So, if you’re still around, I thank you for your patience, and ask you to bear with me. Cheers!

Akismet has done a marvelous job in blocking most of the spam – it’s caught nearly 40,000 spam comments so far – but alas, it’s not enough. Every day, I get 1 or 2 comments to be moderated that are total junk; apparently someone really wanted to spam my site during the night, because when I checked my email, I had 10 comments to moderate, all of which were spam.

To (hopefully) cut back on the amount of spam I need to manually check, I’ve just installed the Bad Behavior plugin, which catches spambots in the act, long before they’ve had a chance to actually post anything. I don’t really know how this works – at the time of posting this, they’re claiming it works via black magic – but if it works, I don’t really care. I’ll be thankful.

In the unlikely chance that Bad Behavior blocks you from commenting, you can get in touch with me at: myfirstname @ my domain name. I’ll whitelist your IP address for you.

To my dear spammers who have stuck with me this long: hah! I hope I don’t see much of you anymore.

Update: So much for my hopes. I checked my email today (the day after setting up Bad Behavior), and found 2 spam comments to be moderated.

Bad Behavior is indeed working – it’s caught around 200 spam bots so far – but I also had over 100 spam emails hit Akismet. 2 of those got through, and I’m not really sure why. They’re not subtle in anyway, they’re just comments with tons of links about porn, photos, etc. Akismet has literally blocked thousands of comments just like these, and yet some keep popping up in my moderation list. It’s strange.

I know what’s causing the problem, though: tagging. I’ve been using the Simple Tagging plugin for a while now, and apparently, it doesn’t play nicely with 2.3.1, because 2.3.1 comes with its own tag functionality built in. I suppose if I’d read up on the latest version of WordPress before upgrading, I would have known that. Alas, I like to live dangerously.

At any rate, I’m now left with a crappy selection of choices:

A. I can leave the error up above and continue to use Simple Tagging (basically not an option, because that error is pretty yuck, and I like things to work smoothly);
B. I can lose all of my tags that I’ve applied, and start over from scratch.
C. See below.

I know, there are some of you in the crowd going, “well, just import the tags from Simple Tagging, and then get rid of the plugin.” A fine idea – I’m just not sure that’s possible. It appears that Simple Tags is the successor to Simple Tagging; Simple Tags works with 2.3.1, and Simple Tagging does not. So, I’m now poking around, trying to figure out if there’s anyway for me to keep my tags, possibly by installing Simple Tags, importing my tags from Simple Tagging to Simple Tags, and then importing my tags from Simple Tags into the top-level, WordPress approved tags area.

Simple my ass.

So – if my system here explodes and you see bits of my blog floating around on the internet, you know what happened.

Update: All fixed. I wasn’t looking in the right area in WordPress for the tags importer. I found it; imported; and now all is well in the world – at least in my little digital corner of it.

P.S. WordPress makers: why, oh why, will you not make TinyMCE’s Full Screen function part of the standard offering on the editing window toolbar? Why?

• June: 28
• July: 22
• August: 10
• September: 9
• And October, counting this post, thus far, I’ve posted six times.

I’m not at all happy about this, and it has certainly not been intentional. So, what gives? That’s a good question; I don’t really know.

I haven’t lost the desire to write here; I hit the WordPress administration frequently with intentions of starting drafts, of writing about things that have been going on in my life, and… nothing happens. I look at the blank editing window for a bit, type a word or two which I don’t care much for, and then go on to other internet abodes. I’ve even taken up the oft-recommended habit of writing down my ideas on paper while away from the computer, so I’ll “have” them when the time comes to write up a post. That just adds another step in my currently broken routine: I stare at the editing window, look at my notes, type a few words, sigh, and bail out.

Yesterday I turned to those who are smarter and sexier than myself, my fellow 9rules members. They gave some good advice. Cas recommended that if I need a blogging break, make it official; put up a “gone fishing” (or in my case, probably “reading”) sign and let readers know I’ll be back in a week or two. Others recommended that I relax a bit. Beating myself up over the fact that I’m not blogging doesn’t help; it probably just exacerbates the problem. Perhaps I’ve also been overly hard on myself on what I’m writing about; I suppose not every post has to be a masterpiece. I also think that, in the back of my head, I’ve been really wanting to write lengthy posts about history; when those didn’t come to me right away, I felt that I couldn’t write anything at all. This being my personal blog, I thankfully have the freedom to write about whatever I want; mentally boxing myself in in regards to what I can write is more than a little silly. Special thanks in particular must be given to Kamigoroshi, who rightly pointed out that, on a personal blog, the very problem of not being able to write anything can be turned into a post; it was this advice which gave me the impetus to write this.

My plans, then, are pretty simple: relax, experience life, and not be so damn nitpicky about my own writing. I think I really need to focus on that last one, because I think being my “own worst critic” has been a major factor in my writing (or, lately, the lack thereof). I’m also going to relax on swinging the beat-stick; if I find that on a given day, I can’t write something, so be it. Hopefully putting these mindsets into place will help things run a bit more smoothly around here, and the number of posts will raise again. I’m sure, though, that if it does nothing else, it’ll help me feel a bit better. I’ve been positively bummed about my blog here lately.

