Category Archives: BLog Technicalities

Information about the creation and maintenance of this site.

Migration Warning – Update

Posted on by
7

I prep to move this blog from my current host to a new one.

Just a fore-warning… I’m prepping to move this blog from Bluehost to Hostzinger. I’m just plain tired of Bluehost’s poor service and support and the crazy high fees they want to charge me for three small blogs.

There’s a pretty good chance this blog will go down for a few days. If it does, don’t panic! Keep check in.

And wish me luck! I’m going to need it.

UPDATE

This morning (17-Oct-24), I duplicated this site on the new host using a domain name I already had registered there. Then I pointed the original site to this one. That’s why the domain name in the URL bar is different. Once the original domain name is transferred, I’ll fix all that. In the meantime, however, it looks like the site survived the move intact.

UPDATE #2

Bluehost dragged its butt making the domain transfer so it all happened while I was away. But as of this morning (25-Oct-24), the website transfer is done and operating. Email is iffy, but doesn’t affect anything here.

Oops! Subscriber Feed Accidentally Turned Off

Posted on by
Comment

I accidentally turn off the subscription feature, halting the notifications about new posts.

I should have known I’d done this because I also did it on my Great Loop blog. I turned off a plug in back in April and that inadvertently turned off the blog subscription feature — except, apparently, for WordPress.com account holders. I’ve since fixed the problem. If you’re a blog subscriber who used the form in the sidebar to sign up, here are the posts you may have missed:

There aren’t many of them because, frankly, I’ve been enjoying life too much to stop and write about it. (Have I mentioned anywhere how awesome retirement is? I should blog about that.) What I do write these days has been mostly in my Great Loop blog.

Keeping Up with Blogging

Posted on by
9

I offer up an excuse for neglecting this blog.

It’s been a whole month since the last time I posted here. And I only posted twice in January. And not at all in December. Do you see a pattern here?

This blog will be 20 years old in October and has thousands of posts — probably millions of words — and I seem to be running out of steam.

Well, I am and I’m not.

My current priority is blogging about my Great Loop boat trip in Do It Now, which I’m about 135 days into. At this point, I’ve traveled over 2400 miles and have done about 2/3 of that solo — just me and my pups. I’m having a great time facing the challenges and reaping the rewards of the trip. I’ve got about 5 weeks left before I head home for the summer and my summer job. (Yes, I’m still drying cherries.) I’l be back at it in mid-September; I just hope I can catch up with the blog before then.

A brief word about my production rate

I’ve noticed that as I age — or maybe just as time goes on and the world/technology changes? — my writing production rate has slowed considerably. As I type this, it’s hard to see that — I’m really churning out the words this morning.

But writing those trip blog posts leads to distractions. I’m pretty sure its caused by the work I need to do to add photos and links. I have to stop writing to find, format, and add the photos. I have to stop writing to look up the name of a restaurant or tour company or marina and possibly find and add a link to it.

Any time my attention is taken away from my blog composition software, it wanders. While I’m getting a photo off my phone, I may notice an incoming text from a friend. That leads to catching up on texts and responding to them. Somehow I drift into email. Or while I’m looking up a restaurant name, I get pulled into social media, which is always open on a browser tab.

These are distractions I can fight if I’m aware of how they’re destroying my productivity. I’ve been better about fighting them lately, but still not good enough. Heck, even this little sidebar box is a distraction, taking me away from the main point of my blog post. Enough!

That priority is working me hard. I’m trying to write for at least 2 hours every morning, but these days 2 hours just isn’t enough to knock out a complete and illustrated blog post, with links to related content. As a result, I’m falling farther and farther behind. My last blog post on My Great Loop Adventure was published two days ago (March 16, 2023) and it covered the events of January 8, 2023. So yes, I’m more than two months behind.

What’s Sucking My Time

Understand that I’ve got other priorities, too. First, I need to move the boat from place to place. On a long travel day, or one where weather could be a factor later in the day, I might want to start early — possibly so early that I don’t get my two hours of writing in. I can’t write while I drive the boat and lately I’ve been driving the boat for 4 to 7 hours in a day.

