Tag Archive for: blogging

2019 Resolution

I’ve never really been a New Year’s Resolution type of person, but that may change in 2019. I’ve been a bit bored with my websites recently and I’ve had the real urge to tinker around. I haven’t had this urge in years. Since it has been a while since I’ve kept up with the web development community, I started researching what software or service everyone is using these days for creating content. I signed up for a trial on Squarespace out of curiosity and imported this site to see if I’d like their interface. It’s pretty nice, but there are a few things that bother me about it and will, most likely, prevent me from moving from WordPress, which I’ve used since this blog’s inception. I will probably create a separate blog post for my thoughts on Squarespace (and WordPress) at a later date. The point is, that led me to a realization that is brought me to my resolution: I don’t blog anymore and I’d like that to change.

Over the past several years the frequency in which I update this site has slowed and slowed and has pretty much stopped almost completely. If you look at 2018, I had four posts. Yes, four. This is a blog that has existed for 15 years. I used to post weekly, if not daily, in the beginning. Of course back then I was in college and in the beginning stages of my career and as such I had more time, but in 2018 I managed to knock out four whole posts. I’ve essentially stopped writing. I think a lot of the reason why I no longer post is I’m always busy at work and when I get home the last thing I want to do is spend more time staring at a computer. This makes finding the motivation to write or share something pretty low. Especially since there are easier ways to share my thoughts. That brings us to Twitter.

Posting Activity for 2018

I’ve been on Twitter since almost the beginning. I think since it’s second year in operation. I used to love Twitter. It was my go to place for sharing thoughts on a variety of topics. There was also a really great community that I followed on Twitter, especially the St. Louis area people. However, Twitter has become a cesspool of Alt-Right hate groups and trolls. I don’t spend nearly as much time there as I did a year or two ago. In fact, there are days where I don’t check it at all. So now I’m getting the urge to get back into blogging and sharing myself through my blog, taking me full circle.

So in 2019 I’m going to try and post more. If I have something to share or say I’m going to try and do it here first. I’m going to make myself get back in the habit of posting. I have an Instapaper account full of articles that I thought would make great posts but never took the time to actually post them. It kills me when I discover something really cool, save it for a blog post later, only to see it spread its way around the internet and by the time I work up the motivation to post it is old news. 2019 is the year of the blog (again).

RIP The Blog

Jason Kottke recently had a post on his blog declaring the blog dead. Of course, it’s not really dead, but the way we write, consume, and share content has changed drastically over the past several years. If you look at my posting on this site over the years, you can see the number of posts decreasing each year, and fast. I no longer have the time, or the will, to write long posts about what I find interesting, what’s going on in my life, or random stuff I find on the internet. When I do want to share something, I usually post it on Facebook or Twitter (mostly Twitter).

That being said, I still want to share that information in a place that is much easier to sift through the noise (like a blog!), but that’s not what piece of shep is or was. So, I started i am shep on Tumblr. It is the perfect place for me to post quick links, pictures, videos, etc. Yeah, I could have found a Tumblr-style theme for WordPress, and I tried, but Tumblr is a better place for my new focus (or lack thereof). So, if you’d like, go over and follow me there or subscribe to the RSS feed (or, since it posts to Twitter, follow me on Twitter). POS will still exist, and I may post longer posts here, but for now, anything that grabs my attention will be posted at i am shep.

The Future of Piece of Shep

In case you haven’t noticed, I haven’t posted anything here in a while. Even the last post was not really a post. I guess I don’t have much to say, nor do I know what to do with this blog anymore.

I started a blog (that I post at almost as less frequently as here) to showcase some more professional and work related posts and topics. Definitely a lot more censored than this one. That being said, what becomes of this one? Do I still post here? Will this still be the ramblings of shep (as opposed to the ramblings of my birth name, which is my other blog)? I’m not sure.

In the meantime, this blog will still exist, if nothing else than for archival purposes. I still get a fair amount of traffic here from Google searches on a variety of topics and I definitely don’t want to keep people from finding information they may find valuable.

I guess if the mood strikes, I’ll blog here again. We shall see.

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My Favorite 5 Posts Over the Last 5 Years

5yranniversaryIt’s hard to imagine that today is my 5 year anniversary of this blog. I’ve never posted anything groundbreaking or life-changing, but I do have some favorite posts from the past 5 years. They are nothing spectacular, but they were fun to write and put out there for the world to see. Here are my favorite 5 (in no particular order).

The New Rules of Blogging
This post is quite old and not many people will understand it. It was basically an inside joke with some members of the WordPress and Habari communities. The post was inspired by someone that we all found completely annoying and we hated her blogging style. This post was created as a joke.

The Game
I really love this post, but not as much as I love baseball. I was excited about baseball season starting and was bored when I was working in the computer labs in college, so I wrote this. It was even featured on StLToday when the season began a couple seasons later.

The Best Hip Hop Albums
Everyone knows that I love music, especially hip hop. In 2006 I put together some of my favorite albums of all time. 3 years later and I’d still say this list is the same. Maybe that’s because I’m still waiting for the sure-to-be-a-classic Chico and the Man album.

Three Generations of Cardinals Fans
This isn’t so much a post as an image. One of my favorites. My nephew, my dad, and me.

The World Can be Saved by the Bell
Last, but certainly not least, is my favorite post of all time. Anyone who really knows me knows I am a freak when it comes to Saved by the Bell. I think it’s the best show in the world (only slightly kidding here) and have seen every episode too many times to count. Heck, if I could get away with having the theme song as my ringtone without looking like a total geek I would.

So there you have it, my favorite 5 posts from the past 5 years. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading them as much as I have writing them.

Happy Blogiversary

On October 4th I will have been using WordPress for 5 years. Piece of Shep has actually been around a little bit longer, but that was in my Blogger days. I never imported those old posts because they were mostly drunken college ramblings. WordPress has served me well over the years, though I will admit I have looked for alternative platforms lately. It’s kind of hard to switch platforms when you’re this deep in and when you rely on certain plugins. I have been keeping a close eye on Habari and can’t wait to see how the development progresses.

Because this month is my Blogiversary, I will (hopefully) be posting a bit more, including one that features some of my favorite posts of the past 5 years. I find it hard to categorize my blog other than personal. I write about technology, music, TV, and rant about pretty much everything. This of course makes my blog limited in exposure. When you visit and read a post you really are getting a piece of me. Most of my readers are people I know in real life or from the internet. I’d like to thank all my readers for continuing to read and look forward to what the future brings.