stuff del likes

It appears I haven’t written anything so far this year. Interesting. Why in the hell do I keep a blog installed then?

This realization came about when I realized I should be keeping some kind of log of my new adventure in quitting smoking. As I write this it has been about 108 hours since my last cigarette. Yup, Tuesday morning I had a real smoke, and haven’t touched one since. Friggin amazing. I bought one of those e-cigarette things (okay, okay, “personal vaporizer”) from http://www.electronicstix.com/, it came in the mail Monday. After it was charged up (around 6pm) I started puffing on it, then had one cig at bedtime. Then another tobacco smoke Tuesday after taking kiddo to school. Then no tobacco since.

This is the longest I’ve gone without a cigarette since before I started smoking.

I’m impressed. Especially since my previous attempt obviously didn’t work ;)

Of course I still probably won’t actually write about it any more than this one post. Which makes me think again, why do I even keep this blog? I’ve got more web software installed than I can remember. Fun stuff.

Shoebox » 165 Bots With Stuff.

Yay, the site’s up again. Silly hosting bills…

Shoebox » 165 Bots With Stuff.

I’ve been kinda thinking on my last post. The answer is still no, I don’t really need thirty megs worth of blog engine to operate this thing. I don’t need to replace it with a wiki engine either. WordPress handles static pages just fine, and with the RB Internal Links plugin, interlinking posts and pages is trivial, just like a wiki. I also don’t really want to migrate the old posts and pages to yet another format.

So, yeah, I think I’ll leave wordpress alone. Again. It’s not like I’d use this site any more if I did change anything ;)

Not surprisingly I’ve already grown tired of WordPress. Lots of snazzy stuff, especially with the plugins available, but it’s just not doing it for me. Part of the problem is evidenced by the fact that I’m writing a blog post about wondering if I really need a blog.

While I know I use it as a blog sometimes, most of the stuff here is page-like stuff. I keep notes-to-self, minor writeups about projects, stuff like that. At least half the entries here would be better stored as a static-ish page. Now that I’ll be using the LMR blog for tidbits about robot/electronic projects, I don’t really need 30MB worth of blog engine on my own homepage.

I think the “right” answer is some wiki (or wiki-like) thing instead, with a blog-style device in that for non-robot random stuff. That would put the static stuff as it should be, and still allow for quick thoughts, ooh-I-want-one posts, and other useless crap. A plain old link to “My Robot Blog at LMR” would cover that part.

Now I just need to decide if I want to use any of the existing wiki engines or if I should write my own. I’ll never be happy with either option, so it’s a pretty tough decision to make ;)

The Arduino Experimentation Kit (from oomlout) is a pretty damn slick thing. Usually I’m one of the shit talkers about Oomlout’s stuff (they think a lot of their laser cut plastic). This thing isn’t quite as pricey as I’d expect from them though, and the idea behind it is just cool.

What got me more than anything else was the printed breadboard overlays. A very simple way to show just where to plug things in. Especially for a seven year old, which I just happen to have one of.

Damn I wish I’d thought of that…