Time to Make a Pressing Change To The Blog

For the last several years, I’ve written a blog just for fun; said blog, which I entitled Carlisle’s Chaotic Commentary, was hosted by Blogger (owned by Google). Over the last few months, I’ve become increasingly displeased with Blogger’s Dashboard. It hangs, freezes and also has gotten to the point where I have to manually edit the HTML code to get the page to display correctly. This became increasingly irritating for me since I switch between using my laptop and my Surface 2 tablet and trying to edit code on the tablet’s smaller screen (and without a mouse) can be a pain in the ass.

Also, since I’m now a subscriber to Microsoft’s Office 365, I wanted to find something that worked well with Word 2013’s built in Share feature specifically the “Post to blog” option. My attempts at doing this with Blogger proved to be less than exciting.

So, this past Friday, since I had the day off from work and had the spare time, I decided to register for a free Word Press account. I spent a couple of hours posting test blogs both manually and using the Post to blog feature in Word and I’m pretty happy with the results. Going forward, I’ll be blogging using Word and posting to Word Press instead of Blogger.

Granted, Blogger is 100% free, while certain features in Word Press only work if you subscribe to a paid account¹, but even so, Word Press (so far) has been more user friendly than Blogger has been lately.

For that matter, I’m also planning on researching the possibility of migrating data from Google to Microsoft Live. It’s odd to think it, but lately I’ve gotten to where I’d rather trust and use Microsoft’s cloud features than Google’s; perhaps it’s because I own both a laptop and a tablet running Windows 8.1. *wink*

If you are reading this on the Blogger site, thanks, but this will be the last post on http://jecarlisle.blogspot.com. If you’re reading this on the new Word Press version (http://jecarlisle13.wordpress.com), thanks for stopping by and I’ll work on getting more stuff posted here soon.

~ JC

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1.    For example, I can’t do much in the way of customizing the layout in Word Press using only a free account and the choice of templates is rather limited as well.

52!

Fifty-two weeks, fifty-two blogs. I have never had a calendar year in which I have actually posted a blog every single Sunday, until now. This is blog number 52 for 2012 (unless I counted wrong, which is highly probable). Whether or not my count is correct, I have managed, for the first time ever in a single calendar year, to post something every week. Sometimes it’s been a rant, or something about nothing, or sometimes just a photo, but at least I can say I’ve posted something every week.

I’ve discovered a few things while engaging in this little project. First of all, I enjoy writing - or at least the act of writing; it’s cathartic. Secondly, how the fuck professional writers come up with material on a regular basis escapes me; there have been plenty of weeks where a topic worth writing about, or for which I had more than a sentence or two worth of commentary has alluded me.

I’ve also discovered, based on the analytics for the blog, that more people actually read this thing than just my friends who are kind enough to click on the links I post on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Interestingly, some of my older posts comparing To Do list services seem to be my most popular (or at least most viewed) posts.

Going into 2013 I can’t say that I’ll make another run at 52 straight weeks of blogging. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ll allow myself the occasional break from blogging. I’ve always called the blog “Chaotic Commentary” because I’ve never locked the blog into a single topic; that won’t change, although don’t be surprised if you see more World of Warcraft themed blogs in the near future.

