Blogging

Changes Afoot

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Since I started blogging back in March of 2003 I have had several names for my blog. I have had even more URL’s for it. From the first site I had on blogger.com, to hosting with Gus, to the several iterations of the site on Typepad. When I switched the name of the blog to Powerpedia back in April 2005, I also changed the URL to it. I did this mainly because I needed to distance my blogging from my day to day internet usage such as email, and my personal website. This was because of pressure from my employer at the time who had bad opinions about blogging. Well I should clarify that it was the CEO only who had a problem. HR, and my boss the CTO didn’t really have an issue with it, but you do what the boss wanted. This was the time I started moving posts related to work to a private blog. New posts about work that were a bit detailed went onto the private site. Even after doing that I was still a bit paranoid about “the wrong people” finding my site I went to great lengths to get rid of any direct references that would identify me. I know that is not really possible but I tried my best.

More recently I have wanted to reverse the steps I had taken to be anonymous. It was recommended to me that by saying who I am may not be such a bad thing. For one more and more people are looking into peoples web presence when recruiting. That and over the past year I have been becoming more involved in online social sites. From Linkedin for work to Facebook for friends. And yes Match.com for dating. Having a presence on the web that says who I am and displays my opinions and ideas might be a good thing. Now it can still be a bad thing, but I have always considered myself an upfront and direct person anyway so why should I care if someone researches me and finds this blog anyway? The biggest concern is what an employer or prospective employer might think. I have been sanitizing what I talk about with regard to work for ages, and the stuff I do talk about I think shows off the cool and interesting projects and the honest trials and tribulations of my job.

That being said I have moved the URL for this site to a domain name that I use for most other uses on the web. The new site URL is blog.powerz.org/. This change also breaks all old links on www.powerpedia.net/ This was inevitable. The old site layout always forced any URL for the entire site to be www.powerpedia.net/blog/ I didn’t like the added sub directory blog, but I never realized what I did to force that. After looking into the domain mapping settings in the Typepad FAQ I figured out I had setup Powerpedia.net to be the domain for all of blogs and picture blogs on the service. I didn’t really care about that so I adjusted it so the new URL just pointed to this blog. Any other sites I have on Typepad (I can have 3) will get another URL. This means that the switch from www.powerpedia.net to blog.powerz.org also caused the directory structure of the site to change. That means no old links will work. I have setup a redirector so if you type in the old main URL of powerpedia.net it will redirect you, but I doubt that RSS feeds or other links will work. That is what I get for progress!

The name of the site will still remain Powerpedia, because I like the name and it is still catchy.

The next step for this site is for me to actually say who I am. I know it is no big mystery, but it is a big mental step for me to simply say my name in writing on this site and click post! That should happen soon, I hope.

My Blog Entry For Monday 6-23-2008

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I think I am going to get back to basics on some of these posts. I want to write down simply what I did for the day. This is how I originally started writing a journal many years ago before blogs got big. I will still have regular posts like I normally do, but i want ot have at least a blirb about what I did for the day. I will keep the titles simple like the one I have on this post. I am doing that just because it is hard to come up with snappy titles all the time.

Today I worked on some status reports for my boss. I worked on getting the status of several projects that are in progress right now. I also had to rebuild my desktop in the office in between working on stuff. The linux install I put on last week wasn’t working out, and the backup image I took of the machine didn’t work so all I could do was do a restore from the factory defaults. Thankfully that doesn’t require allot of effort from me.

I went to the post office to ship my Treo 750 that I sold on ebay. Thankfully it didn’t rain as I walked the 10 blocks to the nearest post office. I don’t understand how in mid town manhattan you have to go 10 blocks in any direction to find a post office. Oh well.

It was unusually hot in my office today. I don’t get it since it was only like 75 degrees outside today. Maybe it was the humidity. It got worse in the afternoon when I had a meeting in my office and there were 4 of us with the door closed. Man it can cook when you do that. Thankfully the meeting was very productive and I think we have a game plan for solving some design questions on an old hardware platform we need to support for a while linger. Now I have to write up a proposal to our vendor and see what they think.

I got out of the office at a reasonable time. I cooked up some stuff I had fresh from my Fresh Direct on Sunday. That was tasty. I got to talk to both my parents, and I emailed my brother in law back an answer to a question he sent me. I got to relax at home after that. I also even had a chance to write this post.