Then there are the boat chores when I arrive. The biggest one is hosing down the boat, which I try to do on arrival any day I cruised on salt water. I’ve been cruising on the Gulf and Atlantic Intracoastal Waterways since December so that means pretty much any day I cruise. Hosing and brushing down the surfaces that got splashed enroute can take an hour. I usually follow that up with topping off my fresh water tank, since the hose is already set up.

There are inside boat chores, too. Washing dishes, doing laundry, vacuuming, taking out the trash, grocery shopping. Sounds like what you do at home, right? Well, this is my home, at least while I travel on the water. I did the same stuff when I took my camper south every year. There’s no escaping from it; there will always be chores to take care of a home.

I also need to do trip planning and make reservations as necessary. I don’t do this every day, but when I do it, it can easily take an hour out of my day.


Rosie and Lily on the steps leading up to the command bridge. They have become real boat dogs.

And then there are my pups, Lily and Rosie. They need to be fed twice a day and taken out for pee breaks at least three times a day. If I’m at anchor, that might mean a dinghy ride and all the extra chores related to that.


Charleston has some amazing architecture. The other day, I got a chance to explore it on foot.

In addition to all that, I need to have some fun. I want to explore the places I visit, usually by walking around, sometimes with my pups. Sometimes I take tours — like the Segway Tour I took in Savannah earlier this month. I love to go into shops and galleries and museums and just look at things. Occasionally I buy — yesterday I bought a new mat for outside the boat’s back door and a pair of shoes for art show work this summer. I eat out — usually lunch — to get a taste of the local food. (I can’t tell you how many oysters and versions of shrimp and grits I’ve tasted.) I also go on bike rides and do a bit of hiking.

And, of course, I need to wind down at day’s end and sleep. I normally sleep very well on the boat and can usually get at least 7 hours of solid rest.

So when you add up all the time I spend doing those other things, you can see that there’s not much time left to write — and most of that writing time is spent trying (in vain, apparently) to get my trip blog up to date.

This blog has fallen to the bottom of my priorities list.

Don’t Give Up Hope

I hope that the folks who normally read this blog have begun reading about my trip. Some posts are definitely more interesting than others. I think the photos really help tell the story. Of course, when I’m done with the trip — and my blog about it — the posts will be pulled offline and turned into a book. What you’re reading on that blog is the first draft.

I’ll try to get to this blog with non-boating posts again soon. But you probably shouldn’t expect much until this summer when I’ll have a lot more time on my hands.

I think.

Great Loop 2021 Gets Its Own Website

Posted on by
Comment

I copy all of my Great Loop 2021 posts to a new website where I’ll be publishing all posts about the trip from now on.

I’ve been posting to this blog since 2003 and, over the years, it has accumulated thousands of posts. If you know me, you know that I have a lot to say. This blog makes it easy for me to get the things on my mind off my mind so I can think about other things. It also offers a sort of journal of the things I’m up to — something I can turn back to in the future to see what was going on in my life.

And I’ll admit it: I keep this blog more for myself than for readers. Regular readers come and go but I remain.

Long ago, when I was writing a lot of computer how-to books, I broke out the content related to those books and put them into their own website. It was Maria’s Guides for a while and Langer Books for a while and I think it even ended up in Flying M Productions for a while. Those sites (and my support for those old books) are gone. The content is around somewhere, but it simply isn’t worth maintaining websites for it.

I’m hoping that’s not the case with the first new blog I’ve created in more than 10 years: My Great Loop Adventure.

I bought the domain name a few months ago when I first started seriously thinking about doing the Great Loop. I set it up but didn’t really have the motivation to give it a nice design or the “branding” that everyone expects. Frankly, I didn’t have the creativity to do it myself or budget to hire someone else. Since I didn’t think it was attractive enough to share, I kept it under wraps.

In the meantime, I kept blogging about the Great Loop and my upcoming trip here.

One of the big “rules” for bloggers — back when blogging was a big thing and people bothered to share advice about it — is to keep your blog focused on one topic. That is impossible for me. I have too many interests and blog about too many things. Did I really want to maintain a dozen or more blogs just so that each one could be focused on a single topic?

The answer was no, mostly because of another rule: add new content to your blog frequently. I definitely did not want to write and publish a dozen (or more) new posts a week, which would be the minimum to keep the blogs alive. So I continued to publish about all of my interests in one blog.

