Measi's Musings

Archive for the ‘Blog Organization’ Category

It’s been all over my friends’ pages for the past couple days… but Diary-X is no more. For various reasons, both explained and not, it’s not coming back. Everything’s lost. Apparently some of the more devoted DX’ers are going to try to put together a replacement… and I wish them the best of luck.

Yeah, I’m a bit sad. Mostly due to the connections I’d made there. I mean, hell– in just over a month, I’m going to the wedding of two people I met through DX… and who met each other through DX, for that matter. Until the end of 2004, my entire relationship with Erich was written about as it developed.

Erich lost everything he’d written there. I’ve done an archive search for some of his stuff… and did find a few writings, which I saved to my computer for him. But for the most part, everything’s gone beyond what I had the sense to cross-post to diaryland or LJ. At some point, I know he’ll set himself back up. I’ve (of course) offered whatever he wants on measi.net.

Le sigh….

But it’s time to move on, as many others are doing. In my case, that’s getting around to finally making my journal how I want it. I’ve found a WordPress template that I like, and it’s uploaded and live. I just need to get the entries transferred over there, and then move everything into the blog folder. It’ll take some time, but it’s stuff I want to do.

As I work on that, though– I need updates for webpages so I can update my links. I’ve found some on the DX form that was set up on the old site. But if you haven’t added your info there and are reading… drop me a line and let me know where you’ve moved to so I can find you again.

~ Mel.

It’s been all over my friends’ pages for the past couple days… but Diary-X is no more. For various reasons, both explained and not, it’s not coming back. Everything’s lost. Apparently some of the more devoted DX’ers are going to try to put together a replacement… and I wish them the best of luck.

Yeah, I’m a bit sad. Mostly due to the connections I’d made there. I mean, hell– in just over a month, I’m going to the wedding of two people I met through DX… and who met each other through DX, for that matter. Until the end of 2004, my entire relationship with Erich was written about as it developed.

Erich lost everything he’d written there. I’ve done an archive search for some of his stuff… and did find a few writings, which I saved to my computer for him. But for the most part, everything’s gone beyond what I had the sense to cross-post to diaryland or LJ. At some point, I know he’ll set himself back up. I’ve (of course) offered whatever he wants on measi.net.

Le sigh….

But it’s time to move on, as many others are doing. In my case, that’s getting around to finally making my journal how I want it. I’ve found a WordPress template that I like, and it’s uploaded and live. I just need to get the entries transferred over there, and then move everything into the blog folder. It’ll take some time, but it’s stuff I want to do.

As I work on that, though– I need updates for webpages so I can update my links. I’ve found some on the DX form that was set up on the old site. But if you haven’t added your info there and are reading… drop me a line and let me know where you’ve moved to so I can find you again.

~ Mel.

So despite a few emails that piss me off regarding my opinion on Diary-X, I am in the process of making things better for myself. And I’ve found that stereotypical “silver lining” to the disaster cloud.

And believe me– despite a few inklings on comments sections, I’ve been keeping my opinion on the matter VERY much to myself. Yes, I read the LJ forum that’s now front and center for DX’ers. I can say for certain that my eyes have a full range of motion to the amount of completely sappy, over-the-top “Stephen love” going on there. But yeah, my comments have been restrained. For lack of a better reason, I’m well aware of the elitist DX-only crew out there, and just don’t want to deal with a lot of the crap. I don’t get all of the love. I really don’t. But then again, since I’m One Of Those Who Left, my opinion is a dark cloud on the fluffy rainbows of DX-dom.

Anyway… onto the good stuff. My discovery of the Silver Lining came out of this frustration. I’ve had three issues that I’ve been thinking about for a while with my current journal. I want to improve it. I want to better organize it. The layout annoys the crap out of me. So I did the traditional pros/cons list.

There are three things that I really don’t like about Blogger.

1) The layout coding, I’ll deal with slowly. This issue is just as equally my lack of time to commit to it than the actual coding setup. I understand somewhat how the Blogging coding works. I’ve messed around with new templates. For the most part, I can make them work. But it definitely goes much slower than I’ve dealt with in the past.

2) The Archive System If there is ONE thing I miss about being at DX, it is the split archive system that was there. it was clean-looking and well-organized. I don’t like how Blogger has things done– especially that the archive listing on the right is in opposite order (with no ability to alter it) than it makes sense to appear. I *would* want the most recent months first. Sorry, no can do. This issue could be fixed, again, by some elbow grease time on my part. Recreating a split archive by hand isn’t really that much of an issue. It just takes time.