Chair Blogging

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I am attempting to write on my Sony Vaio laptop I have from work. It is so tiny. It is one of those 2.5lbs units with a tiny screen. I have to push the fonts up to 22pt in order for me to see things when I put the laptop on my lap. They keyboard is small, but so far I am able to touch time without tons of errors. I don't know how long i can do it for.

Even though the laptop is less than 3lbs this is the first weekend I have taken it home. I had to get everything configured properly on it as well as get a power adapter so i can leave it at home. I know, I have a Macbook that I travel to and from work with, but when I am home it acts like a desktop so this tiny guy is nice to have for times like right now when i want to sit on my comfy chair and type. It also has broadband access so i can get on the internet from anywhere Sprint has mobile service. That makes it worth it to travel with. OK enough talking about extra computers that I am tinkering with.

When It Rains, It Pours

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It is weird. I go months without writing very much at all on this blog, and then there are times where I have written 4 or 5 posts in a day. This week is one of those times where I have queued up a bunch of posts. I know it is because I have free time to write because I have time off between jobs. I just find it funny. I am aiming (I have said that allot) to set aside more time to sit and write. I always find it therapeutic but when my schedule is hectic it gets put aside too often. I think when I start my new job I will force myself to set aside a half an hour before I goto bed to write what’s on my mind. That by the way is why there are plenty of topics I repeatedly talk about and others that I don’t touch very much or at all. I talk about what comes to mind that I can put into coherent thought in print. There are plenty of times I have stuff to say about my social life, dating or whatever and I just don’t feel like articulating it into words. So instead I write about mobile phone woes or some cool new toy I got at work. I guess I am shy about writing about some stuff. Go figure?

Non Glamourous Blog Updates

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Since I have given my two weeks notice my boss has not asked very much of me. I have completed most of what I can hand off to other people, and now I am in limbo until my two weeks are up. I am helpful when I can be, but since my last day is tomorrow I am pretty much out of the loop already. In my somewhat spare time I have tried to keep busy. I have put some time into some much needed cleanup of my blog and website. If you read this site and know me, you know that I haven’t said who publicly. If you do know me you see huge hints at who I am, but I haven’t ever been public about it. Over the past year however I have talked less about my work and more about general technology and stuff going on in my life. I have talked about general projects I work on, but nothing detailed that would get me into trouble. This is a departure from a few years ago when I was very detailed and vocal on the blog. Those expressive posts about work have mainly been moved to a private blog I have dedicated to work that is outside the public eye.

Over the past few days I have gone through and vetted out many of the remaining detailed posts from years past that talked more about work interactions vs what projects were going on. There are still tons of posts regarding work, especially early years at “Widget Tech” (still anonymous for now), but the more personal stuff has been moved private. I still will write about anything I want, but I will be maintaining the public/private blog for the foreseeable future.

You may be wondering why this matters? Well in the near future I would like to be less anonymous and more open about who I am on this site. I will see what rules my new employer has on blogging, if any to be sure that I observe them, but above that I want to be open about who I am. Most of the people I know that do blog are public about it, so I shouldn’t let one incident many years ago prevent me from constructively expressing myself online.

On that note, I had installed WordPress on my hosted account like I mentioned I would last night. I even imported all my posts from Typepad and tried to mimic all the widgets I have on my Typepad account. The end result looked pretty good, but not good enough in my and a few close friends opinions. That means I stick with Typepad. Hey, if you know me you know I blow more than the annual subscription fee in going out on a weekend!

One change that will happen when I make my identity more public will be I will move my domain that I use publicly to this blog. I will also try to en corporate the last remnants of my “traditional” website pages into this site also. I have drafts of some pages already, and one ore two are already posted. Allot of these changes are not really important but time consuming. I used my time this week working on them. I also switched the theme again. This one is more a darker blue, and less pastel. I am not sure if I like it better or not, but it will stick around for a little while.

The Moveable Type Experiment

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Last week I had installed Moveable Type 4.1 community edition on my hosting account. This week I am uninstalling it. I liked the way it looked, and it was easy to use, but I ran into a fundamental issue with it. I cannot publish my content. I tried to import my content from Typepad to the new MT4 site I created to see how it looked before I decided if I was going to switch or not. The import worked fine, but I have not been able to publish the new content since I brought it into MT4. I don’t know if it is an issue with the server I am on at my hosting provider, an issue with the software, or some configuration issue I caused, but it just doesn’t work. I don’t think I configured anything wrong since everything works fine except for the publish. I see content going back to 2005, but the publish never completes. I have posts going back to 2003. That leads me to think the publish is just choking on the server it is on. That is a problem.