The problem with that is this: if someone is interested about just one of the topics I write about, he might have to wade through weeks of uninteresting (to him) posts to find one that does interest him. And let’s face it; no one is really motivated enough to make a bookmark for a single topic (category) or tag on the site, although that would definitely solve the interest problem.

Great Loop cruising is a relatively new thing for me, however, and I want to reach as many fellow loopers as possible. The best way to do that would be to collect all of my Great Loop related posts in one blog.

And since I’ll actually be starting my partial Great Loop trip as a crew member on a 27 foot Ranger Tug on Tuesday, I expect to blog about my trip at least once a day. That’s a lot of new blog posts — far more than non-boaters want to see on this blog.

So yesterday, I copied all of the existing posts in the Great Loop 2021 series and republished them with their original publication dates on the new blog. (I left them here so links to them wouldn’t break.) And then I spent far too much time fine-tuning the blog’s layout and appearance to make it presentable. And I linked it to my Twitter account so my Twitter followers could still see the new posts as they were released.

Great Loop Website
Here’s what the My Great Loop Adventure website looks like now. I said it was “presentable,” not a work of art. If you have any interest in donating some design skills for a banner or custom icons, I’m ready for them.

At this point, I’m ready to stop blogging about my upcoming Great Loop trip here. I may, however, continue to blog about my boat shopping progress and other things of general interest to boaters.

I did make one change to this blog to help readers find new content on the new blog: I added a link to the RSS feed for My Great Loop Adventure to the sidebar. That widget will show clickable links to the most recent five blog posts there, as well as a link to that blog.

If you’re interested in new content about the Great Loop, I urge you to subscribe to that blog. You’ll get notified every time a new post comes out. (And, of course, you can unsubscribe at any time; your email address won’t be sold, etc., etc.)

And if you haven’t subscribed to my personal YouTube channel, please do. That’s where you’ll see the videos I create on the trip; I’m hoping to release a few every week, including more than a few from my drone, which is coming along on the ride.

How to Follow Just the Content You Want on This Blog

Posted on by
2

I explain how to follow this blog in a way that weeds out the content you don’t care about.

One of the things in my life that I’m proud of is that I’m interested in a lot of things. My friend Bill refers to this as curiosity — I’m curious about things so I learn more about them. But while others might be content with getting quick answers to any burning questions about a topic, I’m often willing to do a deep dive and learn more, sometimes firsthand by doing. That’s what got me involved in things like beekeeping, jewelry making, glass fusing, and other “hobbies gone wild.”

And then I blog about it to share some of what I’ve learned.

I’ve been blogging since 2003 — yeah, I’m coming up on 20 years now! — and this blog’s 2300+ posts cover a lot of topics in a wide variety of ways. Back when I first started blogging and people were writing about making “successful blogs,” they all recommended one thing: stick to a topic. If you’ve explored this blog at all, you know that’s a recommendation I have been unable to follow. I write about lots of topics because I’m interested in lots of topics. And while it is possible to maintain multiple blogs, I simply don’t want to do that.

What does that leave my readers with? A hodgepodge of posts about all kinds of things: jewelry making, flying helicopters, cooking, computers, reading/writing, video creation, etc., etc. The list goes on and on.

I’m not too naive to realize that not everyone is interested in everything that I am. And not everyone comes here to read every word. In fact, I’m sure I lose a lot of new readers by delivering up posts about topics that don’t interest them nearly as much as the topics that originally brought them here. I get it.

I addressed this the other day after a comment from a reader named Susan brought it up:

Comment
An exchange on this blog between me and Susan, who likes the fact that I cover a lot of topics here. That weird symbol is supposed to be a shrug emoji.

With all that said, I thought I’d take a moment to help readers zero in on just the new content that interests them using several techniques.

Subscribe and Choose

Subscribe Form
Here’s what the form looks like. You can find it near the top of the sidebar on any page of this site.

The easiest way to learn about new content that might interest you is to subscribe to the blog via email. You’ll find a form on the sidebar on every page. Put your email address in it and click the button. You’ll get a confirmation in email to make sure you really want it.

From that point forward, you’ll get an email message every time I post something new — generally two to 20 times a month. See a topic that interests you? Click the link in the email to come here and read it. Otherwise, just delete the email.