~JC

Carlisle’s Chaotic Commentary 2012 Posts

First Blog of 2012	January 1, 2012
Damn it Feels Good to Be a Lannister	January 8, 2012
Ben Was Right... Mostly	January 15, 2012
What Possesses People?	January 22, 2012
Let The Hunt Begin	January 29, 2012
The Hunt is Over	February 5, 2012
Some Chaotic Commentary	February 12, 2012
Nook Tablet – First Impressions	February 19, 2012
Boxes, Boxes Everywhere	February 26, 2012
Movin' On Up	March 4, 2012
Channels, Channels Everywhere	March 11, 2012
Hungry for the Games	March 18, 2012
The Great Furniture Hunt	March 25, 2012
Put It Together Your Damn Self	April 1, 2012
Laptops, WiFi & Family	April 7, 2012
Sunday Evening Bloggin’	April 15, 2012
U-verse vs Xfinity - Just My Humble Opinion	April 22, 2012
Tiptoeing Through ‘The Cloud’	April 29, 2012
LG Tone Bluetooth Review	May 6, 2012
Shaking My Head	May 13, 2012
The Sarah J Show	May 20, 2012
Remember More Than Just Your Grill	May 27, 2012
Sorry Ben, But Beer Doesn’t Love Me	June 3, 2012
RIP Ray Bradbury	June 10, 2012
Happy Dad’s Day	June 17, 2012
Can’t Stop The Music	June 24, 2012
Burnt Offerings	July 1, 2012
The Game Is Afoot	July 8, 2012
The Great Book Debate	July 15, 2012
Is This The Real Life?	July 22, 2012
Making a Splash	July 29, 2012
Rethinking My Tablet Choice	August 5, 2012
Vacation 2012	August 12, 2012
Round IS a Shape, Right?	August 19, 2012
Lock It Down	August 26, 2012
Sunday Ramblings	September 2, 2012
Bachelor Pad	September 9, 2012
Time to Become a Little More Antisocial	September 16, 2012
I’d Rather Be Writing	September 23, 2012
Rethinking the Layout	September 30, 2012
Save the Tatas	October 7, 2012
The Last (?) Temptation of Uhnk	October 14, 2012
What the Puck!?	October 21, 2012
Return to Azeroth	October 28, 2012
Heads or Tails - Election 2012	November 4, 2012
Salute to our Veterans	November 11, 2012
WoW, It’s Been A Month Already	November 18, 2012
Tis The Season	November 25, 2012
Raiding, Achievements, and Gold, WoW	December 2, 2012
What Ifs	December 9, 2012
Fifty Down, Two To Go	December 16, 2012
We’re Still Here	December 23, 2012
52	December 30, 2012

Fifty Down, Two To Go

At the beginning of this calendar year I imposed upon myself a goal. That goal was to actually post a blog every Sunday through the end of the year. Writing, for me, has always been a cathartic undertaking. I don’t really care if anyone actually reads it or not. Sundays became the day of blogging from almost the start because it was always the one day of the week when I had time in the morning to post. A few years ago my friend Jimmy starting trying to do a daily blog, which inspired me to at least do a weekly one. Like most hobbies I undertake, I tend to go at it pretty hardcore at first then my interest starts to wane, so there are some pretty large gaps in the dates of my blog posts. Writing, though, is one of those enjoyments that I really like to do, so even though I didn’t write something every week, I still wrote fairly often. Strange as it sounds, it’s the act of typing that I enjoy - I’m not sure why. And yes, I’m the weirdo that will say that the thing I miss most about college is writing papers.

So far I’ve managed to post something every Sunday during 2012. Today’s post is number 50 with two more Sundays left in the calendar year. So, I’ll see you here next Sunday for another blog post (that is, of course, if the Mayan calendar was wrong).

~ JC

P.S. - I was going to write another World of Warcraft post this morning, but figured I’d take a break from that topic for a bit ;-)

Rethinking the Layout

I’m not sure exactly when I changed the blog to the current layout. It's been a couple of years ago, at least. I like it. I tend to prefer the lighter text on a darker background approach to websites as it tends to be less stressful on my eyes. Then again, it’s nice to change things up now and again, too.

Color scheme aside, there are other things to consider as well, like font face and size, which widgets to include (if any), do I want said widgets on the left or right side of the page, blah, blah, blah.

I think what it really comes down to is, I’m a bit bored on a Sunday morning and don’t really have anything nagging at me that I feel a need to write about here, so it’s got me thinking about screwing around with the layout instead.

~ JC

Bachelor Pad

As of around an hour ago, I’m a bachelor again... well, for a week anyway. Roxanne has headed to North Carolina to visit her Mom and go with her to a couple of doctor appointments for which she needs someone to be with her to drive her home afterwards. Nothing horribly major, but the meds will make Mom kind of loopy for a few days, and with Roxanne’s brother being away at college and her Dad being a truck driver and out on the road right now, Roxanne was really the only one available to help.

So, that leaves me home alone for a week. I get the whole bed to myself. I can make whatever I want for supper (including pizza rolls). I can hang out in my underwear (or less) if I want. Then again, I could kind of already do all that even if Roxanne was here.

Truth is, I miss her already. It’s funny how one starts to think how cool it will be to have the house to one’s self for an entire week, but in rather short order one realizes that it actually kind of sucks.

At any rate, it’s only around 9:15 AM and I’m already thinking about having pizza rolls for breakfast while watching last night’s episode of “Doctor Who” on the DVR. Why? Because I can. :-P

~ JC