design – Scott from California

The Ebb and Flow of a Personal Blog

Personal blogs are a different…no…special…part of the internet.

Has it been a while since you have posted on your blog consistently?

That’s ok.

Because it is yours.

Personal blogs are a different part of the internet. Special in my opinion. Some people write long enough (and well enough) to make some money…but many (like me so far) don’t.

That’s ok.

Because it is mine

Perhaps it is just my generation (I fall smack in the middle of Gen X and Millenials) but a blog/website that is mine and mine to do what I want with…has always felt special.

I have followed a blog by Greg Morris for some time now: gr36.com. I also follow Greg on twitter @gr36. I don’t remember how I came across his site but I have always been glad I did.

And I follow him for no other reason than I enjoy the thoughts he puts out in to the world through his blog…and I feel like if we knew each other in real life, we might be friends.

That’s it.

He has done things that I have done here: switch blogging platforms, turned ads on and off, tested features, pontificated on whether or not he should keep writing, etc. Greg has treated his blog much like I treat mine…as an avenue for him to write, create, think aloud, seek feedback…and he has done it for quite a while.

That’s ok.

Because it is his.

It is ok

The beauty of a personal blog is that (hopefully) people are there for you…not necessarily for an ever flowing feed of information, gear reviews, etc. It’s personal…it is yours….it is you.

And that means it is ok to step away and take a break every once in a while. It is ok to try something new, to write on a completely new and random topic…or to take a deep breath and think aloud…while writing those thoughts down.

Don’t worry about the optimal time to publish and there is no need to sweat the thoughts of how long a post is or if it has too many pictures.

It is ok.

Because your blog is just that….yours.

Let me encourage you my friend…the world is better when you are in it…and in this day and age a personal blog is my favorite way to contribute to the digital world we all operate in.

Start that personal blog…or keep the one you have going…make it yours…hit publish whenever you want to…it is ok.

Typeface Matters

When done right, social responsibility gives back—to the charity and the business. And, as this research shows, something as simple as typeface choice matters.
Donors were one-sixth more likely to give when the typeface matched the message. In this case, that meant “warmth-focused” messages were handwritten while “competence-focused” initiatives were machine-written.

Typeface has interested me for a couple years now. I might be embarrassed to tell you how much time I spent choosing the font for this site…and then tweaking it.

Seems like for some businesses it is time well spent.

Typeface matters: Donations go up depending on typeface choice

Links of the Week (3/09/2020)

Deep dive on my WP theme, mesh WiFi routers, and that company that raised their minimum salary to $70k a year…

I’m the Grinch who grumbles about every WordPress theme. Except one. After years of resisting change, I finally switched FilterJoe to a modern, responsive theme: Twenty Sixteen—the new default theme included with WordPress 4.4.
My only temptation has been to leave WordPress for a simpler and more writing-focused platform like Ghost or Medium. While WordPress was for blogging at first, it expanded over the years into content management and an online application platform. The original focus on blogging has been diluted, and WordPress themes often reflect that.
However, WordPress now offers Twenty Sixteen for modern blogging, and it is good.
In this post, I detail how Twenty Sixteen makes me comfortable with it as a wonderfully content-focused blog theme.

This is the Theme I am running right now. This guy nailed it in so many levels.

The Grinch who Changed to the Twenty Sixteen WordPress Theme

A few new opportunities have arisen recently, offering up an equally exciting opportunity to reassess my camera kit. Now, I have friends — knowledgeable friends, very wise friends — who have made it clear I have very little rational reason to make any changes. But want is a pretty significant factor, specifically when it comes to photography kit.

Many of us can identify with this.

First Impressions of the Canon EOS R, a Reader’s Setup, and More – The Sweet Setup

Amazon’s Eero routers are the first out of the gate with HomeKit support, which promises to provide greater security to your Internet-connected HomeKit devices.
The update, which appeared today via an update to Eero’s iOS app, walks users through the setup process of adding their Eero gateway to the Home app. Along the way, the Eero app explains that enabling HomeKit support allows Eero to firewall off each HomeKit device, so they only communicate with approved devices and services.

I bought an Eero mesh WiFi router when I moved to a bigger house. Totally worth it.

Eero WiFi Routers Add HomeKit Support

Remember a few years ago when the owner of a credit card payment processing company based in Seattle raised the minimum wage of his employees to $70,000/yr while taking a huge pay-cut himself and capitalists the world over, afraid of their beloved & apparently suuuuper delicate system collapsing from such madness, flipped out?

🤔

What Happened to the Company That Raised Minimum Wage to $70k/yr?

I Can’t Help Myself…I’ve Done it Again

Ever in the pursuit of the perfect website design…

One of my biggest weaknesses (yet also a strength) is the fact that I like to fiddle with the design of my site. I feel like I have a very specific vision of what I want my site to look like.

The trick is that I have to balance that with how to best design it in such a way that I can work on serving information on community memberships, showing tasteful ads, display affiliate partnerships, etc. I’m trying to make a little money here and I want to show you how I do that along the way.

While my Hermes wordpress theme was very fast, it didn’t seem to allow me the ability to add a simple righthand column to display a little extra info. I experimented just a bit but decided for now to switch to the Twenty Sixteen wordpress theme. I love the classic and clean blog look of this theme, and it shows the full posts on the main page…which is nice because people who land here can spend more time on the page vice having to click around. (Although…do I want people to click around?) The only downside is that when I tested it over at Pingdom.com it failed the “speed test” miserably. Ugh. So I’ll be working on that.

All that to say, if you visit my site over the next few days you may seem some changes. Don’t worry, content will always be king and my content isn’t going anywhere. Hopefully I will just make it easier to peruse it all.

Drop a comment if you prefer the old design, like this one better, or just don’t give a damn.

Oh, and Happy Leap Day!!