Blog

Site updates and anything else related to the technology of blogging and my site(s).

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I’d been considering it for a while, but comments are now disabled for my blog. Between my low post volume and the low signal to noise ratio, it just wasn’t worth it anymore. #f

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More testing: Posting to Eclecticism on WordPress using the micro.blog iOS app.

Linkdumps are Back

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For quite a while in the past, I used the del.icio.us bookmarking service to save bookmarks, which were then automagically gathered and posted here as occasional “here’s what I found interesting recently” posts. Unfortunately, del.icio.us went through some changes a few years back, things fell over, I got distracted by other projects, and the whole thing fell apart.

I’ve been missing that aspect of my blog, though (along with the ability to quickly search through a list of bookmarks to find that thing I know I read a while back that I’d love to refer someone to while it’s on my mind), and have finally resurrected the system (with a few changes).

Rather than using the del.icio.us service again, I’m instead using Pinboard. It’s essentially the same thing that del.icio.us was “back in the day” — simple and fast saving of bookmarks, complete with a field for descriptions or excerpts, and tagging for categorization — with some extra niceties that either weren’t part of del.icio.us or that I just don’t remember, such as being able to designate particular links as “private”. Plus, there are a few iOS apps for easy mobile use of Pinboard, and after finding this review of a few, I’ve installed Pinner.

I’ve set up an IFTTT applet so that if I tag a link on Pinboard with the “.twitter” tag, that link will automatically get posted as a Tweet to my Twitter account for quick sharing that way.

Finally, I was quite happy to discover that Postalicious, the WordPress plugin I used to collect and post my del.icio.us links, still works (even though it hasn’t been updated in six years), and works fine with Pinboard.

So, as I find interesting stuff, I’ll toss links into Pinboard, and every so often (when there are at least five new links since the last time Postalicious checked), a Linkdump post will show up here on Eclecticism.

I’ve started off by tossing a few of the many Tumblr posts I’ve liked into Pinboard (both as a test of the new setup, and because there’s a lot of discussion on Tumblr that I’ve found and enjoyed over time, but which is nearly impossible to find again without something like Pinboard to keep track of them). More links will come as time goes by.

It’s not quite the same as if I were actually posting here as regularly as I used to (or that, ideally, I would like to), but at least it will get some movement here between my all-too-infrequent “real” posts.

Eclecticism is Now Secure (HTTPS)

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Thanks to Dreamhost’s Let’s Encrypt initiative, plus a little nudging while setting up the iOS version of Ulysses, the (simple but very powerful) editor I’m using for writing posts here, my site is now HTTPS enabled.

For those who don’t know the terminology, all that means is that all traffic between my blog and your web browser is encrypted, and cannot be read by anyone who might intercept the data stream in transmission. You don’t have to do anything, it just happens automagically in the background.

While there’s nothing here that really requires the transmission to be encrypted — I don’t sell anything or have any reason to ask for sensitive information, which is the primary use case (and why HTTPS is used by financial institutions, shopping site, and so on) — I’m increasingly of the opinion that it’s just good practice to encrypt whenever possible.

Think of it like sending a physical letter to a friend via traditional snail mail; there might not be anything in the letter that needs to be kept private, but I’d still be pretty disturbed if I got a letter from someone and saw that the envelope had been opened so that someone else could read the contents.

Of course, with electronic communication, there’s no ripped envelope to let you know that someone’s taken a peek at what you’re saying or reading. Unsecure websites (or emails) are more like sending postcards: while for most people it’s pretty unlikely that anyone between the sender and receiver would be reading the postcard, it’s entirely possible that it could happen. Adding encryption means that not only is there an “envelope”, but it’s an envelope that can’t be opened by anyone but the receiver.

Good security isn’t paranoia. Just a good idea.

(Incidentally, I’m also set up with PGP encryption for my email, and would use it more often if I knew my contacts were similarly set up. Just contact me for my PGP public key if you’d like to securely email me (I’ll get it posted here eventually, I’m just finding bits and pieces of my site that need to be recreated after letting it lie fallow for so long, and that’s one).)

