Categories
life meta technology

Old Goals, New Goals

I have made a goal ever six months for the last couple of years to review every talk from general conference before the next general conference. I have to make the goal anew each conference because each time I fail – until now. Thanks to my introduction to ScriptureCast I reviewed the final talk from the October 2007 conference this morning. ScriptureCast allows you to create custom podcasts from the scriptures (and the last conference or two) where you set the starting point and completion date and it generates a podcast for you. They don’t have the Bible but I hope they are working to add it – though I have no information about whether they are or not. it’s nice to finally meet that goal – just in time to start over again (as soon as this week’s conference gets added).

I have been trying, with pretty good success, to be consistent at writing here. I had hope of ensuring that my blog would be consistent enough to hold the interest of those who read it, and attract responses to continue refining my thinking. At one point I had an average of more than 2 comments for every post on the blog. That may not sound like much to some people, but considering the large number of posts from when I started the blog where there was nobody to respond I felt pretty good about that. Then I went through and added something above 100 posts from my earlier blogging and the comment count was again well below the 2:1 ratio I had achieved – I’m almost back to that ration thanks to much feedback from a half a dozen regular readers.

I have recently recognized that I have been holding back somewhat because of that relatively arbitrary goal (the 2:1 comment ratio). I have avoided writing about things that don’t feel very current or likely to generate some interest. I have decided that being picky is not my strong suit and I would like to make more strides on another goal that I had made – to go through all the founding documents (especially the Federalist Papers). I have decided to push for two posts per day until I achieve that goal – one covering Federalist papers, and another like what I have been posting regularly (that way I won’t put off studying one of the Federalist papers just because I saw something interesting to write. Hopefully that study will make my other writing and thinking deeper and more grounded in principle.

Wish me luck.

Categories
Local meta politics State

Party Shenanigans

I would think that people who are politically involved enough to be elected as delegates and precinct chairs for the Republican party would want to be contacted by candidates so that they could choose who they would support. That is at odds with the assertion that the Utah County Republican Party promised not to give the emails of their delegates to the candidates. The water becomes extra murkey in light of the fact that there is evidence that some candidates do appear to have those email addresses. Kip Meacham has links about this as it develops plus his own experience as a precinct chair. The story is also being followed at Out of Context. This is definitely a case where people need to keep the issue in the public eye and put pressure on the party to not interfere with a fair political process – if some candidates have the email addresses then they should be released to all Republican candidates.

If delegates do not want to hear from candidates then they should not accept the position of being delegates – but I don’t think that’s what is happening here. If candidates want to try spamming the delegates to win the primary then I think the delegates are smart enough to vote against those candidates at the convention – but I don’t think that’s what’s really happening here either. Maybe it’s my own personal bias here, but this seems like exactly the type of thing I would expect from a party that has no significant opposition (meaning another solid party to counter them) which has grown accustomed to simply dictating who will come before the citizens on the ballot for their perfunctory approval.

I sure hope to see the Utah County Democrats grow to the point that they can regularly get their candidates elected – forcing the county Republican party to stop talking and start listening. We also need to see more active Republicans like Kip who will stand up to their party and say publicly that this is unacceptable.

Categories
life meta technology

Unseen Rhythm

For some time I have been wishing that my posts from my earlier blogs could be included in my archives here. There were some specific posts that I felt should be included so that I could refer back to them as appropriate. I finally went and added those old posts on Monday from archives I saved before I pulled my blog. I had been forced to pull it because of excessive spam which brought the server to its knees (which is obviously unacceptable on a shared server). Thankfully WordPress is not as vulnerable to the spam attacks I suffered back then with b2Evolution (and I would not be surprised to learn that my new host – HostMonster – has better defenses than my old host).

Yesterday I found one final post that was not included in the other archives. This was the last post on my old site and it explained why I was pulling the blog. What I found very interesting is that the date on that final post was December 17, 2005 – exactly 2 years prior to the day I restored those old posts.

I wonder if there’s something about December 17th that I should be wary of. 😉

Categories
life meta

One More Dimension

As I search for things to write here I always hope to convey a perspective that is broad enough to invite discussion. One of my major goals in writing is to receive feedback on my positions and ideas that will help me to refine my positions and my thinking process. Of course I strive to create a profile of myself here that is consistent with my own values. Part of that has been that I try to put away most thoughts that are primarily political in nature on Sundays so that I may focus y attentions on more spiritual/religious/family oriented topics. This has often put me in a bind because I don’t want to dilute the focus of my writings. That is why the day of the week most likely to not have anything written is Sunday.

When I do write on Sundays it has generally been generic in nature and not specific to my own Latter-day Saint background. Today I read the commencement address given by Elder M. Russell Ballard at Brigham Young University – Hawaii. He invites the graduates, and all church members, to make their voices heard in the many discussions about the church that are taking place online.

There are conversations going on about the Church constantly. Those conversations will continue whether or not we choose to participate in them. But we cannot stand on the sidelines while others, including our critics, attempt to define what the Church teaches. While some conversations have audiences in the thousands or even millions, most are much, much smaller.  But all conversations have an impact on those who participate in them. Perceptions of the Church are established one conversation at a time.

