This is my newly re-done, resuscitated blog, which I haven’t used for over a year.

Improvements are:

- A new, better theme (neoclassical). Also created new photo headers for it from my photos.

- Upgraded WordPress (to 2.6 from around 2.2). (see more about this below)

- Got rid of articles I didn’t really like.

- Re-did the Categories from scratch

Regarding the WordPress 2.6 upgrade:
I upgraded because I wanted to make sure I was able to use new features and be compatible with themes, and it sounded like there was something called “widgets” that were part of the new deal. Unfortunately My categories were wiped out in the upgrade process (from I believe 2.2). I tried going into the MySQL tables, as suggested by this post by a programmer at another blog. However, there were more database rows than a Google cached page of my old blog categories showed, and it seemed tricky to sort out. so, I simply deleted all the old categories and started fresh. This turned out to be better anyway, because I was able to come up with better, clearer set of categories

Always aim for the simpler, more beautiful solution.

8/7/0
Update: I created a couple of blogs at Wordpress.com a couple of days ago thinking that would be a way to get more traffic to the site, since it was part of a large pooled domain of subdomains, and I’d noticed that many times my Google searches on various topics took me to www.blogname.wordpress.com sites. Well today I did some actual research in to the topic (using Google and the search terms “blog seo wordpress.com vs. self-hosting”) and discovered that there are good reasons for thinking self-hosting is actually the better solution. For example, this struck me:

“8. Better SEO (Wordpress) - You can use plugins to SEO your blog. You can use plugins like All-in-One SEO to SEO each post, link checker to check for dead links i.e. links that are not working.”
(http://www.quickonlinetips.com/archives/2008/08/self-hosting-your-blog/)

A number of commentators (bloggers) also mention a number of other compelling issues, such as control (e.g., plugins, coding), and the ability to advertise.

So… I deleted all the posts at quantumfrog and thequantumfrog blogs, as well as everything else except the “About” link (which links back to this site).

It was a learning experience (trying out wordpress.com), and not a big deal to create and delete them. I got to learn about export and import
in setting them up. There were only 8 posts, so it was not a big job to delete them and the three (static) pages.

I also renamed this blog to “Blog Sin Nombre”.

Had a little fun with the title of one of the defunct blogs, calling it “This Blog Does Not Exist” with the subtitle “except in your imagination”.

Why have a joined the Brave New World of Blogging? I avoided it for many years because I was concerned it would be too time-consuming. For starters, I already write in a journal every morning as part of my daily routine, and often write in it during the day (and night). So, I thought also writing in a blog would just add to the already long (non-money-making) list of things I do everyday, and I would be repeating content - writing double as it were - and I already felt a little guilty about all the time I get “distracted” by my curiosity, passions, interests and creative activities.

However, the reality is … more complex than that. (Reality often is). What happens is, I get interested in some topic, and spend time researching, thinking, surfing the web, saving notes and links, AND THEN, email friends about what I’ve discovered, uncovered, or created (such as photos or writings). This process of emailing different friends is repetitive: I don’t just cc: (”carbon copy”) the email, because different friends are different, with different interests, and I don’t want them to feel they were just part of a mass emailing anyway. That emailing process is repetitive of the journal writing anyway, and repetitive with the various emails I send to different audiences.

Not only that, but later I often want to find the reference to a link I sent to some friend, and have to sort or sift or search through old emails or journals to find it. Blogging software uses a database to save everything, and has search capabilities. Links are part of blog posts. As are photos. So it seems a natural solution.

I can also reach a much wider audience - both those people I already know, and anyone that finds their way here, or who I give the link to.

So … I investigated various Content Management Systems (CMS) besides WordPress (one of the two blogging packages my ISP offers to install for free), with names like Drupal, Joomla, and XOOPS. Sounds like the name of juicebars or candy, eh? I decided to stop messing around and try WordPress. I’ve tended to get bogged down in research in the past when I was looking into blogging and wanting to use a software package on my server instead of one of the services out there such as Blogger.

In the process of research I did get sidetracked this time – though in a good way – learning about such things as “cruft”, “Permalink” and the “MetaWeblog” API. I also saw terms that I’ve learned recently like “pingback” and “trackback” when I was researching “splogging”.
Why was I researching splogging? Well, that’s a long story.