Author: Jeffro

Jeffrohttp://jeffc.meEnjoy writing about, talking about, and helping others with WordPress
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Adjusting Has Been A Pain

This is the first week in where I begin working weekends only at the grocery store while doing freelancing Mon-Fri. One of the reasons I was looking forward to this type of work schedule was the simple fact that I would finally be able to develop a sleeping schedule that normal people use. Well, in my first week, sleeping schedules have been anything but normal. I’ve been trying to get to bed at an early time but after a year and a half of working 9PM – 5AM, it’s just not that easy. Coupled with the fact that here in northern Ohio, we have been flirting with 70 degrees all week long but thanks to my insane sleep schedule along with the time change, I haven’t been able to take advantage of it.

My writing this week has also suffered. I haven’t published as much content at Performancing this week nor have I written anything for this blog in a little while. I’ve been thinking about using some sleeping aid pills to help me out but my girlfriend is strongly against me using those. The only real choice I have now is to pull an all nighter where I stay up for most of the day and then try to go to sleep at a decent time. Pretty poor for my health but I am sick of waking up in the middle of the afternoon.

Inspired But Reality Kicked In

So last night, I like many Americans stayed up to watch/listen to all of the coverage related to the election. I ended up voting for Obama and as luck would have it, he has become the next president of the United States. However, I must admit that when I listened to John McCain’s concession speech, it touched me and was a bit inspiring. After his speech was over with, I seriously thought if I had made a mistake voting for Obama.

That question was answered once I listened to Obama’s acceptance speech. I was seriously impressed with what Obama had to say. He left no stone unturned and after he left the stage, I had this feeling of wanting to go out and kick some ass as an American to help get things back in order. Obama had one hell of a speech and it really messed with my emotions.

Then, in the back of my head, I reminded myself that there is a good chance that what Obama promised in his speech could be empty handed. After all, that is what most politicians have done, promise this and that and then come up empty handed with no one to hold them accountable for their actions or lack there of. I sincerely hope that Obama delivers on each one of his promises in the next four years.

What A Busy Week

I am pretty excited to know that I am almost finished with my 32 hour work weeks at the grocery store. At least, for the time being and everything continues to go well with freelancing. The grocery store will serve as a crutch in case things in the freelancing world cave in. This past week, I published an interview on BloggerTalks.com with Steve Hodson, published a great post that was welcomely received by the Performancing community called 7 Tips On Building Relationships Through Blogging, produced a fun open mic edition of Perfcast and to top it all off, produced an hour and a half WordPress Weekly with Jane Wells were we covered a ton of ground related to WordPress 2.7.

WordPress 2.7 Beta 1 is out and ready for the publics consumption. November 10th looks like the date for a release candidate while the end of November is aimed for the actual release of 2.7. I am going to bite the bullet and work on getting my content from my Jeffc.me domain and the content on Jeffro2pt0 back into one file and then import that into a new installation of WordPress, that being 2.7 beta 1. Then, I’m going to work on slimming down the theme and installing one plugin at a time and get back to the basics.

One of the subtle changes I am going to make is to remove the FeedBurner graphic. I was having a discussion with Andrew Rickmann on the WordPress Weekly after show and I was talking to him about going back to the basics and how I am getting to the point of doing things my way instead of the popular (what the rest of the blogosphere is doing) way.  So, I’ll remove the graphic because I don’t care to see it everyday. I’ll check in from time to time but it is not a priority for me anymore. My priority is to clean this place up, highlight my freelancing work and then publish content on a regular basis by treating this blog as if it was my Tumblr account. That means, publishing links to articles that interest me, sometimes I’ll write a long form article, opinionated pieces, bits of my personal life, random thoughts, etc.

I just feel that it is time for me to reclaim this blog as my own and no one else’s. While I enjoy writing content for people, I always enjoy writing content for myself and getting my thoughts from my head, out into the open. I want to get back to the point in time of where I can freely express myself without thinking about the boundaries I have placed on this blog by writing for others.

