BrockLi Soup

I’ve had this site on WordPress for a few days now, after using Movable Type for over three years.

So far, I love it.

I don’t want to place blame, but for the past couple months, Movable Type was giving me hell. I kept getting 500 Internal Server Errors on almost every other page load, and I don’t know if it was because of MT, 1&1 (my web host), or because my 650+ posts were too much for the system. According to the Google, a lot of other people were having this problem - long run times seemed to be the issue - but no one seemed to have any solutions. It was incredibly frustrating to do anything, and so I just avoided it.

Under those circumstances, MT was kind of like a rusted-out Oldsmobile that only fired on three cylinders and refused to start on cold mornings. In comparison, WordPress is like a brand new Vespa - quick, sleek, and kind of fun. And most importantly, it doesn’t stall in the middle of the highway.

Now that I think about it, maybe it was because of the language. Movable Type is mostly Perl, and WordPress is PHP. I don’t know enough about Perl to know if that could have been an issue, but whatever. I’m a big fan of Movable Type, but it just wasn’t working for me. I got all my posts and comments moved over, the permalinks seem to be alright, and I’m happy. I need to get my portfolio and project pages fixed up, but on the whole, the migration was easier and quicker than I thought it would be.

Of course, as I was editing this, brockli.com disappeared entirely for half an hour, then gave me a 500 error, then refused to connect to the database for a little while. Maybe I can blame 1&1 after all.

After reading Getting Things Done and trying a couple times to implement the system, I think I’ve only taken away the parts that actually add MORE stress: everything is work, and you just need to prioritize and do it.

With that mentality, blogging falls in with booking hotels and airfare, planning bachelor parties, regular household chores, and of course, actual work work. The trouble is that all of those things take precedence over blogging, so I just haven’t been doing it - and then I feel like there’s one more thing on my to-do list.

I started this blog with the best of intentions: I wanted to actually write interesting, well-written posts - unlike the short trivial crap I used to post in LiveJournal constantly. I saw (and still see) a lot of really talented writers that are blogging about all sorts of things, and I wanted - to some extent - to emulate that. But the truth is, I’m not a good writer. I have ideas for blog posts all the time, but I don’t feel like expending the time or energy to write something GOOD about it, so I just don’t bother. In general, I really like writing about stuff on here - frankly, I think it’s more for me than anyone else. It’s kind of therapeutic to write about stuff, to work through my feelings on the matter. But so often, my desire to write something is overwhelmed by my desire to write something good. It feels like an obligation, but an obligation to whom? Only a small handful of people read this site, and as much as I love you all, I don’t think any of you expect a whole lot of quality out of me. Maybe I need to adjust my own expectations and just post stuff when I feel like it, whether I can make it good or not.

Furthermore, Movable Type and 1&1 have been giving me hell lately. In the MT admin, I get 500 Internal Server Errors on almost every page load, so even a simple post is a frustrating exercise. I managed to import all my entries and comments in WordPress, so we’ll see if this works better (and incidentally, you may get all my posts again in your feed reader - sorry about that).

Long story short, blogging has left a bad taste in my mouth for a couple of reasons. I’m going to keep doing it, though. It won’t be polished and it won’t be pretty, but I think I’m OK with that.

(And yes, I hate blogging-about-blogging as much as everyone else, but you’ll get over it)

Check it out, I started this thing three years ago. Happy blogiversary to me!

I just noticed that my toothpaste top can flip up OR twist off (it even has printed instructions) (actually, that’s the only reason I noticed). Why didn’t they think of that sooner? (And why do I feel like I should have a preference?)

Also: I almost forgot about it, but as of last Thursday, I’ve been doing this thing for two years.

Does anyone know a decent blog traffic analysis tool? I’ve been using Google Analytics, but it’s geared toward companies and marketers, not bloggers. On the upside, it gathers data via JavaScript, so I only get stats from actual visitors and not bots or spammers. My hosting company offers a web stats tool, but the numbers there are an order of magnitude higher than the ones on Analytics because they count all page requests, not just the ones that come from an actual browser.

I can also get the log files from my host, so a desktop app that handles raw files would work. I used Weblog Expert Lite for a little while; it gives me the information I want, but since the reports are based on the logs from the server, it’s got all the same crap results that the host’s web stats utility does. As such, another JavaScript-based tool would probably be best.

