Well now – it’s been just over a year since my last post, and something like 18 months since last regular posting. Life has been somewhat insane in the intervening months, and there’s been both amazing things that have happened, as well as some really challenging events that have changed life in myriad ways. Continue reading
There’s been another crazy long gap on the blog (nearly four months; might be a record in this iteration), which is a sure sign that I’ve been busy. But the blog had to get updated, or at least relocated, recently when the host I was keeping it on the past few years was scheduled to be shut down. As such, I had to get things into action to get the site moved in time.
Thanks to my job I’ve become quite familiar with some WordPress-focused web hosts now, and decided to go with WP Engine, which I’ve heard great things about for years. If you’re seeing this post, you’ve followed me over!
I’m confident enough working with WordPress that I could have moved the site without difficulty to just about any host, but I really liked the WP-centric offerings of WP Engine, and their migration tools, which I used just to become familiar with them, were ultra-smooth and very useful. I was able to get my site up and running pretty quickly, and the site feels faster than ever, which is pretty cool.
They help keep the site’s security up to date, protect against certain issues, create and offer the ability to grab a back-up of the site if something goes wrong, and ultimately will help me manage the site in certain ways so I can focus on what I want to do most with the site – write and share.
I can’t promise regular updates will be back just yet, although I have a TON of drafts that have built up, some of it probably too old to actually post, although I may anyway for the heck of it, but I hope to get into a rhythm here again soon enough.
It’s been a quiet couple of months here at the blog, but anything but in my life. The first quarter means a ton of activity for me, and the last two years I somehow fought through everything and kept posting, but this year, decided to take that pressure off (even though it’s fun in its own right to work on it and write things up) and focus on the other things, and circle back when things calmed down. Then, I got sick. My normal 24-48 hours of truly knocked out illness, and an unusually long battle against the cough that wouldn’t die (movie treatment coming soon). Continue reading
Somehow we’re already at the end of another holiday season, and with that the end of another round of Christmas Present. So let’s celebrate with a compilation of all of the tracks through three seasons on the blog. Continue reading
Well, I didn’t make it posting daily for a year (a 10-week gap is confirmation of that), but I’m pretty proud of the 350+ posts that now live here on the site; it’s grown quite a bit over the past two years since I kicked it off Thanksgiving weekend of 2012. I haven’t touched the site’s design since then, although I might going into the end of the year.
I haven’t been lacking for topics; I’ve got more than 50 drafts of saved content that I wanted to post about but failed to have the time to do so. I may fill in some posts with that content since I still want it to live here, or they may lead to future posts.
But the main reason, for those keeping score, for posts to resume is the holidays are here, and one of my most fun parts of the blog is the ongoing Christmas Present project, which begins year three tomorrow. I’ll be posting holiday songs by more modern artists, which will help balance out all the Burl Ives and Bing Crosby (nothing wrong with them, but I like the holidays to have a bit more energy sometimes). Because of the growing list of recommendations, the selections will likely come a bit more heavily this year, as long as I can keep up.
For those who missed it last year, I established a Spotify playlist, and will continue to add with this year’s selections. It feels good to get this back up and running; let’s begin, and happy Thanksgiving!
We’ve had “Friday,” “It’s Thanksgiving,” “Chinese Food” and other earworms designed to go viral, but that doesn’t mean he’s done. He’s at it again, with another video that makes you go “huh?” Continue reading
Katy Perry can do no wrong, so it seems, and her latest song, “This is How We Do” is likely to be no exception. Continue reading
Given the date stamp on the YouTube video, and the number of views (nearly 100 million as I write this), either the U.S. is late to the part of this song, or just me, but I just heard it the other day and have been digging it. Given it was a U.K. number one earlier this year, perhaps we’re just getting to it now. Continue reading
Taking a cue from Nick at The Littlest Winslow, I’ve compiled some recent picks onto a Spotify playlist that I’ll update from time to time. If you’re enjoying the music you’re finding here, you’ll definitely love the playlist! Continue reading
Commitment to writing is always a challenge, and it’s certainly been a struggle at times to get here, but a few days after reaching the six-month mark of daily posting, another milestone: 300 posts. Continue reading