I only have a few more days to tinker with this before I don’t have free time anymore (new job starts Monday). I am going to give WordPress another try. At this point I think it is just easier to leave everything on Typepad and not worry about dealing with configurations. I like to try new stuff out, but for real world use the hosted service seems just easier.

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Trying Moveable Type 4

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I have been continuing to play around with blogging software on my web hosting account. I finally decided to no longer be lazy and try an install of Moveable Type. WordPress is was easy to install on my hosting account because my provider Site5 offers a simple install script that takes about 2 minutes to run. You need to know nothing about linux software installation. I on the other hand know a little (not much but a little) so I decided to stop procrastinating and try the personal edition of Moveable Type. I was surprised at how easy they did make the install from the last time I tried to do it. Of course that was 2 versions and several years ago.

The point is I was able to get the software installed with no major issues. So far it looks good. I am comparing Moveable Type with WordPress, and my currently hosted blog at Typepad. What I am noticing is that Typepad has allot more bells and whistles built in, vs either of the other platforms. For example, the widgets make life easy. Moveable Type & WordPress both have widgets but neither of them are as nice as what Typepad offers. That of course is only my opinion.

The verdict? Well it is probably too early to say, but besides the cost involved in hosting my blog with a service provider like Typepad on top of my normal mail and site hosting I think that Typepad is still better. The major sticking point I have right now is that I cannot use custom themes with the current package I have on Typepad. I don’t really want to pay the extra fee per year to get the ability to use custom theme’s, but I want to play around with them. I am leaning to just trying out the themes I want on the MT4 install I just did, and if I find one I really like I can always pay to upgrade Typepad.

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Blog Theme Change

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My previous theme on this blog has been around in some for or another for a few years. I have wanted to change it for some time but frankly I hadn’t found a better one to switch to. I had used a stock theme from Typepad for a while but the column for the blog content was too small even on a large monitor. Because of that I kept going back to my old custom blue theme. It at least had a flexible column setup so if you read the site on a larger window the columns would resize to fit accordingly. Well I finally found a new theme that I wanted to give a try. It isn’t as flexible as what i had but it doesn’t suck as much as the other ones i have tried. It also looks nice! It was this or try the radicle option of doing my blog over in WordPress on my regular hosted site account (that is still something i am pondering).

Flickr Spree

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Over the past two months I have been tasking myself with a digital clean up so to speak. I have been spending some of my free time going through my photo album in iPhoto. I have been uploading everything of value onto Flickr. The uploading isn’t too hard, but I am trying to take the time to tag and organize everything. Back in September when I shut down my hosting account I wanted to put my photo’s somewhere, so I upgraded my Flickr account to Pro. Since I didn’t have a Gallery site anymore I wanted my photos on Flickr.

I now have my recent history in photo’s up online. I think I have most photos back to about 2000 uploaded. There are still allot since 2000 that are not up, but they are the less important photos. Next task is to get to some of my older photos I have taken at camp, either as a councilor in the 90’s or on my teen tour’s as a camper in the late 80’s. After that it will probably be the photo’s I got from my parents of the family. That might take a while, because there is a lot of them. I don’t think of this as a waste of time, because it is like organizing my life in pictures. It is kind of fun. This is going to be a work in progress for some time. The big question is always what photo’s can be made visible to all, and what if any of them should be left more private for friends and family? So far I have been pretty open about what I put up there, but with a young niece and nephew you have to be worried about crazies getting too much information off of some post or picture.

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Blogging Update

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I am actually writing, but you don’t see the results here just now. I have found it wise to leave most current work related entries on a site secured from the general public. I also write some of my more personal stuff in another secured journal. Unfortunately that hasn’t left much to put up on this site. I hope to change that. I am thinking I am going to continue to write work related entries on the private work blog, and only publish them here when I leave a job. That way I am not under and obligations or restrictions. The other thing is that by the time anything is published it is extremely dated and most likely no longer relevant. Some posts still will never make the light of day just due to what I write, but I not going to totally disregard common sense and publish everything I write.