Mephistos

For those of you do not know, which probably depends on how much of a technical inclination you have and how far back you have been reading the blog, but this blog runs on my own hosting solution with an installation of the WordPress blog software running on top of that.  This particular setup is great, as it back ends to a basic MySQL database, sets on a very nice Linux host that I have a setup running several other sites on as well.  WordPress itself is released under the open source, open license concept, which means as things are thought of they can be added and it is free to use the software, available at wordpress.org for download.

It is possible of course to sign up and run a WordPress based blog on the wordpress.com site, by simply signing up, and starting.  It does have some limits on the customization options, but very few.  It does limit you ability have a direct domain without paying for it and you are also limited in doing any advertising on the site yourself or at least you were when I investigated sometime ago.  This is however, probably the quickest and easiest way to get started blogging outside of a site like myspace which does have a limited blog type of software that works well with in the community, but is cumbersome at best for a non-myspacer.

I have a couple of things that have come up recently in regards to WordPress that I feel the need to talk about.  Actually, now that I think about it there are about five of them, if I can recall them all.  Though some are more related to just blogs in general and are more universal then just WordPress itself.  So I am sitting here listening the O-Brother Where Art Though very non-technical mostly old fashion music sound track I thought I would write about something fairly technical considering the general audience.

• Recently on the Weblog Tools Collection blog and indeed on the forums that are for communication and support issue regarding WordPress there has been a lot of complaint about some plugins that have ceased to function after recent updates.  A lot of finger pointing has gone toward the fact that WordPress re-releases the core on an almost seemingly monthly basis.  I can attest that the major and consequent follow up patch release have been an almost monthly process.  This is not an issue if you are running on the wordpress.com solution, but on your own site, this has meant downloading, uncompressing, deactiving plugins, copying files, updating the database, reactiving plugins, and so forth.  Not exactly the kind of process for the faint of heart or non-technical person.  Some of this has been addressed with a recent plugin to do automatic updates, though it is itself new and of course required installation - and at least my first attempt of using it did not re-activate my plugins despite indicating it did (not a big deal except I got a spam commment that I later deleted manually and my blog visit counts were off that day).  Anyway, my suggestion to the the folks do WordPress is keep the same general schema in place and do a few less releases.  Do bug or patch updates as required by security/saftey - but those are hardly a major release and are few in between that are likely to break a plugin.  Four major releases a year is MORE then enough.
• Apparently I have been asleep at  the wheel a bit.  I thought the measure of success of the blog was number of unique daily visitors combined with those pulling an RSS feed.  However, I am no reading from some of the experts that it is really the number of comments.  So, to this I say I have apparently the most cohesive thoughts in the world and leave so little room for comment - that or I have just muddied the waters so much that none can make enough sense to leave a coherrent comment.  Regardless the point is, there are very few comments on my blog.  They have increased lately, but the over all number is still very tiny in the great scheme of things.  The big news here though is that there is now a plugin that is shows instead of possibly skewed unique visitor and such, instead the number of comments the blog has recieved.  This is not something I plan to turn on anytime soon, but once my blog gets enough comments to make it seem worthwhile I may reconsider.
• A statistic I noticed the other day that struck me as just interesting - the number of unique views of various pages on this site is about 2/3 the number of spam that has been stopped by Askimet (the spam stopping plugin mechanism for WordPress).  Granted I understand how spam comments can be robotized and even how a direct call can be made to the site page with that attempting comment (being one in the business has its advantageous sometimes).  However, in my head I am still thinking that should have triggered a page “viewed” count.  So maybe I am not into the business as far as I thought I was.  This one is just an observation, but if someone has the answer let me know.
• Having recently set up blogs for the office in conjuction with the newspaper group that I work for, I have one major complaint/dissapointment in regards to WordPress.  There is no clear easy path to host multiple blogs on the same relative site without doing some hacks on a few little files.  Further, even once done, each new blog you want to set up requires the additional setup of things down at directive level for Apache (the most common software that is the backend to make websites work).  This is a place where WordPress is behind the curve given the easy, practical, and almost non-technical way that some of the competitors have used handled this same issue.  So, for what is currently a test bed of about six blogs and soon to quickly grow probably in number to about forty is alas not going to be done using WordPress for this simple deficiet (if you need such a solution yourself I would point you to B2Evolution as a possibility, though I do not think it is as rich as WordPress in all the options).
• Cloud Tags - I still think they are over used.  I commented recently though about the global cloud tag and how I thought that would be kind of interesting.  I have no, however, been able to find any information in regards to wether a site hosting stand alone can be linked into this global cloud tag.  Granted I have only made a cursory inquiry at this point, so I do not suppose I can complain very much, eh?
• While I am at it - one of the recent versions did make inserting media, especially photos into a blog a LOT easier.  Used to be you had to upload it manually, recall the exact location, point to it manually, and so forth.  However, the new upload picture button has some limits on formatting and arrangement options.  I have yet to get a tag line on the photo to look the way I would want them (centered for instance) on them.  Also, I tried doing a video today.  While I could do a link, I really wanted the the video embedded.  That is what I am off to try and figure out next though - what fun.

