The Remodeled Blog

Privacy Passwords

I just read an interesting article about the consequences of blogging. So being the “good” blogger that I am, I had to blog about it.

There is a running conversation about blogging and how people are sharing intensely personal details about their life and what, if any, consequences come from such sharing. There is always the famous, and seemingly enviable, Dooce who was fired from her job for blogging and now has one of the most popular blogs on the net. In fact, her blog is so popular that neither she, nor her husband has to work and I just heard that she got a movie deal. Wow, the fairy tale blogger. My two cents, I am not a fan of Ms. Dooce. I respect her success. But I don’t find her dog or her life terribly interesting. Maybe I haven’t given her enough of a chance, but hey, I just don’t seem to digg her….HA! GET IT!! DIGG HER! yeah, really bad cross cultural pun. Ok, moving on.

One of the issues brought up by the article is the idea of posting things that are very personal but putting a password protection on the blog. Why would you do that? So only approved people can view the post? Well….just email them and tell them what is going on in your life. Or have we all lost the general communication skills to be able to communicate directly. We all have to use the internet as a filter. Texting, IMing, emails, social networking profiles and now blogs. I don’t want to tell you I am having a hard time, I want to write about it and let you deduce from my not so subtle clues, that I am having a hard time. That way you can reach out to me in your own blog and if we try hard enough, we can have an entire relationship without ever saying anything directly.

Ok, so that is a bit extreme. I admit, I have been guilty of such posts. I have posted things because somehow it seems easier to write to the unknown masses and hope that someone I care about is reading and will therefore reach out to me in my pathetic typed cry for help. Not to mention, the justification of then being angry at those people for not reaching out and not reading. The world is all about me, so why aren’t they paying avid attention to what I write? Uh, yeah. Narcissism aside, isnt that what blogging is. It is a self indulgent validation. Yes it is a a way to communicate, but it quickly moves past sharing photos from the last vacation and moves on to a socio-philosophical dissection of the relevancy of our lives. Beyond the fact that we like writing, we also like reading other people who are doing the same thing! I do. I admit it! Guilty! and that is ok.

But there is truth to the fact that in the age of the internet and rapidly developing technology, when you put something out there, it is really out there. You can’t erase it. It is there for someone to find and possibly hold against you. When I found myself writing blogs that I only felt comfortable posting with a password protection, I stopped myself. I thought, who is going to read this? well, my close friends. In that case, why don’t I just tell them what is going on? Why do I need to blog it? Am I really that important that I can’t speak directly to them? uh…no. Also, if it needs password protection, then maybe I shouldn’t be putting it out there. How hard is my password going to be to crack? Probably not very, I am not that clever.

So my rule of thumb, if you have to put a password on it, then don’t post it. This is safe blogging at the most basic.

Adsense, the new Popular Kids!

First off, this is a very cool photograph of smoke from Sensative Light.

Now, the reason for todays blog. Since the recreation of my blog from my tremendously stupid mistake of deleting my config file, I have been spending considerable time on the details. Specifically my sidebar. I think I finally have it the way I like it. Well, at least for today. But as I have been working and reworking my sidebar, pretty much as an excuse to procrastinate homework (much like doing laundry, cleaning the bathroom, cleaning the kitchen and doing the bills), I have noticed that I am getting some cool ads! The effect that I noticed this had on me was a feeling of acceptance. Sure it is acceptance from “the man” who in this case is Google, but acceptance and approval none-the-less. I felt like my blog had just stepped up a level. People are reading me. People are liking me. I have worthy content! WORTHY OF GOOD ADS!! Ahhhh! It feels like I just got accepted to my first party by the cool kids.

I think I am blowing this out of proportion. A part of me knows that this is not what this means. I did have a friend express ad envy. I won’t lie, that was rather cool! Of course that has everything to do with the settings and nothing to do with some freakish Google popularity contest. But if it did…I am so on the outer fringe of the popular kids! So there! heh! Right now I am the one they invite because I know someone who knows so and so who is the cousin of that person whose house the party is at, oh yeah, and I can buy beer. I am Anthony Michael Hall in Sixteen Candles!

It is interesting though that I feel this sense of accomplishments simply because my ads have improved. Of course, Murphy’s law, while you are reading this post the ads will suck. I know, it is inevitable. It is Google’s way of telling me I am full of sh*t. Seriously though, what a strange way to find acceptance. A larger component of what is intrinsic to our economy and plagues our general existence in all forms of media is now boosting my techno self esteem.

Hell, I am just glad that I don’t have “Find you Asian Bride” ads running on top of my posts.

So I trashed the site…

So in my wonderful attempts at upgrading, at wordpress’ annoying insistence I totally trashed my entire site. I know you can’t tell by looking at it. But this is not the same blog you saw yesterday. This is a whole new blog. Yes, if you look closely, you will see some differences.

So during my updating process I accidentally deleted my config.php file. For those of you who don’t know what that is, be happy that you have never had cause to know what that file is and why it is important to your life. For bloggers, just let me say NEVER DELETE THIS FILE! and you life will be happy and peaceful. I did delete this file…and then everything went bad. I couldnt fix anything. I couldnt get into anything. I did have the foresight to backup my my SQLdatabase files (again if you don’t know what these files are, consider yourself lucky).

So after trying to recreate this config file to no avail, I realized that I just trashed my blog. I didn’t panic. I didn’t scream. A silent “crap” ran like a subtitulo through my mind…..and yes “subtitle” did have to be in spanish. My cognitive thinking switched into another language.

Mierda! Por dios! Estupida! Que hace? QUE HACE???? Joder.

I looked at my little backdoor entrance to my blog and saw it sitting there. Just looking at me, with its innocent html coding and sweet css style sheets. But like a teenage before puberty, I knew that the wp_config.php file was a bad case of acne that just exploded all over its face, and now the hormones have kicked in. No matter how perfect it looks, it will never work right again. Unlike with a teenager where you just have to accept this nightmare they have morphed into….I crossed my fingers, help my breath and knocked on wood so much my knuckles are bloody…with my mouse finger hovering over delete I thought, with resignation, there is nothing left to do. Then I clicked.

Just like that, it was gone from the world. The only evidence is in the memory of those who have read it and in the dead links floating around the internet. So easily gone.

Well, the dead was done, so now it was time to see if there was any validity to other people toting’s of my web design capabilities. I recreated the blog. Slowly, created a shell, where all the code files were there, but none of the content. I looked through the backdoor window, and all looked good. Into my database I crawled and coaxed in my archived posts. Holding my breath, I loaded the site. Though it looked like Frankenstein’s monster, the posts were there. Big sigh of relief. Now it is time for plastic surgery.

That is what is left. I have changed the side bar a bit. There are some remnants of code inside the old posts, because I chose not to reinstall an element. I have made some improvements and will have to keep tweaking things here and there until it is back to where I want it to be.

So as I talk about remodeling my house and myself and some other random things mixed in between…for the first time, I had to remodel my site.