blogging Archives - Page 6 of 22 - Ramblin' with Roger

12 Years blogging

I’m having trouble enough moving forward in blogging.

Somehow, for the past twelve years, I have managed to write a blog post at least once a day, I realize that I’m a piker compared to some. Dustbury has been posting since 1996, but at least I’ve gotten to 4/7th of his total, roughly.

This last year was probably the toughest, technically. The provider I had came about because I had won some online contest back in 2010. I got six months free before paying a fairly modest fee. I was happy because I understood a “real” blogger has one’s own URL. (I’m seriously rethinking that position.) But starting in 2013, I experienced a number of outages. In the last year, it happened on 21 June, 20 November, 9 December, and 23 February, some for a considerable duration.

Then on 9 March, my provider sent me this message:

The datacenter cost has gone up extremely and I have had to reconsider my position of offering web hosting. Within the next few months all clients will be cancelled as their contracts come up for renewal.

Roger you will need to register at https://www.namecheap.com/myaccount/signup.aspx so that I may push your domain name to you so you can manage it and make changes to the server names, renewals etc..

You will also have to find web hosting with another company within the next month and transfer your website files and MySQL database to the new host.

To make backups of your domain name simply login to your cPanel account and click the BACKUP icon. Be sure to backup the home directory and the database to insure you have all your files.

To login to cPanel use the following information…:

This was a hard decision for us but we just cannot continue with the cost that’s associated with the datacenter.

Once you have found a new web hosting company and moved all your files, please let me know so I can remove your files from the server.

Ugh. I don’t even know what half of that MEANS.

At this point, I started manually moving all my completed, but not yet live, posts, and the posts in draft to another blog, https://rogerowengreen.wordpress.com, where I had managed to capture my posts from the beginning of my blog to September 2014. (It occurred to me, in retrospect, that if I hadn’t moved the files from my first five years on my original blog http://rogerowengreen.blogspot.com/ then all the files would have moved to the WP backup.)

Then on 28 March, I got a “Where are you at with this transfer?” message. My blog was down for over a day while files…do whatever files do, but at least I had a secondary site for people to do. That site has, in addition to my posts from October 2014 and earlier, the ones from February 21, 2017 and forward.

If time were no object, I’d copy those 2.3 years from the current blog to the backup. But I’m having trouble enough moving forward. I compose in blog B, and then copy to blog A. This takes a little longer each day. As a result, my blog reserve has been more than halved. Worse, the number of posts in draft have ALSO shrunk.

So we’ll see what the next year brings.

A blog change is gonna come

Did I screw it up? Is THAT the reason the files aren’t “taking”?

I get this email from my blog provider for the past seven years:

The datacenter cost has gone up extremely and I have had to reconsider my position of offering web hosting. Within the next few months all clients will be cancelled as their contracts come up for renewal.

Roger you will need to register at https://www.namecheap.com/myaccount/signup.aspx so that I may push your domain name to you so you can manage it and make changes to the server names, renewals etc.

Did that.

You will also have to find web hosting with another company within the next month and transfer your website files and MySQL database to the new host.

I DID find a new web host, but my files wouldn’t upload. Need to contact the help desk. Arrgh!

To make backups of your domain name simply login to your cPanel account and click the BACKUP icon. Be sure to backup the home directory and the database to insure you have all your files.

Did I screw it up? Is THAT the reason the files aren’t “taking”?

To login to cPanel use the following information…

This was a hard decision for us but we just cannot continue with the cost that’s associated with the datacenter.

Once you have found a new web hosting company and moved all your files, please let me know so I can remove your files from the server.

The pressure!

We wish you the best of luck Roger, in your endeavors and I have been a frequent reader of your blog for years…

Any questions just let us know and talk soon.

Bottom line is that I’m working on a transition, which has cut into my blogging time, so there may be some terse posts in the near future.

Just know I’m not going away.

Mike Huber: Times Union herder of cats

I’ve seen a bunch of community bloggers come and go, and Mike’s always out there, shaking the trees for new folk, trying to create a diverse platform.

times union press credential Mike Huber — TU cat herder Mike Huber

Long before the Times Union came up with blogs for community members and staffers, it housed these websites for community organizations. I did a couple of them, including for my church at the time, and since that was in the last century, that should give you a timeframe. And the guy in charge was Mike Huber.

