Tag Archives: blogging

Knowing How To Code Is Empowering

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So, in case you haven’t noticed, this blog is on a subdomain and I have a homepage of sorts over on the main domain (is that the right terminology?). Anyway, I have searched long and hard for a landing-page theme for the homepage. I finally thought I found one when I saw this theme called Alter Ego. My homepage was so beautiful – see for yourself with the screenshot below.

Click to see it larger

Click to see it larger

I had Google webfonts and a cool background (an old-fashioned map of Russia). But then, when I visited my site from my iPhone, this allegedly responsive theme (responsive means it was supposed to change to be viewable on my iPhone or other mobile devices) didn’t work so well after all. I don’t know PHP so I couldn’t find out what the problem was, and I stopped using this theme (even though I really, really liked it).

I found another theme, but I don’t like it as much. To make a long story short, I really, really ought to learn PHP so I can do amazing cool things with WordPress. The only problem, aside from finding the time to do this, is I don’t know where to start with learning PHP. Any suggestions?

New Theme!

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I am so proud of this new theme I found. It’s called Focused and is from S5themes.com. Best of all, it’s free.

It’s hard to find decent themes for WordPress. Yes, I know there are quite a lot out there, but I’d say ninety-nine percent of them are very, very bad.

Update: Unfortunately, it was too good to be true. I noticed some problems with the theme while using Firefox, a relatively popular browser, so I’ve stopped using that theme and switched to another.

My Blogiversary

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blogiversary-cupcake-2

Oops. I missed my own blogiversary, which was on March 7 of this year. I have now had this blog for over two years now. I haven’t written as much as I’d like, but I’m doing my best here.

My first post was oh so creatively entitled “Hello” and in it, I confessed my love for Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov. (For the record, I love Bulgakov even more now than I did two years ago, since I’ve read a lot more of his work at this point in time.)

In honor of my belated blogiversary, I thought it would be fun to look at the different taglines I’ve had for this blog. Back in the day, I started this blog as an overworked study abroad student and my tagline was “Not your average study abroad blog ™”. (Yes, complete with the trademark symbol. I thought it was cute/fun.) Then I came home from my study abroad and that tagline didn’t work so well anymore. I went with “Languages, History, and other random tidbits” before quickly changing to “Languages, History, Russia,” which I stayed with for a long time. I only recently changed the tagline to its current incarnation, “Resistance is futile” (which any Star Trek fan worth his/her salt will immediately recognize). Basically, I discovered finance and economics and realized that languages, history, and Russia was not fully adequate to describe my diverse interests. The current tagline is supposed to convey how incredibly irresistible my blog is – once you find it and start reading, you can’t stop. :)

Thank you to all my readers out there, whether you’ve been reading since 2011 or just discovered me last week. I really appreciate all of you and I hope you enjoy reading the blog.

Photo from here.

Insulting Spam

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I just had to share this spam comment with all of you. Usually, most the spam comments I receive are complimentary, probably to make me want to click on them. (I don’t click on them, of course.) But this one is new and unique. Apparently the spam bots have stooped to insulting us bloggers.

Click to see larger.

Click to see larger.

If you can’t read it, it says:

The next time I read a weblog, I hope that it doesn’t disappoint me as much as this one. I mean, I know it was my option to read, but I essentially thought youd have something interesting to say. AllI I hear is often a bunch of whining about something which you could fix if you happen to werent so busy searching for attention.

Needless to say, the rampant errors were in the original.

I suppose I would be insulted if I weren’t so amused right now. Though on second thought, probably not, as blogging tends to give one a pretty thick skin after a while. And remember, I’ve been blogging since those dark days when I was in high school.

I Installed an Anti-Spam Plugin

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I had over 600 spam comments when I logged in earlier, and I’m tired of it. Yes, I know most of them don’t make it to the blog, but still.

Basically, don’t think it’s strange that there’s something asking you to click on a little photo before you post your comment. And don’t hesitate to contact me if it doesn’t work.

New Theme!

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My blog has a brand-new theme. It’s called Twenty Twelve and it’s made by the WordPress people (every year they release a theme, predictably named after the year it which it’s released). I’m still playing around with it, but how do you like it? Do you like the header images or not?

(It’s also special because it has these nifty format options for different types of posts. For example, this is an “aside.” Oh, and it’s responsive too, so mobile people are also seeing a pretty version of my site.)

Edit: I also updated some of the pages on my blog and added a new one called language lust, so be sure to check it out!

Why My Blog is Not More Popular

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I have determined my blog is not more popular for the following three reasons:

  • I don’t post enough. (I have known for some time that I have this problem.)
  • I’m not controversial enough. (But I have many controversial thoughts, so therefore I ought to post them.)
  • I’m not crazy enough. (Apparently there are popular bloggers who overshare crazy things about their lives. I think there should be a limit to how much a person shares, but there are some things I haven’t shared that I wouldn’t mind sharing on this blog.)

So there you go. This post is hardly crazy or controversial, but at least I am posting again. And that’s a good thing.

No More Spam!

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This is an actual screenshot. Click to see larger.

Why am I so plagued with spam? As you can see from the chart, it has increased recently. I got so tired of it that I installed a CAPTCHA plugin (that uses math, not obscure strange letters that you can’t even read).

I just can’t figure out why my spam increased so much. The visits to my blog did not increase with the spam, so it’s not like I became an internet sensation. (Well, I guess I did, but with the spambots of the world.)

Congratulations to Blogathon 2012 Participants!

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It was my first time participating in Blogathon and I enjoyed it, though it was a bit hectic. I wrote more than I thought possible (and hopefully at least some of my posts were interesting!).

Since Blogathon is over, I will not be posting every day. In a way, it will be nice not to have to worry about coming up with post topics, but I hope deteriorate into a cycle of not posting for weeks on end, then guiltily writing five posts in one day.

Getting Visitors is Easy. It’s Keeping Them That’s Difficult.

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You would laugh if I told what the most popular post on my blog was. Believe it or not, it is this one concerning the Google maps car. When I wrote it, I had no idea it would become the most trafficked page on my site.

So I really don’t have a problem getting people to visit my blog – the issue is making sure they stay. I am not sure how successful I am in doing that, as my site counter uses cookies to determine if someone is a repeat visitor or not. Since it is relatively simple to delete cookies, I could theoretically have more repeat visitors than I think.