Kévin

I've been meaning to post some new entries, or at least auto-post some of my entries on to my LiveJournal.  I've still not figured it out, so for the moment you can see where my blog has moved to at :

www.mmn.on.ca/posts

I want to create a Phlog, so I did.

I generally use content all over the place, because I’m not enough of a content generator to be able to get my shit together and write different things around.

No jokes, you’ll find this post on my blog, livejournal, and no doubt elsewhere I see fit, on top of it being on the phlog.

I also post it on the web via the phlog, only because I really want to get more in to posting using Markdown and it seems the most logical way of doing this.

And before you ask, I considered creating the webpage using phlog.gopher.is but I decided to keep that domain off of the old HTTP and it seems I have standards. I picked my BBS.ec domain, because in a weird sort of way Gopher has always been linked to my BBS.

I have been diddling on and off with Nanoblogger for some time, if you don’t know what it is, it’s basically a blogging platform that works on Bash.

It’s unfortunately gone out of development as of 2013, but if you have the patience to work with it, I can assure you that it is actually quite flexible.

Plus you get the joy of beating something in to submission at the command line level.I’ve put my BBS website in to production using Nanoblogger which makes handling the site easier to move around since it’s all flat files, plus if I need to make a code update then I can just modify one file, push an update and we there. No databases, no script issues, just nice flat files.

One of the things I have mentioned before is that I want to bring my data in house, because you never know if a service is going to fall down, which we have seen a number of sites fall down and take a few years of work with them.

For my blogging, I’ve started to use WordPress as it was simplier to import a bulk load of old entries over, with the exception of course, being LiveJournal since the API has gone all wonky #sadface. But I’m trying to push things out on to not only my personal blogs, but dump them in another Nanoblogger install on Teleport.

One of the thing that held me back with Nanoblogger was that commenting isn’t as easy to do, but I’m not really saying I get a lot (if any) comments on my posts, but it’s nice to have around.

So this morning, I worked with Disqus on the Teleport website, turns out that was pretty easy to get going. Now I have to work out which content to drag across, I’m not really going to put it as one of my main websites, but having an archive of various things I’ve done is pretty cool. Considering that at the moment, it’s LiveJournal that holds 18 years of my internet mumblings.

I’m currently up all night due to last weeks great effects of la grippe, with my sleep patterns completely gone crazy, I figured a good long haul to the evening will fix things up.

To do this, I of course must be busy doing things, and things in this case is making sense of my various websites and my web presences.  I think I went totally OTT at one point since, there like be hundreds.

One of them which is going to come offline is vx.sg, it was the precurser to this blog.  My first use of Ghost as a blogging platform, don’t get me wrong, Ghost is pretty good.  But it lacks easy configuration, it was worth it to get my hands on it, but a pain to keep running.  There is of course also the fact it’s hosted on a DreamCompute instance which I no longer hold SSH keys for.  I will of course be keeping this domain, I have a fondness of it in the same sense as my other short ones #ILikeShortDomains.  I’m becoming a real fan of simplicity, I do love something complex to get my hands on, understand and discover, but in the long term those kind of projects I tend to abandon, since I don’t really have enough time to give them the care they deserve.

The next one to kind of start, is Signal Earth, this was a really good idea in my sleep deprived nostalgic mind.  I used to have a trashy AngelFire account which I posted all my young Alien related things, being a creative type, I used to create things out of plasticine take photos, scan them (as were the days) and create storylines.

This I really should have never got out of, it was fun, got me outside and even if nobody read any of it, I made it with my hands.  So since thar be a WordPress, I think this will fit in well with it’s own category.   Perhaps even throwing up the pics on nbcam.

Also on the new block, retrowa.re, I have an affinity for classic computing, it’s my main jam and I still run a BBS after all.  I want to get some of my classic games up on the BBS and file them in to various reviews.  I have a huge collection of Commodore 64 games, all on tape which would be amazing to save.  How I am going to present the BBS things, I do not know just yet.  I may possibly run another WordPress instance, but I will need to consider this heavily, as one too many of the same thing is pointless.

Speaking of the BBS, I’m considering bringing this up on to this site, it’s fitting I think.  But we shall see over the coming hours how this works out.

I always get asked why I came to France, because the French are quite interested in why anybody would bother coming here when they want to escape it.  In fairness, this isn’t limited to the French, anybody who has moved countries will have been asked this; followed by a tale of how much the person who posed the question wants to live where you came from.

I personally just wanted to, so I did, voilà.  But this doesn’t make an interesting story enough, people are seeking intrigue and perhaps a deportation story (when you have two passports, it seems to raise the question for some bizarre reason).

I’ve decidedly changed my direction when the question is thrown out there.  I’m here to bang French dudes.  The icebreaker of all icebreakers (to employ some bullshit managementism for you there).  Needless to say this seems to work, to the extent it becomes a self-fulfilling prophacy at times.

But I divert from the original concept of this post (see I planned something in advance).  The point is to bang French dudes you need to speak French, it comes part and parcel.

I had a time when I was confident I could throw down a perfect reflexive verb, like Kanye at a music award interupting Taylor Swift.  But then things went down, and that confidence blew up in to a catastrophic mess.

My internal voice tells me I couldn’t conjugate an er verb without looking a fool, so I don’t, I take the easy way out International English.  But I’m starting to get back up, you see, contrary to the myth that everybody in Paris speaks English, there are are a shitload of people that just can’t.  Or when dealing with any higher functioning extention of the government, won’t.

Par exemple, my bank branch calls itself « agence internationale », claiming there are many people who will talk whatever language you throw at them.  Only if it’s French, because ain’t nobody there who speaks anything else.  Each time I have to deal with something pointlessly technical, complex or day to day with them, it’s conducted in French.  And my god can I hold that shit up good, like Atlas but mastering the complexities of masculin and féminine and laying the ground work with the correct de, du, des, à, au, aux and etc.  How can I?  No fucking idea, but it just comes out.  I don’t think about it and we’re on form.

But I forget this and the many times that I’ve had to explain the hilarity of my own body to a medical professional while some how knowing the words for the respective parts.  When I feel there is no other way out, the French flows.

Why am I rambling on about this?  Because today, I’ve done something mundane as having my television box replaced.  Because she is fucked and I want my TV which I pay for.  I don’t need this nor have I been put in a position where I have to fix this, but I still picked up that phone, called the number and went through the entire ordeal to make this happen.

It doesn’t sound big, but the waining scream of that lack of confidence that just won’t fuck off, kept me from doing that for a few weeks.  Overstepping that shit, that’s a victory, one that brings me back to my end goal.  Banging French Dudes.

How am I bringing myself out of a situation where I’d rather Netflix myself to death?  One word at a time, conguated to perfection.

I set up a blog on my personal homepage a while back, however, I some how managed to crap it out completely.

So here I am sleepless again (with an early start) playing around with another WordPress installation. It seems stable, but I haven’t yet the heart to move it across.

The Out of Memory error is still freshly burnt in to my soul.

With all that has happened so far, I’m glad to report this is perhaps the least interesting drama I can come up with.

I think I’ll fiddle some more and write something actually interesting.

J’ai créé un blog dédiée à la ville de Bristol ce soir et ajouté quelques photos.

Pour mes amies sur LiveJournal sont les photos trop grande ou ils sont ok?

I have created a blog dedicated to the city of Bristol this evening and added some photos.

For my friends on LiveJournal are they too large or are they ok?