I’ve been kickin’ back for the past week or so, taking a much needed vacation from work, and — as is commonly the case — I’ve been as busy at home as at work: yard work, catching up on chores around the house, making a dent in my reading list, and getting my new web site for vasectomy reversals up to speed.

The web site’s been a lot of work, but I’m enjoying it immensely. I’m building it in — WordPress!

Blogging software for a professional content-oriented web site? You betcha — the capabilities of WordPress in its latest renditions (now up to version 2.2) are truly amazing. It is now easy to have a static page as home page, and use page templates and post categories to display specific content on a specified page. So I can have, say, a page for frequently asked questions, and add new questions as blog posts with the category “FAQ.” WordPress page templates and template tags (pieces of PHP code which are used in the templates, and pull content from the database) are very flexible, well-documented in the WordPress Codex, with a short learning curve. This is sooo much easier than hacking together a static site using Dreamweaver or hard-coding html and css.

On the writing front, I’ve been giving some thought to my direction here, as I approach my third blogging birthday. As both my readers know, my typical format has been long essays or multi-part series (which are really very long essays, too long for a single post). These essays can prove to be rather gargantuan tasks at times, often taking 1-2 weeks to formulate, edit, and complete. The amount of time and effort thus entailed pose a significant initial hurdle: it takes quite a bit of energy to launch into one, and it is all too easy to procrastinate. The time limits of my profession don’t help as well. So I periodically get tired of the demands incurred, and have trouble gearing up again.

I have thought of branching out a bit — being a semi-professional techno-dweeb, I have a million little tools, utilities, and programs (Mac & Windows) which I find immensely useful, so I thought I might review the good, the bad, and the ugly I’ve run across and use regularly. I’ve also thought of having a Q&A format: any pressing issues you’d like me to pontificate upon, medically, faith-related, or other off-label topics? Let me know, and I’ll give it a shot.

My current readership (site visits per month) is about half what it was one year ago. The reasons for this are of course inscrutable — perhaps the content no longer appeals to as many people, or to other, more prominent bloggers who bring traffic by mentioning and linking to posts. Perhaps it has nothing at all to do with such factors, and is just part of a down cycle. I write from a passion of the soul — for my faith, for my profession, for a great culture in decline, for the joy of life, and family, and pets, and laughter. Hit counts mean little — but being human, they give rise to second-guessing when their decline is noted. Sending words blindly into the digital ether — especially when their generation requires substantial effort and time — can prove easily discouraging when few echoes return.

Well, enough of my navel-gazing — I will write as long as I am called to do so, and as long as there are those who read, and listen, and hopefully gain some insight and benefit from the effort. I genuinely appreciate those of you who visit regularly, and comment — you have blessed me far more than you know.

Have a happy and safe Memorial Day, and God bless. Back soon.

I’ve been working on a different look and feel for the blog, based on a new WordPress theme called CutLine. The designer (Chris Pearson) has created a very clean look with some excellent page layout features, especially image handling and pull quotes.

I’m still in the process of thinking through how best to handle archived posts. One of the big downsides of the blogging medium–especially for essay-oriented sites like this–is improving access to earlier materials which many newer readers may not have seen. I have handled this in the past with periodic reposts of older material, especially during light blogging times, as I have been doing lately. But it would be nice to have older material more accessible and categorized more clearly, perhaps with short excerpts rather than simply titles.

Any thoughts you might have on this–or tips on other sites which have addressed this dilemma in a creative and useful way–would be appreciated.

For a sneak peak at the new look, mosey over here and take a gander.

Thanks, and hope your Thanksgiving was a wonderful one.

 
WARNING: YOU ARE NOW ENTERING A SITE BANNED BY THE U.S. GOVERNMENT.

Seriously, this is cool: this humble blog has been blocked by web filtering software at the Department of the Interior.

How awesome is that!!

Man, the place just ain’t been the same since Jimmy Watt left it, ya know?

Of course, one might hope for censorship from a somewhat bigger player than the Department of the Interior–the bureaucracy whose job in life is to watch trees grow, prevent mining and drilling only in areas where these natural resources exist, and to periodically burn down Los Alamos.

But, hey! You gotta start somewhere.

And from the looks of the other sites blocked–some big hitters, these–maybe my ship has finally arrived…

UPDATE: Here’s the latest scoop on what’s going on with the blocking of sites at the Department of the Interior, over at PoliticsCentral.