Category: Site-Update

Over the years, I’ve had a few different flavors of run log integration; a homebrewed cgi, a simple third party logging site that’s long departed that I can’t remember the name of, and select runs …

I use Raindrop.io to manage my bookmarks. I thought it would be fun to have a streamlined way to share select bookmarks in the blog:was; somewhat similar to the way that Brett Terpstra does his …

Just a couple small improvements: When using the site from a phone sized viewport, when the menu items unfold, they appeared behind the hero image on the home page. Turns out when you use css to …

No real content here. Messing around with meta tags to set default cover image that appears when post links are unfurled.

The Claude generated scaffold for my new Hugo site didn’t include a category list page. I’m pretty sure that I could figure out how to pull one off given enough fiddling, but lets see what Claude can …

The older version of my site used Google Analytics (via Monster Insights Wordpress plugin). Figure I’ve given enough free data to Google over the years and wanted to try something else. Enter Umami. …

Noticed an entity encoding problem (a recurring theme) in search results. The exact same bug was already fixed in post snippets in the post list page and in description field in RSS for posts. Lets …

Well, look at that! After manually copying and pasting to fix a zillion YouTube embeds when migrating from WordPress to Hugo, I found that Hugo also has shortcodes. I was most interested in the …

I improved the formatting of the description of posts in the RSS feed. Previously, it was regular HTML, which doesn’t unfurl well on Mastodon (likely for security reasons). So I made it plain text, …

When putting together that last post, I wanted to batch resize and change format for a pile of images. This macOS shortcut was pretty helpful.

ChatGPT So, recently, I was messing around with ChatGPT and got a cute invite to try their image generation features. It gave this sample prompt: Turn this photo into a magical “Mini Me” world where …

I’m kinda bored with Wordpress. Its bloated, kinda annoying to maintain, and has some questionable leadership at this point. I’d looked at migrating to an SSG in the past, but none jumped out as being …

Posted last week and noticed I didn’t see a notice in my mastodon feed. Hmm, at some point, IFTTT made syndication to mastodon action a pro feature. I don’t have enough action on either the blog or my …

Hmm, it appears that Monster Insights Wordpress Plugin updated itself at some point with a bug in it and took out my whole wordpress site. All pages just responded with a page saying that a Critical …

Previously, the home page here was pretty static, just an image and some basic intro text. That’s probably not the best for SEO, so I changed the layout into a 2 column affair and added a Latest Posts …

Moved some more random bits off my old Digital Ocean droplet and then powered it off. Gonna let that stew for a few days to make sure I didn’t forget anything or leaving anything pointed to that older …

Did some more research on trying to syndicate this blog to Facebook. Doesn’t look anybody can post to your normal field, just to a Facebook page, at least for free. Even Wordpress’ own Jetpack thing …

Embedding on Modern Wordpress On modern Wordpress (ie: circa 6.x), it wasn’t super obvious how to use an <IFRAME> style embed using the new blocks interface. Turns out the magic is just use a Custom …

Hey! Why don’t I syndicate my posts to Facebook too? Let’s head over to IFTTT to set that up. Oh, right, IFTTT can only post to Facebook Pages and not to normal personal profiles. Hmm, I think I …

Some what embarrassingly, I have to admit that my blog install was way out of date. It was running an ancient version of Wordpress on an ancient version of Ubuntu. So, I upgraded both, with a big hat …

Hmm, let’s see how much the Wordpress iOS app has changed since I last used out years ago. We’ll, log in was fairly painless. The editor send to let you do all the block stuff that the latest version …

15 minutes of downtime while I snap shotted and upgraded to a newer Ubuntu version. I think it went pretty smoothly for a noob. As far as I can see didn’t break anything along the way.

I finally got around to shutting down my DreamHost account. I poked around a bit in the control panel and didn’t find a way to cancel the account. I started to file a support ticket and their ticket …

Turns out setting up an email server at Digital Ocean is pretty straight forward. Here’s my recipe: Follow this Digital Ocean tutorial to set up postfix. Poke a hole in the firewall for mail to get …

Finally got my rear in gear and migrated from Dreamhost (its been nice) to Digital Ocean (the new hotness.) Digital Ocean’s droplet setup stuff is super easy. They also have great recipes for setting …

Just took the site offline for about 30 seconds to update to Wordpress 3.8. Man, updates through the admin interface are silky smooth these days. (After backing up site and data) updates are a single …

Wow, sorta hard to believe but this is post #1000 for my blog. Its taken 9 1/2 years, 2 blog engines (pivot and wordpress) and 2 hosting providers (host for 2 bucks and Dreamhost) to make it here. …

Content is king! I’m ditching my custom twentyten based Wordpress theme in light of the new hotness that is the twentythirty theme. I think its pretty sexy out of the box, so I’m just gonna roll with …

Facebook peeps, I’m no longer syndicating my twitter feed to facebook. So, you’ll see blog posts like this one, via feedpress syndication instead. Hopefully, not much will change with your enjoyment …

I’m preparing to overhaul my blog and figured it was time to hang up on Feedburner, and its uncertain future (especially since Google shuttered Reader.) So, its onward and upward with Feedpress. …

I’ve been putting off some look and feel updates to my blog for a while; Mainly, because I’m too time constrained (and/or lazy) to set up a development environment to mess around with. I’ve been …

There was a minute or two of downtime as I updated to the latest Wordpress. I also disabled a bunch of plugins that I no longer use. Might speed things up a little bit.

