a broken mold

Right now we’re demoing the new WordPress theme that comes bundled with 3.0, Twenty Ten. Seems pretty sweet and polished.

The header image is a crop of one of my photographs. Right now it’s sort of hacked in, as the header image replacement doesn’t appear to be working with the theme; I suspect it has to do with the file permissions we have.

I guess we’ll be back to our regular look after a while. I think…

Update: Demo aborted for now. It appears to not play nice with FD Footnotes. I may try to track down the problem, as Twenty Ten is pretty cool.

Update 2: Turns out it was a conflict with Google Analytics for WordPress, which I installed today. Tracking of outbound clicks and downloads has been turned off, that fixed the problem. We may need to do some investigation into a replacement or just using the regular GA code since tracking outbound clicks is a nice capability.

So… we’re now demoing Twenty Ten again.

This is rather overdue.

Since I care somewhat about SEO (not an SEOhead, though… I mean, how many SEO blogs can there be?), I looked for a WordPress plugin to handle that sort of stuff for a broken mold. All in One SEO Pack is pretty much the package for WordPress, I guess, but I couldn’t even get it to run. I have no idea why.

I tried another SEO plugin, too, as I remember. HeadSpace, I think. I also tried Platinum SEO Pack and that’s what I ended up using. The author asks that you either review, link, or donate. I was happy to oblige since the plugin worked fine but being lazy I haven’t done it yet. Until now.

This isn’t really like reviewing a piece of art or anything, so I have simply this to say: it works and it works well. I suppose I’m not an expert and it’s probably missing some, but I’ll go ahead and say ‘name a SEO feature and it’s got it’. All sorts of meta stuff. A big long list of check boxes for you to decide on.

One thing I’d like to highlight, even though I don’t use it, is custom meta elements for individual posts. Check it out.

I guess some people would find this handy.

For a while now we’ve had a page with our tag cloud on it since we’ve removed it from the sidebar. It sure can be interesting but it’s not all that useful on the sidebar. Supposedly this page listed all our tags, but when I was editing a tag recently, I noticed we had a lot more tags than that. I investigated, found the problem, and got all our tags showing.

So, have a look at our tag cloud if you wish. It will get bigger as we write more posts. I’ve also added a link on the top nav bar to bring the page into view. Enjoy.

A basic outline of what wireless means in relation to an internet connection.

It could really refer to one of three things:

Mobile broadband – broadband service delivered over a cellular network

Service from a WISP (wireless internet service provider) – the ISP delivers internet usually via some line of sight wireless technology. Somewhat more common in rural, elsewise underserved areas.

A wireless router providing an internet connection to devices – probably all types of broadband can be used via a wireless router. (Well, except gigabit service. There’s no wireless router with enough bandwidth for that.) The router allows devices (laptops, desktops, an iPod Touch, etc.) to connection wirelessly to the LAN and also provides internet if the router is connected. Wireless routers also usually have several wired Ethernet ports.

Some confusion may be had getting service from a WISP and running a wireless router. You have wireless (from the WISP) and wireless (a router running). But remember, you can also run a wireless router with other types of service: DSL, cable, FTTH, etc. In fact, you don’t even need an internet connection to run a wireless router. Once again, it forms a LAN (Local Area Network: a network of local devices, local being ones connected to this router) and provides an internet connection to these devices if there is one.

There are also wired (only) routers that perform much the same function, but may only be connected to with an Ethernet cable. Wireless is probably more common, at least in homes, because of it’s convenience (wiring a house is often much more difficult).

So that’s pretty much what wireless means.

This is the first in a planned series of tech posts directed at laymen, non-geeks, etc. Basically a lot of my friends and family. Subscribe and enjoy.

Illustration built with images from OpenClipArt.

I think I’ve refrained from saying anything because I didn’t have anything clever to say. That was wrong; I’m sorry.

So simply thank you. Thank you for being brave, thank you for sacrificing, thank you for keeping on keeping on keepin’ on. You’re doing good work. We owe you a lot.

I’m ashamed to say I haven’t been praying for you. I will.

So, if I right a bazillion good posts but nobody ever sees them, I’ve certainly wasted something, right? Maybe it did have it’s purposes, but I’ve realized that I really need to think about audience¹.

Who is my audience right now? My friends and family.
How will that audience change? Word of mouth.
Why will people talk? Because I’m writing good things for my audience (or will).

Sure, it’s not bad to write about stuff because you like it and nobody cares. It just doesn’t do that much (except maybe make you happy). I personally would like to have some other people reading what I write and caring about it.

So I must write for the audience I have. That’s the only way to change and grow our audience it seems to me.

Leeann has this in her sidebar and it made me feel a little sick.

That’s a helpless person murdered nearly all the time. Those who can support abortion knowing that suppress the truth they know at some level or another. It’s sick, okay? Sick.