Jumpstarting my career, but the engine is stalling…
Today counts as the first day that I have written a blog post using my new iPhone 4. No, I am not gloating, but I am really enjoying the device and all the functionality that comes with it. I am typing this post using the wordpress app that I just downloaded. I just had to enable an XML feature within my self-hosted WordPress blog and I was off.
The interesting thing that even caused me to question using the WordPress app was the pic that I took when I went out for a morning walk. I saw a puzzle piece on the ground and thought that it looked like a piece of the sky laying on the concrete sidewalk. I walked past it initially, while listening to music on my phone, and then turned around to revisit it. A secondary thought came to mind about how I should take a pic of it and post it to my blog. And that’s when it hit me, I now have a phone that can do all of this. The camera on my previous phones had never been good enough, but that’s all different now. Fact is, I don’t know if I’ll make another post from this phone or if I will, but it’s nice to have that option now.
Below is the pic that I call, a piece of the sky.
——-@ds
Again
All the things that you want out of life, but can not have. Those tender moments that are sometimes so sweet and peculiar that you know you will never experience them again. Or, just the yearning for something that will always outpace you. These are the thoughts that always haunt me. Everyday, it’s the realization of an explicit rule that somewhere along the lines became written without my consent or knowledge. And it strips everything from me. It dangles the possibility in front of me, while pulling it away just far enough for me to know, and yet, never achieve. It’s there and it is everywhere. It’s the sign on my forehead that I can’t read, but bears a foreboding to everyone. I try to scrub it off and attempt to remove it, but it just won’t leave.
I want and am left wanting. I yearn and am left without.
I’ve tried and I’ve failed. And it’s always the same. I’m the one always left watching and I suppose if fate is real, then maybe this was supposed to be my path. I am curious as to why. I question what makes the alternative so much better, or why I desire it. I can’t, for the life of me, understand why this other path is so damn special, or figure it out. But I know I can’t be part of it. I suppose I’ll never know the answers to these specific wonders and maybe that’s the point; it’s not meant for me to know. I wish this wasn’t the case.
There was a lot of things in my life I thought I had accepted, but sometimes the reality of those things come back in full force that no matter how much you want to fight against it, you can’t do anything but sit there and accept it. I’m always at my best when I am in the middle of something terrible. But when the sea is calm, I always feel like a fish without water. Always gasping and straining for something that I can’t attain.
So, I am full circle (again) to where I was a few years ago (no, not the job, that’s fine) and I am having to accept what I thought I had already let go. I guess I didn’t. I suppose I have to.
These are my brief thoughts about a life that is less.
——-@ds
As a child of the late 70′s (1977), I was part of the generation that grew up playing video games, both at home and at the arcade. When I think back on my history with this illusory past time, I remember all the fun and excitement that I had with playing them. Yet, at some point in my life I grew past playing video games all the time. I don’t quite recall when the turning point was, but I also know it never fully left. The last console I purchased was the Gamecube Nintendo and that all changed a little over 6 months ago. During a pre-black Friday sale, I bought an Xbox 360. For a brand new system, I paid only 99 dollars. I figured it was a good deal and given the hell of a year it has been, it was the first “gift” to myself in a long time (even before the lay offs). After buying this system, I got it home and opened it up, just to make sure everything was in the box. Then I packed it up and put it in a storage bin where it sat for a little over three weeks. And again, that all changed months ago. So, as of today, I have been actively playing my Xbox 360 and using the Xbox Live service. I’m meeting up with some friends online and meeting some new gamers via the online games that I have. I’m enjoying it a lot and the more I play the more I start remembering the part of me that I left behind, and how I used to be.
Over the past eight years I have had a few skirmishes here and there with playing video games, but even with my new console, I still haven’t scratched the surface of the hours I used to give to my gaming past. In many ways, I am glad that this is the case. However, there has always been, and I suspect always will be, a desire in me to get back into heavy gaming. Even though I have controlled the habit over the years, I still get that persistent itch once in a while and I have given into a few all night sessions. However, after getting back into the groove, I’ve started to reflect upon my memories as a child growing up in Seattle, WA, (more…)
I wanted to take a brief moment and make a new post. I haven’t posted in a while, because I’ve been setting up this blog and trying to mold it into something that I was comfortable with. I’m at a point that I am happy with its current version, but I am just lacking a logo at this point. That will be coming soon. Setting up my own site, installing wordpress (manually), finding and editing themes, installing a comment system,working with plugins; essentially creating the initial building blocks of my personal site has been a great, but trying experience. It’s a useful skill to have and it is something I want to have more experience with.
