Brian Schell’s Home

Yesterday was New Year’s Day. so I decided it would be a good time to get all my software current. That was mistake number 1.

I also came up with a new blog idea and decided to kill off a blog that I have completely lost interest in. These were mistakes number 2 and 3.

Then I figured, It’d be a good idea to make a back up off my entire web server, 9 or 10 complete sites, plus databases. Mistake 4.

But above all, I tried to do all of this in the same day, mostly simultaneously. Mistake 5,

The backup alone took two and a half hours, but while that was going, I was able to register three new domain names for a new blog that I’ll be working on later this weekend. I did kill, destroy, eliminate, and delete the WellnessNewsDaily.com website. I got into that one before I had really thought it through, and quickly realized I was never going to be able to keep coming up with stuff for that. Zap!

Killing an old blog and setting up a new one are easy to do. That backup was time-consuming, but a no-brainer. The upgrade of the old software was where the trouble really came in.

DailyBuddhism.com uses the Wordpress blogging software with something called PodPress to manage the audio shows/podcasts. The trouble came in because WordPress is always changing and updating and improving, while Podpress seems to have been abandoned by its creator. I’ve been hacking and patching PodPress for several months, and it still worked, but when I upgraded to WordPress 2.7 (a major upgrade) I decided enough was enough and that PodPress deserved to die.

There are two other podcasting solutions, the “BluBrry” and “Podcasting” plug-ins. Neither offer features on-par with PodPress, but bothare currently supported and likely to stay current for a while. I had used “Podcasting” for several months on the ArcaneTales.com site, and I wasn’t thrilled with it. It worked fine, but didn’t really offer much. The deciding factor, though, was that Blubrry claimed to have a “drop it in” upgrade from PodPress. So I “dropped in” the plugin and turned off PodPress, and my entire RSS feed exploded into tiny little fragments all over the Internet. *poof!*

So basically, I spent the next four hours rebuilding each individual podcast blog post one at a time, rebuilding the RSS/Podcast feed one show at a time. Somewhere along the line Feedburner got confused about the feed, and the show disappeared from iTunes completely for a few hours. Eventually everything was restored, upgraded, and working again. So now my biggest blog has updated Wordpress, the latest version of the theme that I use, a fully-supported podcasting plugin, and it all seems to work again. All I can say is that I’m glad I only have about 40 episodes of the podcast that I had to fix.

The only site I have running the old version of Wordpress is TaoOfTheDay.com, and with over 160 audio episodes to deal with, it’s going to STAY on the old software.

So now I have to record this week’s DB Podcast and lay out the Weekly Buddhism BEFORE I can do any work on the new blog, which I’ll probably announce early next week.

January 2nd, 2009 | Category: Current Projects | Leave a comment

It’s currently 7 degrees and -14 with the wind chill. Yow!

Christmas shopping is done, and everything is set for the big day, so I don’t have to go out in the ultra-cold anytime soon.

So what have I been up to this week?  I recently set up Replay Media as a “network site,” a sort of catchall site linking to all my various blogs. I’ve got all the logos and short description of each site there. Beyond what’s there, I haven’t given it too much thought just yet.

I’ve been spending a bit of time this week setting up a fan site on Facebook for the Daily Buddhism. If you want to join that, head on over and click on “join.”

I’ve also shut down my eBay Store until after Christmas. Anyone shopping there this week is going to be in a desperate hurry for their stuff, and I don’t like to trust the mail that much. So I get a week off. This also gives me a chance to review prices and maybe make a few changes.

Overall, no major developments this week, but what I’m doing is definitely keeping me busy.

December 21st, 2008 | Category: Current Projects | Leave a comment

Wordpress 2.7 came out last night. It’s a big upgrade, but big upgrades mean big changes and potentially big problems. I had been running the release candidate on DailyChessLesson.com since that was a really new site, but I have been afraid to try it on one of my busier sites.  The blogs themselves won’t be a problem, but I am concerned about the sites with podcasts. The software I use to handle my podcasts (Podpress 8.8) has been more or less abandoned by its developer, and I’m not completely happy with the alternatives. I have somewhere near 150 episodes of Tao of the Day, and do not want to have to edit or modify that many posts.

On Arcane Tales, I had been using the “Podcasting Plugin,” but it broke with the ReleaseCandidate version. I switched it for something called the Bluberry Powerpress. It seems to work all right, so that may be the way to go for the other sites. I guess this is something I am going to have to work out over the weekend.

Meanwhile, I just finished doing Episode 35 of the Daily Buddhism podcast, but soon I’ll I need to get started on the Weekly Buddhism PDF Newsletter (issue 10 already!).   I also want to put out another “special edition” free issue of that this weekend.

December 11th, 2008 | Category: Current Projects | Leave a comment

Not too much new going on this week.  The local University and Community College are both closed until after the first of the year, so I have no swimming pool to go to for a break, so I’m pretty much just sitting around all day writing with no break and getting bored already. Sigh.

I just posted another Arcane Tale, the extremely short “Unfinished Race” by Ambrose Bierce. The main news for the week is about Arcane Tales. A few weeks back, I complained that I was having trouble finding stories for the site and that the format wasn’t working out. Well, I’ve decided that the format wasn’t the only problem, and decided to simply expand the scope of the site.

The “New Arcane Tales” is going to have a (near) daily post of something related to horror, mystery, or sci-fi. If onthing else, I can write and post book and movie reviews, since that’s always fun. The main thing is that it’s not going to be just one little story every week or two.  I’ll still do the stories, but I want to do more in addition to that.

On the Daily Chess Lesson site, I finally finished explaining how the pieces move, and next week we talk about how to deal with check, checkmates, and stalemates. That should easily take the whole week. After that, things are more wide open.

I was playing around with some new podcasting software a few evenings ago, and before I knew it, I had the Daily Religious site set up to deliver a podcast. I hadn’t really planned to do a podcast for that site, I was just fiddling with the software. But now that it’s set up, I am considering whether I need any more commitments right now.

December 5th, 2008 | Category: Current Projects | Leave a comment