I finally had a little time to concentrate fixing little behind-the-screen problems with the blog. One of the WordPress plugins, Twitter Tools, I had set up to post a weekly digest of my tweets. But in upgrading the plugin, it no longer has that option. Although it stopped working a few months ago, which is why my weekly tweets stopped in October. So now it posts one post per tweet. While I liked having a public record of my tweets, one post per tweet is a bit much :/.
If you have been following me on Twitter or Plurk, you have noticed me sending messages saying I was writing. I have been busy re-writing part of my life about what it is like having been born with a facial condition.. well, two actually… cleft lip and cleft palate. They almost can be called one since they are related but someone can be born with one and not the other. I call my story “Born to be Cleft”. Right now it’s on my old Tripod site.
And, by the way, it’s not a “pity me” type of story. It’s just telling like it is. My aim was and is to give a glimpse of what it’s like… to spread a little understanding for people who are noticeably different. And to have something to relate to for those who were born like me.
Anyway, I decided to use WordPress 2.7 for it (very nice upgrade!). It won’t be a blog though, it’ll just be a static site. I’ll blog about cleft related things here with cleft tags (cleft lip & cleft palate) and add a link from the new BtbC site to here, and also talk about them on my Cleft Club Radio podcast… whenever I get time to get that up and going again.
When I originally wrote that story, it was over 10 years ago. I think I was still a newlywed. And… well, it was time for me to update it… having another kid and getting divorced and such ;).
I also needed to move it from my Tripod site. I’ve been using a webhost for a while now, but with everything that was going on, I never got around to focusing on re-writing my story. So now I am, and I feel pretty good about it.
Not much really needs to be redone. My outlook on life remains, I think, the same. But I feel like I should re-write the whole thing. But instead of it being from a 20-something it’s now from a 30-something.
And maybe one day I will finish other posts that I have started for this blog :).
This is my test to see how WordPress has improved embedding videos, especially YouTube videos. I was having one heck of a time (more like 2 or 3 heacks) with the older version and could not get it to work, even reading others fixes and trying different browsers.
The video below is one that one of the members posted to the Charlie Chaplin Forum. The montage is from a number of Chaplin’s films ranging from 1915 to 1940. And the song is by Moby called Run On. I think the video is awesome and well timed.
[EDIT 7/22/14 — I was checking out some of my earlier posts and saw the previous embed was no longer working. So I updated it :). Enjoy!]
So for those of you who have never been here before, Hello there!
I have added some of the other sites that I run on the left hand side.
The About Me page is still being written. So yes, I know that I did not finish the last sentence 🙂
By the way, if you want to see the old version of the site, click here. That is pretty much like an “About me” type of page anyway. I still have my Twitter updates there. Eventually I will add a Twitter widget here along with a plugin to post my tweets for the day. Maybe it will be a Plurk widget instead…have to see about that. I use Ping.fm to post to both so there’s no need to have both since they will both will have the same short messages.
After thinking about it, I thought I might as well make the blog my main site and just have what was on the previous site move to my About Me page… when I make one that is :).
The version I’m using at this moment of writing is WordPress 2.6. There are some nice upgrades, such as autosaving my writing, similar to Gmail. That is *very* handy. Especially now that is stormy here in Florida and the power goes out without notice.
I’m also looking for a new theme, and looking around for some. Particularity ones with blue and round corners. I have looked through ThemeViewer and have found some nice ones that I will try out later on.
Things here at home have remained constant. I’m still living with my parents since my new job started and the girls are still with me. The divorce was finalized May 15.
