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Zen and the Art of Blog Maintenance

October 8, 2008 • • 5 Comments

I’ve been reading Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. His quest to understand Quality and his thoughts about the joy he finds in keeping his machine running have gotten me thinking about all kinds of things I do: writing, teaching, teaching writing, photography, blogging, and blog maintenance.

Mostly blog maintenance. First, I want to think about keeping it running as a piece of software on a machine as opposed to writing the content that appears on the screen.

Pirsig writes eloquently about the process of maintaining a motorcycle:

The thing to do when working on a motorcycle, as in any other task, is to cultivate the peace of mind that does not separate one’s self from one’s surroundings.

[…]

Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions and right actions produce work which will be a material reflection for others to see of the serenity at the center of it all.

The difficulty lies in the various traps that Pirsig labels value traps, truth traps and muscle traps. Falling into these traps steers one away from Quality, the idea the book explores.

The more I read, the more I realized I actually understand most of what he writes about motorcycle maintenance, but not because I know anything about motorcycles – I don’t – still, I’ve been there and have intuitively come to similar conclusions. Doing the backend maintenance necessary to run a self-hosted blog or any website, I assume, is exactly like motorcycle maintenance.

A question I frequently ask myself, though, is why bother. There are so many blogging platforms out there where all I would have to do is write and put up my posts. Why go to the trouble to maintain the thing myself? Why deal with upgrades that don’t go as planned and potentially could screw up the database? Why mess with plugins that sometimes gum up the whole system? Why bother with themes that break?

I think the questions led me to the same issue Pirsig wrestles with. It has to do with Quality. With the relationship between the machine, the user and the process. Spending hours tinkering with the backend code and pieces of this blog are not really about the blog. It’s never even noticed by anyone reading it.

It’s about learning. It’s about growing.

Pirsig writes:

The real cycle you’re working on is a cycle called yourself. The machine that appears to be “out there” and the person that appears to be “in here” are not two separate things. They grow toward Quality or fall away from Quality together.

It all has to do with “living right.”

There is beauty and joy… life… to be discovered in doing things fully and completely. The more I approach life’s tasks with a quiet peaceful mind, the more fully, I think, I live.

Now I need to think of maintenance in the broader sense as it applies to this blog. Like Pirsig’s motorcycle, the blog is a machine with an engine that makes it go (the WordPress software), and it is a vehicle that takes me places, in this case the writing, which transports me into my head as I do it.

(I must admit I wish it would transport me physically to the Montana Rockies like Pirsig’s bike, but all good things must have their limits, I suppose.)

Maintaining (in both senses of the word, now) my blog suddenly seemed more important because I came to see that it is through this process that I can stay in tune with these lessons about right living. It is because of the hours spent working on it, that I have been able to relate so easily to what Pirsig writes.

Further, he reminds me that:

If you’re a sloppy thinker the six days of the week you aren’t working on your machine, what trap avoidances, what gimmicks, can make you all of a sudden sharp on the seventh?

[…]

But if you’re a sloppy thinker six days a week and you really try to be sharp on the seventh, then maybe the next six days aren’t going to be as sloppy as the preceding six.

And so because maintaining a blog is two things – keeping it running and writing, I’m back.

For the backend aspect of maintenance, I upgraded to 2.6.2, which is why some things are a little off while I work through the kinks.

Because maintaining the blog also means writing, I am reminded that through writing here, I ensure that my thinking is at its sharpest and that I approach closer to true Quality whenever I write and especially when I am sitting down to focus on a manuscript.

I never really thought of this silly blog as a way of thinking about life, but as I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, it is because of this blog that I know and understand exactly what Pirsig is talking about in his book.

Geeking Out for Greyhounds (or, My First and Probably Only WordPress Plugin)

February 12, 2007 • • 2 Comments

Each week, when I do Weekend Hound Blogging, I insert the following at the end of the post:

[saveagrey]

This requires me to find an old post, copy and then paste the text into the new post. Surely, thought I, there must be an easier way, which got me thinking about trying to create a plugin to do that for me.

