogs) and–that’s it! No other options. It keeps things simple. Posthaven bills itself, somewhat weirdly, as “the blogging platform designed to outlive us.” I mean, OK, but I’m not sure if I care much about my blog a hundred years after I’ve departed the Earth for parts unknown.
A major caveat for me is image sizes seem to be limited due to their theming. They mention 800 pixels max, which is tiny and probably a dealbreaker.
Having gone through these, the ones I feel can be eliminated are:
This leaves Pika, write.as and Blogtastic. Currently, only one offers a free trial of sorts, so I’ll give Pika a test-run and do more research on write.as and Blogtastic.
Coming up in Part 2:
Here is the promised cat GIF for this post: