I haven’t really felt like updating lately, although I have been saving some good stories to put in this space. Considering how little I’ve had to do these last few weeks, I’m not sure what the cause of my malaise is.
So, today I’m going to try to put up a few updates from the last few weeks. None of the stories are especially new, but I found them to be interesting.
My me.com account is working. If you don’t have any other addresses for me, the one below is as valid as any. They all end up in the same place eventually, anyway.
In other news, I spent a good portion of this weekend updating my blog’s layout. It’s quite a bit simpler and cleaner now than before. If you have comments or suggestions, let me know.
In the process of updating everything, I evaluated a couple of programs and plug-ins. I’ll try to make it a priority to write it up. (I actually evaluated something like four SQL tools because a plug-in I installed corrupted a few entries in the WordPress database, and I couldn’t access the damn fields any other way. Although I’m not planning on buying it because I don’t see it being a regular need, Froq was by far the best Mac SQL tool I tried, and if you’re looking for one give them a shot.)
I also went through and read through a lot of my older entries. For a while there, I was updating this site pretty regularly with some substantial updates. I’d like to try to get back into that. Newsvine has been a great diversion, and there’s a community there that is second to none, but I kind of miss trying to build my own thing.
Also regarding Newsvine, I finally found an easy way to integrate the stories that I seed there with the blog here. That was one reason I stopped updating this blog; I got tired of so many duplicate steps. I’ll probably write up a quick tutorial about it later, but the long and the short of it is to use the WP-O-Matic plug-in for WordPress. It’s not perfect by any means, but it’s the best tool I found that (sort of) works.
Ta.
So this whole updating the blog thing isn’t working out so well over the summer. Unfortunately, you would think a course title like Intensive Summer Greek that counts for two semesters of credit in a 10 week offering and with a course description that starts “Designed for highly motivated students…” that I would have recognized how busy I would be (or should be, if I were doing everything I really ought to be doing). Alas, school demands on my time always seem to hit me by surprise.
So. This just means that I have unfortunately not been able to invest the time in this blog that I would have wished even just 3 months ago. I’ve even unsubscribed from the vast majority of my blog and newsfeeds (down from about 80 to about 30, mostly low-traffic personal blogs of friends).
However, I am going to try to update moderately more often, at least once a week. This will probably occur on Friday or Saturday, starting next week. I hope to pull together a few news-clippings I hit upon during the week (despite my best intentions not to go browsing!), and throw together some “best of my internet” posts until the end of this course, now only 4 weeks away (!!!)
Cheers.
Today I’m more or less laid up in bed. This means I ought to be able to get some further work done on part II of my Immigration series. If you want to know what happened, take a gander at the flickr badge in the right pane. There are pictures there of my now awesomely oversized ankle.
Have a good day!
If you can’t tell by my weather widget in the sidebar, it’s an insanely nice day in Austin right now.
My roommate and I tried a new restaurant/bar, Shoal Creek Saloon. The shrimp and crawfish were very good, as were the cheese fries. I can see going back.
I’ve been looking for stories to post about, but haven’t yet found anything about which I have too much to say. And with the weather as it is right now, I don’t have a lot of motivation to just make something up. 
Everyone be good, send me something worthwhile to read, and try to enjoy the Spring!
Okay, which of you yahoos loves me so much that he has to go and add me to favorites 65 different times?
So I’m back again. Although it isn’t set up currently, shortly demosthenes.us should point directly to this page. I decided that I would be happier on WordPress and happier with a domain that was mine, that wasn’t an assumed personality. There wasn’t really a point to doing so. And thus, here we are.
So welcome (again) to my online presence: davidvoegtle.net.
Needless to say, configuration and site changes are very likely over the next few days. Stick with me, and I hope to have it all worked out in the near future.
Well, I’m back; at least for a little while. I haven’t had as much time as I would have liked this Spring Break to catch up on the news and write some new posts. Moving on top of catch-up at work has really been a bitch and a half.
Oh well.
There should be some updates this evening.
I feel bad that I haven’t sent anything to you guys in a while. This weekend I am moving to a new place closer in to town and closer to school. I’ve had zero time to read the news, much less form some cogent opinions to throw up in this space. Sorry.
Updates to hopefully resume this coming week. Otherwise, Spring Break should offer me an opportunity to get some writing done.
I decided to stop using double-quotes within my blockquotes. I figure it’s probably redundant. Don’t sue me. I think the blockquote sufficiently indicates already that it’s not my writing. If you can think of a good reason why this is not the case, feel free to drop me a line.
Thanks
So I happened to look at the site from a Windows XP PC running the latest version of Firefox, and I just want to apologize to everyone for the really atrocious background color that apparently comes up. On my PowerBook, in several different browser apps, the page has a nice mellow deep banana yellow; on the PC it was a glaring nuclear mutant banana yellow.
I’ve been seriously considering a style redesign anyhow, since I’ve become more accustomed to CSS and what the different markup terms mean, so as time allows this weekend I plan to do a bit of hacking around with the style.
I’ve also been playing around with Rapidweaver. If you like the concept of iWeb, but the reviews have sort of turned you off (incomplete implementations, more of a “beta” feel than finished app, etc.), check it out. It’s only about $35, and it has every feature I’ve heard advertised for iWeb, i.e. pod-casting, blog support, .Mac integration (and FTP site support, too), themes, photo galleries (HTML and Flash), etc.
The plan is to come up with a unified or closely similar feel for both sites, so as soon as I decide roughly what I want, I’ll start putting it together.
