Moved (Copied) to Wordpress!
Due to server down-time issues in the past and b/c I like WordPress, I've moved (copied) this blog over to Wordpress! the new url is:
http://wildstar84.wordpress.com/
Please follow / comment me there. I'll most likely continue to *attempt* to cross-post entries here too for awhile, but not sure if or for how long, so if you wish to continue following, i recommend using that url from now on! Pages that link to other posts on my blog, still point here though for the moment. Everything else should still be the same or better - anonymous comments still supported, etc.
I'm liking Wordpress so far - seems to be a bigger, more popular blogging site. A lot of business and professional blog / news sites seem to use it. It fully supports my HTML/CSS-heavy posts (using the mostly-unformatted "Sandbox" template and minor tweaks to embedded videos and background images). I also get stats a/b my site free now (LJ charges). I was able to copy my entire blog and be fully operational in <24 hours! I can now log on via Firefox/Linux w/o the empty-comment kludge. The site plays nicer w/"Noscript" - does not require allowing any third-party javascript sites to be allowed!! The only sites I had to add/allow were "wordpress.com" and "wp.com".
Another really cool thing was I was able to "import" ALL of my previous LJ posts & comments in one fell swoop using their tool (free), maintaining the posting dates and the continuity of this blog!!! They also allow you to store images there free too (LJ charges) so now I can have images there w/o necessarily having to clutter my Flickr. LJ has been fun, but it really literally seems to be dying. It was completely off the grid w/o warning for over 24 hours this week prompting me to scramble for a new host since I was afraid they had just pulled the plug. I didn't panic b/c I have all my posts for the last 2+ years stored as HTML files locally! :) I briefly contemplated writing a simple Perl/CGI script to handle basic blogging/comments using my ISP's server, but Wordpress looks like it'll meet all my blogging needs for now. Wordpress does force you to use one of their CSS templates and charges for full CSS and non-trivial template customization, but the Sandbox template they provide includes everything i really need (LJ's the same way, so nothing lost there). It took me awhile to find that one though - most of their other free ones made the screen too narrow and put too much crap around my stuff. Sandbox is the closest thing (flexibility-wise) I found to LJ's S1 Default layout (template) which always worked well for me.
I looked at a few others (blogspot, blog.com, tumbler, etc.) but none of them was what I was looking for. blogspot=google=must have a google acct=allow all google's tracking sites, snooping, web-bugs, virii, javascript=NON-STARTER!!!; blog.com=limited HTML/CSS,etc in free accts; tumbler=registration required for comments, just not quite a full blogging site, others=various limitations, registration required for comments, etc.