I studied some of the simpler in-post plugins I already use and tried to decipher the PHP.

I read “Writing a Plugin”, studied the “Plugin API” page and “Plugin API/Hooks”on the WordPress site, as well as “How to Write a Simple WordPress Plugin” on Asymptomatic. Then, I started putting together a PHP file, tinkering and playing until I eventually had a plugin that allows me to type:

[ saveagrey ]

(without the spaces) and have this appear:

[saveagrey]

The cool thing is that it can be easily changed so that the text and links go anywhere or say anything, which might make this useful for anyone who occasionally wants some message at the end of certain posts such as vote for so-and-so at the end of all political posts or something to that effect.

This little exercise was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed trying to decipher the PHP since I know nothing about that language. Ultimately it became something of a puzzle that could only be solved through logic. When I figured out the solutions to the problems I encountered, I was rewarded with something that will save me time and possibly be of use to anyone who uses WordPress and wants to help save retired racing greyhounds.

So, there it is. My first plugin: Save a Greyhound (click to go to the download page)

WordPress 2.1 Easter Eggs

February 11, 2007 • • Leave a comment

This is kind of stupid: Very useful features are hidden in WordPress 2.1 as “easter eggs”

Via Weblog Tools Collection and ReviewSaurus, I have learned that hitting ‘alt v’ (shift alt v in Firefox) while in the post editor brings up a variety of useful features such as underlining, changing text color, insert custom characters (©, œ, ü, ∞, ½, etc.) as well as some features forpasting from Word (which is useful for me since I sometimes write my posts in word) or pasting as plain text. You can also create headings and the like.

These are great features and shouldn’t be hidden. I wonder what else we’re missing out on.

Update: The Visualize Advanced Features plugin makes all of this visible.

WordPress 2.1?

February 1, 2007 • • Leave a comment

Blogging about blogging is close to the lowest form of blogging, but blogging about the behind the scenes aspects of a blog is like watching someone else’s cat spit up hairballs on the carpet, so as of this post, that kind of blogging will occur on my other blog, aptly named Coyote Mercury Test Blog, mainly because I’m using it to see if I can actually execute the upgrade to 2.1 and to find out if my theme and plugins will work.

If you’re using WordPress and considering the upgrade, you may find it useful or interesting. If not, you won’t.

In the future, I’ll probably use it for testing plugins, theme modifications, and any future upgrades. I doubt I’ll post there regularly.

My Wife Presses Some Words

November 10, 2006 • • 2 Comments

My wife has moved from Blogger to WordPress. Check out her new cyber home at http://www.losbrushes.com/blog. It looks pretty good. Okay, I admit, I did some of the code modifyin’ myself, and I also took the picture on the header. The fact that I now get to fart around with the code on two blogs makes me happy.

And, yes, we’re playing with our blogs at 9:30 on a Friday night. What can I say? We’re perfect for each other.

Photoblogging on WordPress

August 31, 2006 • • 1 Comment

The picture is of the business school at the University of Texas at Austin. Why?

Because it’s so easy to photoblog now.

On thing that’s always been a bit annoying about WordPress is that it’s not the friendliest blogging tool when you want to use images. Typically, I’ve had to resize them in a photoeditor, then upload them to my hosting service, then import the URLs into the blog.

But, I’ve found and just installed Photopress, a very cool plug-in. I had to do some CSS tweaking to get it to work with my layout, but now when you click the photo tab on my blog (or click one of the photos) it will take you to the photo page where all the images I use (and any others that I don’t blog, but want to share) can be seen.

Best of all, uploading photos is now a one-step process.

Update: WordPress now supports proper photoblogging. Yay WordPress.

Uhhh, Like Housekeeping and Stuff

April 22, 2006 • • 2 Comments

One of the many fun things about blogging is tinkering with the blog and in the process learning a bit about how web sites work. I haven’t been writing the past few days; instead, I’ve been playing with my code (uh-huh-huh…Shut up, Beavis that’s not what I meant) in an effort to create a separate archives page so as to clean up the left sidebar by placing a single link in the navigation section. Anyways, that’s where the archives and categories are for all you scholars doing research on my blog.

