by liberal japonicus
Just an update and explainer about what’s happening with this site and the archive site. As you’ve probably noticed, the posting frequency is way up, because I want to try and have daily posts in case people wander back here. It is unfortunate that Typepad basically has gone off the air a month early, so I wasn’t able to put a final post directing people here. If you happen to know anyone who was commenting or frontpaging here before, please let them know that we have moved. Also, feel free to use this thread to just say hi.
Speaking of saying hi, I did a zoom with Eric Martin and Slartibartfast to let them know we have moved. I’ve reached out to some of the other front-pagers, but not in a systematic way. I’m thinking that someone getting an email about the blog would assume that it is a North Korean hacker trying to catfish them, especially with the time difference, so I will be taking it slowly.
I’m going to work on a new theme for the blog, which is located at test.obsidianwings.blog and if any one of sound mind and body wants to fool around with WordPress, I definitely don’t want to have all the fun.
If there are any people who want to try some blogging for fun and profit, or if you’d like to recommend someone who might be a good fit for this place, please do so. While I realize that Sam Altman has started to subscribe to the Dead Internet Theory, I’d like to think, like all those tiny mammals at the end of the Jurassic period, there are still people who like to put down their thoughts rather than farm it all out to AI.
Are there any folks with WordPress experience, or some knowledge of mySQL? For the archive site, I’d like to add a full text search for posts and comments. I am using one here (Relevanssi) but if I install it on the archive, I’m worried about database size.
A note about images and the image with this post. While I thought that a photo of George Allen, former head coach of the Washington Commanders (née Redskins) who used to trade draft choices for grizzled veterans under the motto ‘The future is now, from Wikipedia might be good, it seemed a bit too obscure, so I stole this image from Amazon, under the principle that turnabout is fair play, which will probably be the philosophy going forward. WordPress does quite well with images, so even though they weren’t a bit thing at Typepad, I thought we should take advantage of them here.
hi
LJ thank you for keeping things going here. I haven’t been posting all that much but I appreciate the work you do to keep something on the front page every day.
Thank you!
And many many thanks as well to Michael and Janie and anyone else who made the transition happen.
I have at very best a journeyman’s experience with MySql but it was all a few years ago at this point, and when I retired I made a commitment to myself to only get myself engaged with living things. Or at least analog things. I’m sorry I haven’t been of greater help in keeping the lights on.
I will promise to deliver non-concise rants when stuff just gets too maddening. Or even when not.
And it’s been a minute but it would be great to see old pals like Eric and Slarti jump in now and then. Although I think Slarti may be even deeper down the living thing / analog well than I am, at least in his free time.
But I ain’t gonna speak for either of those guys, other than to say it would be great to hear from them here.
Also, too – hi!
nooneithinkisinmytree,
It’s great to see you again! I hope you’re doing well despite the fact that most of what you warned us about for years has come to pass.
–TP
lj,
My vote is: keep the current layout and save yourself some … fun(?) And thanks again!
–TP
What Tony P said, in both comments!
I’m happy to tinker, and I would like it to be usable. I’m trying to figure out what I need to do to make it more smartphone friendly and wondering how many posts should be on the front page. After things settle down with classes, I should have time to try some more things.
…or some knowledge of mySQL?
Throughout my tech career, I always said that I was glad there were people who seemed to be interested in database design, because it meant I didn’t have to worry about it.
I’m 25+ years out-of-date and out of practice with SQL, and am more of a danger than a help at this point.
Are there any folks with WordPress experience, or some knowledge of mySQL?
Grok volunteers… 🙂
Other LLMs might be helpful too.
MySQL Assistance: Queries, Design, Optimization
i have WP programming experience, and MySQL.
i can’t promise i have enough of either to be of use. but if you think you might need me, give a shout.
I wrote something in FORTRAN about 38 years ago. Is that good?
Seriously, though, thank you for your efforts, lj.
On a more serious note, I know some WP, but mostly things related to attaching odd bits of PHP to the standard hooks in various ways. For pulling stuff out of the database — eg, some subset of comments — I only know things that have PHP shorthand calls, not SQL. I know about get_comments(), but nothing about the underlying database calls.
I’m a long-timer Perl programmer, so I just think of PHP as Perl with a lot of the useful stuff stripped out.
cleek, you are as much of a mensch as ever!
I can’t speak for others, but this is working just fine on my phone.
A’s for those planning to outsource to AI, perhaps they ought to consider just how much of the stuff on the Internet (where most LLMs are trained) are basically spam from bots set up to push either an ideology or the foreign policy of one group or another. A’s contributions to thoughtful discussion they are useless.
Took me a while to find this. I thought someone owned an obwings domain that redirected to the typepad site and maybe it would be redirected here, but that approach didn’t yield any results.
Luckily, googling “Obsidian Wings Blog” eventually led me here. You might consider reaching out to some bigger blogs and asking them to give a post, or at least a social media mention, telling people this place has moved and where to find it now.
Also, I’ve been doing WordPress stuff for nearly 20 years now, so I’d be happy to give you a little help if you need it.
woo hoo! Great to see you Chuchundra! I’ll be in touch in a couple of weeks for advice.