this blog of mine

Redesign hell ~or~ How not to change your blog after 18 years

I started this blog in February 2005, which means it’s 18 years old. In Canada, that means my blog can drive, vote in federal elections and join the army. It has to wait a bit longer before it can gamble.

But I don’t have to wait, and gamble I did!

Since WordPress has no easy way to work in a staged environment, when you want to make changes, you either have to go through the rigmarole of setting up a local server, or just make changes on your live site and hope for the best.

Which is what I’ve been doing the last few days.

What I have learned:

  • After 18 years, my site has accumulated a lot of legacy cruft
  • This cruft can do interesting and/or alarming things when you poke at it
  • Different parts connect in unexpected ways. Imagine if your elbows connected to your knees, it’s kind of like that.
  • Things that should work logically will often defy logic
  • Sometimes it turns out to be user error
  • More than a few times, really
  • But not always!
  • Planning ahead is a good thing to do
  • I should have planned ahead, which I did not do
  • But even just starting on this journey, I have cleaned up a lot of that cruft:
    • Old, inactive widgets have been purged
    • Outdated links and thingies have been removed
    • Legacy stuff has been converted over to blocks where possible
    • I’ve backed up all the weird CSS changes that are in Simple CSS
    • I’ve documented every weird thing I’m likely to forget
  • I’ve experimented with colours, but right now it’s just a sedate green/grey combo
  • I will actually need to figure out what I want to show up front and what will be tucked away

Currently, the site looks a lot more green. I added some nice rounded corners on the individual posts because round corners are the new hot thing. But it’s otherwise pretty stripped down and ready for more serious remodelling. This stuff takes a lot of time, so I’m not sure how quickly it will happen, but at least I’ve started.

A tale of too many plugins

Yesterday’s site shenanigans have now been resolved, and it made me realize I had way too many unused plugins hanging around, doing nothing except potentially causing problems (which one did, yesterday).

I’ve deleted a bunch and will delete a bunch more before I’m done. This will also help with the site redesign, so I will later claim it was part of the plan all along, somehow.

And now, another cat:

Proposed site logo, 2023 edition

Yeah, I’m still mulling the site redesign. I’ll get to it eventually. Probably.

In the meantime, I used Canva and some stock objects and background to make this:

And this:

Both are magical. I didn’t even notice I’d used a Star Trek font in the second one until later.

Also, apparently I have a thing for pickles? How Freudian!

Now, I won’t actually use these for site logos, but part of me really wants to. I will continue to mull what to really do…

This blog of mine: A 2023 reflection of sorts

Stats as of Wednesday, March 15, 2023

On February 2, 2005 I wrote my first post on this blog. You can read it here (it’s a mere single paragraph): Bloggity blog blog

In fact, why even make you click? Here it is, in its entirely:

I was the last one to get bell bottom jeans in grade 5 and now I’m the last person on the Internet to have a blog. Hooray for me! As you may have guessed, I am using WordPress for my blogging needs. An apparent feature of WordPress is relentless self-promotion, as witnessed by the three separate links for the software on this very page. I’ll be culling a few soon and adding some other links that might prove interesting or not.

Me, February 2, 2005

Not exactly a fascinating debut, but actual interesting writing eventually made its way to the site.

Eventually.

Here are some 2005 fun facts:

  • Facebook didn’t exist
  • Twitter didn’t exist
  • Netflix existed but only rented out DVDs
  • Blockbuster still existed
  • The current version of Windows was Windows XP
  • I had hair (I would keep it for six more years)
  • I was 40 years old, which seems almost kind of young now (scary)

Today, I came across a story about an even older blog–https://kottke.org/. He has a billion more posts than me, has had an actual impact on the web (he created the permalink!) and has been on TV. It made me wonder what sort of impact my blog and its 4280 posts has had on the world, and whether that matters.

I suppose it doesn’t matter as long as the blog entertains me, or serves some kind of useful function for me (I think it does). But I do sometimes ponder about starting up another blog with a tighter focus (reworking this site would seem to almost go against the chaotic randomness of it). But the problem with going with a tighter focus is…my brain tends to wander all over the place. Imagine it with legs and a cute little suitcase. I write, I draw, I take photos, I run, I ponder, I make lists, I post things I find amusing or stupid. I complain (I have long-struggled to minimize the latter).

