Ruralocity Blog

I’m restructuring my blogging activity and moving over to my vainest domain name yet: www.aaronsumner.com. That’s not to say nothing will ever happen here again, because, you know, you never know.

Anyway, see you there.

The WordPress mobile blogging app is now available for the iPhone. Download your free copy from the iTunes App Store. So far, so good.

This blog of mine just won’t stick. I can’t commit to it in its current form, and I think I know why–it rambles along with whatever interests me at the moment, and if you know me at all you know my interests wax and wane with the tides. So, as elsewhere in my life, this site is chock-full of half-started initiatives that never go anywhere.

I need to work on that. Here, at least.

Awhile back I had an idea about a blog called “Series,” in which I’d post everything I did in a certain venture and give it my all until that venture fizzled. For example, when I had that idea I was getting ready to drive back to Kansas after four years in Seattle. I was going to document the trip with photos and words. The problem with that one was I’d forgotten from the original trip up there that there’s really no time to stop and smell the roses–I was on a mission to beat the truck with all our stuff. I made a half-assed attempt but nothing really came of it.

But I still think it’s an interesting way to get a slacker like me going on writing. So here’s what I’m going to do.

First off, I want a new theme for my blog. The one I was using, Particles, looked neat but had limitations. This new one, plaintxtBlog, is OK and will work for now, but I need something more suited to me. That will probably mean going back to crafting a custom WordPress theme, but I hate PHP. And I kind of hate WordPress. Supposedly TextPattern and Emotion Engine are better ways to go, but they still have that PHP albatross going against them. I think the general consensus in the Rails community is that you should write your own engine, but I don’t see the point when someone somewhere has surely written something that would work for me. I’ll probably just stick with WordPress since it’s easy to host and manage with my provider.

Second off, but more importantly, is the content. This is not the place for random non-sequiters and software tips. I’ve got Twitter and Pownce for that kind of stuff. It’s also not the place for “this is what I did today” posts or what I think about an R.E.M. album I pulled out for the first time in years, because frankly, nobody cares. I’d rather this site document the brief, sometimes intense moments in which I’m interested in something more than anything else.

It’ll be good for a laugh, if nothing else, like “Hey, remember that time I could tell you from memory the specs on a few dozen esoteric European sports cars? Ha ha ha!”

I debated a bit on what to do with what’s here now. A couple of the things I posted drew some traffic, so it would seem foolish to do a mass-delete. I’ll probably make a category to store all that junk, just to get it out of general sight, and go from there. Fresh starts are good, right?

Now I just need to put together time to put this all together and get a new, consuming interest to drive it. School is almost over. I’m in a rather pointless summer class right now, and then my final project looms this fall, and then that’s it–I’m back to determining my own schedule and interests in January. Who knows what those interests might be, but I can tell you they won’t be related to instructional design or educational technology.

So anyway, I don’t know who actually reads this–there are at least a few people popping in and out based on what I see on Google Analytics–but I figured I’d give you a heads up. I need to make this work for me, you know?

I got rid of a few old posts that really didn’t have to do with the foci I’m trying to apply to this blog. Nothing big, and I didn’t delete any of the small handful of comments I’ve received here–so, no harm, no foul? (Sorry, I’ve been watching basketball most of the day.)

As is well documented, I am not very good at keeping up with the whole blog thing. This morning I starting wondering if it had to do with the extra baggage of signing into WordPress’ admin section. So I’m trying out a blogging program–in this case, MarsEdit. We’ll see how it goes.

So far, I like MarsEdit’s straightforward interface–no WYSIWIG, just content and code (it does have a basic preview mode). That may be a negative for people who don’t want to look at HTML in their posts, but so far it seems like I get cleaner code from this than I do with WordPress’ built-in editor. I also like how easy it is to upload media. Also, I was just about to report that a lack of support for tags was a minus, but then I found how to include the Tags field.

I’m hoping that having the editor just a docked icon away will help me keep this a bit more current, and that when the trial period is up I’ve decided that MarsEdit is indeed worth 30 bucks.

Today’s a snow day–six inches fell on Lawrence overnight and KU actually closed campus. In my four-plus years as a student there they didn’t close campus once. This winter alone I think it’s been closed twice.

Anyway, so I decided to spend my time at home on a little professional development. I decided to tackle a few things in WordPress–namely, better use of CSS within it, and getting up to speed on widgets. And I give you the new-look blog.ruralocity.com.

For the most part I think I like widgets–they’re easy to set up and juggle. I downloaded an alternative Search widget (why no title bar, Automattic?) but other than that am running stock. I’ve also got a couple of plugins going, such as the AddThis options you should see at the end of every post. The Google Analytics plugin is giving me some problems–not sure why–but the nifty iPhone plugin works as advertised.

I know, it needs some tweaks–I’m not happy with line heights and a few other things–but this serves as my somewhat annual pledge to renew my own interest in this site. I’ll try.

Also, no, I haven’t looked at it in IE yet. Later.

Last time, I swear–my flyers collection is now here:

flyers.ruralocity.com

I thought they deserved their own look and feel. I’d done the basic layout awhile back, and being kind of sick from insomnia this week left me only good for brain-dead content migration–so I was able to finish the transfer. Everything’s been deleted from the old Flyers site and from what I was putting on this blog.

Everything’s tagged now, so go to the tags page and see if your favorite band is there!

I hate this blog. I let it get too unfocused. When time permits (which may be awhile) I’m going to revisit and do some cleanup. I want it to be more portfolio-oriented. Nobody cares what I have to say about the iPhone, anyway, right?

With a small stack of recent flyers, and a brand new scanner on my desk, I decided to revisit my little pet project–a few acid-free portfolios’ worth of flyers promoting upcoming concerts, ripped from bulletin boards and telephone posts throughout Lawrence, Kansas City, and Seattle over the past 15-plus years. OK, so I lost a lot along the way–but what I’ve got left has been faithfully digitized and shared with you, dear Ruralocity enthusiast, online.

I’ve had them in an old version of Movable Type for the past couple of years, but now I’m moving them over to this blog. The MT-to-WP import/export function leaves a bit to be desired, so I’m doing this by hand. 2006 has been moved over, as well as a few from this year I’ve picked up and just scanned today. Hopefully I’ll have everything moved over in the next few weeks.

I felt the need to make this site look a little more blog-like today, with enhancements such as putting the sidebar on the side of the page, of all places. I still need to fix the width of the pages with no sidebar. You know me, I love to tinker–this will be a work in progress.

Sunflower’s doing their best to thwart me from it (our Internet connection has been down more than up today) but I’m working on the official Ruralocity theme for WordPress. I’m doing things piecemeal. Things will look weird, but I’m the only one reading this thing anyway–so no harm, no foul. If you happen to stop by in the meantime, hello. Welcome. Sorry about the clutter.

I’ve had a new blog in the works at ruralocity.com for several months now. After obsessing with WordPress themes, layouts, colors, and so on, I get tired of it. So I’m trying something new–instead of working to make it pretty I’m going to work on the content for awhile. And here we go–just the basic WordPress theme, maybe some links and stuff, but nothing too fancy.

This blog will be a place for me to talk about things I’m working on, school stuff, fun stuff, whatever. Probably nothing interesting to anybody but me, but my memory gets worse by the year and I’d like to have a way to remember my mid-30s.

Also, albeit tentatively, I’m going to leave comments on (with moderation). Tell me what you think. I reserve the right to cut you off at any time.