Silence

Sorry for the week long silence. I moved, but my internet took a week to follow me ;) I should be as noisy as every going forward...

Google Publisher Plugin

How timely? Google has released an official Publisher Plugin for Wordpress. That makes the decision that much easier :)

Working on Wordpress

FYI, I'm working on bringing Wordpress back, and have discovered an old database dump of old posts, so I may be able to import them as well. I'll wait until I've ported the theme over, so the process is as invisible as possible.

Singer Wanted!

I posted this on our Facebook page yesterday, but Rock Bottom is looking for a lead singer. We all grew up in the 80's and are heavily influenced by 80's hair metal, but plan on doing original stuff eventually and not remaining a cover band forever ;) We're mostly a group of beginners (except the lead guitarist) who enjoy hanging out and jamming on the weekend, so if you or someone you know is available to practice most Saturday evenings in Columbus, let one of us know on Facebook, or email rock.bottom@nitemarecafe.com. Skill level isn't as important as having fun doing it. We're not looking to gig just yet, but once we have a singer and we're comfortable with a set list, we might be ;)

Blogger is frustrating

I love Blogger. Really, I do. But I find that I bump up against its limitations quite often. The first one I ran across when I turned on Google+ integration. Actually, that one kinda pissed me off. It's not so bad that it linked everything to my real name, because a little CSS and a custom About page easily fixed that. But it totally linked my Blogger account to my Google+ account, which means that I comment on other blogger-driver blogs under my real name, now, or have to use another log-in method to comment. Very frustrating.

Another limitation that I'm starting to see more of is with widgets. When I powered the blog with Blogger before, it was via ftp to my webhost. This allowed me to use custom PHP in my widgets, and I took advantage of that. I might be able to create a sub-domain on a host and create php-powered widgets that way, but it's still not ideal.

Finally, the commenting system, again. I hate that it displays the default Blogger page when commenting, instead of having it themed like the rest of the blog.

So, I'm second-guessing going back to Blogger. Maybe I'll move back to self-hosted Wordpress yet again. If so, I'll try WP-United again and see if I can get that going. That was the most powerful overall platform I think I've used. I had chat, phpBB, Wordpress, and a wiki all using a single sign-on. It was glorious. If I can get that working again, I'm definitely going back.

edit: I found an option to allow embedding comments, which I think may fix the one issue. But the settings on when a comment needs moderated is way too restrictive as well. If I approve someone's comments, I should have the ability to allow that person to bypass the moderation system.

One by one, the penguins are stealing my sanity.

Anyone have a review of The Geek Dad's Guide to Weekend Fun [affiliate link]? Seems like something I might need soon, seeing as the wife and I are expecting our first in August ;)

fbcmd - Facebook via Command Line

There's a great tutorial for setting up fbcmd, which allows you to access Facebook via the command line in Linux. I've used this little utility before, and highly recommend it for a minimalist approach to Facebook.