Cheers to those who gave advice. You guys rock.

System 13 ranks pretty high for some other… “interesting” searches. A few examples:

• I’m #4 on Google for “rotten shark.”
• #6 for “ninja penguin.”
• #7 for “hardwood floors and dogs.”
• #10 for “I can has cheezburger.” (Heh…)
•  #3 for “stargate languages.”
• #2 for “stargate everyone speaks english.”

Don’t take this post the wrong way. I’m not being narcissistic (at least, no more than any other blogger…) – I just find a lot of those funny. If you could dig into my stats, you’d probably be surprised at just how much traffic I get from searches like that. In particular, I seem to get at least a few hits every day by someone who’s looking for information about Icelanders eating rotten shark meat which has been soaked in shark urine. I’m not kidding.

You internet folk… you’re some weird people!

Update: Upgrade complete, with nothing broken. Woot.

If all went as smoothly as I think it did, most of you should have no idea what I’m talking about.

There are still some things that aren’t quite right, like the CSS and the page titles. I’m seeing some text that isn’t styled as it should be, and a few other minor things, but they truly are minor. I haven’t, for example, seen any fatal PHP errors. Regarding the page titles, the name of the blog isn’t showing up in them. So instead of getting (post title) – (System 13), it’s simply (post title). Easily fixed, though, with a big of PHP digging. (Fixed!) All in all, I’m amazed at how well the jump from WordPress.com to the new host went. The host I’m using, by the way, is A Small Orange, who were quite helpful during the process. I had a few issues that they dealt with very quickly (I’m talking like 3-5 minute responses).

I decided to hop back to my own hosting because there were a few things I wanted to do that I wasn’t able to do with WordPress.com:

• Create pages outside of the blog structure for other interests of mine, i.e. if I wanted to make a page about Old Norse or Battlestar Galactica or ketchup popsicles (the urge might hit me, you know). The page system in WordPress is nice if you’re going to make a few pages, but it seems rather clunky if you’re going to do anything extensive. It’s also a real pain in the butt to make pages look drastically different than your blog when you make the pages inside of WordPress. If I were to make a page on Old Norse or Vikings, I wouldn’t want to have it showing up inside the System 13 blog template. (Unless, of course, the page were about Vikings in space…)
• Use the LibraryThing widget. What can I say, I love books. I really, really wanted that widget on my blog. My LibraryThing widget, by the way, is now in the sidebar, if you hadn’t noticed it yet.

There was nothing at all wrong at WordPress.com, other than I was limited by a few things. For what they’re doing – hosting blogs – they are, in my book, the best out there. I don’t think I ever got a 404 or time out on their site, and it’s always been speedy. My other blog, Language Geek, will continue to be housed in the mighty blog warehouse that is WordPress.com.

Lastly, if you see anything “off” – weird display problems, broken links, alien limbs hanging out from under the header – let me know, and I’ll take a looksie. As my toddler would say, “Tinks!”

I’m not too happy about this. They did include my name, and a link to the original post, but I’m still not happy about them basically stealing my content to feed their blog. At least I’m not alone; it looks like they’ve stolen content from a huge number of people.

Of course, I was unable to find any contact information on their site (surprise, surprise), so I did a WHOIS on their domain name. I was able to get an email address to contact them, to ask that they take down my content from their site. Now, whether they check said email, who knows. It’s also up in the air as to whether they’ll comply with my wishes.

I guess it’s time for me to put up some form of copyright notice here…

The blog here won’t be going anywhere, and won’t even be going “inactive.” I’ll be blogging just as always. I think once I get into the swing of things, regular posting will recommence. In fact, once I get into the swing of things with school and my new schedule, blog posts here may actually become more frequent: just from a week and a half of classes, I’ve got all sorts of interesting things floating around in my head, begging to be blogged about, particularly about history. (See, Nils, if you’re patient, your wish will be my command. More history blog posts will be showing up!)

So, please stick around. I’ve not gone anywhere, and I won’t be going anywhere, either.

My feed stats tell me that there are approximately 50 people who read my blog daily. My comment, on the other hand, have mostly has the same 5-10 people commenting over and over. There is, of course, nothing wrong with these 5-10 people; in fact, I’m quite fond of them. However, that leaves about 40 of you who I.. well, don’t know. I have no idea who you are. You are just numbers on a pretty graph. I really would like to know a little bit about the rest of you. What’s your name? What do you like on my blog? Do you have a blog? Do you like pizza? How about blueberry muffins? Cats or dogs? Tell me whatevever you want to (if you want to tell me anything, that is).

The ball is in your court.

Update: Well, the feed stats show that 47 of you got my blog updates today, and there have only been two comments on this post so far – both of which were done by folks who have commented in the past. My regular blog stats (i.e., not feed stats) show that 17 people have specifically hit this blog entry.

So uh… I guess I just have a lot of lurkers who don’t wish to comment, at all! And now, back to our regularly scheduled program (which is basically randomness, in a nutshell…)