Category: blogs

Real v2.0

I got to meet not one, not two but three new buddies this weekend! Three more people that can vouch that I am real. heehee I know I’m an odd bird in that I actually like using social sites to meet people in person.

I met up with a local twitter buddy on Friday. Carlos and I met up at CPK downtown and had a very nice lunch talking and getting to know each other. To my surprise, he was very talkative which is always nice. Score 1

Sunday, I met up with Rich for lunch. He is in the Bay area now so we decided to meet up. I really liked how frank and genuine he seemed. I never realized he was native to the Bay area. He also gave me several compliments about my own blog. I tried very hard to take them in stride. I just suck at taking compliments. lol Score 2

Sunday night, I met up with a long time fellow blogger Glennalicious. [1]soon to be "former blogger" as he is ending his blog. *sigh* We met up at Daddies aka 440 Castro. I was immediately struck how much sexier in person he was. Grrr! (He already has a husband so I behaved. lol) Anyway, it was great finally getting to meet him. At one point this drunk guy tried to start some trouble. He went so far as to kick the pinball machine next to us. I knew 2 of the bartenders and promptly had him ejected before drama erupted.

It was late and we were both a little tired so we didn’t stay out long. Instead, we got together for breakfast this morning. We got to talk a lot more. He is very endearing and sweet. He is a total geek too, which I loved. lol Anyway, he is here for a conference so we probably won’t get to hang out again but it was fun finally meeting him. Score 3

All in all, it was a good weekend. Three new guys, three new positive experiences. Oh, I can also add them to the list of hundreds I’ve met thru blogging and social networking. See, they really do work!

References

References
↑1 soon to be "former blogger" as he is ending his blog. *sigh*

Found Me

I just had to share. I was looking the search stats for my blog this month and I’m always amazed at how weird some of the searches turn out to be.

Apparently, the search phrase “steam room pimples” brought 10 people to my blog in the past month.

Who da thunk it?

Hack

I hacked one of my old plug-ins and finally got it to work with the new template. This just means my categories are back as a link, up top. The blogroll will be back shortly as well. I also added a new log-in feature directly to the home page. This hopefully simplifies the login process as well as giving visual clues to users to know when they are actually logged in or not. [1]Are you logged in? You should be. *EG*

The great thing about WP 2.7 is it is much more widget and hook friendly. The bad news is it is much harder to do manual hacks. There are pros and cons to be both approaches but I like tinkering with the code.

Someone complained the links to the old blog were broken but they look fine to me. I’ve tried a variety of browsers and can’t seem to get a failed link. If you experience trouble, email me.

References

References
↑1 Are you logged in? You should be. *EG*

Anal-Who?

No, not that.  Get your mind out of my gutter.  heehee  I’m referring to analytics.  I’ve been using Woopra for some time now to track my blog stats.  With the new version, they have a nifty plug-in that incorporates easily into my blog dashboard.  

Its fun examining the new blog stats.  And nothing like some dirty talk to boost my clicks. lol  I’m always tickled how many people read about my wild antics.  That pesky brettcajun is currently in the lead in referrals.  Of course, now that Large Tony has a new blog going, he is gaining fast and looks like he is trying to reclaim his title of top dog.  In a big surprise, Obliquity65 is bringing up a respectable 3rd place. 

I’m really surprised at how many oversea clicks I’ve been getting.  While most of my clicks still come from inside the country, I am noticing more and more international clicks.  Canada, Germany, Sweden, Australia, hell even Singapore.  lol  Who da thunk it?  

Google is still the top search engine, no surprise there.  twitter and Facebook have really begun to generate a lot of blog traffic as well.  I’ve currently left my blog open to being indexed by the search engines but if the junk gets to high again, I’ll nix it.  

It seems I’ve settled into a core group of about 150 regular readers off and on.  Lord only knows why you stick around.  Gluttons for punishment I say. heh heh  Anyway, thanks for tuning into my madness on such a regular basis.  I am hoping to meet a few more of you in person this year.  Of course, if you find yourself headed to SF, give me a shout.  My schedule isn’t always the most conducive but I do try.  