I did this during my spare time when I was laid off (more…)
My soon to be self hosted WordPress blog is coming along very well. I’m taking my time with this, so that I understand fully what is involved and how to manage my blog site going forward. As I stated in Spouting 13, I will be using this blog to detail my progress of my self hosting WordPress install and set up. Afterwards, I will transfer everything over to my self-hosted blog and continue blogging from there.
I decided to use a subdomain of my site to do all of my testing, as I learned that it would be very easy to transfer my completed test blog to my main domain when the time is right. As such, I’ve completed the phase 2 of my sight: installing and playing around with plugins. I haven’t installed every plugin that I will need, but the two that I did install contributed to the learning process for me to know how to actually do the installation. The two plugins that I chose to start with is the All in One SEO Pack and Tweetmeme. Both of these plugins installed quite nicely. WordPress offers a great internal installer. And the beauty of all of this is that you do not need to install directly from WordPress if you choose not to. If you’re interested in doing it manually, you simply need to upload your plugins to the plugins folder on your server via FTP. Not that I’m afraid to do it manually, after all, I’m quite proud of having installed WordPress manually. As noted in my first phase, Spouting 13: WordPress Update, the installation was a piece of cake. I really only had to change 8 lines in one file called: wp-config.php and then upload that file with the rest of the WordPress application files to my root server via an FTP client. Now that I understand the manual process, I don’t have a problem with letting WordPress automate it for me. Another nice feature is that WordPress will decompress the .zip file the plugins come in as part of the auto installation process. I simply can not believe how easy this has been. I also installed a different theme. It’s not the one that I will be using, but I also wanted to understand how theme installations were handled. The fact that WordPress is setup to allow the user to search for and install plugins within its own dashboard is wonderful. This prevents the user from having to go to another site. Yet, if the plugin you want to use isn’t available within the dashboard’s plugins page, then you can still simply upload the .zip file and have WordPress take care of the rest!
As of now, Tweetmeme,was the easiest of the two plugins to understand. Although I have the All in One SEO Pack installed, I’m not sure if it’s really working or how to determine if it is or isn’t. I did a test post, but I didn’t see anything beyond the general stuff that appears with a post. This means that I will simply play around with the plugin a bit more, visit the forums and see what I can discern. For those of you reading this and considering the same, some resources that I found to help me out with this part of my installation were:
My Google seach string for the “must have” plugins for a WordPress blog
How To Make My Blog’s 18 Most Downloaded Plugins Ever
Thesis Theme Plugins Customization
Quick Online Tips’ Must Have WordPress Plugins
Business 2 Press’ 30 Must Have WordPress Plugins
Most of the information is repeated in the above links, but I put them in the order that I found them to be most useful. With regards to the Thesis theme, I’m not sure if I will be going this route. It’s a highly customizable theme for WordPress with a very clean structure. If you like to control everything and have the time to invest, then this is the theme for you! My personal opinion, and I could be wrong, but it’s really for those that are more high end users. I’m keeping my eye out on it, maybe one day, but I really like more visually laid out themes, like Elegant Themes, and while I’m still on the fence about which direction I’ll take my blog, I am leaning more towards Elegant Themes. That being said, I will be saving my theme of choice to the very end. As far as plugins are concerned, I would enjoy reading anyone’s suggestions on any other plugins that I should consider using, whether they are on the lists noted by the url’s above or not. I make no promises, but to check them out!
——-@ds
To "run without condition" is a metaphor for doing all that I can, with all that I have; to be boundless. It's my acceptance of an unconditional spirit and thriving to move beyond the constraints of myself.
Visit my About Me page to learn more. I'll be updating it with more information in the near future!