Bots or otherwise… Mercy, there was quite a spike in my google analytics. Easily most page views for a single day in the 8 or so years I’ve been running this blog. Most were on the home page, but a …

I’ve been using Wordpress' Twitter Tools and Social plug-ins to syndicate my blog posts to Twitter (which is sucked into my Facebook account further down the line.) The workflow has been pretty good, …

Sometime ago, I noticed that my twitter integration plugin for Wordpress, Twitter Tools stopped tweeting when I make a post here. I checked to see if there were any updates and found that there …

For those not already in the know, the Mrs. and I are expecting again. You can follow all the action and wager when they’ll make the seen at pixel.thecrowthers.info. You can also subscribe to Pixel’s …

I’ve got some decent domain names that I’m just sitting on when they could be yours. Make me an offer. bootbase.com ticketworx.com wedworx.com redefiningsuck.com sleepticker.com Something you like? …

Hmm, so still no tweets on blog posts. Turns out there’s a bunch of folks having the same problems with twitter-tools. Just noticed that my Dreamhost config for this domain was still saying php4 (even …

Just replaced the stock header photo from Wordpress with something my personal photography collection. Enjoy the shapes in some lights from Frank Lloyd Wrights’ Falling Water house.

Time is something that I’m pretty short on these days. I’ve been meaning to do some work on the old blog for months it seems. I’m finally blowing the dust off the keyboard and trying to get stuff back …

Its a kinda sad story when the only work that I get to do on my blog these days is the occasional wordpress update… And, I screw it up by forgetting to rename my template out of the way and watch it …

Ok, the flickr feed is fixed. Not sure what the problem was, but I think I noticed something similar last time I updated Wordpress itself. I purged the cached images and did the one click automagic …

My Dreamhost overlords moved me to another server box and some how that broke the flickr feed site right. I’ll get things cleared up soon. Please stay tuned.

After seeing a scary Wordpress update warning on mashable.com, I was guilted into doing a little maintenance work on the old blog. I was half way through the normal Wordpress update procedure that I …

A little tech task I’ve been meaning to get to forever was adding my Tweets to the sidebar. I was gonna cook up something myself, but stumbled across Twitter Tools. It was a simple unzip, copy, …

Expected that last post to put in a Tweet. Turns out I didn’t have the auto create tweet from post option turned on. Option toggled and hopeful it’ll work this time.

Finally getting around to updating Wordpress again. I was waaaay behind the times. After messing around with the new admin interface (not that many changes on the end user side that I’ve noticed.) I …

All the cool blogs use Feedburner to host their RSS. Now, I do too. As far as I can tell, if you’re already subscribed, nothing will change for you some smoke and mirrors on this end will route …

Yeah, figured it was finally time to update to the latest wordpress. After enjoying all the enhancements on the wordpress blogs we use at work, I thought they might encourage me to work on my blog …

I like Wordpress’ management interface, really I do. Well, except for one minor annoyance that’s not really Wordpress’ fault. After typing on a plain old PC keyboard for years and years, I’m addicted …

Post headers, footers, and the sidebar headers now have nifty Super Mario Bros. flavor courtesy of the Super Modena Bros. free Icon Delivery from Icon Buffet. I think they perk up the design nicely. …

A while back on my former pivot blog, I said I was migrating to wordpress. After that, I pretty much gave up on the old site. I was planning on doing a fancy schmancy site overhaul to coincide with …

You may have noticed that I’m finally getting around to tweaking the look and feel. I stumbled on some nice Super Mario Bros. themed icons in my Icon Buffet Free Delivery a while back. The idea is …

Spent a few hours over the weekend tuning up my blog content. I’ve gone through a recategorized all the posts (so not everything appears in the default category.) Hopefully, that should reading stuff …

I’m slowly but surely getting up to speed on hacking Wordpress. Today, I added some quick running stats to my side bar. Just about as easy as it gets. I made it so my run log database manager program …

As you may have noticed already, on the navibar to the left, you can now find my del.icio.us links and flickr photos. Hooking up both of them was so easy, I’ve all but forgotten about coding up my own …

Ok, I’m not making any progress on my master plan to reinvent my website. In my grand vision, I’d like to use a single home brew tagging system to cover my blog, links, and photo gallery. But lack of …

I’m in the process of moving from Globat to DreamHost. Ability to host multiple domains out of one account was the primary motivator. Now, maybe I’ll actually work on some content instead of having to …

As you’ve probably noticed by now, the site looks a lot nicer than it did the last time you visited. Welcome to jasoncrowther.com version 3.0. No HTML tables we harmed or used in the new layout (check …

No, I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth, my faithful readers. I’ve been devoting all my spare time into a full site redesign. I’ve got the new look and feel done, and I’m working my way through …

All the pictures from our honeymoon in Maui have been uploaded. I’ve got titles and captions done for most of them, with a gallery or two to go. Check ’em out.

I’ve been hunting around for a gallery manager tool to catalog all the pictures from the honeymoon and all the other misc. photos that I have on my harddrive at the moment. After sifting through the …

Back to business, I’m back from Maui and slowly but surely getting back into blogging and getting some new bells and whistles together for the site. Stay tuned!

Yes, I am still alive; and, I’m still interested in blogging! Unfortunately, time is the issue. With the wedding fast approaching, free time is at a minimum. I actually have a bunch of cool posts in …

Messed around with my PhotoBlogger s’more this morning. Finished the WAP version of the POP3 client that scans a mailbox for new postings. With a little testing help from Opera (which renders WML with …

In addition to my text blog, I’m trying to come up with a nifty photo blog. The kicker is that the pictures will come directly from my Nokia 6225i cell phone. IE, the phone has internet connectivity …

Late last night (well late for me anyway), I turned on the home page making my site officially live. There’s still some loose ends to wrap up, but the site is pretty much together at this point. Feel …

just trying to get the time zone worked out…

Whoa! Pivot is way cool! Pivot is super cool and very easy to set up for the php challenged. Basically, all you need to is mess around with their templates and CSS files and leave all the php to them. …