Category Archives: Blogging

The past, present, and future of this blog

I started blogging sometime in the early mid 2000’s. The internet was a simpler, slightly more innocent place back then. We didn’t have “influencers”, social media was fairly nascent, and an awful lot of us mostly opened our browsers to read text. At the time I was recovering from a failed music career and trying to reprogram my brain for a career in information technology by absolutely bathing every neuron in tech-related content. This blog started, in many ways, as an overflow from that.

I’d blog to document things I’d learned or created. I’d blog to answer questions I saw on forums over and over. I’d blog to just brain-dump something I’d learned, or to brag on something I’d just coded. Mostly I just blogged because I get ideas in my mind and I need to get them out so I can get past them and think about the next thing.

At some point in 2017, someone noticed that I blogged about programming in Tkinter and I was offered a book deal. I ended up writing 3 books for Packt on Python, and suddenly I had an online persona. I’m now an author, with (believe it or not) a bit of a fan base. That’s pretty cool and yet humbling. And also a little stifling.

Because now what started as a guy just writing out his thoughts on whatever was filling his brain at the time became part of a marketing tool for a product. It became part of the online branding for Alan D Moore the author. I felt the pressure to orient the content towards things that would sell books or make me appear like some sage programming guru. The result? I quit blogging.

Some people are wired up such that when they see an opportunity for fame and fortune and they seize it with two white-knuckled hands and milk it for all it’s worth. I’m not one of those. My brain wants to be free. Free to think about what interests me, free to pursue avenues of interest that I find inspiring. Yesterday it was programming. Today it might be electronics. Or music. Or Theology. Who knows where I’ll want to go tomorrow?

I can’t guarantee I’ll be wanting to write about any of those things, but I will still be me. And I’ll still want to write about whatever is captivating my thoughts. And for quite a few years now, I’ve felt like this blog — my own blog, on my own website, that I pay for — hasn’t been a place where I can do that. Well, now it’s going to be.

So this post is basically my notice to anyone who had expectations in coming here. Maybe you know me as an author of books or youtube videos about Python GUIs and you’re expecting some great insights on that. Maybe you remember me from some Linux forum or from some old Linux tutorial and want to hear thoughts about free software. Maybe you’re someone who read my tutorial on drum machine programming or harmony, or one of the literally dozen(s?) of SpinAround fans wondering what the former keyboard player is up to these days. Whatever your expectations were from this blog, dear wonderful visitor, I’m officially no longer worrying about meeting them. What gets posted here from now on is just whatever I want to write about.

And now, with that said… on to what’s next.

Spam-a-lam-a-ding-dong

Just a short note to let any potential commenters know that this blog is being rocked by spammers right now. None of it is getting through, thanks to my moderation settings and a few anti-spam plugins; but it’s possible your comments might be getting lost.

I value all (actual made-by-humans-who-are-reading-the-articles) comments to this blog, positive or negative, so deepest apologies if yours gets lost. Just make sure you post something meaningful and easily recognizable as not spam. Thanks!

Blogging in Emacs, part 2

When I first set up this blog, I attempted to use the weblogger.el extension to blog to this site. Alas, it gave me quite a bit of trouble, so I had to scrap it.

Recently, though, I’ve been trying to get a handle on Emacs org-mode, and noticed an extension called “org2blog/wp”. If it can work, seems like a good way to learn org mode. So, if this works, it’ll be my first post from org2blog. Let’s see how it goes….

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Comments fixed

Apparently due to my failure to read directions, comments have been broken on this site for a looooooooooooooooong time.  So now they are fixed, I expect everyone to bless me with their profound wisdom.

 

Less blogging == More coding

So, the blogging has slowed a bit, but that’s a good thing. Yes, Episode IV of my “Reviving your old PC” series is in progress and on its way. You gotta wait for quality, folks.

But last night I started and interesting new project that took over my brain and had me up most of the night. It’s like this…
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Well, I guess I really did join the herd…

WordPress powers 14.7 per cent of the top million web sites – The H Open Source: News and Features.

I knew WordPress was popular, but jeepers!

New series in the works: Reviving your old computer with Linux

In my spare time, when my brain simply demands that I stop writing PHP and Javascript and start writing English for a little, I’ve been working up a miniseries of articles on reviving an old computer with help from Linux.

I know the topic’s probably been done to death, but since tinkering with old and dusty computers is one of my hobbies, I just wanted to write some articles on this.  Anyway, my teach-the-roadmap-not-the-route method of approaching these things will hopefully add a little more to someone’s experience than the usual barebones recipes you get from places like howtoforge.

I’ll probably post the first installment later this weekend, if I get time to look it over once more.

Website mini-overhaul

Well, as long as I’m doing stuff to the site, that main page needed an
overhaul BAD!!!!

So I rearranged the menu, created a new stylesheet, and removed all the
fanboyish anti-IE nonsense. The site looks pretty consistent in IE9,
and if you’re using older versions of IE you’re probably going to have
to get used to things looking like junk.

Because frankly, if a browser doesn’t support border-radius, box-shadow, or text-shadow, I can’t be bothered to go make jpegs or do some javascript nonsense just to make things pretty for old-and-busted browser. Sorry.

Testing Emacs

Just testing my ability to post from Emacs. Test test test.

I’m posting via weblogger.el, but there are some bugs involving timezone offsets that mess with the publishing time.  I’ll see if I can sort those out somehow….

I’ve joined the herd…

After years of not blogging much to my geekblog, I’ve decided it’s time to join the herd and get a real blog engine behind my writing.  True, I may still not find much time to blog, but at least I can get some experience playing with WordPress  — a worthwhile bit of knowledge for a web developer / Linux admin / advisor-on-all-things-computer-for-my-family-and-friends.

So here I am tinkering away on this WordPress thing.   Maybe I’ll write more.  Maybe I can link this in with social networks and such, or feel more like writing about things other than just computers and tech.  Who knows.  Maybe it’ll end up with three way-out-of-date entries like every other WordPress blog out there.

Time will tell…