Technorati Tags:
computers, software, recommendations, Apple, Rapidweaver, iWeb
More for me than for you, but if you’re curious, here are some stats for the site for my first full month of demosthenes us.
This next one is pretty amusing. Even though I run a Mac, for almost the entire month of January I was using Camino. That means most of the other Safari traffic is you guys.
Anyway, for those of you who read, thank you. If this is something you like to see, I can do it every month.
Sorry that output has been a little low the last two days. I’ve been a little busy getting ready for school, preparing for a move, and getting braces. No, you can’t see. I’ve been told I still qualify as a cyborg, but I’ve yet to see any of the benefits.
I’m working on a post on abortion. I have a title, but not much else yet, so I’m not sure how long it will be. We’ll see.
I’ve caught as much of the Alito nomination hearings as I could. He’s going to be confirmed, I think. If he wasn’t so beholden to the idea of executive supremacy, he actually might be a good Justice I think. Conservative, but not a terrible one. It’s a shame he didn’t have any legislative experience. (Did he? I don’t recall hearing that he did.) I think that would have really rounded out his judicial philosophy. It certainly seemed to help Sandra Day.
Well, my first real week of blogging is over, and I think it went really well. I made over 50 entries, including one very substantial one.
There are a few snafus yet. Technorati doesn’t seem to be correctly receiving pings from my blog, either from entries entered through MT or through MarsEdit. I’ll have to look into that this week. Other than that, I think the style and layout is currently pretty stable.
I also need to figure out the best way to promote my blog a little bit. I’m doing this mostly for myself, but I have to say that I miss the interaction of posting in LiveJournal. There has to be a happy medium somewhere. I’ve registered the blog at the big name blog tracking/search sites, so maybe that will get me some traffic. I also tried linking my blog to a couple of bigger named blogs in the comment (to a specific entry on my site, which I thought might be of interest to the other bloggers). I felt kind of like a whore doing it, though, so I doubt I’ll make it a habit.
Now I just need to keep it up. They say it takes three weeks to form a habit. The other concern is that once school is back in full swing I won’t be able to update quite as often. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it, though.
I’m not exactly a seasoned blogger yet (although I have used LiveJournal for several years). However, I think I generally lucked out with the tools that I use when writing this blog. For those of you who might be interested in starting your own blog, the following might be of help:
For hosting, I cannot recommend enough www.bluehost.com. Setup was easy, quick, painless, and the cost vs. features is among the best I saw when shopping around for a web-hosting service. Their web-based management tools are simple but powerful. You can also use your own FTP client to manage your site, and even get SSH/shell access for free (once you fax or e-mail a scan of your drivers license).
For FTP access, I’m currently using Transmit 3, a fantastic program I bought on recommendation from a friend. Transmit is easily the best FTP software I’ve ever used, and I’ve been using FTP software programs since 1995.
For the actual blog software, I’m using MovableType 3.2. The main reason I chose this over WordPress was the general consensus that I found online that MovableType has more extensive documentation. Although I have some programming experience, I’m only somewhat proficient in simple HTML, and I previously had no CSS experience. Setup has not been entirely painless, but the interface is easy to use, and I like it. CSS and the MT markup language themselves actually aren’t too bad. I’ve been able to edit the template files to my liking simply by reading each file carefully.
For posting and for newfeed reading (to find interesting stories to post), I’ve been using two programs from Ranchero Software. I was first attracted to their newsreader, NetNewsWire, as a replacement or supplement to BlogLines. BlogLines has been good, but is going through growing pains. Also, having access to my newsfeeds from any computer connected to the Internet isn’t particularly important to me. NetNewsWire has exceeded my every expectation. The program is simple, fast, and beautiful to look at.
For the actual posting I’ve been using MarsEdit, ver. 1.1 beta fc1. At first I wasn’t sure I would buy the software, as it doesn’t integrate well with LiveJournal. However, its facility with MovableType has won me over. MarsEdit integrates with NetNewsWire, so you can easily and quickly post stories you find in the latter to your blog. Ranchero even offers a “combo pack” of the two pieces of software for a small discount.
Both pieces of software are for Macintosh computers (yes, I’m one of those people). I use a 15″ PowerBook I bought in December as my main computer system; I’ve been primarily a Mac user for home and school use for almost three years.
Now all I need is a decent graphics editor so I can publish more images on the site. I have to say that I’m not crazy about GraphicConverter, which came with my Mac. Keeping in mind that I’m a poor college student, any recommendations?
Technorati Tags:
computers, software, recommendations
Huh. Blogging is kind of cathartic.
Just a quick note that if the page seems to change a lot, please understand that I’m new to Movable Type, so I’m playing around with a lot of different options for the first time. I’ll try to keep everything readable.
Also, in regards to the first post, I’ve created an abuse e-mail account on my domain. If you feel that you’re genuinely being harassed by someone in the comments and I don’t seem to be catching it, please let me know at abuse at demosthenes dot us.
I’d like to welcome everyone to my new home. I’m not exactly certain what this page will evolve into, but essentially I wanted a location in which I could post longer form work of a more serious nature. I imagine a good bit of it will current events issues that strike me as requiring comment.
Ground rules for commenting: 1) Be adults.
(Note: I don’t intend to moderate the comments section unless there is some pretty flagrant harassment going on. I’m hoping anyone who stumbles across my rather obscure little corner of the Internet will be emotionally mature enough to engage in heated, spirited discourse without throwing a fit.)
That’s it for now. Maybe more about me later in the morning. Good night!
