A word on the new design this blog is sporting.

The forgotten wedding anniversary has been a situation comedy plot device for decades. Consider Lucy Ricardo jilted in Hollywood or the last minute gift of an alarm system given to Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced “Bouquet”). In both instances, the men in these relationships ultimately got in trouble for their lapses in memory.

I too forgot an anniversary — my blog’s anniversary (or “bloggiversary” as I know some would say). July 13, 2000. Eight years, three domain names, 3,326 entries and several redesigns later, I’m still here transferring bits from my brain into the digital ether.

Thanks to you guys for indulging me these last 8 years.

A minor site update. Yesterday, I installed a couple of plugins that I hope make commenting on this blog a little more pleasant.

For months whenever I replied to a comment, I would hand-code a link to it like so:

@<a href="#comment-0000">commenter</a>:...

The result resembled a twitter reply:

@commenter:…

Now anyone who comments here can do that with far less effort. To reply to someone’s comment, simply employ an arroba (the “at” symbol, @) in front of the commenter’s name as it appears. For example, if you wanted to reply to a comment I made, enter @Fredo in the text field. When the comment is submitted, it will automatically generate the link as described above.

I thought about setting up a plugin for threaded comments, but I didn’t like how the only one I could find nested comments.

Second, if you’ve ever needed to edit a comment you made after you submitted it, you can do so for 5 minutes. This is similar to a feature in digg where you can edit a comment for two minutes after submitting it. No need to go to a special page on this blog to do it, just use the controls that appear under your comment.

If you’ve never left a comment here before, your first comment may still be put under moderation for me to approve, which I usually do within minutes.

The two plugins I used for these new features are @reply and WP Ajax Edit Comments.

This is part 1 of a series of posts outlining my goals for the year. These are posted in no particular order.

People make resolutions every year, and many are doomed to fail. Last year I wound up not making any concrete resolutions, mostly out of laziness; the previous year, I wrote an überlist.

In lieu of making resolutions or a 108-item list, I decided to set a few goals for myself in 2008. Yes, there is a difference between resolutions and goals. Resolutions are promises you intend to keep; you’ll feel guilty for breaking them. Goals are more flexible; they’re marks to aim for, but not necessarily reach.

One of my goals is to give this site the attention it deserves. I don’t mean by posting more frequently, as I’ve been sustaining that for the last several months. Rather, performing some maintenance I’ve neglected to do in the last couple of years.

November was National Blog Posting Month — NaBloPoMo for short — and it ended a couple of days ago. So, how did I do?

All told, I wrote 38 entries throughout the month. If we were going by averages, that’s just over 1.25 entries per day (38 entries ÷ 30 days = 1.26666… entries/day); but we’re not. The goal was to write just one entry every day and in the last month I missed 8 days. Most of them were Wednesdays (the 7th, 14th and 21st); missed Saturdays came in second (the 10th and 24th); and Sunday, Tuesday and Friday tied for third with one missed day apiece (the 25th, 20th and 30th, respectively). One of those Wednesdays (the 14th) wouldn’t have been missed if I hadn’t neglected to save an entry in advance for it.

Chalk it up to several factors: unusually busy days at the main job; days floating around the Gulf of Mexico without a reliable net connection; plain laziness, and so forth.

It just occurred to me that as of today, I’ve been blogging for seven years. Check out the first entry, appropriately entitled “The First Entry.” I’ve come a long way since then.

So… Happy Bloggiversary to me, I suppose.

As part of a gradual site overhaul, I introduce the new Grapefeed logotype.

The font used is Linotype Veto.

When I launched Constructive Cynicism (hereafter referred to as ConCyn in this entry - my reasons why later) back in December, I had this notion that I’d blog differently. I wanted to avoid the personal diary that Grapefeed mostly was, and get more into the social commentary. I don’t think it’s working out so well.

Part of the problem is the frequency — or perhaps infrequency — of my entries. I don’t write an entry every day, much as I would like to. I know it doesn’t need to be a daily affair, but I think my readers — all three of you — would probably appreciate a little regularity.

And then, there’s the domain. I purchased the ConCyn name last year on a day when I was feeling particularly brilliant. Incidentally, my brain hasn’t quite recovered since, but I digress.

I figured it to be the perfect domain name for me: I am a lifelong cynic and it was a twist on the phrase “constructive criticism.” Despite its suitability though, I now think it’s problematic. For starters, at 20 letters it’s too long, hence my shortening it to ConCyn earlier. Second, because of its length and complex combination of letters, it’s easy to misspell. And finally, I already had the perfect domain: grapefeed.org. It’s short, easy to remember, easy to spell, and there are far more branding possibilities than with the ConCyn domain, which I feel is limited in its scope.

Think about it. I can make several grape references for various features of the site: wine, vine, seed, bunch, jam, jelly, and juice to start. I’ve even used a couple of these in the past.

It’s official then - I’m reverting to Grapefeed. Though, by the time you read this, I will probably already have.

Suffice it to say that 2005 left and 2006 came without much incident. I spent the turn of the calendar year with a couple of long-time friends that I feel I don’t get to spend enough time with. It doesn’t help that they live in the boonies and I’m sufficiently immobile. Damn my lack of driving prowess!

To start off my new year, grapefeed and the engine that runs it both received extreme makeovers. Grapefeed was redesigned; WordPress went up to version 2.0 from 1.5.2.

I must say that I’m rather happy with this WordPress upgrade; the interface improved and is a bit more intuitive than before. (At least I think it is.) Unfortunately, the one plugin I got the most use from — Live+Press — breaks with this upgrade, and once again, I’m waiting for the updated plugin. If I had the head for it, I’d go ahead and either update the plugin myself or just write a new one. Alas, I’m good at making things pretty, not making them work.

The grapefeed redesign was largely influenced by Derek Powazek, and in particular, an entry he wrote entitled Embrace your bottom. Cheeky title, no?

Without realizing it, I seem to have taken inspiration from another source: the default Windows XP desktop wallpaper, which is called “Bliss,” by the way. Those four columns at the bottom, they’re supposed to have a grassy background behind them. I may have to rethink that one. Perhaps some scorched clods of dirt. We’ll see.

Oh, and if you’re looking for some obligatory new year’s resolution post, wait until later, okay? I’m working on my first überlist, which is taking me considerably more time than I thought it would. The first entry on my list: write my 2007 list before 2007 starts.

Thanks to the Live+Press plugin, I’m now able to efficiently crosspost entries here at grapefeed to my LiveJournal account.

Like, woo… and stuff.