3) Tags (or categories, depending on where you’re using them). Since having them on LJ, I’ve come to love them. They really are quite handy when archiving and organizing. I read my old entries quite a bit– and finding them by topic is wonderful. Unless there’s something I’m missing, I just don’t see this feature at all at Blogger.

When I started really thinking about making the “plunge” to a blog on my own named webspace, I downloaded several different programs. Greymatter, Moveable Type, WordPress. I’ve used Diaryland (which has the same uptime/downtime issues as DX) and LiveJournal.

I couldn’t figure out Greymatter and MT and how to get them installed. The instructions made me very nervous. WordPress, on the other hand, I got up and running. It works okay, but again.. the template thing drives me a little nutso. I found a basic one (ironically, the same one that Linda (aka Hooligan from dx days) currently uses… based on what I saw while doing some surfing a few weeks back), and it works.

I had to remind myself– this will be for my ARCHIVES. I don’t need to keep everything in blogger forever. Eventually, I probably will transition entirely to WordPress. But for now, the most important thing for me are the following:

1) An archive of all of my journal entries on MY webspace

2) The ability to tag past entries so they can be found by topic (let’s face it… I do write a lot of boring, daily entries that don’t matter in the long run. They just keep me writing. They can be skipped if things are sorted by topic).

3) An archive that’s in the right order– most recent months FIRST.

Yesterday, I took my WordPress experiment on my site and started doing the old fashioned “cut and paste” method to add my old entries to my site. March-April 2001 is now done. I’ll work May-July 2001 this weekend, and slowly just go through everything. Tag each entry, clean up the exterior links in them (since so many no longer work or had DX shortcuts).

It’ll go slowly, but surely. It’s not perfect, but it will be better. And right now, that’s what I’m looking for.

I found out this morning that Diary-X crashed soundly sometime over the weekend. Apparently Stephen, who is the owner of the service, hadn’t backed up the server since December 2004. But the kicker is that I’d originally planned to move everything over here into archives. But I’d never gotten around to downloading a backup.

It’s my own damn fault for not backing up my own journal, of course. I do have back to January 2003, because I was cross-posting to LiveJournal at that point. And I thought I was safe because I *had* kept a backup at Diaryland.– but it crashed hard at some point– and everything prior to 2004 is gone there. (whee).

So at this point, unless I do have a weird backup somewhere on my computers at home, everything from 2001 and 2002 is gone. It sucks, because I’m pretty sure I’d saved the very first email from Erich there (also known as the “how we met” story). But again– it’s my own damn fault for not backing it up.

Edited to Add: D-X is still down, but my backup is intact at Diaryland. I’m sure that I’m missing a few entries here and there that I wrote but never actually linked to my journal. But for the most part, everything’s been located in working order. Archiving and backup-ing will be a pet-project for the week and weekend.

I have been meaning to make a complete archive on measi.net anyway– this is the swift kick in the ass I needed.

Le sigh.

Erich also had a DX journal that he didn’t use as much… it’s probably completely gone.

I can be a bit annoyed with Stephen for not doing a complete site backup since December 2004. Oddly, though, I’m not that surprised for an unknown reason, though. Perhaps it’s my memory of what happened with Nervousness under his care. (which is why I’d switched a copy to Diaryland, BTW)

It sucks… but what can you do?

~ Mel.

Dear Readers–

With many days left on Holidailies, and a new year starting, I’m reaching out to get ideas for topics to write about for the next few weeks. I can ramble all day about the boring stuff I do every day– but is there anything YOU want me to write about?

If it’s one of those big, important topics, I may even stop my usual off-the-cuff writing style and actually COMPOSE entries for a while, editing them and cleaning them up.

So please– give me ideas! Chances are, I’ll use every one of them.

Or if you don’t have ideas, let me know you’re reading… because maybe I’ll come and get inspiration from you.

~ Mel.

It’s December 7th, which this year marks the beginning of the Holidailies season. There might be some strange entry writing here, but I’ll be forcing myself to write every day… hopefully multiple times every day… for the next month.

Since it is the beginning of Holidailies, and I’ve also met several new people online in the past several months, I’ll start this year’s challenge by simply reintroducing myself. Whatever bio is linked to my journal probably hasn’t been updated for years at this point, and well… it’s been a life-changing year.

Those who know me, stop snorting due to obvious-ness of that statement.

Anyway… hi, how are ya? My name’s Melissa. I normally go by Mel, or by my childhood nickname-turned-online handle, Measi. I’m 30. I’ve been blogging online for just shy of five years now, and I literally write about everything and anything here—so if you pop by every day, you’ll find completely random topics to read about.