And in the end, I never do make that other more focused site, because I am not a focused person. At least not yet. Let’s see if I am for the 25th anniversary of this blog. Only seven years to go!

I don’t know what to write, send help!

Actually, it’s probably more than I can’t focus long enough to sit down and write something. In any case, I intend to start cranking up the old writing machine in the next few days, seeing if I can hit a goal of an average of two posts per day for the month (62 total). As of right now, I am 10 posts behind. That’s a lot of McTopics. I need to get cracking.

Here’s a haiku to start. I even wrote it myself instead of outsourcing it to ChatGPT!

Time to Write

Time to get writing
Put fingers on the keyboard
Magic gushes out

Er, maybe I’ll try another haiku tomorrow.

Spring-cleaning for the brain

Yeah, it’s not spring yet, but I feel like my brain could use a good spring cleaning. Lately, I’ve been coming up empty for writing and drawing. Is it the time of year? Is it lack of sleep? Is it some other unpleasant thing in my life, like mismatched socks?

I don’t know.

So consider this post a cry for help.

But also, here’s an amusing cat image:

Exciting blog topics: Too exciting

a vintage typewriter
I love stock photos. Photo by Suzy Hazelwood on Pexels.com

I asked ChatGPT to generate ten exciting blog topics because I didn’t even write anything yesterday and felt bad. It came up with a list that’s way too ambitious compared to the kind of mindless frippery I usually post here. So I’m just going to paste its list instead and call this a success.

10 Exciting Blog Topics

  1. “Exploring the Future of Artificial Intelligence and its Impact on Society”
  2. “The Rise of Remote Work and its Effect on Productivity”
  3. “Sustainability in the Fashion Industry: How Brands are Making a Difference”
  4. “The Science of Sleep: Understanding the Importance of a Good Night’s Rest”
  5. “The Evolution of Virtual Reality: How it is Changing the Way We Experience the World”
  6. “The Future of Transportation: Electric Cars, Hyperloops, and More”
  7. “The Mental Health Benefits of Gardening and How to Get Started”
  8. “The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare”
  9. “The Future of Food: How Technology is Changing the Way We Grow and Eat”
  10. “Exploring the Benefits of Mindfulness Meditation and How to Get Started”

A brief experiment in user registration. Goodbye vanderpoo.

man wearing brown suit jacket mocking on white telephone
Literally the only image that comes up when I search “spam” on Pexels. Photo by Moose Photos on Pexels.com

After getting nothing but spam accounts endlessly registering on this site (but unable to post because the first post any account makes must be manually approved by me before it can post freely afterwards), I shut off registrations altogether. My blog–this site–officially became me shouting into the void, with people unable to directly comment or cajole.

Today, I ran an experiment: I once again allowed user registrations.

Within moments, a new user had registered: clintonvanderpoo

Yeah.

I mean, I kind of like how the name is sort of a portmanteau as imagined by a spambot, but still, having a poo name show up within seconds of opening registrations, while unsurprising, was a tiny bit depressing. I’m not exactly lamenting the old days of Internet Explorer 6 circa 2001, but the web has certainly changed since then. In most ways, for the better.

But not quite in every way.

Footnotes, get yer footnotes

I use a WordPress plugin called Modern Footnotes1You can check it here: Modern Footnotes plugin to make pop-up balloons for posts. Yes, not actual footnotes, because this isn’t a Grade 8 Social Studies paper2I still have some of the essays I wrote in high school and college. Toward the end I think I was getting bored, because my focus seemed to be more on wordplay and being funny than extensive research and nuanced arguments, but pop-ups that appear when you click on the footnote number, allowing you to keep your place while reading about funny cats3Cats are funny people, my runs4Officially up to 735!, my weight5Treading water at the moment or my latest excuses for not taking part in National Novel Writing Month6Too many to fit into a footnote or pop-up.

Today I spent some time modifying the CSS of the footnotes and almost have them the way I want them. Almost. They’re more round and bigger and a little sexier.

This concludes my programming FOR THE ENTIRE YEAR.