 As usual, I promise nothing beyond my normal blunt opinionated self.  That will have to do. *g*  I’m getting better at dragging the camera around w/me though.  I’ll try to continue including random pics for excitement.  

Ok, enough babbling.  I’m off to get my hooves clipped and polished before TFA arrives tonight.  And no, I will not be posting any of those details. lol

Bitten / Kudos

The blogging bug has definitely bitten me again (as if you couldn’t tell). I guess the new blog and template has inspired me. heh heh

I’ve been tinkering w/using Google’s “Friend Connect” to allow people to sign into my site. It was pretty easy to setup and it worked well. Unfortunately, it only seemed to complicate the process. Their sign in doesn’t actually create a new user account on my blog, which of course means no control over content and access. Users would have to double register to truly be listed as “user”. I’ve since disabled it. I guess my blog really isn’t a social mecca anyhow. lol

In a slightly different vein of thought, a big thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes.  I was very humbled by all the kind words and emails I got.  I might have mentioned I have a 4-day weekend this week and have been a total slug so far.  Well, besides the gym anyway. lol  TFA arrives tomorrow night.  The only thing planned, besides the obvious, is to check out the new Underworld flick.  I’m a big fan of the movies so far.

Tonight, my buddy kristaki drug me out to some of the local gay bars in the gaborhood.  He is straight but grew up here so totally cool.  His fiance has a whole contingent of gay friends as well.  Sadly, the group seemed to like all the bars I hate. lol  I wasn’t miserable but I certainly wasn’t overly excited.  kristaki and I were in the acadamy together and we could pretty much have a good time anywhere.  We actually ended up splitting off from the group and wound up at Sparky’s gorging ourselves on chili cheese fries.  Even though we didn’t really do anything exciting I had a blast.  I don’t get to see him as much now that he is on the force and has a blushing bride-to-be.

So now I’m home feeling like a bloated heifer.  Ugh, I ate too much.  Tomorrow is definitely gonna be a cardio day!

Work Around

Not being a PHP guru, I have given up trying to figure out why the import/export function of WP didn’t work correctly.  After an exhaustive search of the forums, it seems to be a bug.  It could also be related to the very reason I decided to start a fresh install of WP.  In my first attempt, I was able to import 2005-2007.   This is exactly where I encountered problems a couple years ago (and ever since) with upgrading WP versions. 

Luckily, the old archive page was rendered with the full links so I was able to just copy/paste into a new page here.  This neatly solves the problem w/o a whole lot of fuss!

New and Improved?

It looks like my reasons for starting with a fresh install were justified.  When I imported last night, I got all of the posts thru 2007 but nothing beyond that.  Obviously, that wasn’t gonna work so I deleted them from the new installation.  I’m still tinkering with ways to import so they may come back into this installation.  

There was a point during one upgrade around that time something funky happened.  I think my DB got corrupted somehow.  Every upgrade on my old blog since has had problems.  The irony is all my old categories came thru onto this one. [1]Remember, my last upgrade lost a ton of categories  WordPress as a blogging platform has matured signficantly since then so I’m happy with the newest version.  

Never fear the old blog is still active under blog.mobius.name (or the long url of www.mobius.name/blog/) and will remain so.  I’ll probably come up with a way to pull the archive into this blog.  After reading the support forum files there were some serious issues w/the export/import option for larger blogs like mine.  I knew that going into it so no surprise there.  

Anyway, it is a new year and a new blog.  This template is only temporary until I settle on one I really like.  Things will be missing or odd for a couple weeks till I get settled probably.  

I also plan to manage the user list more closely in this one.  The last group got so weildy as to be a mess.  There will still be content restricted to registered users but that will be a few weeks. lol   

Wish me luck?

References

References
↑1 Remember, my last upgrade lost a ton of categories