Tag: wordpress.com

Does This Work?

Years ago I was posting music on this page using HTML5 audio tags and links to my alonetone account. For some reason I stopped doing that. I think its because the audio file links were auto-downloading instead of just opening up in a new browser tab.

Everything on the wordpress.com side has changed too, but I wonder if I can still use the tags. I found some ancient posts (from 2014, I think) that are still functional. Can I use those tags again?

ADDENDUM: Nope. Doesn’t work in this editor. I tried a whole bunch of different variations on the tag attributes but nothing worked. No big deal. I’ll keep using hearthis.at when I want to post audio here. Okay, sorry to waste your time.

I’m Not Complaining, Just Observing

I promise that this post is not me complaining or whining or bitching. I’m just a stats nerd and I notice stuff like this.

I watch the stats for this page. Always have. Back when I was using Blogger (from 11/08 through 12/12) I didn’t have stats available so I signed up for third party apps that kinda sorta let me view stats. One of the reasons I moved off of Blogger and onto WordPress.com was all of the visitor and page view stats.

In March of 2021 my view counts started to grow. I don’t know why, they just did. I always say this and I’ll say it now. When I talk about numbers on this page I am not talking about large numbers. I am not comparing viewer engagement here to any other site. This is not a real site and it’s not meant to pull people in. I tag and stuff, but that’s it. My numbers are teeny tiny compared to real blogs. I only compare my current numbers to my previous numbers. In March of 2021 I went from very few viewers to slightly more than very few viewers. Things grew steadily for a few months, then in February 2022 things started to sort of trend downward again. I don’t know why.

For some reason, unknown to me, last month’s numbers were super low compared to the prior year and a half. It wasn’t the lowest hit count for a month over that time period, but it was close. Similarly, this week my weekly numbers have been super low. I had one good day and every other day has been down to almost nothing. Today’s count right now (4:41pm) is less than what I would have woken up to at this time last year. I don’t know why and I don’t really care. This page is really just for me, you know? I have fun with it even when no one reads any of it. If my numbers were flat zeros (sorta like the film blog) I wouldn’t care.

The really interesting thing for me is, while the page view numbers seem to be evaporating steadily here, the view counts on Flickr have never been higher. I know why, theoretically at least. I am posting tons of stuff to Flickr and I am much more active on that site than I’ve been maybe ever. I joined in 2009 and at that time I was up to my eyeballs in the facebook and maybe up to my chin in the twitter, not to mention being a few months into the original Blogger page. Social media engagement wasn’t really the point of Flickr for me. Today though, Flickr is pretty much it for me as far as social media is concerned. I’m still using instagram a little, but I’m not really engaged with it. I post a pic a day and follow a bunch of photo and guitar centric users and I double tap on things that I see that I like, but mostly I just post the day’s picture and then leave. Over the last six months or so I have been posting photos to Flickr groups like crazy and then following up by viewing everyone else’s posts to those groups (within reason… I am not viewing everything that goes to the 10 Million Photos group, just a tiny fraction) and I have been viewing and faving and following tons of stuff on each day’s explore page. I should leave comments more often, but I never know what to say… sort of like real life, right?

What’s the point of this? There is no point. I post a ton to this page because I enjoy it. I post a ton to Flickr because I enjoy it. If people check my posts out then that’s great. If they don’t then I am still going to post a ton more. It doesn’t matter. I’m just a stats nerd and I feel the need to share my pointless observations. That’s all.

I mean really what it all comes down to is that we should all just prepare ourselves for season three of The Mandalorian, right? This is the way. I have spoken.

Happy Nerd News on a Busy Morning

Today has been a touch on the nutso-busy side. Not a complaint, just a statement. Good things are going on, they are just taking up time.

I haven’t had the opportunity to post anything yet today, which is a little unusual. I haven’t been able to comment on how trading off one of my favorite Red Sox players has resulted in two wins against a World Series contender. What? How does that work? I haven’t been able to mention how I am suddenly kind of a San Diego Padres fan. Holy murderers row, Batman!

