I was just going through an updating a few things on my blog. I had accidentally removed Akismet, and accumulated a massive amount of comment spam in the last day or so. Anyway, I reinstalled and was going through cleaning out the spam comments, when I found a number of actual comments from human beings! Ones that I had completely ignored because I wasn't updating my blog regularly. Anyway, if you left me a comment a few years ago, and I ignored it - please forgive me! I'll try and be better at responding!
Focusing on Maths, Programming and Science
It seems like the World is breaking down, with increased terrorism in Europe, Trump supporting Neo-Nazis in the US, and the insanity that is Brexit. I've decided that I need to ignore politics for my own peace of mind, and focus entirely on maths, programming and science!
Hacked!
It looks like my blog got hacked. I noticed that there were some weird posts related to an essay writing service, which I've now deleted. I'm not sure of the attack vector. I had a relatively weak password for my Wordpress user, which could have been the entry point. I'll have a look at the server this weekend and see what I find. At least it's prompted me to do some work on improving the security on the server and to do some software upgrades. I need to set up the letsencrypt certificates as well.
Back to blogging
Well, it's been a loooonnng time since my last blog entry. One of my resolutions for the new year was to do more blogging. Despite this, I haven't blogged anything for the whole of January. OK, so this stops now. As of today I am starting to blog again. Even if it's just a short and almost meaningless entry about how I'm going to start blogging again.
Making Space in Time
Sometimes I think the best way to get things done is just to allocate space in the day in order to achieve them. For example; I find it hard to write blog posts. Left to my own devices, my blog would resemble a desolate wasteland. But all I need to do is allocate 10 minutes out of my day in order to write something, and I can get something written that I can upload to my blog.
This is the beauty of time-boxing, of the Pomodoro technique: It forces you to allocate a fixed section of time in which to achieve something. If you just make a space in time it's amazing what you can do.
Blogging Process
I have been meaning to blog more for ages. I have had a blog on the internet since early 1990 in one form or other, but I just tend to do sporadic blogging. Every so often I get fired up with communicating and write some blog posts, and then my enthusiam wanes for a while, and my writing tails off.
Blogging as Gardening
You know; blogging is a lot like gardening. Some peoples' blogs have been completely neglected - untended and overgrown with weeds. Mine has become a lot like that. An out-of-date Wordpress environment, stale posts overcome with comment spam weeds.
Citizen Journalism, social networking and reputation
Bill Thompson has posted a thoughtful article over at the BBC about the changes that social networking is making to our standards of social interaction. He discusses his own tweeting and live-blogging at conferences, and then talks about the news updates that were tweeted by Tearah Moore during the Fort Hood incident.
Continue reading “Citizen Journalism, social networking and reputation”
Blogging and SEO talk by Matt Cutts
Matt Cutts gave an extremely interesting and dynamic talk at WordCamp about blogging and Search Engine Optimization. Not only was it extremely entertaining, but it contained lots of interesting tidbits about how to increase the PageRank of your site.