Redesign Thoughts

It's not perfect, and it's not exactly what I was after. But it's better than it was. There's still a lot to do, little tweaks that will take weeks to finish.

I have always loved Blogger. A lot of bang for a secure, easy to use, free product. To me the benefits have always outweighed the limitations. After this redesign I'm not so sure. I'm seriously thinking about moving to Wordpress - not the free online version, the full hosted solution with your own domain. Here's how they stack up:

Ease of Use:
Blogger by a mile. Non-techies can be up and blogging in minutes. Wordpress requires some geeky research and practice. You'll figure it out, but it's not blogger.

Features:
Wordpress by a mile. You can use Wordpress as a blog, or as a full-blown content management system. The add-ons, widgets, and theme options are limitless. For Blogger it's not terrible, but it doesn't compare with Wordpress.

Security:
Blogger by a country mile. When you put your blog on blogger it will be there. In a month, a year, or more. It's not going anywhere. For Wordpress if you, for example, go to the hospital and can't pay for your webhosting, it's possible a webhost (not me) would delete your account. If you're not backed up (are we ever adequately backed up?) you've lost everything you've worked so hard on. If that happens to you, call me, I'll sit with you on the first suicide watch.

Design:
Wordpress. There is so much flexibility in design. Blogger is better than they used to be, but it's still not easy to get a custom design on Blogger.

Spam:
Blogger is incredibly good at recognizing and killing spam. Wordpress is getting better, but it's a clumsy process with a sophomoric look. For such a professional product, I expect more.

How about others? Any pros or cons?

Template Question

Hey All - I'm worried about this site loading slowly. I love the template, but it seems to be loading so slowly. Does it load slowly for others, compared with other blogs out there?

Kyle's New Blog

Hey all - my son Kyle has started a blog.

Manic Repressive

He goes by the name "Stretch" and is starting by posting an autobiography he was assigned in a counseling session.

Stop by, leave him a comment, and let him feel the love of this community.

Hypomania

You know, hypomania's a bitch. Yes, it feels good at times to be so full of energy, productive, and fun-loving. But much of the time it's pretty destructive. For example, I didn't sleep at all tonight. It's 3:00 AM, and I'm up. I have to take my family to the airport in an hour, they're taking a vacation without me, I can't get off work. But after going to bed early and trying to sleep for 2 hours, it was too late to take an Ambien, I was worried about waking up after that. So I'm up all night. On the positive side, I tagged all my blog posts back to the first of the year.

I wish there was a way to tame this without being risky to my career. I'd love to find a way to stay on an even keel, but I'm afraid that would impact my ability to work. The lamictal takes care of the lows pretty effectively, so I tolerate the highs and try to use it to my advantage.

Great Week

The last week or so has been pretty decent. Not perfect, mind you, I've been bouncing around like that stereotypical yo yo. Yesterday's rant about pay-for-blogging illustrates the mania just under the surface. Which is funny, as my energy level is pretty low right now, so I would be expecting depression before mania. But they are more closely related, at least for me, than others would imagine.

Speaking about pay-for-blogging, I have decided to go a different route for my blog. Instead of ad words, or those services that you have to actually write about (Refinances - everyone approved!), I'm going to add one of those donate buttons. You know the ones, the "blogger beggar" buttons. Mine is going to be for a donation to "The Human Fund - Money For People". Watch for it.

Last week I went with Kyle to see a show, it was a father's day gift for me. We saw a band called "Indigenous" in a smaller club setting. This is a hard-rocking blues band, and these guys tore it up. The guitar player's name is Mato, and in this style of music there hasn't been a guitar player this good since Stevie Ray Vaughan. Mato is incredible. This ranked as one of the top five shows I've ever seen.

Tomorrow night my wife, Kyle, and I go to see Robert Randolph And The Family Band. If you have never seen these guys you owe it to yourself to see them at least once before you die. There has never been a more high-energy, harder playing, talented, and fun band. Ever. At any time. Bold talk? See them and find out.

For those in the US, have an enjoyable and safe Independance Day, and don't lose sight of the reason for the holiday.

Retraction

Sorry folks, I have retracted my last post about pay-for-blogging. Even though I promise I was not singling out any particular blog, I know people would take it that way. So if I've offended anyone, please know it was not directed at anyone in particular. Like so many things in life, we have different needs and objectives - what I get from my personal blog is not what someone else seeks from blogging.