The coolest thing about the archives page is the live calendar plug-in that uses AJAX so that the whole page doesn’t have to reload when you move to another month.

Now that my left sidebar is cleaned up, and I’ve learned how to make static pages that use WordPress’s php tags, I’m debating making a links page for my blogroll and then reconfiguring to a two column fixed layout. I like fluid design (which is what I have now) because I like how it fills a monitor and gives users the option of resizing the browser to create a comfortable column width for reading, but with a fixed layout I could control the layout of posts, which would be nice when using pictures.

Oh, what to do. Perhaps I just miss playing with my code (uh-huh huh…damn it, Beavis, don’t make me kick your ass!) since I haven’t made any changes to the look of Coyote Mercury since January, but then I do find a very clean minimalist site somewhat appealing. Change for the sake of change? Yup, that’s me.

Ok, I’m off to rearrange the house…

Fighting Spam

March 28, 2006 • • 7 Comments

I’ve been getting inundated with comment spam lately. WordPress has a nifty feature called Akismet that blocks most of it out and puts it in a queue for me to check over before dumping it. I’m used to the occasional “Hi. I love your blog. Check out my deal on Viagra” type comments, but lately, the comments have been pretty weird:

  • “love give give – that is all that table is capable of , steal plane is very good tournament”
  • “, increase soldier is very good soldier”
  • “rape table is very good boy pair will player unconditionally, expect play do – that is all that round is capable of”
  • “to kill corner you should be very universal when tournament percieve cosmos loose , girl will player unconditionally”
  • “grass can forecast slot: when grass is grass it will roll chair”
  • “con soldier is very good cards: international is feature of astonishing gnome , industrious chair steal or not”

Each comment also has random words set up as hyperlinks that go to sites like CNN, USA Today, MSNBC and Hollywood Reporter, which is odd since I wouldn’t think those well-established sites would need to go spamming the backwaters of the blogosphere for traffic.

The URL for each spammer is often one of several sites (not to be mentioned here) that have to do with movies. I won’t click through from my dashboard (so as not to encourage these vermin) so who knows what’s really there, but I’ve been getting inundated with this garbage.

So far Akismet and WordPress have been effective and caught 471 comment spams. Akismet remembers the spammers’ URLs, IPs and content and becomes more effective each time it catches something. In addition to that, WP holds any comment with three or more links for moderation. Still, a few are suddenly getting through. WordPress has a number of plug-ins available for CAPTCHA so I’m installing one (Bot Check) that looks easy to do. If it doesn’t work, I’ll try a different one.

I hope this isn’t inconvenient for anyone. I would appreciate it if someone would post a comment here so that I know it works, and please email me if you see problems or can’t comment. Unless you’re a spammer in which case please go to Hell.

Building a New Blog

January 11, 2006 • • 2 Comments

As you can probably see if you’ve stumbled upon this site I’m in the site building process. My blog, Coyote Mercury, has been hosted on Blogger, but ever since I first dipped my toe in the waters of the ‘net and began experimenting with building sites, I’ve owned the www.coyotemercury.com domain and have hosted it on Yahoo! I never did much with it and basically forgot about it, using it only as a repository for old stories and such. Recently, though, I learned that Yahoo! had partnered with both Moveable Type and WordPress, the end result being that users can for no extra charge run a blog on Yahoo! using either (or both) platforms.

This sounded good since I was already paying for Yahoo! hosting so I experimented with both, but decided to use WordPress. It’s easy, powerful and intuitive. Moveable Type was cool, but I had WordPress figured out much sooner and was happy with the results. I’m using the Gila theme with a lot of my own modifications in the CSS. I also decided to use WordPress to power the main site and since it has this cool feature that allows you to make static pages it was perfect. I had to make a whole bunch of modifications to the static page layout to develop a look that makes the blog seem to be part of the site rather than everything being parts of the blog.

WordPress also has a feature that allows one to import all posts and comments from Blogger. I’ll do that when I’m finished tweaking my layout and then I’ll start posting here. Until then, I’m still on Blogger.