And you can always get off the list. The unsubscribe feature really does work.

I don’t use this for anything other than blog post updates. I don’t share email addresses. I don’t spam.

Follow Me on Twitter

If you’re on Twitter and you don’t want your inbox to take in any more subscriptions, you can follow me on Twitter. I’m @mlanger there. All of my new blog posts are automatically tweeted to my account, so it’s the same as subscribing to the blog. But you also get a running commentary of maximum 240-character posts of what I’m thinking about or doing.

(Some folks would likely prefer the blog subscription.)

Bookmark a Topic

All the blog posts here are assigned a category (topic) and most are assigned at least one tag. (Topics are listed on every page in the sidebar; tags are listed on the home page in a cloud format in the sidebar.) This makes it easy for readers to find the content they want that interests them. But did you know that you could bookmark a category (topic) or tag?

Share This
You’ll find a Share This area at the end of each blog post.

On a post that interests you, scroll down to the Share This area. In addition to icons you can click to share the post on various social media and via email — which I do encourage you to use if you think your friends might enjoy it — there is a “Posted in” section and a “Tagged” section, each of which are followed by links. Click the category (topic) or tag link that closely matches what interests you. You’ll see a page with the most recent posts with the same category (topic) or tag.

Bookmark that page. This is something you do in your browser and I’m not going to explain how because there are lots of browsers and each has its own method. I know that in Firefox, which I use on my computers, the shortcut key to get started in Command-D (I’m on a Mac).

New Jewelry Making Topic

If you’ve got sharp eyes, you may have noticed the new Jewelry Making topic in the sidebar. I added that the other day. I’d been using the Hobbies Gone Wild topic for posts related to jewelry making and realized that that particular endeavor had progressed far beyond what one would consider a hobby. So I pulled those posts out into their own category, mostly to make it easy for folks interested in jewelry making to find them..

Once you’ve bookmarked the category or topic, you can check in periodically to see if there’s anything new of interest to you. I recommend once a month, although you could come by more frequently. You might want to do the same thing with any other sites/blogs that interests you. Then make check in part of your routine — maybe a rainy Saturday morning coffee routine.

And do you see that Add a Comment link in the Share This area? Here’s a tip: you can click that and add a comment about what you’ve just read and maybe encourage me to write more about it. After all, it was Susan’s comment (shown above) that got me to write this.

Subscribe to an RSS Feed of a Topic

In the old days we used Feed Readers to follow blogs without having to go to the blog itself. Do those things still exist?

Although I know I’ve written extensively about feeds in the past, I’m not going to do so again here. Instead, I’ll share this from the WordPress glossary:

A feed is a function of special software that allows “Feedreaders” to access a site automatically looking for new content and then posting the information about new content and updates to another site. This provides a way for users to keep up with the latest and hottest information posted on different blogging sites. Some Feeds include RSS (alternately defined as “Rich Site Summary” or “Really Simple Syndication”), Atom or RDF files. Dave Shea, author of the web design weblog Mezzoblue has written a comprehensive summary of feeds. Feeds generally are based on XML technology.

If you’re a bit of a techie and want to use feedreader to follow topics in blog, be aware that you can modify a blog’s feed URL to specify a specific category (topic) or tag. For example, if you’re interested in flying and want to subscribe with your feedreader to a feed about that category (topic), you might try

http://www.AnEclecticMind.com/category/flying/feed

(Too techie for you? Me, too. When I stopped writing computer how-to books around 2012, I stopped being a techie and became a mere user. Now I don’t research and write about any tech unless it’s related to something I need to do with my computers.)

The idea is to set up your feedreader with all the blogs that interest you and open that application when you want to check in on your favorite blogs.

The Point

The point of all this is that you don’t have to visit the blog and wade through whatever’s new that doesn’t interest you to find something that might. You can either get a list of new posts delivered to your inbox and click links to explore the ones that interest you or use various techniques to bookmark or subscribe to a feed for the categories (topics) or tags that interest you.

Whatever you decide, don’t be discouraged by the wide range of topics here. If you found this blog, it’s likely because there was something here you liked. There may be more now and in the future. Any of these techniques will help you keep on top of what’s new.