So. Very. S…l…o…w….

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WordPress has gotten, really, really slow for me on this site, both on the outward-facing public side, and on the backend. I’m wondering if it might be a side effect of years and years of blogging (building up a total of almost 6,500 posts and almost 13,000 comments), plus trying various plugins here and there that probably often added extra fields to the database. I’m very tempted to do a full nuke-and-pave, exporting all the entries, building a brand-new WordPress install from the ground up, and then re-importing everything, but I worry about breaking all sorts of links (incoming, internal, and images) that I’d likely never have time to go back through and fix. At what point does the hassle of rebuilding stop outweighing the annoyance of a slow website?

Input-Only iPad

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The iPad has lots of good creation tools, but it really does excel at providing a convenient way to veg out, and as much as I like having it, I think it has been more than a little responsible for my lack of blogging. Why take the time and effort to write anything when it’s so easy to kick back and let page after page of text and images flow past my eyes?

Meanwhile, I’ve neglected posting to Eclecticism; I have probably a few gigabytes of audio ripped from old vinyl waiting to be processed, imported to iTunes, and perhaps posted to Vinylicious; when I bother to pick up my camera, shots sit on the memory card for weeks or months, and then sit in Aperture for months before I finally get around to processing them and posting to my Flickr account; and who knows how many other projects have been left half-finished here and there.

All in all, while it’s been a busy year, on this level it feels like I don’t really have much to show for it.

So: As the iPad does have the capability to be far more than just a portable idiot box, it’s time to start taking advantage of that. I’ve got the iPad, a text editor, a nice little wireless keyboard (the onscreen keyboard works great and all, but it’s best for short bursts of text–tweets, status updates, comments, short emails, etc.–a real keyboard is much nicer for anything longer than one or two paragraphs), and a whole mess of lately underused grey matter rattling around in my skull. In theory, I should be able to put those together and, perhaps, get back in the habit of babbling on a semi-regular basis.

End of 2012

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Well, a fair amount went on in my life this year…not that you’d know from this blog. This is one of those things that I hope to change for 2013. While it isn’t one of those things that I’d call a formal “new year’s resolution”, I do hope to spend a little more time babbling on here than I have over the past year or two.

We’ll see how I do. It’s a good goal, at least…and since I only made four posts in 2012 (this will make five), beating that shouldn’t be terribly difficult.

I have tweaked the design of the site a bit. New year, new look, though still focusing on a nice, clean, simple presentation. Black text, white background, not a lot of flash to get in the way of the content. Just the way I like it.

New Design

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During my between-homework breaks today, I snagged bits of time here and there to see if I could slap together a new design for my site. Initially I was just hoping to find a decent temporary placeholder theme until I had time to really dive into a full redesign, but as it turned out, I think I’m happy enough with this to simply declare it my new look (until I get bored again).

I’ve wanted to simplify things and remove some of the clutter for a while, so I went looking for a nice, clean, single-column theme. After experimenting with two or three, I’ve settled on Satorii, by Felipe Lavin, slightly modified to fit my taste (adding the graphic in the background, switching to a serif font, and using my handwriting font for the site and post titles). I may do other tweaks here and there — I’m not thrilled with the footer at the moment — but that will come as I have time and inspiration strikes.

For the most part, though, this is what I’m going with from here forward. Nice, simple, clean, and easy to read.

Back (Sorta)

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While I don’t really think that very many people noticed, something went all pear-shaped over the weekend and this blog disappeared for a few days. Thanks to some assistance from Dreamhost support, I’m back up and running…mostly. Some of the plugins I used broke, and I’ve lost the customizing of the theme (including all the egolicious representations of me), so I’ll have (yet another) PROJECT to keep me busy once the quarter ends.

So, some minor frustrations. However, the content is here, and that’s the most important part. I was thinking that it was about time for a redesign anyway.