I had to take a second and write this post though because I just got an email from the photo lab and they sent me the scans of my four rolls of film. I’ve only looked at a couple of images so far, just to make sure they came out, and WOW do the ones I’ve looked at look good! Pics from Dad’s Pentax and from the Ebay Nikon both look excellent. My lunch break will see me getting everything up onto Flickr, but hot damn am I happy right now! Film-Photographically-Happy to be precise.

WOOHOO!

Distance and Social Media Stupid

Yesterday I used the Distance function on the Indoor Walk setting on the Apple Watch Workout app for the first time. It said my longest indoor walk was 3.20 miles so I set my distance at 3.20 miles and off I went.

Today I went to do it again. This time, however, the default distance it gave me was 3.21 miles. Well honk my hooter, it wants me to set a new record? Off I went. I did it. 3.21 miles of walking in place. It took 45:07 seconds. My legs feel battered and weak, but I will be okay after I rest up a bit. I haven’t had any protein yet today so I think I’ll need some breakfast soon, yeah?

I expected to get an award from the iPhone activity app for setting a new distance record. I did not. I am sad.

So I reblogged a couple of pictures from the new film-only-photos page I started last night. I don’t know how long that page will last. I’ll probably either get tired of maintaining two pages or I’ll just forget that it’s there and post everything here like I’ve been doing for almost 14 years. You know, habits and all.

What I didn’t mention is that I did the same thing with Instagram. I started a new account there too. I already forget the user name so I’ll cross post something later on so I’ll have a record of it. Forgive me for being lazy, I just faux walked five kilometers.

Anyway, I was sitting in the car last night, waiting for Jen and Bellana to come out of the airport. The attendant at the parking lot told us not to leave our car unattended. Otherwise I would have gone inside too. So I figured, what the hell, I’ll make that new Instagram right now. It was amazing how idiotic the process was. For example: I did all of the setup for the new account and then clicked the final “create” button and… I got an error message saying I could not create a new account at this time. What? I started over and went through it all again and when I hit create again it told me there was already an account for that email address. Why the fuck didn’t you tell me that before? Also, who hacked my email and started an account with it?* So I made a new email address and did the whole process again and it errored again! This time instead of clicking the create a new account link I just logged in with the email that had just failed and… It said I was locked out due to a violation of the terms of service, or some shit like that. What the hell? How could I have violated the TOS when I haven’t even logged in yet! Ugh. I disputed the accusation and all it asked me to do was do a captcha and a two-factor authentication and then I was in.

I mean… really? Assholes? I know you’re facebook and I know that facebook is the root of all evil, but give me a friggin’ break.

Whatever. Yet another social media account to lose the password to and never log into again. Probably.

*After the second failed account creation I realized that I wasn’t hacked and I didn’t already have an account for that email address. Instagram is just fucking stupid.

Here’s the new Instagram account:

New Theme?

I changed the blog’s theme and layout. I don’t think it’s new though. I scrolled through the wordpress.com themes and found one that looked interesting. I activated it… and it was already customized. Huh? I think I must have used this one before. I’ll live with it for a little while and see if I want to keep it.

Binge Watch

This post has two meanings. One is literal, the other is a test of some changes I made.

The literal part…

Jen and I have completed our epic binge watch of all nine seasons of How I Met Your Mother. The ending still sucks, even though they telegraphed it over the course of the entire series, and littered the last season with obvious hints. Oh well.

The question now is… what next? Should we binge watch another show, and if so what show should we binge watch? Part of me wants to suggest a Star Trek series, partly because they run long, partly because it’s totally different from a sit com, and partly because the last TV show I watched was an episode of Picard so it’s sort of on my brain.

What do you think? Make suggestions. Comments are open.

The test involves cross posting to Twitter. Specifically, not cross posting to Twitter. I don’t know if the elon muskhole experience is going to drive me away from Twitter or not, but I am setting myself up to go, just in case.