Friday Shorts

Mom, Interrupted at Mercurial Mind Bipolar Blog talks about forecasting a mood swing by our voice and tone. She hit the nail on the head, based on this a change is coming for me. My wife mentioned it to me last night, I’ve been mouthy and sarcastic. Stay tuned, let’s see where this leads…

On a related note, I’ve left some biting and sarcastic comments on some of your blogs. They are not meant to be critical to the blogger who made the post, sorry if they sound that way.

We bought a new bike for my wife the other day. A very nice fitness/hybrid bike by Gary Fisher/Trek. She’s excited to ride, and it looks like she’ll be able to keep up with us now. For anyone who likes to bike, the difference between a Wal-Mart bike and a bike shop bike is HUGE.

Does anyone know if it’s possible to dynamically order a blogroll by clicks or popularity? Now that I ask this, I hear txandi saying "blog tweaks: as addictive as crystal meth."

I was listening to NPR the other day, actually, I listen to NPR every day, but the other day I heard an interview with a guy that wrote a book about understanding philosophy through jokes. It was one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard. Things like:
"3 ladies were sitting on a park bench. The first lady says "oy!" The second lady says "oy!" The third lady says "enough about the children already."
Or:
"The invisible man walks into a doctor’s office without an appointment. The nurse says ‘The doctor can’t see you now’"
I’ll let you know if the book is as good as I think it will be.

Everyone have a great weekend!

Visual DNA

Got this over at Pax Nortona. If you post one yourself, show us where we can see it.

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

Friday Shorts

On the LivingBipolar site, I don’t see enough benefit – yet. I’d like to increase the benefit without duplicating the ideas of sites like HealthCentral’s BipolarConnect, which might be a conflict of interest given my relationship with Bipolar Connect. One of my primary purposes in building the site, besides an outlet for my hypomania, is to increase traffic to all of our blogs. The thinking being if we could bring in people who might not take the time to seek out our individual blogs, "click-throughs" to our blogs would result.
Here’s thoughts of a rough "to do" list at this time:

A mirror site where the name does not include "bipolar" so our browser history does not show "bipolar". This might be good for work or public computers.
A bipolar wiki of some sort.
An open group blog where anyone can post.
Displaying blog comments from within the site (but you’d have to click-through to make a comment)
A message board or chat room.

I’m always open to ideas or suggestions.

My hypomania is hanging tough. The frantic nervousness that gives me nervous tics and unbearable racing thoughts has mostly passed. But I’m still too energetic, too irritable, and too willing to spend money I don’t have. And I tend to irritate people when I get this way, as recent comments to several blogs may illustrate. Try to remember it’s not really me, at least I hope hypomanic me is not the true me.

I’m living a bachelor life for a few days this week. My wife takes girl scouts camping this weekend, then accompanies my sixth grader on a field trip to New York. It’s time to party! Not really, but it sounded good…

For those who are trying to get into shape, here’s an interesting article:
A Healthy Mix Of Rest and Motion. I started doing this today, and it kicked my tail, in a good workout kind of way. I’m going to do it once a week from here on out.

That’s for this week’s Friday Shorts. I really have to start blogging more than once or twice a week again. But when I’m "healthy" as I feel now, I find other things to do. Not that I want to abandon my good friends, and I hope it doesn’t seem like that.

Feeds - Detail

I’ve been asked a few questions on the feed reader I built. If you’re not into technical stuff, you don’t need to read this post. Except for the bolded text below, that’s some good information. But I live for projects like this – they keep me sane. This was a short one, just a few days. But I really need to focus and immerse myself into things like this, it’s important to my mental health.

First, a quick, high-level overview. I knew very little about feeds prior to starting this project, and I still know little about the technical side of them. All I can say is it provides a quick and simple data stream you can pull into a “reader” and display. This data may be news, basic web pages, or in this case, blogs. You may have noticed links on blogs, they may say "RSS" or "Feeds" or ""Atom". These are all methods of providing feeds for our blogs or web pages. People use these feeds in different ways, the way I used them is described above.

There are a lot of feed readers, Google Reader is a popular one. I use Google to display the news headlines on the side bar of this blog. But there are so many ways to use feeds and readers you need to look around for one that does what you want, or can be modified to do what you want. In my case, the tricky part was displaying multiple feeds in a single interface. It took me a lot of research to figure out how to do this. Somebody else may have been able to do it in minutes, but it was a learning adventure for me.

