Trying To Feel Like I’m Accomplishing Something While Procrastinating

Georgia, Gas Station, July 22 2007
Georgia, Gas Station, July 22 2007

H.o.p. through the car window.

Light box enlargement

Love the above photo of H.o.p., the subtle color, and he was just so happy waving through the window at me.

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I am procrastinating wildly. This is how I procrastinate on getting some writing done, or while I’m thinking about what I’m doing with the writing I’m doing. Instead of moving on from rereading two novels of Philip K. Dick’s to rereading the Nag Hammandi texts, I make changes to the blog and went wild with plug-ins. Next I’ll be doing this to Marty’s music blog and H.o.p’s art blog (which he hasn’t updated in months). But first I’ve got to redo some png images for H.o.p.’s t-shirts (Marty has friends who want some) and I promised a niece I’d do up a t-shirt for her using one of her drawings.

Here are changes I made to the blog yesterday and today.

1.) Comments field. I added WP-Ajax-Edit-Comments Plugin. When one makes a comment it is now editable by the individual for a space of 15 minutes.

2.) Am now trying out Share This so sharing options are displayed at the bottom of posts for emailing etc. Who knows? Someone may one day stumble upon the site who wants to share an article at Digg or some other place. Reminding myself to make a donation for it.

3.) Am going to try to move from depending on categories to tags, implementing site search tags at the bottom of posts, using this. This will be difficult. My desk isn’t piled high with papers and books in this apartment only because lack of room compels me to stuff everything into drawers and bookcases. At our last place I had a big book case right beside the desk creating a kind of nook around the desk and so the way I organized things worked great there as I just made great piles of things on in the bookcase and on the floor behind my desk and next to the case, but it was all at least constrained by that space so though my piles would reach heights of several feet, they didn’t spread out. Here, I don’t have room for that. When I try to categorize/organize/file I get bogged down in multiplying options and eventually lose hope and stop. And if I do carry organization through then within a week or two whatever was organized is likely to be a jumble again. As both Marty and H.o.p. are the same way, our only salvation is that I at least like things to be neat and so organize to the extent that I put stuff away. Anyway, when I try to think about tags, as with categories, my brain goes ??????

May try out the Ultimate Tag Warrior Plug-in but I was reading it can bog a blog down.

4.) Changed the formatting of page titles with the Optimal Title Plug-in so the post title will be followed by the blog name instead of vice versa, which is supposed to be better for Google. Of course, one is supposed to keep post titles short and to the point and use lots of keywords and I tend to be pretty eclectic about things, post titles sometimes having seemingly nothing to do with the post and my posts may be all inferences rather than using appropriate keywords. In OTHER WORDS, not too infrequently what I feel I’m writing about is not ever directly mentioned in the blog.

5.) I am STUCK at trying to work with the permalinks. (This reminds me that I’m stuck with my current novel too, and makes me feel bad.) Looking finally at what’s happening in Google, I find not only am I a virtual nonpresence, stranded in the hinterland, the default WordPress way of doing permalinks is also really messing up the way Google does the indexing on this site and prioritizing. I want to move from the default way of doing permalinks to a pretty permalinks with the post name and ID. So I studied permalink structures last night and thought I found a nice foolproof one. But when I tried it, it didn’t work. Says input file specified. I don’t know if this is because my WordPress installation isn’t in the root directory but a sub. And if I do figure out what’s wrong then will I probably need to install a redirect for all my posts, won’t I? Agh. Do I really want to procrastinate this much?

6.) Made a robots.txt file to cut down on Googlebot finding duplications and further messing up indexing, but for some reason though it’s in the correct directory and done right (I’ve done robot texts before) though Google is finding it, it’s still returning a 404 page on it? I’m confused.

7.) Installed the SEO WordPress plug-in which further cuts down on duplications, optimizing google searches.

8.) Installed the Google Site Map Generator Plug-in (reminder to self, again, make donation) that I’m reluctant to try out until I get the permalink issue straightened out.

9.) Am going to try out another Alex King plug-in which automatically puts designated posts on an Articles page under their selected categories. But all posts that I’ve categorized have multiple categories and there should only be one category for this to work, so I don’t know if I’ll be keeping this.

A number of these ideas I found at Devlounge.

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Took a break while doing the plug-ins to watch Kung Fu Hustle, directed by Stephen Chow. I’m surprised by the reviews I’ve read thus far, as a number say things like “isn’t emotionally involving” or the characters aren’t fleshed out. OK, so I’m not a Kung Fu movie purist, but I’ve watched a number of them over the past several decades, and I loved this film, everything about it–plot, design, sets, costuming, pacing, acting, cinematography, editing. You name it, I loved it. When I wasn’t laughing, I was running out of the room and peeking around the door, scared a character I loved was about to be deep-sixed. And I loved all the characters except for the villains, and the villains were great villains that are completely loathsome. What wasn’t involving about these characters? Yes, it was a cartoon. But it was a wild and wonderful cartoon. How often is a movie funny enough that I’m up and on the end of the bed, jumping up and down on it, laughing my ass off? Not many. And Bruce! The Beast! He was THE villain and I even loved him! I was mad over Bruce the Beast! I was crazy about the Coolie and the Tailor and the Noodle Maker. I was crazy about the landlady and the landlord (Wah Yuen, played the Vampire in Mr. Vampire, another funny funny Kung Fu film). I was crazy about Sing, the lead, but no more so than those others mentioned. No, there wasn’t a lot of dialogue but it didn’t need a lot of dialogue, every scene drenched with story and character informing visual info. And the acting was insanely fine. So, I loved it. It was all candy, thousands and thousands of pounds of candy.


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5 responses to “Trying To Feel Like I’m Accomplishing Something While Procrastinating”

  1. Jennifer Avatar

    You don’t sleep do you?? Do you have a sleep plug-in? One that allows you to sleep while working?

  2. nina Avatar
    nina

    I really like that photo of Aaron. He looks so happy and at-ease. I think I was always a bit self-conscious as a child and certainly as an adult about getting my picture taken.

  3. Idyllopus Avatar

    He’s more than perfectly at ease with the camera, he loves it.

    I still would love to do a digital painting of you. You in context of some situation. Not isolated. Maybe at the museum?? Would you do it? I could come down sometime and take some photos of you? Still might be difficult to get something I could work with. I’m thinking of the time when, I think, I was there seeing the Kerouac scroll (that short-circuited trip) and you were the picture of naturalness walking the museum’s halls. I want THAT but it’ll be difficult circumventing your being ill at ease with the camera. If you agreed to it, I may have to do two shoots because I’d have to come home and examine the first to see what looked like it might likely work out.

  4. nina Avatar
    nina

    I was thinking later that it isn’t just that he loves the camera, it’s that he loves you and you are what is behind the camera so that it’s almost like he doesn’t see the camera, that what he sees is you.

    I’d like to have you do a digital painting of me. I think you’re right, that it might take more than once. I guess part of what is weird for me about photos of me is that I have an internal image of myself that somehow is almost never matched by photos. So it makes me wonder what do I really look like? I think I might feel less uncomfortable about a camera if enough photos were taken that I could just forget about it. Sure, let’s give it a try sometime. But if you make a painting and I turn out looking like Paris Hilton…

  5. Idyllopus Avatar

    Good!

    That’s true. H.o.p. is comfortable with me behind the camera. It can make a difference. I love taking photos of my nieces, for instance. But with one of them, there was one photo of her where all guise was dropped and she was looking at the camera with no screen in front of her, receptive rather than staging. I didn’t take that photo. I’d handed the camera to her sister and was standing beside her helping her take that particular photo.

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