As I read that I realized that my efforts to keep my writing more broadly appealing had resulted in me stunting my voice online by whitewashing a key component of my perspective from the voice I have projected. Many (possibly all) of my readers are aware of my firm convictions of the Book of Mormon and the LDS church but I have decided that leaving that part of my character and life in the background projects an incomplete perspective on what I am thinking which denies people the opportunity to comment on whatever part of my thinking is based on my theological perspective.

I have no intention of turning this into a Mormon blog about politics but I expect that my LDS perspective will be more transparent and might be altogether naked in Sunday posts that are non-political in nature. It also means that I will be more likely to comment on religiously themed posts that I read elsewhere which I have sometimes avoided rather than “dilute my focus” online.

Categories
meta politics

Issues To Vote On

While casting about for something to write today I began thinking about what issues are important to me. There are many political subjects I am interested in, but not always new material to write about. Sometimes there is discussion worth following that I don’t feel I have anything to add (like the current warm-fuzzies coming from the “let’s move on from referendum 1” discussion). Other times the news is truly dead or full of things I have no interest in. At those times I have subjects that I am interested in, but I am looking to discuss the issues and not just pontificate in a vacuum. The question is, what should I discuss that other people are interested in?

The answer seemed obvious – ask.

If I were talking about what modifications to our primary election system who would be interested? What if I were talking about the value of term limits for elected officials?

Based on past experience there seems to be some interest in those subjects, but I would like to hear whether others think those are worth discussing and would be interested in participating in such a discussion. Please let me know which of these would interest you – “both” and “neither”
are perfectly valid answers.

Categories
life meta

Another New Feature

I got a new plugin called In Series today. There have been a few times when I have written a series of posts that should be linked together. In the past I have tried to tie things together by referencing previous posts in the series, or by manipulating the tags so that the other posts in the series dominated the list of related posts. Neither of these methods is completely satisfactory because I prefer to avoid the “(here, here, and here)” links (not my style) and it’s hard to work in references to all the old posts if a series gets long – like my candidate endorsements series. Manipulating the related posts list only works for a series of less than 8 posts and it skews my tagging so that it is not truly representative.

After installing the new plugin I went back through my posts and added posts to various series’ as appropriate. I learned something interesting about my voucher posting, all my voucher posts have been in the last six weeks and I have written 15 times on the issue. Also, as I have read the news I have discovered that I am no longer interested in writing about vouchers ever since I came to my final decision. Like some other people I am ready to put this referendum behind us so that we can move forward on something better than HB148 and HB174.

Categories
meta

Hibernation

I saw an article on Slashdot about a trojan being posted to blogger blogs from spam bots using the blogger post by email function. I thought it would be a good idea to make sure that my post by email was not turned on lest I become part of the problem. It was on, but it’s off now.

While I was here I decided to lock this down against any other malicious use as much as possible. I have turned on every form of comment moderation, image verification etc. that I can and I will begin turning off comments on all my old posts. I have transferred everything to my new site at davidjmiller.org which has been retitled “Pursuit of Liberty” and which I have been using longer than I ever used this blog.

Now I just wish that blogger had a function to turn off all comments on posts older than {specify timeframe}.

Categories
meta technology

Archive Menu

I have created a new theme for my site (more like what I was unable to create before) which should render correctly in any browser. I know that the old theme was quirky in Internet Explorer. As part of creating this new theme I had to make a new plugin for WordPress. It’s called Archive Menu and it displays the archives as a two layer list of years and months. I took most of the code from Compact Archive by Rob Marsh (http://rmarsh.com/plugins/compact-archives/). I loved that plugin in my last theme, but it displayed in a very abbreviated format which would not work for the menu I was trying to create. This plugin displays the menus more like the standard monthly archive function of WordPress broken up in to years.

Once I have fully polished my theme I will release the code I used to implement the Archive Menu but I want to make the plugin available before then. Download the plugin here.

Categories
meta

One Year

Today marks one year since I started this blog. Considering that I had done significant blogging in the three years before that you would have thought it would be stable, but I have been through 2 blogging platforms, 3 name changes, and a variety of styles. In that year this blog has had:

  • 311 posts
  • 360 comments
  • 1355 spam comments caught

That’s an average of 6 posts per week. I’m hoping for one per day in the future. I don’t anticipate any name changes or platform changes in the future, but I am working on making a new style that will not have the major bugs with Internet Explorer that this one has. Hopefully it will have all the functionality of my current style when I get it up but I expect it to have a nicer layout and improved navigation. I look forward to an even better second year than this first year was.

Categories
meta

Stable Title

Feeling that “No Working Title” was a disservice to my blog I implemented “Cause of Liberty” for a short period of time. I wasn’t totally satisfied with that and while playing around with words and fielding suggestions, I came to “Pursuing Liberty” and “Pursuit of Liberty.” Based on feedback from my best adviser (Laura) I went with “Pursuit of Liberty.” After letting it stew at the top of my blog for a while I have decided to keep it.