Tag Archives: blogging

An Eclectic Mind

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The site gets a new name, too.

After months of thinking about a new name for my personal blog and book support site, I finally took the plunge. The new name is An Eclectic Mind.

Why Eclectic?

The name comes, in part, from a regular visitor here, Thomas Fucili. He read my post “What’s in a Name?” and responded using the Contact form with a suggestion: Eclectic Pronouncements. I liked eclectic, but didn’t like pronouncements. He came up with a replacement word and I thought deeply about it but made no decision.

ec•lec•tic |iˈklektik|
adjective
1 deriving ideas, style, or taste from a broad and diverse range of sources : her musical tastes are eclectic.
2 (Eclectic) Philosophy of, denoting, or belonging to a class of ancient philosophers who did not belong to or found any recognized school of thought but selected such doctrines as they wished from various schools.

I liked the word eclectic because it seemed to suit the site’s content. As anyone who visits the site regularly knows, I write about widely varied topics. In the world of “pro blogging,” that’s a big no-no. But I’m not blogging to make money, so I don’t really care if the site’s not focused enough to build a high volume of regular visitors and feed subscribers. I write about what interests me, while providing support for the folks who buy and read my books.

The second definition seemed to suit me, too. I don’t think inside the box and can’t be easily labeled. I listen to a lot of theories and opinions and choose the ones that make sense to me — even if they don’t usually co-exist in other people’s belief systems. I’m not a philosopher (although sometimes I do feel ancient) but I’m a strong believer in independent thought.

Eclectic seemed a perfect fit.

The Domain Name Challenge

One of the challenges I faced was coming up with a name that was somewhat (at least) original and still had the domain name available. Although I don’t expect to formally change the domain name for the site, I did want new visitors to be able to find the site by clicking in the domain name with a dot-com at the end. I came up with a few twists on the word eclectic but couldn’t secure the domain names for any of them.

And then, one day, I just came up with An Eclectic Mind. The domain name was available and I bought it. Without really realizing it, I’d settled on a new name.

That was a few weeks ago.

A Day of Changes

I wanted to tie in the site name change to a complete site redesign. So I spent some time looking for the right theme. I found Cutline, which I’ll probably discuss in some detail in future blog posts. I also wanted to [finally] upgrade to the current version of WordPress (2.2.2 as I write this). I knew from experience that the upgrade would break some of my plugins and my current theme. So it made a lot of sense to take a whole day and just do the name change, upgrade, and new theme.

That day was today.

The site’s not done yet — I’m still adding in a few features that my old site used to have — but I expect to be finishing it up over the next few weeks. I’d love to hear your comments about it; use the Comments link or form at the bottom of this post to share your thoughts.

But for now, I just want to thank Thomas for his suggestion. I couldn’t have come up with the new name without his help.

Under Reconstruction

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Today’s the big day.

Today is the day I’ve decided to upgrade this blog to WordPress 2.2 (finally). I figured that while I was at it, I’d change the blog’s theme — I’m rather bored with this one — and change it’s name.

So throughout today, this blog will be looking and acting weird. I hope it doesn’t get too weird for me to fix in one day. If all goes well, the blog will be at least 95% fully functional by day’s end, with some features gone and others added little by little over the coming weeks. I’m also hoping to add some new features.

The theme I’ve chosen, a version of Cutline by Chris Pearson, features two sidebars and a wider fixed-width page. This will fill the width of most folks screens and make it possible for me to have more before the “fold.” The second sidebar column will make it possible to display offsite links and advertising separate from internal navigation features. The look is clean and polished, the font is larger, and the theme is more far advanced than what I’m accustomed to, so I’ll have plenty of room to grow and learn.

I’ll tell you more about the blog’s new name and plans for the future when I get the hard stuff done. Stay tuned.

And please have patience if you tune in and see a big mess — or, worse yet — some PHP errors here.

The Older Generation

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Not happy unless there’s something or someone they can complain about.

And I’m probably showing how I’m entering that older generation now.

What Do They Think?

My recent rant about people who can’t read brought a member of the older generation out of the woodwork to comment on the post. He/She apparently took offense at my request that people follow my instructions and not bother me for information about Wickenburg.

Apparently, this person thinks I should devote my life to maintaining my Web sites and serving the people who find and read them. I seriously doubt whether this person has used the Donation link to help support the site, which takes time and money to run. Instead he/she wants my services for free. And damn me if I don’t want to give it out!

I’ve seen this over and over at wickenburg-az.com. People can’t take the site for what it is: a many-authored blog related to the town and life in Wickenburg. They seem to think that it’s some kind of service that should do nothing but write glowing articles about the town and its surroundings, to paint a rosy picture of the retiree heaven they want it to be. A service run by someone who’ll drop everything — including work she does to make living — to get them the information they seek.

I don’t know where the hell they got that idea. I guess it’s because they can’t/won’t read.

