Minor update

I am not abandoning this blog, first of all.  However, I am going to focus more on my musical fandom and am starting a separate blog for it over at Tumblr.  If anyone wants to follow it, there's a feed in the sidebar (which at this moment hasn't quite sorted itself out yet) or go to Eat the Music.  I'll be posting some of my music-related posts over there to get things started along with posting new stuff.

Tumblr is a different world from Blogger, but I've been playing around with it unofficially for a while now and I like it.  Biggest drawback so far is that establishing a blogroll for non-Tumblr blogs is a little tricky and thus far I haven't dug into the code enough to put them on the main page.  Anyway, the blogroll over there will be only for blogs I read that focus on music, or at least have occasional features about music.  If any of you who I regularly read make any music-related posts, I will most likely link to them from over there (Albatross' series on Iron Maiden is a good example--I haven't yet, but intend to).

I recently finally got caught up with creating my big playlist for loading on my phone, and now I'm going to try and make regular updates on free legal downloads that I find around the web, which I'll now have time to listen to soon after I get them instead of weeks or months afterward.

I will say that today I splurged and spent $5.99 on the mp3 download from Amazon for the 2011 remaster of The Wall.  I'm listening to it right now (so far so good), and will post about it soon over at Tumblr.

Slight change

I don't know about anyone else, but I've noticed when I get several videos on my main page it really slows down the page load.  So from now on I'm going to use the "read more" thing to keep them from bogging down the main page.

I noticed that in switching (finally) to the new post editor so I can use the jump break button, when I edited the video posts it screwed up the paragraph formatting on the old posts.  I'm not going to fix all that.  Not a big enough deal.

This is interesting

Statcounter recently upgraded their service so that it provides a little more information, among other things. Now it shows your Google page rank, if it's high enough. I have one page that shows a rank of 14, so I'm not sure how far down it goes. I have several pages over at The Briar Files which are #1. For example, Google "delayed gratification technique" or "albert king pipe." Pretty neat.

Needs more purple

Well, I thought I'd change the layout here some. I just went with Blogger's template designer so I wouldn't have to dig into the html the hard way. I wanted a single-sidebar layout because I've noticed that some of those wide-screen videos don't fit the old template. Added a background image and tweaked a few other things, but it was all using their template designer, nothing original. I think it looks okay.

For some reason it isn't showing the date in that space where it should. I'll have to look into that.

Blogiversary

Today is this humble blogger's seventh blogiversary. Just thought I'd mention it. Nothing to see here now, just move along...

Cool new gadget

Blogger now has a gadget that will display your most popular posts, according to their (also fairly new) stat-keeper function. I just installed it at the bottom of the left sidebar. An interesting list of posts. I should re-create that old Hellsing post just to see if it would take everything over again.

Odd...

A current screen shot of StatCounter hits for the Free Wayne Webring homepage. All of the hits appear to be from search engine hits using the string "free wayne." Anybody have any idea why?

Indulging another obsession...

I doubt if anyone here will be terribly interested in this--I have created it mostly for FB friends who are members of the church I attend, but I have created yet another blog to focus specifically on my interest in hymns and hymnals. Check the right sidebar for links to The Hymnomicon.

I tried creating a name that would fit, but everything I tried had already been taken. So I had to make up another name. I don't know..."hymnomicon" does have a certain ring to it.

Still getting ghost comments

Anyone else?

I am a source

So how many times do I have be referenced before I become a respected source?

1. LAW (the band) at Wikipedia (I have tried to edit this to refer directly to the individual post but it keeps going back to the general blog url)

2. Dardick tround at Wikipedia

and now...

3. The Styx song "heavy metal poisoning", what are the muffled words spoken just before the song starts? at Yahoo Answers

Ghost comment

A few days ago I clicked on "publish" to approve a comment, but for some reason Blogger "rejected" it instead. Now every time I go to my dashboard it says I have a comment to moderate, but when I click on it I go to "no unmoderated comments." Lost in cyber-limbo somewhere, I guess.

I'm famous

My gas tank photo made the list at There, I Fixed It.

It's a mystery, so far...

I am getting a lot of hits on my post about the Medieval Music album by The Jaye Consort, but none of them show a referring link. Most of the hits are from outside the U.S. Someone must have linked to it, but why no referring link on any of the hits? Weird.

It menas you're gonna die

Yeah...

I think this is the best search hit I've ever had.

Oh yeah...

It completely slipped by me, but last Monday the 21st was my 6th Blogiversary.

Blogger updates

If you don't follow Blogger Buzz, which is Blogger's blog about Blogger, you may be unaware of a few new changes.  Check it out:  Blogger Buzz: You Might As Well Jump!.

The big news:  Blogger has a new edit post window that you can turn on under your settings.  It has some new features built in.  Just click above for the scoop.

Good luck, dude!

click to enlarge

I don't know why on earth you would want to, though.

P.S. You don't have to, he's already here.

Dashboard ads

So today I just noticed that they've started putting ads on the dashboard. Click to enlarge if you want to see why I thought, "heh." I guess they don't have any keyword matches for "madness" and "death."

By the way, I have not yet begun to write a new installment, but I have been mulling it over in my mind. I am discovering a new difference in how I am trying to write this story. It seems that generally, my past attempts at fiction have been situation-oriented, that is, I thought of a situation and then tried to make up characters to fit it. In this story, it feels to me as if I'm first trying to create characters, and then seeing what kind of story can arise from them. Maybe this is a better way to write; I don't know. I've never had any training of any sort in creative writing. It has been quite an interesting experience for me so far.

Motivation

This post about "fan mail" by Steven Den Beste sort of struck a chord with me. I started blogging for fun, although I began to cover more serious topics as time went by. Eventually, those serious topics were no longer fun for me. Blogging is to me another version of escapism, like reading a book or watching a movie. It came to a point where I was either going to quit or change how I was blogging because it wasn't fun anymore.

My blog reading habits have not followed my blog writing habits, however. I still read quite a number of "serious" blogs and in fact, I think my blog reading habits have tilted even more toward the "serious." I just don't have it within me to write that stuff myself.

So that's why I have been writing so much about music. It is something that I have always loved, something I have studied just for the sheer joy of learning about it, and it gives me something to keep blogging about.