I’m engaged to a wonderful man named Erich. We’re coming up on a year of engagement next month and are just starting the wedding plans. (we’re shooting for next October, but we haven’t finalized a date yet). Erich and I bought our first house this year, moved in at the end of June, and now are adjusting to life as homeowners , long distance commuters, and that odd sense of settling down into that life that we saw our parents living, but didn’t think we’d ever quite reach.

We live in Providence, Rhode Island, having escaped Massachusetts and the frightening housing market that exists there. Rhode Island, being the smallest state in the United States, also has the longest official name: State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. I have not yet seen any evidence of plantations in Providence. Perhaps, though, my idea of great southern mansions isn’t quite what they mean by “plantation.” In any case, I like it here. It’s a very small state—only a bit more than 30 by 40 miles. But because of its location, it’s a huge melting pot of generations, cultures, and economic classes. Diversity is good. Erich and I both still commute to our jobs in Boston, however, so in many ways, we still haven’t left Massachusetts.

We’re owned by five… yes, five… cats. Numbers four and five joined us this past September, and we recognize that we’ve finally reached official “Crazy Cat People” status. You’ll see entries about them throughout the month, but to sum up, we have Colley, Fizzy, Gus, Noby, and Elly.

My hobbies include writing (blogging, stories, penpal letters, etc.), reading, cross-stitch, computer games, and movies. Both Erich and I are bonafide geeks—we play Dungeons & Dragons every month. We go to Renaissance Fairs in period garb. Occasionally, we hit the fandom convention circuit.

So that’s me in a nutshell. Welcome into my little corner of the internet. I love to hear from anyone who’s reading, so please drop a line in my comments to say hi or drop me an email! And please let me know if there’s a topic you’d love to have me write about over the month, whether holiday-related or not. With few exceptions, I’m up for anything!

Best,
Mel

This weeked I managed to nearly complete the new blog template… but for some reason, the simple act of cutting and pasting is beyond my capabilities. I managed to kill not only the new working template, but my old blogger template as well.

To the point that I just. don’t. care.

So we’re going green for a while. And maybe, when I’m in the mood, I’ll try fixing the template I *wanted* to use. Because it’s actually nearly done. But I can’t copy and paste it into the template for my normal blog and have it work. Why? Who knows. (Who cares.)

*sigh*

Yes, I’m feeling helpless.

But at least I have a working template– with links — this morning. Unlike last night.

~ Mel.

If you’re on my reads list and don’t see yourself over there at the moment, don’t freak… I ALMOST have the new template ready, and I’ve sorted my reads by daily, weekly, and stitching-related blogs.

Should have things fixed by this evening… hopefully.

Looky what I did in the last hour…

Eventually, I plan on having everything on my site switch over to the graphics… Stitching page, fanfic, faith ramblings, and yes, my journal. I’m not exactly looking forward to coding Blogger script into this layout, but hey… it works.

I’m too poor to go out and do anything else right now– might as well work on the web pages.

Now if Globat wouldn’t be completely fucked up when I save pages, I could actually do this faster. I guess I’ll work out the pages in Notepad…

*sigh*

I’m trying to get this to work with my own website… consider this a post test….

here’s hoping…

I’m in the process of bringing over my journal from its older home– but in the meantime, if you’d like to read my older entries, please go to my prior journal at measi.diary-x.

2009 Update I doubt anyone’s reading entries this far back, but since I’m putting everything into categories…

Anything prior to 2005 is currently situated at diaryland. I’m hoping to have all of it pulled over here fairly soon.

Now that I’ve spent a couple days trying to get this thing to work…

I’m going for a serious triple-header of gaming this weekend. First down to play Sideport in Randolph for the afternoon, and then Erich and I are driving up to Nashua to spend the weekend with Tan and JT. We’ll play our traditional Innburners game this evening (which Erich and I will be late for), crash out for the night, and then tomorrow play the new campaign, Legacy. It should be a lot of fun, even though most of the Boston crew have decided to be pissants and not come up to NH for whatever reason.

So I’m off until tomorrow night… take care!

–Mel.

Ah! NOW it’s working. Coolness. Publish button is good. Really. It’s our friend.

For some reason none of my posts want to come up on the template. I’m wondering what’s wrong. *sigh*

Ah well… sooner or later I’ll figure this thing out. Then we can actually start doing some rambling from time to time. So here’s another test….

Okay… severe lag time I take it with blogspot? Yikes… nothing’s showing up.