tollie.org/blog

So I’m trying to be better (whatever that means) about blogging here. Now, am I one of these self-centered people that thinks what I have to say is so important or entertaining that you’ll be disappointed if I don’t blog? No, of course not. And if I was, I wouldn’t admit it. Instead, my re-dedication to blogging is more of a personal thing. Personally, I want to throw my ideas and thoughts into tangible words more often, not leaving them floating in the neurons to be later forgotten or confused. That’s why I’m making an effort to be a “better blogger.”

Once upon a time, I understood Wordpress code (mostly). Now, with the new Wordpress 2.3.x, I’m out of touch and a little too lazy to feel my way around again. Here was the problem: I wanted to get my Twitter Updates off my main page - they just looked too spammific compared “real content” - but I didn’t want to stop adding them to the blog. After all, I more or less have control over the blog and full access to its data; twitter - not so much. So I wanted to keep updating my Twitter Statuses here for archival reasons and search reasons, but not clutter the main page with their updates.

So I found it! A surprisingly comprehensive and so far successful¹ plugin to exclude posts from certain categories from the main page and the RSS feed (and/or a variety of other places). It’s “Advanced Category Excluder” from advanced-category-excluder.dev.rain.hu/ and so far all is well.

¹Why “so far?” Well, traditionally, back when I followed a little more closely this sort of stuff, removing a category of entries from the main page came with some side effects, like reducing the total number of posts shown. And do I have enough entries to test this for myself yet? No. So we’ll see. Once I hit 10 posts I’ll probably find that it doesn’t and all is well, but in the meantime, I’m content with everything working as is.

Oh, and lastly, while I was sad to find out that I’d have to pay to upgrade my (paid for) version of MarsEdit if I wanted to keep using it, I am glad to have discovered that the author of Ecto reversed his original reversal and has again decided that Ecto3 will be a free upgrade to paid users of Ecto2. Now that’s how it should be. (I’m pretty sure he promised free upgrades for life originally, but I’m not entirely sure.)

Now, next thing to do is get a hierarchy back to my categories and see if Ecto supports them. MarsEdit didn’t. Windows Live Writer does (it’s like, the only reason I’d use Windows right now).

Oh, and then I need to get a separate page up for our “Late Nite Magic” (LNM) podcast. I really feel like there’s an audience out there for this - somewhere.