Jumping to the solution, I took all the individual feeds and combined them into an OPML file. This is a file that combines multiple feeds. I found a site that will do that for you:
http://www.feedshow.com/goodies/opml/OPMLBuilder-create-opml-from-rss-list.php
Once you have the OPML file built from your feeds, then go to Grazr and use that OPML file to build a reader widget:
http://www.grazr.com/config.html
You can configure your reader in a number of different formats or colors, and Grazr will do that for you. Once it’s configured it gives you the code to paste into your blog or webpage. That’s the basics, and it does work. Just maintain a list of feed URLs and use the method above.

But now the fun part, tweaking it to make it really usable and easily updated. If it takes too much time or it’s too much work to update, it will never be used. A few things about that process.

First, if you’re still maintaining links yourself, stop that! There are several good, free services that make it so much easier to maintain a list of blog links. And they add so much versatility to future projects just like this one. I use blogrolling, but there are several out there. Build your blogroll, they guide you right through the process. Then you can generate the code for your blog. Don’t stop reading when I say code! Go to Blogger, Layout, and add a page element. Select HTML/Java Script and paste in your code. Drag the page element where you want it, and you’re done managing links in Blogger forever. For the ultimate in ease, add a toolbar button to your browser that you merely click to add a link to your blog. Blogrolling will show you how to do that also. OK, those not desiring additional tech information can stop reading now. But the point of this sidebar, If you have a place you can upload and store an OPML file online, and if you create a blogroll of feeds, you’ve cut way back on your maintenance time. Once you have a blogroll of feeds (not basic urls), you can export that blogroll to an OPML file. Blogrolling calls it "backing up", but it’s the same thing. With Blogrolling I have to manually edit that OPML file a bit. On each line you change:
type="link"
to:
type="rss"
and :
url=
to:
xmlUrl
In your html or text editor you just do a replace with the information above, and it’s done in a second, even if you have hundreds of feeds. Then you have a working OPML file.

Note to Suni: If you add a title to the feed when adding it to blogrolling, the title pulls into the feed. Otherwise you can manually edit the OPML file to add the blog title in the “text” portion of the feed line. But I don’t know how to tell you to do that unless you are storing your own OPML file. I don’t think the feedshow link above does that for you.

Then, as described above, use the grazr widget builder to build your widget using the url of the OPML file you’ve built. If you want to change anything, you merely change the OPML file you have stored, and the changes immediately pull into your feed reader.

Clear as mud, huh?

Oh, and the design is a template I downloaded and slightly customized. I don’t have the patience to set up the CSS to do design from ground up. I’m still adding to and tweaking the basic site.

Next step: Adding different feed readers for resources, and maybe other categories as well. Also, the email for updated blogs as described in the previous post.

Any suggestions anyone may have? I’d like to hear other ideas and suggestions.

Check Out This Blog-Reader

I've been playing around with feeds, and came up with this. Check it out:

Feed Reader

Think about it - how much all our traffic could increase if people could go to one location to see an entire blogroll of blogs? If they see something they like they click through to the blog. This isn't perfect, I'd like to display blog titles instead of just URLs, and I can't figure out why it displays some URLs and not others, some pictures, and so forth.

Next - a daily email showing all updated blogs that people can opt-in to receive. This opens things up to people who may be intimidated by navigating their way to blogs.

Thoughts?

Catching Up

I'm home sick today with stomach flu. It's been over 10 years since I've had this stuff, and I hope it's at LEAST another 10.

Somebody asked me about posting songs in blogger, like I did a few posts ago. It's pretty simple, but takes another membership.

Mog.com is a music blog that allows you to upload songs or videos. It's a free account, and an interesting community. Very easy to signup and navigate. You upload your mp3, and it embeds a player in your post. You then click "Share" in your post, and it gives you the code you can paste into Blogger. Pretty simple.

Today I'll share another one of my favorites. Another slower, insightful song by one of my favorite singer-songwriters named Paul Thorn. If you're a baby-boomer this song may just strike a chord with you like it did with me.

mog.com

More about this song

Share

Thinking Blogger Award

ariadneK, Ph.D. from Weird Cake has nominated me for a Thinking Blogger Award. Under the terms of this award I need to list 5 blogs that make me think.

I'm flattered, but to list only 5 blogs means I'll leave out 40 plus - all the rest of the links in my blogroll. I truly don't want any of my friends left out. So let's see what I can figure out...

First is a new (to me) blogger: Soulful Sepulcher. Check out Stephany's blog and tell her I sent you.

