Tag / Blogger

by Greg

Six Years of Blogging

Hello faithful (and unfaithful) blog readers! Believe it or not, it has been six years today since I began this conglomeration and elaboration of all the stuff that goes on inside my head! As we begin year number seven, there may be some changes to the appearance of the site, but as far as I can tell, you can expect to see a continuing stream of thoughts, links, opinions, fun stories, and even questions to you the reader all posted here at GregsHead.net.

Thanks for reading along, and commenting along the way. Always fun to interact.

Today might be a good day to scour the archives for some of your favorite posts and leave a link in the comments. I’ll start off with a few here…

The Extras
My Computer Had a Heart Attack
Living in Perfect Harmony
Alex’s Fish Story
Stopped on a Dime
Don’t Go to Church?
God Saved Our Bacon

Enjoy!

(Don’t forget, it’s fun to click the tabs across the top of the content, too… those help categorize the posts and make for slightly less random and wandering thoughts from Greg’s head…) 🙂

by Greg

The Itch

It’s happening again. I never really know why. It just happens.

It’s time to change up my websites.

All three of my main websites. For some reason I have new ideas for this blog (cool ones, actually!) and my web design site, and our music site. All three will actually be a bit simpler (maybe not this one…) and cleaner, and more web-standards-compliant (you may not care about that part much…) and utilize some cool web technologies.

And it’s just time for a new look.

Bloggiversary number 6 is coming up next week… and I’ve had this look for a few years now as well… time to make a change.

I’ve been dabbling with WordPress for some clients… anyone want to weigh on on whether I stick with Blogger, or delve into the WordPress universe? I could go either way… as long as the export/import of my six years of posts isn’t too painful. (I don’t imagine it would be.)

So… stay tuned. Changes to come!

by Greg

Definition of a Blog

I often find myself recommending to people that they could start a blog. Whether it is one of my web clients, or a One To One member at the Apple store, there are many reasons to have and use a blog.

The funny thing is, when I say that, folks are often at least confused, and usually overwhelmed. Why is that? I haven’t completely figured it out, but I think it’s due to a misunderstanding of what a blog is.

Here’s the definition from Wikipedia:

A blog (a contraction of the term weblog) is a website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order.

The thing is, most people use the term blog in many other ways. First, blog is often used as a verb (which, although Wikipedia’s definition does allow for it, it’s not really how the word should be used) and second, it’s often used to refer to an individual post to a blog site. Also, there is another common misconception that a blog must be replete with verbose and eloquent entries, waxing philosophical on the many complexities of life.

While all of those may at times be true of various blogs… they do not need to be. Your blog can be whatever you want it to be. The three main things that make a blog a blog are:

  1. Regularly published content, listed on the site in reverse chronological order, and often archived monthly or weekly.
  2. Usually, due to the frequent publications, the site also notifies and distributes content via RSS or some other feed technology. (That’s for another day!)
  3. Almost always, there is some mechanism for feedback (comments) which creates a feel of “community” at the website as readers are invited to participate along with the author of the content.

Just wanted to clear that up, and perhaps a few hundred more people can understand and use the word “blog” in a less scary way. 🙂

I have a few blogs. This one (GregsHead.net), and Buffalo Bills Review (articles page), and then a few I don’t keep up very well anymore.

And, there are many services you can use to create and manage your own blog. I mostly use Blogger (the engine behind this blog), but another hugely popular blogging tool is WordPress. Those are probably the top two, but check out this list… there are a LOT to choose from.

So, if you have something to say, or even if you have nothing to say and just need to say it… a blog is a fun way to get that out and even enjoy discussions with your readers about whatever it is that’s on your mind.

Now get out there and start blogging blogs to your blog.

🙂

by Greg

Five Years of Blogging

August 26th 2008 - Five Years of BloggingBelieve it or not, I have been at this “blogging” thing for five years now. Today. August 26th, 2003 was my first post, and now almost 1400 posts later, I’m still at it. (Albeit, quite infrequently this past month or two!) I love this avenue to share thoughts, start discussions, share links and information, and even post photos and family news to the world wide web of internets. I imagine I’ll be doing this for another 5 years at least… unless of course this is true. 🙂

Over five years I have shared the stories of not one, not two, but three additions to our family, I have told a few funny stories from the many children who inhabit our home (like this one, and this one, and this one) and even shared the emotions of times of very difficult loss, and the aftermath of that.

We have an amazing God, and I have loved sharing so many thoughts on life with him, as he leads me along, helping me know him more, so I can trust him more – rather than keep trying to trust in myself more. I even made that one of the main tabs above, Life With God.

Thanks for visiting GregsHead.net over the past five years. Blogging is a conversation. It’s a conversation starter, and the beauty of it is that you can actually respond inline to the conversation. Add your comments below anything I publish here. I love that. Life is a journey, that’s meant to be shared. (Oh yeah! I also have published three books along the way! A Journey Shared, Life in the Rearview Mirror, and There’s The Steeple… Here’s The Church.

This post is getting longer than I thought it would, but that’s because I am trying to cover five years worth of stuff in a few short paragraphs! If you’d like to read more, you can actually access the archive directory directly right here. Just click on any month from the previous 5 years and you’ll see all the posts from that month.

Thanks again for joining me for the past five years (or however long you’ve been here). Once life settles down for me (and I can figure out where to focus my energies) I should have the time and energy to share my thoughts here again, and continue the conversations.

Looking forward to that.

by Greg

Evidence

Here’s a little bit of evidence that I have been unable to get to my blog very much this past week or so…

Yesterday, August 26th, went by without me noticing even once that it was the fourth anniversary of my blog’s existence! 🙂 I had been looking ahead to that date all month, planning to say something about it… but… welll….

I didn’t remember.

Sorry, blog! (Can you say sorry to a blog?) 🙂

More to come soon… I’m working on the Buffalo Bills Review right now. Fun show this week! Maybe the most fun ever! 🙂 Even added some “out takes” to the end of this show. 🙂

Fun stuff.

So, happy bloggiversary to GregsHead.net. Four years in the books. Or, on the web. Or something. 🙂

by Greg

Ouch…

I was inspired to write a fairly long post from a conversation I had over the weekend at about 1:30am last night. Just after 2am I was done and ready to post it, but wanted to change the title. I tabbed through the fields of this page here, and went to far, so I quickly tabbed through again… and whatever I did… froze the webpage up in some strange loop. 🙁 I did manage to take a screen shot of the final three paragraphs, so perhaps I can piece the article back together from that?

Or, maybe not.

But, that was a disappointing start to the day (and finish to last night, though I was hopeful it would work itself out.) I went to bed last night though asking God to fix it if it was worth fixing. It wasn’t fixed, so… I guess it wasn’t worth the read. 🙂

(I still may re-work the thoughts that I posted though in a new article. Now if THAT one freezes up… I’ll know to drop the subject!) 🙂

(For those of you (Uncle Jim…) who would like to take the opportunity to say that it wouldn’t have happened on a “PC”… HA!!! HA HA!!! Go ahead and have your fun, but this is the first time that has happened to me, and it could be as much Blogger’s site as my browser… so there!)

Whew. I feel better now. 😉

Interesting start to the week… let’s see what comes next. 🙂