Genuine Risk - 106th Kentucky Derby

I lament that I did not get this post up here in a timely fashion.  A great horse passed from our midst last Monday, August 18th.  Genuine Risk passed away quietly in her old age out in her paddock at Newstead Farm near Upperville Virginia.  She was a true champion athlete, beating not only fillies, but famously beating the boys in the 106th running of the Kentucky Derby Read the rest of this entry »

I started this blog on mephistos.com sometime late last fall.  I had been doing a bit of blogging off and on another site, as well as the original post that where being initially completed on the wordpress.com hosted version of what eventually became the basis of this blog.

Anyway it occurred to me last night when I was walking through a park near to my new residence with Bitzer on our nightly walk for exercise and some vain attempt to get in shape, look good, and live forever that I had been blogging for a total of just about one year now.  It further struck me that one of the first blog notes I had ever written, maybe the second or third one was about a day that I took Jack, the horse Read the rest of this entry »

Ulrich von Liechtenstein

Ulrich von Liechtenstein has been a hero of mine for some time, ever since I first of heard of him and what he had done in his life.  I know some of you are thinking of the movie from a few years back by the the name of A Knight’s Tale, which starred the late Heath Ledger and somewhere in  the back of your mind you recall that was the assumed name the peasant turned jousting knight used.  Someone associated with the movie must have actually had a bit of medieval history in their background, for there was indeed a true knight from the 13th century by the name Ulrich von Liechtenstein.

The real Ulrich had a life that was probably just interesting, perhaps more so, and certainly as ruled by the notions of courtly love and how to win the favor of his this lady that inspired in him all things.  Further, the true Ulrich was not only a knight and jouster of some reknown during his lifetime, but he was further was educated and used his talents to write poetry describing his exploits pursuing the love that spurned him.  The title of the work the famed poet-jouster, as he is often called, wrote in the original Middle High German was Frauendienst. Translated to modern English, it reads as Read the rest of this entry »

I have mentioned this before, but I am always continually amazed and just what a small world it truly is.  I had a plan to write something about this for a few weeks now as I had stumbled on something called the Medieval Campaigner back a bit ago.  It was a nice little document laying out some guidelines for striving to be the as authentic as possible, including a total immersion into the 11th or 12th century, having only those things which were available to that time period available and so on (incidentally, I plan a separate blog about that coming up soon - looking for it).  The interesting thing about it was that it borrowed heavily from a similar document writing for the American Civil War reenactors by a Nicki Hughes.

Nicki Hughes is a minor acquaintance of mine - someone that I know through having worked as a costumed interpreter at Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill over in Mercer county Kentucky.  Largely I know of Nicki through his wife, Susan, who was in a way I suppose over all interpreters, excepting those few of us that worked in the historic farm area.  Incidentally, Susan apparently modified the same thoughts that Nicki had for the campaigner into a civilian document for the same period.   Two things that stand out most about Susan and Nicki in my mind.  First, once when Susan was letting the village use one of her tents, an over zealous maintenance supervisor painted the iron tent stakes neon orange Read the rest of this entry »