I mostly abandoned Facebook before the 2016 election and haven’t been back since, but without it, I need another way to share ideas and pictures of projects with my family and old (and new) friends.  I like writing articles/blog posts way more than getting into pointless arguments with idiots in other people’s comment sections, and I did monthly newsletters for years and used to do annual Christmas newsletters.  And I’m pretty good with a phone camera and enjoy image cleanup/cropping/etc. A blog would give me a place to post them.

So exactly a year ago, I finally decided it was time to start my blog. I actually got it done by the May 1st deadline I gave myself.  I used a host (Go-daddy) with a simple (simplistic) site builder, and got it about 80% of the way to “good enough”, before I ran into its complete inability to do basic content restriction (e.g. commenting only if registered, and certain posts restricted to people I actually know).

I lost momentum while debating whether the whole idea was worth the effort of switching to a better solution.  I didn’t pick it back up until around the end of the year, when I invited a few people to take a look at it, but the registration/login process was so cumbersome it just wasn’t workable.  So for the new year, I decided to try it again, bite the bullet, and learn WordPress.

After spending WAY more hours than I’d expected over the last 3+ months, I’ve pretty much done that. I can’t say I like it much – programming in Python is much more fun – but I can make it work now, reasonably efficiently. I’ve also won the battle with the “user registration plugins”, and found one that does what I need and doesn’t clash too badly with my dark theme.

I don’t consider this project “done” (no website ever is, I suspect), but you have to walk before you can learn to run. This version is barely walking, let alone “running” (especially on phones). But I can’t let “done” be the line I have to cross before telling my friends about it and letting them read and comment on what I’ve written so far.

Since it is the anniversary of my first post, I think it’s reasonable to declare it “done enough” (even without the mobile browser support :)) and invite family and friends to check it out.  So please register so you can comment, and then leave me a comment to let me know you were here.

Thanks for visiting!