This Ain’t the First Time

In my recent rant, I didn’t list the e-mails and nasty comments I’ve gotten from this group of senior whiners. Frankly, I didn’t think it was worth giving it attention. But since this recent whiner has joined the pack, I figured I’d take a moment to whine back.

Why is it that these people can never find something to be happy about? Why is it that they take offense so easily when something they know so little about is revealed to be a little less perfect than they thought? And why, oh why, is their attitude always “I don’t agree with you so I’m going to stop reading what you write and I’m going to tell you about it because I want to hurt your feelings.”

(Mommy! The mean man doesn’t like me! Waaaaa!)

A person with some guts or brains might attempt to start a reasonable debate on why I’m wrong or why I should look at things their way. A person who truly cared about the town might volunteer to join its content creators and write the articles they think belonged on the site to get their point of view out there.

But all that would take effort. It’s so much easier to say something they think is mean and walk away. (Heaven knows, their time is so limited now that they’re retired.)

Well, as my mother would say, “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.”

People Who Can’t Read

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It’s one of the little things that drive me nuts.

It’s not really people who can’t read. It’s the people who don’t read.

I run a Web site called wickenburg-az.com that’s surprisingly popular as a source of information about the town. You could check it out and find out what the Town Council will be debating at the next council meeting and learn about some neat things to do in the area and read some humor by the Arizona’s Official Liar. You can also find some information about the few Wickenburg businesses worth writing about — let’s not go there right now, okay? — and see some photos of the town and read letters to the editor of the local paper that they either won’t print or won’t print before their authors get sick of waiting to see them.

And if the information you find there isn’t enough, you can go to the contact page — like so many people do — and find the following statements:

All of the information we have about Wickenburg, its businesses, and its events are included on this Web site. We do not have any additional information that we can send out to site visitors….Please do not use the form to ask the Webmaster questions about Wickenburg. Your questions will not be answered.

The bold text appears on the page in bold. I did it that way on purpose, so people would see it easier. Evidently, it doesn’t help them read or comprehend it. Because I continue to get e-mail messages submitted via the form with all kinds of questions about the town.

Like today’s messge, written by a man with a stuck CAPS LOCK key. He wants to know if our library “rents” DVDs and if he can get a temporary library card. How the hell should I know? Does he expect me to drop everything and call the library for him? Why doesn’t he pick up the damn phone and call the library himself? Did running a Web site make me his personal assistant?

Or the woman who wrote asking for information about the gated communities in town. What the hell does she think Wickenburg is? A suburb of Scottdale? There are no gated communities here.

Or the retired couple who were looking for the 55+ trailer park with the cactus sculpture out front. Do they think I drive around town looking at trailer parks? I actually made the mistake of answering this e-mail message, telling them I had no idea what park they were talking about. They had the nerve to write back and ask me to look for it.

Like I don’t have anything else to do with my time.

And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten requests for information about events that might or might not be held in town. wickenburg-az.com has a calendar of events online. If an organization doesn’t submit event information to me, how am I supposed to know about it? So not only is it not listed, but as far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t exist.

So now, when I get these messages, I delete them. I just press the old delete key without sending a response, leaving the sender wondering if their message ever got to anyone. It’s the best way to deal with it. They don’t write again. At least not to me.

Call me a bitch. You won’t be the first — or the last.

But if people can’t take the time to read simple information in bold type above a form, why should I take the time to answer their unwelcome questions?

Declaring RSS Feed Bankruptcy

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When there are just too many posts to read.

When I started subscribing to feeds about a year or so ago, I only subscribed to a handful and quickly read through the new posts each day. In fact, I recall asking other readers for suggestions on feeds I should subscribe to.

Things change. I began accumulating feeds. I use endo, an offline feed aggregator, and I’m very pleased with it. It sucks down my feeds each morning when the computer starts up and presents them to me as I’ve organized them, so I can read them at my leisure.

Unfortunately, I started subscribing to a number of feeds that put out 5 to 10 new posts a day. And there were more than a few days that I didn’t read any new posts. And then days when I felt rushed and put aside certain feeds for another day. And another day.

The problem got serious. At one point, I had over 2,000 unread posts in endo. Not acceptable. I killed off a bunch of feeds that were just too heavy with a low percentage of content that actually interested me.

But today I decided to take drastic steps. I went into endo and deleted any unread post that hit the Web before August 1. That brought 1300 unread posts down to 124. A much more reasonable number.

Did I miss great content? Possibly. But one of the things I’ve noticed — especially in blogs about blogging — is that the same basic topics come up over and over again. If you missed the “5 Ways to Energize Feeds” this week, you’ll catch the “7 Ways to Make Your Feed Pop!” next month. You get the idea. Same old, same old. You can read this stuff for two months before it starts to recycle with very little content that’s really new.

Hmmm…I feel a new topic coming on. I’ll have to put this on my list of things to write about here.

After I’ve gone through those 124 posts waiting for me in endo.