JR linked me to Measure Map the other day; I don’t know anything about it, but it’s intriguing…and closed to new users right now. Anyone got any other ideas?

Like the new look? Of course you do.

I upgraded to MT 3.2 almost a year ago, and “re-design blog” has been on my to-do list ever since. The default template isn’t bad, but I definitely didn’t care for the grey-blue crap. So, I stripped out most of the coloring, touched up some borders, and brought back the random banner images (who doesn’t love random banner images?). I’ve got about a dozen of them from the old design and I’ll be adding more when I get around to it - collect them all!

I don’t know if anyone besides Jym has tried the LJ Comment Grabber, but I fixed the comment parsing…sort of. Read the project page for more details. If you are using it, this is definitely an update you want to get.

Interested parties may remember my post about copying LiveJournal comments from a syndicated account to a Movable Type blog. Wes and Bob (I think?) recommended some LJ developer pages, but the closest I could get was retrieving comments from an LJ account for which I’m logged in. Since I was looking to get comments from a syndicated account, there is (as far as I know) no way to do that.

So I spent a few hours this weekend hacking together this monstrosity of PHP to scrape the LJ pages and insert comments into the MT database. You can get the code on the project page. It’s not that good and I wouldn’t even really recommend using it, but you’re welcome to it. If you have any problems, bug fixes, or ideas, shoot me an e-mail or leave a comment here.

Thanks to Miss Hannah, I’ve learned that Brittanie has made a post concerning NaDruWriNi, which is good because now I don’t have to worry about it, and I wasn’t entirely clear on the rules as it was, not that I’ll be following them anyhow, but that bit’s beside the point.

The point, of course, is that I’ll be falling-down drunk on Saturday, November 4th, and I’ll be sharing it with all of you. I won’t be doing any real writing, to be sure - I can barely handle that when I’m sober, even if I don’t do as much of it as I’d like. No no, good people, you’ll be getting the grittiest, tritest, unfiltered-est crap that wanders haphazardly into the path of my train of thought, and very little of it is likely to make sense even to me, unless I stumble on some nugget of staggering genius regarding the existence of thought and humanity, in which case I hope I can draw a meaningful picture that will make sense in the morning.

I encourage you all to join me. For you locals, I’ll probably begin the evening with a few mixed drinks here at my place, then head down to the pub for a few pints (this part will hopefully feature notes scribbled furiously in my Moleskine), then stumble back here again, where I can be left alone while I beg the room to just sit still for a damn minute so I can find the pisser. Surely, it will be an evening to remember.

PS: I’ve had a couple of Jack & Coke’s this evening. Not only do I participate in NaDruWriNi, I even practice weeks beforehand. That’s how dedicated I am.

To anyone who has commented lately, I’m very sorry if it didn’t show up. I’ve been getting slammed with comment spam lately, with mixed results from SpamLookup. I was flushing some of it today when I noticed one real comment amongst them, but this was after nuking hundreds of comments, so I have no idea if there were other real ones in there too. And it seems that I accidentally published a block of them instead of deleting them, so I’m cleaning up that mess now.

I’m going to keep a closer eye on things for at least a little while and see if my SpamLookup settings need some adjustment. In the meantime, if you post a comment and it doesn’t show up after a few hours - I moderate everything, so it’ll be a little while, anyway - please send me a quick note so I can rectify the situation. I’m at rboland[at]gmail[dot]com. Thanks!

Oh what a world we live in. A stranger gets some fan mail, and a month later, I’ve got a new t-shirt. Also on the way: Colbert Has Stones (once it gets printed).

According to MT’s Activity Log, the following are recent searches on the site:

• samsung
• g
• right
• poop

I’d like to think I’m the Internet’s leading authority on Samsung or (preferably) poop, but Leading Authority on Chewed-Up Pencils and Rotating Doors was the best one left when I finally got around to choosing.

And to clarify, I’m not moving back to Buffalo. Yet. I will be spending the summer in Rochester, doing the same job I’m doing now. The whole company hootenanny is to take place AFTER college.

Just so we’re clear.

(Also, hootenanny is a real word.)