I started my own blog in 2005. When the TU was looking for community bloggers in 2006, he saw my track record of blogging every day for a year and tried to get me to participate with the TU, but I demurred.

He asked again the next year, and I pretty much ignored him. But it’s hard to ignore Mike, because, in his own quiet way, he can be a bulldog.

Finally, in 2008, I capitulated. Mike helped me figure out blogging on the WordPress platform – my personal blog at the time was on Blogspot – such as the time I had a picture of Dudley Do-Right, who I swear looks like Eliot Spitzer, which took up about six times the dimensions of the whole page. Mike got that right-sized for me.

I’ve seen a bunch of community bloggers come and go, and Mike’s always out there, shaking the trees for new folk, trying to create a diverse platform. I’ve witnessed some tension between some community bloggers and a couple of staff writers, or among community bloggers, or the community folks resenting that they provide free content while getting less and less from the TU, which must have been exhausting at times. with poor Huber, stuck in the middle, trying to make everyone happy. Occasionally, I probably gave him a harder time than he deserved once or twice.

I saw Mike by chance this past Friday in the building where I work. I almost didn’t bother him – he was sitting at a table, talking with someone – but Mike and I go WAY back. We’ve talked a LOT, especially in the early days, not just about the project at hand, but more philosophical musings, most recently when he gave me a ride to some blogging event.

O the other hand, I knew that Mike was my link to get more than a few things fixed on the Times Union website, which I’d come across more than occasionally.

Mike Huber, thanks for being your wise self. I wish you well in whatever you’re doing. Shannon Fromma, good luck; I understand a water gun is good at controlling unruly felines.

Random 2016 posts, a New Year’s tradition

Continuing my theological journey, and why 1977 sucked.

This is a thing I continue to do at the beginning of the year: pick a post for each month of the previous year, using a random number generator, which may not actually be random, but is sufficient for this exercise. See how well it reflected that year just passed, or did not. Pretty sure I got this from Gordon, who lives in Chicago, who remains the only non-local blogger I ever met.

I think I enjoy this a lot because it’s so…numerical. And random, or randomish.

The graphic is random. I went to Google, limited to .mil sites, and typed in the word random, and this was the first one to come out that didn’t seem to represent a random check of one’s belongings. This is, as you well know, “Final review and comparison of Figure 1 shows that overall the noise characteristic of the CWT TFR is similar to the synthetic white FM integrated to time …”

Yer random 2016 posts:

January: Z is for Ze (or zie)
In September 2015, “Harvard University made a buzz after allowing students to select gender-neutral options like ‘ze,’ ‘e,’ and ‘they’ on registration forms.
(An ABC Wednesday post; I often write about words and the language)

February: Winter 2015-2016
(The one thing I hate about the metric system is that one gets to below zero WAY too easily.)
(Landed on a parenthetical aside! A still true sentiment.)

March: March rambling #1: wipe out cancer in a decade
Kintsugi: The Art of Embracing Damage.
(It is inevitable that, with two dozen link posts during the year, I’d hit upon one!)

April: Haunted computers
My current Amazon Fire is operable so far, knock my forehead.
(STILL working, though there’s a mysterious crack on the screen.)

May: Not getting to Facebook
(Oh, and why, you may ask, are all the graphics below?)
(More proof that I’m technologically impaired.)

June:Polly ticks, again
I have been told to my face, “Racism will go away, if we would only stop talking about race!”
(Didn’t believe it then; sure don’t believe it now.)

July: George Takei
I vaguely remember that George Takei was politically active.
(This was in response to an Ask Roger Anything question.)

August: The First Ward of Binghamton
Though I spent 18 years there, none of the interior structure looks familiar, though the back yard does.
(A specific reference to the house I grew up in. Arthur helped me with the map, because, as established, I’m technologically impaired.)

September: The 21st century’s 100 greatest films, part 1
97. White Material (Claire Denis, 2009) -DK (don’t know)
(I am doing fewer lists these days than I used to. I don’t even see ones I WANT to do much anymore, though 1971 music MAY be on the horizon.)

