I wanted to take a quick minute and say “hi” to some of the folks now following this blog of mine.  I’ve been playing with a stats module for WordPress for some time now.  I finally ironed a couple of kinks out the other day between it and the platform on which I’m hosting NoName.  Doing so allowed me to get a better picture of the number of visitors hitting the blog each day.  Now, in the grand scheme of things, my numbers are like a grain of sand while many other folks out there have traffic that would equal all the beaches of the world.  The good news, however, is visits are increasing.  What’s even more interesting to me, though, is that in the last week, the number of RSS/Atom feeds has grown substantially.

This is especially flattering because it means that more people who are just stopping by are finding enough content that they like that they decide to keep regular tabs.  That is truly humbling.  Obviously, I want people to read this stuff.  Why else would I go through the trouble of writing it down and putting it out on the “interwebz”? I am still very surprised, though, that some people have decided to get updates with every post to come.  Thank you!  Thank you for the vote of confidence.

Now, for those new to NoName, I’m not sure exactly how to describe it.  It’s sort of a free-for-all.  There are no unified themes are topics that are pervasive across the whole of these posts.  No, this is more like my big fun experiment where I can think out loud and see what, if anything, stirs up responses.  Not everything I post is necessarily something I expect comments on, but they are fun to get.  A lot of times, entries are just the things I’m thinking and/or feeling at the time.  It’s great, though, anytime a post strikes up a good conversation.  At the end of the day, this blog is a the reflection of the disjointed meanderings of the mind of a husband, father, employee, boss, etc who explores his family, his faith, his politics, his world and much more. I am grateful to anyone that decides to stop  by.

Back to the matter of feeds, however, I am excited that some people are starting to keep a regular eye on things!  I promise to do my best to keep it interesting.  Unfortunately, I can not make any promises about the frequency of stories.  I’ll always try to get regular updates, but as the gaps in posts dates already here will show you, intentions don’t always equal results.

So, there you have it.  There’s nothing profound to say tonight.  This is just a pause to say “howdy!” to he new passers-by and “thanks” to all those who have chosen to keep regular tabs on what goes on.  I really am flattered.

The captain has now turned off the set belt signs, so you are free to move about the cabin.  Please refrain from smoking on this blog and any tampering of the smoke detectors will result in ………

1. The blog is now on the latest version of WP
2. I have it posting to FaceBook via a FB application (I’m exploring options for pushing from WP)
3. New theme
4. Two sidebars of widgets – including my latest tweets and some other cool stuff

I still have a lot to do:

1. Tweak theme colors
2. Change theme images to my own
3. Explore better ways to notify my social networking sites that I’ve posted new entries
4. See if there are any more plug-ins I want

The good news is I’ve learned a lot and now I can apply that to some other web related projects I have.  Now, it’s time for sleep.

www.posterous.com

Here is mine.

Peace!
Matt

Posted via web from vw’s posterous

I still have some things I want to explore:

1. Learn more about WordPress widgits
2. Add a Twitter integration plug-in
3. Explore some new options for themes

OK enough of the boring update stuff.  Time to get cleaned up and ready for bed.  Maybe I’ll get inspried to post something more blogworthy before crashing.  We’ll see …

The pluses

1. I’ve found a bunch of friends from both high school and college that I haven’t talked to in a while
2. I’ve extended my foray into social networking beyond Twitter.
3. I’ve given myself a reason to get another &*@#! blog post done (why the fact that I can now get the euphoric rush of linking said blog from my FB page, just so the buddies I haven’t talked to in 10 years have can have it shoved in their faces anytime I finally get my lazy butt in gear and post going forward, is enough to get me to do this, I don’t know.  It’s late and I’m not thinking completely clearly)
4. I just used “foray” in context

The cons

1. It has become quite the time sucker
2. I now have one more thing to log into
3. I believe that I just made my dear friend (and former English teacher), Margaret livid over my egregious use of commas in #3 above
4. The pressure man!  (am I so much cooler online?)

OK, so the cons are lame.  I’m betting the whole piece is weak, but, hey, it’s a new post.  Somewhere, somebody who knows me just said, “right on your 6 month schedule dork-face!”.  Now, however, when I should be going straight to bed, I’ll be publishing this and then hopping right on over to that antithesis of productivity and linking to the rss feed of of nonameblog.  The anticipation it palpable!

I’m now out of SAT words. I’m also tired.

more to come soon …

night!

It’s hard to describe exactly what it is, but think of it as blogging with severe A.D.D. You get 140 characters to speak your mind and often times, this generates replies by those who “follow” you. You chose people to follow was well. So, you start to build a rolling list of comments made by people all over the world. There are any number of disjointed conversations for you to take part in, and when you explore new people to follow, you get to see who they are following – thereby increasing the potential to add to the pool of comments you get. It’s kind of like the digital version of people watching at a bar in the middle of a Las Vegas casino.

Anyway, I’ve enjoyed it. Hopefully this will get me to post more thoughts here (the kind that need more than 140 characters). I felt like sharing. Check it out if you haven’t before. Hopefully, I’ll see you there!

Peace,
Matt

edit -  08-01-2007 – 1:29 pm:  issue resolved See comments for solution

Peace!

Peace!

Matt