After eight years of dormancy, this weblog has awakened from it’s long slumber, like a creature risen from death by a sorcerer and given new life.
I started blogging in January 2000, making this weblog almost 25 years old. This probably makes me a blogging ‘old head’, having gone to weblog meetups IRL when the ideas were new, meeting the first generation of bloggers and blog software writers at the early SxSW Interactive conferences, and lurking in the many IRC channels of the early Web 2.0 era.
But as Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, and modern social media began to consume the interwebs, my posting on this weblog fell off in 2014 and stopped completely in 2016.
Thanks to the command line wizardry from my friend Greg, color ideas from my wife Michele, and WordPress code help from claude.ai, I was able to restore this blog into operation.
Why restart a weblog in 2024?
I stopped posting here in 2016, but I didn’t stop writing and doing things online. I started writing at Medium, as it was simple and easy to use. I like to make videos and posted them on Youtube and TikTok.
Most of my online interaction was on Twitter and Discord, with frequent posting on those platforms. Over time, I’ve became disenchanted with Twitter and stopped using it. I’m mainly on Bluesky these days and enjoy it.
The idea of having a central place to put all the things I do online is appealing to keep some sort non-ephemeral record of my online musings. I will still be posting stuff on other platforms, but having a place here, that I control is appealing.
I had heard about POSSE before and Greg discussed it with me further as I tried to decide what to do. Made a lot of sense to me.
How cruftbox.com was returned to the land of the living
Previously, the blog ran on Movable Type, which evidently still exists (It’s big in Japan!). Greg recommended a move to WordPress, as it is the defacto standard system these days, compatible with almost everything. There has been recent drama in the WordPress community, but it’s a safe choice to use and leaves me the opportunity of migrating to a different CMS in the future.
Greg seemed to effortlessly transmogrify my broken Movable Type system into a modern WordPress operation and I began learning how to use it more fully. Previously, I ran a simple WordPress blog about my thoughts on EVE online, but starting from scratch and not really modifying much, it was a simple posting tool.
I love Andy’s sidebar linkblog and made my own version with the help of claude.ai which was able to write the WordPress code for me. I know it’s underhyped, but this AI stuff may catch on.
For those that don’t know me, I made a short About page to give a little insight into who I am.
Mostly, I’ll be posting videos and occasionally an actual written post about whatever is on my mind. The linkblog will be an easy way for me to share interesting items that I come across. I’ll keep tweaking it to scratch my itches.
Where it goes from here, I have no idea.
