bangmoney.org - Meta

Changing things one more time

nospam@example.com (Chris Lumens) — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 22:30:32 -0400

It's once again time to change the website. For a couple of years now, I've had the content scattered all around. There's the articles on the main page, the journal on my own personal website (why have a personal site when the whole domain is mine?), the projects pages, some useless static information both on the main site and my personal one, and then a bunch of random pictures and things. I started the journal with the idea that I would post frequently and for a while I did. But I fell out of that habit and the website has been stagnating ever since. Of course, most people didn't even know that there was a journal so to them it looked like it had always been stagnating.

Now I've decided that it's time I make the journal the main site. There's no reason why I shouldn't merge the main page's news articles into the journal ramblings. And if I move the journal to the front page, perhaps it will force me to update more frequently. I am going to attempt to write something every day, or every other day at the worst.

I've also got some more changes for the website in my head that will require less code for me to maintain. The longer I have a website, the less I care about writing my own code for it. So those changes ought to be coming in the next several days as I get the free time. I even set up a dev site to stage these changes on before moving them to the main site where everyone can see them.

Let's see if I can keep at this for a change.

That didn't work so well

nospam@example.com (Chris Lumens) — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 13:18:00 -0500

Well, that sure was a failed experiment. However, it's a new year so let's try this again like that means something. The last several months have been pretty crazy at times but since I'm so far behind writing about them and most people already know about everything, I'm just going to ignore talking about it. Ask if you want to know.

I'm not a huge fan of the New Year's resolution thing since it just seems like it's a long list of things to try for a month and then quit. Having said that, there are a couple things I have been thinking about doing for months now. A new year seems like as good an artificial milestone as any to get these things moving. So having said I don't like resolutions, what have I resolved to do?

Get on a pattern of exercise. I'm going to hit the bike trainer this winter and also work on some push ups/sit ups. Once spring is here, I need to get riding outside with David and start up a bunch of hiking. I have a plan for what trails I want to hike, leading up to a big crazy trip with people from work known as a Presidential Traverse. I'd also like to try some of the Long Trail and the Cohos Trail and also do a solo backpacking trip. Yes, I am crazy.

Get my expenses under control, especially where food is concerned. Pay down that credit card debt. I'm so sick of spending money on food. Cooking more at home will help a lot with this. David and I have been working on dinner club a lot, so this is already partially in the works.

Write in this thing more. Yeah, like that will happen.

Get some new computers and obsolete some of the old clunkers I am currently using. I haven't gotten a new workstation since 2000, and it was already a couple years out of date then. I think I've earned it.

Develop a plan for automatically saving. I haven't saved up nearly as much as I would like, which I think is because I don't have automatic transfers into savings accounts. I need to set up a plan for that so I start building up towards a house or whatever people save for.

Make more delicious beers. I already have lots of plans for this.

Take more and better pictures. I'm always yelling at myself for not taking enough pictures of things.

I think that's a long enough list for now. I probably shouldn't promise too much more than I can deliver. If I can stick to those things up there, maybe I will come up with a couple more ideas. And hopefully, I will even get around to writing about things as they happen.

Testing out this journal thing

nospam@example.com (Chris Lumens) — Thu, 23 Jun 2005 19:50:00 -0400

I think I'm probaly the last person on Earth who doesn't have some sort of web journal deal, so I'm going to try fixing that. In the past, all my efforts to maintain a dynamic website have failed because I get bored with it and just stop making updates. Hopefully this one will be different. My current plan is to keep my main web page as it is - a place for me to announce releases of my software and big giant events. This journal is going to be just for boring everyday things that for some reason, I think everyone should know about.

Website Updates

nospam@example.com (Chris Lumens) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 00:00:00 -0400

By now, you've probably noticed the changes I have made to the front page here. The big goofy image is gone in favor of this more dynamic style. I did this for two reasons. First, the big goofy image was kind of stupid and didn't really make sense to anyone but me. Second, having the more dynamic main page allows me to attract more attention to my projects or other things of interest.

I'm not intending to use this for blog-style postings, though I guess it could be used like that if I really wanted to. For now, the code is extremely primitive, but that will improve as I continue to work on the site. I've had a dynamic front page before and it never got updated. I'm hoping this style will be the right balance between ease of posting and my desire to slack off and not update it. Anyway, the rest of the site is basically unchanged. Enjoy.