Next has to be Anonymous Mom at Tenuous At Best. She is struggling through so much of what my wife and I did with Kyle. It brings back memories, some positive, some negative.

Third would be a big-name blogger Liz Spikol at The Trouble With Spikol. A thought provoking blog.

Fourth would be psychiatric professional, Charlie, at Symptom Space. Some great information to be found there.

Final would be Anxiety, Addiction and Depression Treatments. Another site with excellent, professional, information.

For those nominated, if you want to participate, nominate 5 bloggers, link to the originator's post, and proudly display the Thinking Blogger certificate.

BipolarConnect

I've posted many times about BipolarConnect.com, a community built around bipolar disorder. I've been blogging there for about a year, my shareposts can be found at GJ Gregory's Shareposts. I go by GJ there, as there was already a John posting there, the well known bipolar activist John McManamy.

This is very cool way to interact with others, much like we do in the blog world. But unlike the blog world, no technical knowledge is needed. The community is very easy to explore, and very accessible. I encourage everyone to hop on over there, register, create a profile, and participate. If nothing else, leave a comment and let them know you're reading my posts.

For those afflicted with bipolar disorder, or those touched by it in any way, an active community awaits.

Let’s Run This Up The Flagpole

Would an annual "convention" of bipolar disorder bloggers be feasible or desirable? A way we could get together socially, therapeutically, and professionally? Maggs (I think), used to host a get-together a couple of years ago, and it sounds like they had fun.

Actually, "convention" implies a very structured event, and I don’t envision that, at least at this point. "Get-together" implies a very loose event, and I don’t envision that either. I’d like a way to bring people together, for a day or two at the most, with enough structure to keep people from staring at each other all day, but enough free time so we can get to know each other. I would envision round-tables on important topics, workshops, support groups, and perhaps even speakers. All put together by us, using our talents and resources.

This could be an aggressive, structured undertaking, or it could be a handwritten agenda in a spiral notebook. It all depends on how many of us are interested. If there’s 6 people interested, we get together in a motel coffee shop at a central location we can agree on. If there’s a hundred interested, we look for a hotel with a meeting room. This wouldn’t be limited to bipolar bloggers, I know we have hundreds of people out there that read our blogs and never comment. We have caregivers, health professionals, social workers. Anyone would be encouraged to come. If we get enough people we’ll attract corporate attention and sponsorship assistance.

Now I know what you’re all thinking, and yes, I am hypomanic. But this sounds like something that would not only be fun, but helpful as well.

Thoughts?

Friday Shorts

I’m done with American Idol. The American masses don’t care about quality. They want cute, sexy, or attractive. This is exactly why I stopped watching all prime time music award shows many years ago. It’s all about packaging and marketing. Make the performer attractive to pre-teen girls and who cares if they can sing or perform – they’ll be successful. Disgraceful.

Kyle (our 22 year old bipolar son) called a few days ago and asked if we needed our carpets cleaned. We did, of course. Kyle can clean carpets better than any professional. We rented a cleaning machine, and he cleaned all day and into the night. We paid him well, he works so hard and does such a great job. My wife paid him in front of his girlfriend, we didn’t want to offend him by giving the money directly to his girlfriend. Kyle continued to clean well into the night, and he asked if he could stay with us that night. Of course he could. We got up the next day, and guess what? Surprise, surprise, he’s gone. Haven’t heard from him since. When will we learn, you don’t give money to someone with untreated bipolar disorder.

70 degrees in the heartland within a few days! Woo-hoo! I’ll get reacquainted with my deck and my humidor of cigars.

My mania is settling into a more pleasant hypomania, and I hope it stays for a while. Of course when I’m manic I slide between the two, but I’m REALLY tired of mania. I need to be able to accomplish something at work again.

USB memory sticks are everywhere these days, I’ve used one for years to carry things back and forth between work and home. I got one not too long ago that has something called "U3". This allows for programs to be run directly from the memory stick. Firefox browser, Trillian messenger, Filezilla FTP, Open Office, IrfanView, RoboForm, and many more free applications. This is a very cool piece of technology. Launch the programs with a single click, leave no footprints or trails on the computer you are using, securely store passwords, bookmarks, and so forth. I won’t work without one ever again.

I encourage everyone to jump over to http://bipolarconnect.com. My blog is located here. If you survive seeing my picture, take a moment and subscribe to my posts, it will help me out. Actually, the new design they have there is pretty cool, and makes it very easy to interact with others.