Will I still talk about WordPress and Web 2.0 and all that other stuff? Of course I will, as I see fit, but don’t expect this site to be an authoritative figure in any subject. I want to converse with people and discuss things, concepts, ideas, whatever. So, that will be the focus of the site after I have reformatted it. Along with the reformat, I plan on doing a redesign but it will not be anything drastic. I’m tired of spending 17 hours each time I redesign the site. I’ve always been a fan of forests and so, that is the theme I am going to head towards with the redesign.

For those that will continue to ride the train of life and blogging with me, its time to move on to the next stop. For everyone else, you can get off here. But don’t forget to send me a postcard :)

Lightning Kills 52 Cows

In a huge “bolt” of bad luck, 52 black and brown cows found themselves victims to a single lightning strike. However, how does one bolt of lightning kill 52 cows at one time? Apparently, the cows huddled near a fence during the storm to seek safety but the fence was constructed with bits of conductive wire which appears to have allowed the bolts of electricity to run its course.

The picture that is featured with the news report looks like a mass cow suicide.

US Army Sees Twitter As Potential Terrorist Tool

Breitbart.com is reporting that in a recent draft that was filed by the US ARMY, Twitter is being considered as a potential terrorist tool.

“Extremist and terrorist use of Twitter could evolve over time to reflect tactics that are already evolving in use by hacktivists and activists for surveillance,” it said. “This could theoretically be combined with targeting.”

The report outlined scenarios in which militants could make use of Twitter, combined with such programs as Google Maps or cell phone pictures or video, to carry out an ambush or detonate explosives

Wow. I guess you know you’ve made it once people start claiming your web 2.0 microblogging service can be used as a tool by terrorists. To top it all off, Osamabinladen has been using Twitter for quite a while now. A U.S. Intelligence officer should direct message him and politely ask where he his hiding.

WordPress 2.7 Is Cause For A Reformat

This is just a heads up that when WordPress 2.7 is released, I will be reformatting my WordPress installation to get rid of the fluff that may be stored in the database and start off from scratch. I’ll once again audit my use of plugins and only install the ones that I think are necessary. Also, if you haven’t noticed already, I’ve changed the design of the blog a little bit because for starters, adding one more step to the post publishing process in the form of filling out custom fields is a drag. Secondly, I think the reformat as well as the simplified theme will finally help this site load quickly than it has before. Not sure what is causing the slow page loads but I am determined to figure it out.

I’ll also be modifying the theme to take advantage of threaded/paginated comments. I’m pretty stoked about 2.7 as I think many WordPress users out their will be blown away by it.

Woopra Continues To Improve

Early this morning, John P. published the state of the union for the month of October for Woopra. In this latest round of news, John lets us know that their is a slew of speed enhancements to the service overall thanks to a brand new DNS architecture. Also in the post, Woopra users will no longer have to type in their SITE ID into the Woopra configuration as it is no longer needed. This has allowed the javascript code to be reduced to a single line.

On top of all that, members can now configure their time zone, rename their website and configure URL Query parameters. I’m especially grateful for the timezone configuration as my stats would reset to the next day at 8P.M. EST which was a little annoying.

There is also word that Woopra will be developing an iPhone application. I’m sure Woopra and iPhone make for a perfect match. Last but not least, a revamped client is coming down the pike that will contain campaign and ad tracking. Two features that I think many bloggers will love.

Small Potato Keeps His Word

Tung Do otherwise known as Small Potato has kept his word regarding what used to be his theme club. He stated that if the new owner didn’t do anything with the site that he would refund those who purchased theme club memberships. Michael Castilla over at WPCandy is reporting today that he has received his $5.00 membership refund through Paypal already. He also mentions word that someone continued to pay the $400.00 webhosting fee for the WPDesigner.com website. How weird is that considering the site has been stale ever since it received new ownership.

I think what Small Potato has done proves that he is someone that is a trustworthy and honorable person. Good on him for keeping his word.