Dormant blogs exist in a vicious cycle of not-happeningness. Nobody comes around because there’s not much new content and the blogger isn’t doing much to promote the site. Less gets written and less promoting occurs because nobody’s coming around. And so on.

So your humble Blog Goliard—when he’s got the time and energy, which seem harder to come by all the time—has been doing more writing these days in the form of comments on other, more-travelled sites. Bigger audience and more chance of instant gratification. He should really do more with this site too, though, so that those who wander by here because they like what he has to say in com-boxes (maybe that describes you right now, dear reader) find more timely goodness here and bookmark it.

Surely he will. Surely he will also find a way to fix what the newer versions of Internet Destroyer borkened in the blog template. But he’s busy and distracted a lot these days, so hard to tell when that will be exactly.

I thought I’d pin a quick update on the status of the blog here near the top of the page, for the sake of any new readers who might happen to wander by in the coming days.

Update: My recent post that got a link from The Corner—thanks Jonah!—is two posts down from here.

First of all, I’ll mention my favorite post to have scrolled off the main page to date: the “Prayer of St. Blog”. Some folks are of the opinion that it might just catch on.

I am continuing to tinker with some of the features, and the sidebar, and assorted details of presentation. (Readers who have helpful suggestions, or complaints about aspects of the blog that make them crazy, are welcome to e-mail me anytime.) But I remain very happy with the blog design overall, and I once again thank the folks at E.Webscapes for their fine work and considerable patience.

The “About” and “Rule” subpages are still under construction. The introduction and first Chapter of the “Rule” are finished, but work continues on the rest as time allows. When more of the subpage content is fit to receive company, I will be sure to mention it here on the main page.

The “Archives” subpage is set up, and should work just fine so long as the tasty AJAX goodness doesn’t cause a browser freak-out on your end.

As my perfectionism is satisfied or gets tired—or some combination of the two—actual posting should become a little more frequent. But I do not intend to, and am quite incapable of, becoming some sort of Insta-freak. (Note to Prof. Reynolds: I mean “freak” in a good way. Honest.) In an ideal world, I would be posting daily, with at least half of those being of the longish think-piece type. We shall see if that indeed comes to pass.

For readers who find themselves disappointed whenever they check a favorite website and find nothing new, may I suggest checking out the “Subscribe” box at left. Either the RSS or e-mail feed should keep you apprised of all new posts here, as soon as they go up. I’ve only just recently started using an RSS reader myself (I settled on the one built into Mozilla Thunderbird); I find it helps me reach a state of information overload so much more efficiently than before. Highly recommended.

Busy busy busy. Is this really July already? How did that happen?

The “dog days of summer” are supposed to be laid back for people who work in the education sector (like me). Right? Well, I haven’t got too bored yet at the office (and I never did get round to the big cleanup and paper-purge I’d had penciled in for sometime in June…was going to dust the bookcases and everything). And as for life away from work, between obsessing over the World Cup, fussing over fine-tuning the new blog, and going over preparations for a summer vacation, that’s been plenty full too.

Said vacation will be coming just in time, if I say so myself. Haven’t given the passport a good workout, or myself a good long break from the usual quotidian existence, for too long.

On an island in the sun
We’ll be playing and having fun
And it makes me feel so fine
I can’t control my brain

(Lyrics from Weezer, “Island in the Sun”. Very, very fun track; best 99¢ I’ve spent on iTunes lately.)

Mmm, sounds good. Afterwards, I ought to be tanned, rested, and ready to do enough blogging—and enough self-promoting—to get this place properly humming. That’s the plan, anyhow. See y’all later in the month.

Are what I am fussing over now. There are so many WordPress options and plugins and features and modifications and so forth that a person can tinker with—even after having had a template professionally designed—that it can be overwhelming.

I was up too late last night working just on the favicon (that little graphic thingy that appears next to a bookmark, and in various other places depending on your browser); but at least I am pleased with how it finally came out. If I hadn’t been able to take advantage of a free trial of the excellent Studio program from Microangelo, I might still be working on it. Man is it ever hard to fit two reasonably well-formed serif capitals into 16 by 16 pixels.

Any readers who are interested in whiling away the hours ginning up favicons for their own website could do a lot worse than starting with the favicon entry on Wikipedia, and the aforementioned free demo from Microangelo. Several of the links at the bottom of the Wikipedia article are rather helpful also.

