If you have a skill, and you don’t practice it for a good ten years or so, the skill goes away. You can maybe get it back if you start practicing again, but it’s not instant.
No, this has nothing to do with me reviving two defunct blogs this weekend, why do you ask?
Having some problems with Mynt, the static site generator that I use to update this site. It stopped working at some point since I last posted forever ago. I’ve fixed most of the issues but you’ll notice you can’t get to older posts, and the previous and next links don’t work.
Should have it all fixed shortly.
I’m going to try to start blogging again for the millionth time. I really do enjoy blogging, I just get distracted, and it’s tough to actually do it from work, which is where I tend to get the ideas for blog posts. This time you know I’m serious, though, because I set a reminder on my phone to start blogging agian.
Over/Under on posts before I forget about this again is three.
Whenever I see the traffic to this page and this page quadruple, I know that Wikimetro has sent out another batch of spam to various bloggers, pitching their scam. If Wikimetro contacts you, ignore them. Or, better yet, file a complaint. I was thinking of complaining here, but never got around to it. I don’t think the FBI appreciates online scams very much.
The scammy scammers from WikiMetro, who take money to put ads on sites that don’t accept them, have contacted me again. See here and here for my previous contact with them.
Hi Drupalcon, Thanks for the email. Let’s schedule a time to talk on the telephone about this. Please go to http://list.wikimetro.org/contact.aspx Choose ‘Phone’ (it requires you to create a username) and choose a time for us to call you back. We’ve been a bit busy, but we can usually call you back in 10 minutes. Lisa Anderson Customer Service Wikimetro
They called me “Drupalcon” again. I know my custom site layout doesn’t follow conventions (I didn’t know this when I built it, and a redesign is in the works) so that automatic site parsers get confused. But starting a business relationship by scraping blogs for contact info is insane. I have never emailed them. And listing my blog on their site as “participating” is an outright lie, as well. Your blog may be listed on their site, too – you can check here to see. Do NOT pay them $25 to have ads appear on this site. If you really want to put ads here, I’m happy to talk, but I’m not sure my traffic is really worth your time. Anyway, I wasn’t sure when they first contacted me, but there is no doubt in my mind that Wikimetro is a scam, and you should have nothing to do with them.
Wednesday’s post got into The Express. For those not familiar, The Express is a free paper that gets handed out all over the city, most importantly on Metro – I’d guess that anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 of all Metro riders as least browse The Express a couple times a week. I won’t complain about being in the Express – I think it’s awesome. I’ve occasionally seen blogs I know in there, but never mine. Anyway, it figures that they’d notice me on a day when I’m being a bit of a jerk. I was in a bad mood because of my meeting later in the day (1:30 to 4! That’s too long for any meeting) and, as I am prone to do, I mouthed off about something that wasn’t really what was bothering me, but was sort of related and was handy at the time. So that’s my complaint. Noticing me on a bad day. Why couldn’t they have noticed on a better day? Like January 24th, 2007? My mom and I agree that this is one of my best posts. Or maybe on July 8th, 2008, when I got hit by a friggin’ truck? In any event, they say there’s no such thing as bad publicity, and my hits were up yesterday. So, those of you who came to see that post, hang out and read a few more and realize that Wednesday was not an accurate reflection of me as a human being. I may be a complainer, but I’m not a jerk.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=7b20692d-baf3-49af-920d-eb24858f0bf5)
I’ve started up a new blog. It’s not meant to replace this one – I plan to continue posting to both. But it is a new direction. I’m trying something a little more professional rather than whatever you might categorize this blog as. The new blog is about ebooks and ebook readers, and my intention is to see if I like writing something that’s a little more journalistic and a little less whining about parking in DC. So, go check it out. Let me know what you think. Seriously, I’d love feedback. Is it mind-numbing? Do you want to punch me in the face? If you were in the market for an ebook reader, would you care what I had to say?
Originally uploaded by thetejon
I hate the “I’m sorry I haven’t updated my blog” posts, but I’d like to point out that I actually do have a really good excuse (Pictured at left).
Anyway, my excuse loves to look at herself in the mirror while she’s being changed. I’m not sure what she thinks she’s looking at, because I don’t think she really has that self-awareness. But any time she’s awake, not eating, and not screaming, I’m happy, so at this point I don’t care. People keep telling me that the six week mark is where it all turns around and gets easier. We’re almost at three weeks. I have to say that, while I love my daughter and still can’t believe she’s real, the first few weeks of parenting are hard. I wasn’t really prepared for this. It’s cool, though. At least I have a photo subject that doesn’t (can’t) run away.
I posted a little while ago about my attempts to optimize my blog for search engines. I think it’s working. Take this example. This morning, I linked to an article on Prince of Petworth about a new restaurant opening in Columbia Heights, CommonWealth Gastropub. Now, PoP is a near-deity in the greater Columbia Heights/Petworth/Logan/Shaw area. It’s a good blog. I read it regularly. I, on the other hand, am a relative unknown who complains too much. PoP went to an early preview at CommonWealth and took pictures, then wrote an article about the experience. I linked to the article, and offered very limited commentary. Now, go do a little Google search for commonwealth dc gastropub. you will notice that item seven is my post. The first item from PoP is item 23, and it’s not even a link to the most recent article. So, on one hand, you have a good blog that did some real journalism. On the other, you have a blog, where half the readership was at the author’s wedding, that just linked to the real journalism. But I show up first on Google.