Blog entries tagged "blogging"
Well, technically it was all on MT4 before, but some of the pages still had the old template. I'll admit I'm going to miss that old template. I should build a little homage to it, just so I don't have to lose all that quality work. I had it on my site for a long time. But now the Billboard Charts, my About/Contact page, my not-super-impressive portfolio, and the page copies are all incorporated into the new look/feel. I'm working on some additions to the Billboard charts (more links to the actual songs, so you can more easily reminisce/dedicate). Want to know what I learned about MT4 while I was doing these conversions? MT4 is flippin' sweet. I won't geek out on you here, but I fully admit I love the new system, and I doubt I've really even scratched the surface.
Despite this being my third blog post in one day (and you thinking I might have nothing better to do on New Year's Eve), I wanted to take a look back at the best entries of the year, by month. Limiting myself to just one post per month is tough in some cases, so I've slightly cheated:
- January - In Memory of Mr. Cup Noodle - This started a little spree of mine of writing haikus on this blog. I've probably had more Cup Noodles in the past year than the previous 5 combined. No correlation.
- February - American Idol Delusion - I feel like I've wanted to talk about that one ever since I saw the show the first time. Yes, much to my male coworkers' embarrassment (and a little to mine), I watch it still and look forward to the new season.
- March - Give 'em a Call - A new guy start at work and in his first few days somebody warned him of this quality/tendency of mine… months after I blogged about it. Go figure.
- April - Picky Eaters - Continues to be one of the most perplexing things to me. I think I fairly categorized them though, which is pretty good after all this time.
- May - Mousecapades - Had I known how much this would impact/bother me later in the year, I might have moved then. I still really like our home. Despite being born this month, she doesn't really get blogged about until late July.
- June - Superstitions - My only entry for this month. I was busy because I was almost….
- July - Done with School - A horrible post to have to actually read, but a significant thing for me to accomplish.
- August - Site Revamp… Again - Mainly due to my upgrade to Movable Type 4, and also because I was bored with how it was before. Too bad I never really finished all the stuff on these lists, but I made significant progress.
- September - Recipe Collection Revamp - This took a bunch of work on my part to get this up and going. Similar to the mice, had I known what would happen the next month, I wouldn't have spent as much time on it. Oh well.
- October - G2 20071012 - Just a finishing piece to various musical adventures this year. This double disc compilation for Maria turned out to be quite a success - better than the previous G2 this year.
- November - Unique to the Taker - I had a number of <a href="http://longboredsurfer.com/blog/2007/10/new_forms_of_interaction.php>of more thoughtful (as opposed to humorous or mocking) pieces this year, and this was probably one of my weirdest to most of you. I've thought about this post since I wrote it, and I now see a small flaw in my theory. Oh well.
- December - Ouch - An instant classic for me. Looking at the colors I provided, it's little wonder to me why make-up colors are what they are… if people want to look bruised and battered. Go figure.
Although I'd love to go through and pick the best pictures of the year and best events, I'm going to be honest here – I know most of you don't care. Thanks for making 2007 what it was. Here's to 2008 being even better, both as a dinky blog/site as well as for each of us personally.
The Longbored Surfer just got a little face-lift. If you're using a feed reader (I love Google Reader) and haven't stopped by since I last posted, it might be worth your time. This isn't the full redesign I talked about before, but it's something with which I'm satisfied, especially considering the time investment. I'm not going to bore you all with the details of my plans – I did that before. I think this is a very good/solid starting point. I anticipate moving all my old remaining content off of the old format soon. Ever since I upgraded to Movable Type 4, I feel like I haven't done as much on this site as I wanted to, and I intend to change that. I enjoy doing this sort of stuff too much.
On another note, if you do read this site through a feed reader, you may notice that I fixed the formatting issues I was having. Previously all the text was bunched together for a reason I didn't know. Well, thanks to a tip on how to fix that. It took me how long to make such a simple fix? Shameful, I know. That's all.
I've been asked to remove the recipes I previously had on my site, and I'm happy to comply. The recipes have not lost their quality, just this temporary home. You can access the few recipes I had, and lots more on the Cook's Illustrated website (subscription required). Thanks to all of you who visited the site while I had those few recipes up. I appreciate the many kind notes of thanks I received during that time. I still contend that C.I. could provide a better format for the recipes, especially for searching and printing. They may have a great printed magazine, but the internet and the print world aren't the same. Too bad my requests to them for such a thing were ignored. Obviously many others appreciated those same conveniences. Oh well. Thanks again to most of you. Happy cooking/eating. :)
Surprise!! I took the liberty to redo the recipe collection. I know that nobody asked me to do it, but I did it anyway. This represents some magical happenings by yours truly to incorporate the recipes into their own publishing system. I spent good time to make sure that the old recipe page(s) would automatically lead to their new home (don't forget to update your bookmarks). If it didn't… well… you got here somehow, so… maybe it actually did work.
You may ask, "Why?" and I would say… "Because.". Previously the recipes where housed in their own database, and weren't really all that easy for me to update (hence my lateness in putting up recipes sometimes). I'm kind of tired of doing that, and I wanted to take advantage of some of the cool features of a publishing system. So here's what you get out of the deal:
- RSS/Atom Feed - Tired of checking to see if I've put up the latest recipes? Subscribe to the feed for the recipes, and you'll know automatically when I put up new ones. Learn about RSS/Atom. I recommend Google Reader. I really like it (or NetVibes)
- Search functions. I tried out a Google Coop search engine for a few days… but I didn't really like it. Sure it fast, but I couldn't go "back" in my browser (thanks to the funky javascript). Kind of annoying. (Plus I, as a site stats lover. couldn't really track my search stats, and I want to know what you as users are searching for so I can hone my site a bit (plus I don't really like ads on my site, like Google did))
- The new system will also hopefully encourage me to edit those recipes to clean them up a bit. Don't keep your fingers crossed on that one—it'll take me a lot of time if I do it
- Print Formatting – I spent the time to make sure these things would print out in an acceptable format. I only know one person with a computer in their kitchen, and it's not me. We all want these things on paper so we can actually use them. Just go ahead and print. It won't look the same when you print it as it does on your screen. Don't believe me? Preview the print job, and see if it looks good to you. Just a little trickery on my part there (it also cuts back on storage for me not having duplicate pages).
- Last but far from least, Comments. To me, food is all about enjoying it with others, and it's nice to be able to leave comments on recipes. Share your thoughts about a recipe, or even ask simple questions. I'm game.
Hopefully you like the new features as well. If so, drop me a line letting me know. I very rarely won't respond, so keep your eyes peeled for that response from me. Happy cooking & eating! :)