I’m leaving WordPress.com

In the 6 weeks I’ve been here, it’s became more evident that WordPress.com is not right for me. It’s also became clear that I’ve shoved too many subjects into the same blog, and am losing focus and readers with it. It’s time I split my single blog into several, so each can stay focussed. I am in a baffled state over WordPress.com’s spam protection settings. I also want to include a little affiliate and AdSense code which is not allowed here. The reason I’ve been quiet here in recent days is that I was busy setting all that up, which it now is.

My new blog is http://detectiveagency.blogspot.com/ from there, my first post explains the reason for each blog, and the URL to them. I am copying some of my content here straight across, some will be slimmed down or rewritten, some will be scrapped. Until I have cleared out everything here, this blog will remain live.

Despite me deciding to move, I still think WordPress is a good blogging host, it’s easy to use. It is very limited however. The look I have on my new blogs is much closer to what I wanted to do here but couldn’t without buying the CSS editing privileges. With Google (Blogger or Blogspot) that is available to all, free….straight out of the box, along with many other feature…..including being allowed to advertise. It’s easy to use fromt he dashboard too, just a lot more control than WordPress dashboards. My CSS now aligns the text to “justify” automatically instead of the PITA that editing by hand here is.

This is my last post here, and I am not going to slam WordPress.com, I have met some nice people here, and for a gated community…..it’s a nice place to be….albeit rather limited. It was a good introduction to blogging for me. There’s no one reason, just a convergence of several all building to tipping point.

Blogging for the spiders

The other day I noticed a couple of incoming links to a blog I’d written in my stats. Being new to blogging, I clicked on them to see what the context was, and found mixed results. The first had both a “read more” and “digg this” links to my site…..which I accepted as fine. The other blog was something which inspired me to write this blog.

First, let me give you a URL. http://windowsvistavideos.blogspot.com/

The winner is – The Rejected Ballot Paper Party

During the build up the mood balance seemed to be shifting to the SNP (Scottish National Party). Labour have held a stranglehold in Scotland since the early 60’s and while the SNP have gradually built support, it tends to fall back at the election. Over the last few days Labour started to pull back some of the gap, so it really is too close to call.

The star of the night has turned out to be the humble ballot paper. The election process was changed this time round, and the Scottish Parliament had to do a PR run to explain to people what to expect. Personally I didn’t even get my polling card this time, maybe because I’ve been critical of Labour, and they didn’t want to risk me voting against them…which is exactly what I’d have done. I at least got the satisfaction of watching my local Labour MP fall to the SNP in a shock result. I’m not sure I endorse the SNP, but they seem the best of a bad lot.

Going native

I’ve been used to the Windows way of PC life for too long. This means that I’m used to the brand and program names I use for each service. I don’t want to use WINE with Windows ports unless I have to, which means I’m looking to go native in Linux……this means relearning program names.

I have Mandriva Linux 2007 with the KDE desktop environment, and am looking to set up various programs. I want them to be as light in resources as possible, and they have to be GUI. I am new to active Linux, as I learn more….I will shift to command line stuff…..but not yet.

Never a better time to switch to Linux

With Microsoft having launched their new Vista operating system on an unwilling public, there’s never been a better time to abandon Microsoft to their fate and switch to either Linux or an Apple Mac.

Not only has Vista been a more effective Linux advert than anything Microsoft have done previously, it coincides with the rise of some VERY nice and easy to use distributions of Linux. Before I go on, I’d like to thank two major players here…..Microsoft and Ubuntu.