Finally, I got to thinking about the concept of a "community blog". A blog where anyone, named or anonymous, could post. A bipolar disorder theme, of course. You could plug your main blog, make announcements, tell others if a fellow blogger is in crisis, give those who just lurk or are intimidated by blogging a chance to be heard, and so forth. These ideas come a million miles an hour when I’m hypomanic, and can be difficult to implement or maintain when I’m "normal". But this wouldn’t be a big deal, especially with assistance from others. Thoughts?

Enough for now, everyone have a GREAT weekend!

Friday Shorts

The BipolarConnect redesign is done. Check it out! Leave me comments on my blog there, which can be found here, under the name GJ Gregory. Don't hesitate to create a profile and share your stories.

Big blizzard yesterday, our city’s worst in a decade. We got between 12 and 15 inches at my house. I have a medium sized snowblower, and the snow was just too deep for it. The wife and I half shoveled, half “snowblowed” my drive and walks. It took almost all afternoon. I went to the gym at about 6:00 AM, and there was an inch of snow on the ground. It’s only 5 minutes away, but in that 5 minutes the blizzard blew in and I was in a white-out. I made it there, worked out, and when I left there was 7 or 8 inches of snow. I was there less than 2 hours. The streets were like parking lots on every hill, the cars could not make it up the hills. I finally made it to a retail area on some higher ground, and went into an Office Depot store where I know the managers. I hung out for a couple hours until they had time to push the stuck cars out of the roads, then I plowed my way into work. Worked for a few hours, and plowed my way home. I never got stuck until I was turning into my driveway, and got stuck in the street. On my way to work this morning, there are cars off the road all over, even some still stuck in the roads. Those poor cars have snow plowed around them, they’ll have a lot of digging to free themselves. It could be worse though, I could be in the southern US, like Alabama or Georgia. I hope all my friends down there came through their storms unscathed.

Let’s see – Kyle called yesterday, I haven’t heard from him in a few weeks. He is considering a local program that will help him get assistance. The only problem is the program insists on homeless documentation. That means he has to be in a shelter, and he’d probably be there for 6 to 8 weeks. I’ve written about it on my BipolarConnect blog. They haven’t published it yet, and per my contract I can’t double-post. But I’ll post a link when they do publish it.

My kids are so funny at times. At different times Wednesday evening both of my girls grabbed a handful of ice and threw it out onto the deck. They claim it is good luck for getting school cancelled. Also if they wear their pajamas and everything else backwards they think it helps. Well it worked, school cancelled Thursday and today.

On a lighter note: Did you know there are several stages of marital “relations”? There is the newlywed stage – insatiable, anytime, anywhere, constantly. Then after a year or two that settles into the hot stage – not as often but very hot and intense. As middle age approaches, things slide into the “special events” stage. Birthdays, anniversaries, valentines day, and other special days. As people get older, things often move into the “oral sex” stage. Yes, believe it or not, oral sex is VERY common among middle aged and older couples. You know what I mean, you pass your partner in the hallway and mutter “screw you”.

I hope everyone out there has a great weekend.

Checking In

Hey all! I haven't posted for a while, not even my favorite "Friday Shorts" the last couple weeks. Thanks for the comments and emails asking if I'm OK. I'm OK, in pretty good shape all things considered. What I've been able to write recently I've sent to BipolarConnect, and they have exclusive rights to anything I send them. And when I only have so many words I can squeeze out in a week, something has to give. I've started a new personal blog for family, political, and more controversial posts, but I haven't been prolific enough to do anything with that either. Just a typical bipolar move, start a project I can't follow through on.

I haven't made the rounds to blogs recently, I'm still a little emotionally shell-shocked. I can't read your blogs without being pulled in a little emotionally, and right now I just don't feel I can take on that load. Sorry if that means I'm turning my back on my friends, I do feel bad about that.

Thanks again all for the thoughts and messages, and I'll be around to your blogs before too long.

BipolarConnect's New Site

Those who have been reading a while know I've been blogging for BipolarConnect.com> for a while, my blog can currently be found here.

In the next few days they will be rolling out a completey redesigned site that I'm excited about. I'm a sucker for online communities, and I'm excited that Health Central has embraced the concept.

They expect to launch their redesigned site in the next few days, so check in regularly.

Blogger Needs Support

Hey all, a fellow bipolar disorder blogger, and a pretty special person, is in a bad place right now. Keep Queen at My Bipolar Life in your thoughts and prayers.