Is blogging dead?  I notice that i blog far less often than i used to.  Maybe it’s because i don’t have anything interesting to say (did i ever..?).  But I think that blogging has just taken on a new form and that “traditional” blogging with a dedicated silo site just isn’t where the action is anymore.  If you look over my early blog posts, many of them were “hey, check out this cool article talking about such and such”, with a link (most of which probably don’t work anymore).  Sometimes i’d do a travel log of a trip or vacation.  There’s even a few rants in there, some predictions about the future, and general thoughts on the human condition.

There are a few people who follow my blog.  But if i write something here, i find that i want it to be something original, not just a regurgitation of something else.  When i do write an entry, i’ll typically post a link to it on facebook so people will know to come check it out.

I feel like blogging has gone the way of print.  In the immortal words of Egon: “Print is dead.”  Well … not really.  It’s simply changed forms.  I think blogging is the same.  There will always be room for writing articles, travel logs, journal entries, stories, analogies about life lessons, etc..  But how people discover this content has changed.  You don’t go to some rss discovery service, you don’t do a google search.  You look for curated content from your friends on facebook and twitter.

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As you may have noticed, i’ve switched around my blog. It was time to move on to a more modern, powerful engine.  I’ve chosen to use WordPress.  I hope you like it.  I’ve certainly enjoyed it so far.  If you’re interested in the whole boring history of my blog, keep reading.

My first blog was hosted on a friend’s server, running TypePad.  It worked ok for a while, but eventually I wanted to run my own blog so i could have more control.

For the second incarnation of my blog, I picked a little-known java-based open source project called blojsom.  It was easy to install, had a lot of nifty features, and was growing like mad.  Every two or three weeks there was a new release.  I even got into the code and fixed a bug which i contributed back to the community.  The only drawback was the fact that it used a flat file-based system rather than a database.  This worked great for a time.

Eventually blojsom began to mature and a 3.0 release prompted me to restart my blog with the new blojsom.  With this new version, i had lots of control and lots of widgets to play with.  And i had fun writing my own themes.  I also had three blogs.  I asked David (the owner of the server where my first blog was hosted) to export all my old posts.  He did so, and i imported them into blog #3.

Soon after blojsom 3 was released, it became apparent that blojsom had died.  There hasn’t been a new release in over two years.  I continued to use it, but as time has moved on, blojsom did not.  It has come to the point where it has finally fallen too far behind.  There’s no community support and it’s a resource hog.  Knowing that it would soon be time to move on, i took my old blojsom 2 blog and rolled it into blog #3.  Now at last i had all my blog posts, clear back from January 2003 in one place.

After some research, i have come to the conclusion that WordPress is the hot ticket.  Tons of community support.  Lots of fun and interesting widgets, lots of themes.  Lots of updates.  Easy to use, easy to administer.  So here comes blog #4 – complete with all my previous posts imported in (after a HUGE and headache filled process i might add).

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My mom just asked everyone why they haven’t written any blog entries recently. I think it’s because everyone is updating their facebook status and sending tweets instead. But it’s good to still write blog entries now and then.

So here’s some good advice that i heard many years ago that can apply to a wide variety of things. It’s the cryptic kind of thing some zen teacher might tell you and that doesn’t make sense … until it makes sense, and then it makes perfect sense and will change your life :)

The best time to plant a tree is 50 years ago. The second best time to plant a tree is right now.

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Jun 252008

Wow, I read a really great blog entry today. You know it’s going to be a good entry when it starts out mentioning star trek! :) But then to actually use that as a lead-in to a reflection of ones past, relive life-changing events, and draw strength from them is really great.

Unfortunately for most of the rest of the world this is a private blog. It’s probably the most consistently well-written and profound blog that i read (and i read a lot of blogs). It’s a shame that i can’t get an rss feed for it, because i only sporadically check it. I really need to do better and go there more often.

I hope that one day my writing is half so good. Until then, i will continue to read, be inspired, and try to find my flute.

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After several weeks of development (well, a few hours here and a few hours there), i’ve completely redesigned the miniature portion of my website. Click here to check it out. If you like what you see, let me know. If you have any suggestions for improvement, i’d love to hear. And if it doesn’t work for you, please tell me so i can fix it!

Thanks to my wife who helped with much of the artwork.

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Wow, five years of blogging today. Who would have thought i’d have stuck with it this long? I was going to write something witty and clever about the reasons people blog and how it has changed the world, etc..etc.., but i’m sure you can all figure that out for yourselves. So i thought it would be fun to quote someone much more interesting than myself: Stephen Hawking. Here are 10 famous quotes by him:

  • “Einstein was wrong when he said “God does not play dice”. Consideration of black holes suggests, not only that God does play dice, but that He sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can’t be seen.”
  • “I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.”
  • “My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.”
  • “I find that American & Scandinavian accents work better with women.” In response to a question about the American accent of his synthesiser.
  • “Someone told me that each equation I included in the book would halve the sales. In the end, however, I did put in one equation, Einstein’s famous equation, E = mc2. I hope that this will not scare off half of my potential readers.”
  • “My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus.”
  • “To show this diagram properly, I would really need a four dimensional screen. However, because of government cuts, we could manage to provide only a two dimensional screen.”
  • “Life would be tragic if it weren’t funny.”
  • “The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired.”
  • “Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end.”

Source: thelandsalmon.com

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Hello fellow readers. I’ve been hard at work and have finally tossed out the last remnants of the original default theme that came when i setup this blog. I’ve been morphing it over time, but have never been very happy with how it looks. The other day i was “shopping around” for a good theme, and came across one i really liked called “binary blue“. This is my attempt at creating a theme similar to that. (i don’t run wordpress, i didn’t steal the theme; just the idea of how it looked)

Let me know what you think.

onload="this.height = this.contentWindow.document.body.scrollHeight+20"
style="display:inline;width:100%;border:none" scolling="no"
src="/poll/s?action=view&pollid=9">

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Sep 302007

I am now hosting two new blogs. Luann has made the leap from Yahoo 360 over to my site. You can check out her blog here:

Luann’s Blog

And I’ve also set up a blog for Gabrielle. She’s quite excited to get on the net. Her blog can be found here:

Ellie’s Blog

Be sure to check them out! Also, if you’re subscribed to the ScottHawker.com rss feed, all of their posts will be included in that feed.

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NPR has recently posted a job listing for a “blogger”… Wouldn’t someone who is paid professionally by a news agency to post articles to the internet be a “journalist”?  Is it possible to be a professional blogger, or does the term not make any sense… I’m still thinking about it. 

More Info Here

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