When I am a bit closer to the end of this tinkering madness, I will write up some posts describing some things I have learned and discovered and installed and tweaked. In the meantime, I have placed an automatically-updated list of active plugins on the still-under-construction About page for anyone curious. I will also likely continue to post the odd tip here and there along the way.

But now it’s time to get back to learning a little about PHP, so I can improve my chances of not breaking things as I play around with stuff deep in the guts of my theme…

If any of you out there were trying to reach this website over the last hour or so, you would have noticed a short, cryptic error message in place of this lovely new blog.

It would have stayed that way much longer had I not backed everything up shortly before doing what I did that made everything go haywire.

Backing stuff up saved my bacon this time. Whereas not backing stuff up has gotten it fried many times in the past.

So that’s why I’m sending out this helpful little reminder to the world: Back up early and often! Back up your backups, even!

(Oh, and while I’m at it—I’ll bet you should really be flossing more. And make sure you eat your vegetables. And don’t make that face; what if it froze like that? And…oops, sorry, parental overdrive kicking in at an inappropriate time here, sorry.)

I’ve even got a few bonus lessons for those of you running WordPress blogs:

1) Before installing any plugin, read the readme file.

2) Popularity Contest is a neat thing when it works, and all laud and honor to the author; but be aware that if it doesn’t work with your template, it can immediately mess things up, in the most thorough and scary fashion.

3) So did I mention that you really ought to do your backups?

(And don’t go swimming for at least a half-hour after you eat. And…oops, sorry again. Better quit now.)

The prayer commonly known as the “Prayer of St. Blog” does not come to us from any of the saint’s known, authenticated writings, but rather from an unattributed cache of rare illuminated-HTML manuscripts, stumbled across by workmen at the famed Monasterium inter Retia as they installed the first abbey-wide LAN.

Whatever its true provenance, I wholeheartedly endorse the sentiments the prayer expresses; and as a longtime feminaferrophile, it seems only natural to me to observe the occasion of my blog’s relaunch by quoting just such a prayer. And so:

The “Prayer of St. Blog”

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy Web.
Where there is flaming, let me bring peace;
where there is flackery, candor;
where there is arrogance, fitting mockery;
where there is ponderousness, wit;
where there is doubt, links;
and where there is error, Fisking.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to receive traffic, as to refer it;
to be appreciated, as to appreciate;
to lecture and be read, as to read and learn.
For it is in sharing information that we increase it,
and in visiting others’ blogs that we become worth visiting ourselves.

Amen.

Welcome, one and all, to the new home of goliard blogging. And what a spiffy new home it is, too, thanks to the work of designer Lisa Sabin and illustrator Leanne Wildermuth of eWebscapes. I am glad to have had the privilege of working with them, and hope that my fussiness over detail and profusion of design notes were not the primary cause of their declaring a hiatus some weeks back.

This new site is a relaunch—or perhaps, in homage to the creators of the fantastic new Battlestar Galactica, I should say “reimagining”—of my old blog. The previous site is still up on Blog*Spot, but I will not be copying over the old posts wholesale. For one thing, it’s been a few years since the old blog was active (my, does tempus ever fugit up a storm!); for another, I want the new Blog Goliard to truly be a fresh start. Also, as a born perfectionist, I am easily embarrassed by each and every thing I may have ever written, said, or done that fell short of the ideal. (Which would be most all of it, of course.)

I do, however, plan on running an occasional series of lightly-edited “best of the old blog” posts to rescue a few of my favorites from the memory hole. Two such items, from the last World Cup, ought to be up within the week.

But enough nattering for now what I plan to do; time to get on with doing it! Thank you for taking the time to come round, and I hope you enjoy the new Blog Goliard!

P.S. The title of this post is taken from the leadoff track of Stephanie Schneiderman’s album Unbelievably Unbroken, which I’m listening to right now. I have a hunch that I am a bit older and a lot more male than most of the audience for this style of record, but I’m enjoying it. Good decompressing music for when I’m playing Mille Bornes or similar on the computer before bedtime. It is one of several fine discs that I would never have run across, or given much of a chance, had they not been featured as $5 Specials at CD Baby. If you’re not familiar with that fabulous online independent-music store, you really ought to give them a look—but be prepared to spend hours digging through their huge catalog and listening to the many, many audio clips they have posted.