October: Baptized again
I hadn’t gone out with ANYONE from mid-1975 through the end of 1977.
(Continuing my theological journey, and why 1977 sucked.)

November: November rambling #2: Book two of the trilogy
“Who thought we’d have to deal with this in our lifetimes?”
(Quoting the Weekly Sift guy, after the unfortunate election of Donald TRump.)

December: A Yuletide tradition: Ask Roger Anything
So I guess I’m NOT so pure of heart as to be happy writing a daily blog that no one reads.
(My quarterly entreat, in which I get as close to baring my soul online as I’m likely to do.)

Ten things I’ve done that I’m still proud of

It’s not that I’m averse to changing the blog layout. I’m just not particularly adept at it.

For this iteration of Ask Roger Anything, Eunai gets right to the point:

Ten things you’ve done that you’re still proud of.

OK. I found this challenging. In no particular order:

1. Getting arrested at an antiwar demonstration in the town of Poughkeepsie, Dutchess County, NY. The trial was very interesting.

2. Editing the Spider-Man Chronicles for FantaCo in 1982. I was learning how to do this by trial and error.

3. Going to grad school to get my Masters in Library Science when I was 37 to 39 years old.

4. Trying out for and appearing on JEOPARDY! in 1998.

5. My very good grasp of mass transit systems in fairly short order. That’s true in Albany, of course, but I’ve gotten comfortable in Atlanta, Boston, New York City, San Diego, San Francisco, and Toronto, and possibly others.

6. Keeping very good friends for a long time, even staying civil with ex-girlfriends.

7. Getting Black History Month at First Presbyterian to be less about the perceived needs of the black members and more focused on the whole community.

8. When I ride my bike, I generally follow the rules, even when no one is looking, or I don’t think anyone is looking. What I’ve noticed is that, sometimes, accurately used hand signals by a bicyclist has a calming effect on a driver. Of course, when I get passed by a guy riding on the wrong side, through the red light, my work is undercut, but so be it.

9. Helping to raise our daughter without totally wrecking her. Of course, she still has her teen years, so I still have my chance.

10. Doing this here blog, every day, for 11 years and about five months.
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And speaking of the blog, the fabulous Scott F wrote:

I’ve been reading your blog again and found I’ve missed it. How do you think you’ve changed as a blogger over the time you’ve been doing this? One thing that hasn’t changed is the layout of the page. Ever think of changing it? (By the way, that’s not me saying it needs a change.)

Welcome back.

Well, I sort of know what I’m doing about 90% of the time. I write ahead so that I don’t stress out if I get sick/too tired/too busy/a bad Internet connection.

I write about enough different things that you can say, “Well, that doesn’t particularly interest me,” but the next day might be more to your liking. The variety is more to MY liking; I can’t write the same category of post back to back.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I found a list of celebrities who will turn 70 in 2017 that I will write about. Knowing what the topics will be – and this also includes family birthdays, major holidays, and significant anniversaries – helps the brain to think about it casually so that when I actually DO write about it, it is not a tabula rasa. I may have even come across an article or two, which I’ll throw in the draft file until I get closer to the date.

I find that it is MUCH better to write about ANYTHING, so if that piece on Trump isn’t writing itself – it seldom does – then I’ll look for an ABC Wednesday post for three or four weeks from now, or a piece about a musician’s birthday, or a Music Throwback Saturday. As I’ve noted, some days, I have NO idea what is posting that particular day until it goes live, at which point I almost always see the damned typo.

As for the layout, it did change in May 2010 from my Blogger blog to this WordPress iteration. It’s not that I’m averse to changing it. I’m just not particularly adept at doing techie things or visual things, or especially techie visual things. Recently, some simple bit for my blog took a half-hour, which was aggravating, and I don’t have a half-hour to waste on something that wasn’t all that important in the grander scheme anyway.

Now if YOU want to take a shot at redesigning my blog, go ahead. Seriously. I also lack what George HW Bush called “the vision thing.” Change it to what? I have literally no idea.

Are YOU still blogging, BTW?