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frugal technology, simple living and guerrilla large-appliance repair

Regular blog here, 'microblog' there

Many of my traditional blog post live on this site, but a great majority of my social-style posts can be found on my much-busier microbloging site at updates.passthejoe.net. It's busier because my BlogPoster "microblogging" script generates short, Twitter-style posts from the Linux or Windows (or anywhere you can run Ruby with too many Gems) command line, uploads them to the web server and send them out on my Twitter and Mastodon feeds.

I used to post to this blog via scripts and Unix/Linux utilities (curl and Unison) that helped me mirror the files locally and on the server. Since this site recently moved hosts, none of that is set up. I'm just using SFTP and SSH to write posts and manage the site.

Disqus comments are not live just yet because I'm not sure about what I'm going to do for the domain on this site. I'll probably restore the old domain at first just to have some continuity, but for now I like using the "free" domain from this site's new host, NearlyFreeSpeech.net.

Tue, 12 Jun 2012

WordPress: What am I doing wrong?

OK, here's the deal. In Ode I can get any kind of output I want through the project's infinitely flexible theming. In Movable Type I can create any number of custom Javascript output files that draw on the blogging system's database.

So how do I do this in WordPress? I'm looking into child themes (I confess that I've -- horror of horrors -- modified the main theme in a WordPress blog), but I need EXTRA theming. What I need is the ability to tap the blog database for custom HTML output that includes only the elements I want with accompanying HTML so I can display that output on other sites.

It's so easy to do this in Ode and Movable Type. Why is it so hard (or seemingly so) in WordPress?

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Mon, 11 Jun 2012

How do you feel about social-networking posts originating as blog-post titles?

Allowing the use of multiple themes simultaneously would solve many #WordPress problems for me.

Social networking -- the giving and the taking

I know it's easy. You pick up your smartphone. You click the Twitter icon (or Facebook, if that's your poison).

Then you lay it out in 140- (or 500-odd) character bursts. Or you talk about the sandwich you're eating.

There's nothing wrong with that. Except that your words now live on some social network. Not on your own hard drive or server. Not even on a WordPress.com blog from which you can extract every post to archive and reuse as you please.

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Fri, 08 Jun 2012

I will not be posting on Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, Diaspora or Identi.ca

These are the social networks on which I have accounts.

But I won't be posting directly on any of them.

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Thu, 07 Jun 2012

DSL Extreme: No plans -- or need -- to go IPv6 at this time; so what are web sites and ISPs going to do?

With all the talk of IPv6 and how the Internet is running out of IP addresses and how we have to move from IPv4 to avoid catastrophe, I wondered what my ISP, DSL Extreme, is doing about it.

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Wed, 06 Jun 2012

The why and how of Red Hat/Fedora's solution for Linux and UEFI secure boot

Red Hat/Fedora have put a solution in place in order to ensure that Linux runs on systems that ship with secure boot. Other distributions are welcome to get in on the deal at each.

What Google's doing with Quickoffice, and what it could mean for Microsoft and Apple

I'd hate to be a company looking for growth by selling a packaged office suite. Now Google is acquiring Quickoffice to bolster its mobile offerings. I'm not sure why they need it. Development of Google Docs / Google Drive seems to be moving rather rapidly on Android, though not so rapidly on the iPad, from what I can see. I have no idea about Docs/Drive on the iPhone.

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Debian releases a diversity statement

It was nice to see Debian's new diversity statement bake in the oven, as it were, on the mailing list, and now it's here:

The diversity statement itself is refreshingly brief:

Diversity Statement

The Debian Project welcomes and encourages participation by everyone.

No matter how you identify yourself or how others perceive you: we welcome you. We welcome contributions from everyone as long as they interact constructively with our community.

While much of the work for our project is technical in nature, we value and encourage contributions from those with expertise in other areas, and welcome them into our community.

Mon, 04 Jun 2012

I'm almost ready to turn dlvr.it back on

I made a big deal out of turning off dlvr.it updates to identi.ca and Twitter. Now I'm ready to turn the service back on. Hashtags are great and all, but what's also great is creating all of my content here and then pushing what I own and control to those services. Notice how these last few posts are short? I want to do more of that.