Yesterday, August 27th, 2009 was year one of the blogging experiment known as vansantos.com.  During the majority of the time I posted on a daily basis.  The months of July 2009 and August 2009 were slower than what I had previously established but that was due in part of a number of medical issues I faced.  I simply didn’t have the energy or focus to blog on a consistent period during that time.

Regardless of how much I may or may not have posted, I was very impressed – no, honored – to see 76,555 people came to read over 300,000 pages on the site during that time.  I never expected such numbers, and I didn’t really have a goal. I was simply tracking my thoughts and how they are changing over time.  I’m glad to see there are a number of people out there who share some of the interests that I do.

The three stories that obtained the most attention over the last year are:

Pixar, you’re a class act – Fills dying wish to see UP 3000 views (30K in page views)

Up To 15 UK Retal Chains Expected To Go Bankrupt (23K PV)

The Orb – Blue Room (Coco Da Bank Remix) (12.5K PV)

That is all well and nice for the story but what about me, what did I learn and how did I grown over this period of time?

Amazingly, I’ve found much I can depend on my friends and family. My sense of “go it alone” is somewhat past due to the understanding that I don’t to through life alone. OH, and friends do not have to next door to me… they can be in SC, NJ, UK or CA.

The medical issues I’ve had to live with made me understand that I am not the person I used to be… or even more… I may not even be aware of who I am today. What comes next in the process it to take what I don’t know and transform it into what I want to  know, what I want to believe in.

Finally, the last year has all pointed to the development of my next phase in life.  I have an idea, one I’ve played over in my mind consistently – such as finishing my masters – and than making a switch to a career and lifestyle that is more in tune with who I am and what I want the rest of my life to be like.  The plan is in motion and I will blog about it when the time is right.

The year of consistent blogging has a tool that focuses me in both the best times and the difficulty times. Based off of what I’ve experienced, what I’ve felt, those I’ve met and the lives I’ve had a chance to influence – both mind and others – there is no way I can stop now.

Thanks for going along on the ride with me.

I very well may have missed the news in the last few days, but I was surprised to see that Wordpress 2.8 was released by Wordpress.org. I knew the next version was on the way, I just didn’t know it was this soon.

So, why upgrade?

Having not yet moved through the upgrade process, wordpress 2.8 is said to:

• be faster due to scripting changes
• have theme installation process improvement
• include a widget interface redesign (good, as I felt the last version was subpar)

There are also a number (by number, I mean 180) new features included. Ones that really seem of interest to me are:

• Separate Comments into a separate postbox, from Discussion postbox, on the Edit Post screen
• Allow the dashboard widgets to be arranged in up to four columns
• Allow editing of all plugin files (Woo hoo!)
• Autosave post/page when pressing Control/Command+S
• Give login screen proper iPhone viewport

I’m interested to do the upgrade as the potential increase in speed/usability could be very beneficial, especially if the scripting cut down on processing power. More notes to come…

There seems to be a self-imposed sense of respect towards other writers within the blogging world; however, as bloggers we open ourselves up to a wide range of possibilities, including the possibility that others will lack respect. An e-friend of mine, Clementine @ Invincible Summers, recently had the misfortune of such an experience.

Jim Edwards, a writer for CBS Interactive’s bnet, recently penned a quick overview to Kim’s interview with a Pharma sales person and called her “insane”

Mr. Edwards is not offering an opinion but rather making a statement about Kim, a statement that he did not substantiate. Does that not sound like libel to you? (Slander being the spoken version)

Maybe the comment was meant to be sarcastic but if that was the case why would he title this comment “The Crap that sales reps have to put up with”? That, to me, is evidence Mr. Edwards is not employing sarcasm but rather making a statement bordering on a personal attack. Seeing the site Jim writes for is owned by CBS Interactive, I would like to know if that company also believes Kim is insane and how do they arrive at that conclusion?

Yes, we place ourselves in a position where the world can criticize our views, our beliefs and our experiences, which is fair, but when false and defamatory information is published – especially by a large media organization – the line of acceptability is crossed.

This behavior is unacceptable by any blogger, let alone large media organizations. Any and all credibility bnet ever had with me is now lost unless actions are taken on their part to correct the situation.

For the last week I had the strong desire to write (and write, and write) about depression and a number of things that I am going through. The posts range from introspection on who I am and where my life is going to the emotion and sensations I have been dealing with over the last few days. Each time I attempt to write, each time I sit down and put thought to paper (or Office) I simply cannot express myself properly.

The writing process starts relativity well. I begin to structure my post based on the main themes I want to touch on, I find the word that accurately describe the sensation I feel that then… it all falls apart. I cannot continue. I find my mind ends up being flooded by every single topic I want to express in regards to depression or anxiety. My structured post, the one I just established a solid framework for only moments earlier, quickly becomes an aimless mess of incomplete thoughts and disjointed views on my experience.

It almost looks like a really bad mental health MadLib.

What I find funny about my lack of ability to write about my current condition is that this is what I feel like in other aspects of my life.  I feel as if I have little to no ability to focus… I feel that my thoughts simply overwhelm me… I feel lost, adrift.  

I am not sure why this is taking place, and I have no clue as to how long it will last, but I am finding it very frustrating.

While I only started blogging once again in August, I’ve had a number of posts that I am very, very proud of. SixUntilMe did a year end round up and I thought, you know, that is a great idea.

Here are the posts I am most proud of – by month.

August – e*trade Bank – Think Long and hard before you use them

September – When did obesity become an epedemic?

October – America the beautiful

November (4) - It’s not about you, Thought experiment – Let’s say Gerald Celente is right, I will miss him, The “Right and Wrong” Paradox

December (3) - Thinking about the happiest time in my life, Why do we feel this way, I have a problem with this “reporting” from the AP

Thanks for joining me on this journey…

Time for another batch of potentially useful Wordpress plugins that are new to the community.  I am currently testing the following items, and have had no major issues thus far, but I cannot yet fully state they are 100% stable.

That out of the way, let’s get to it.

Phpinclude

If you are a PHP developer, I’m guessing you have had the urge to execute code in Wordpress at one point or another.  You can user an iFrame and call your PHP code but that can get a bit… well, it can be a pain to do so over and over.  While other plugins have attempted to execute PHP in the past, they never seemed to work properly – not that they were bad – they just never work right all of the time.  

Enter phpinclude.  

Thus far the plugin has performed flawlessly, and I may finally be able to successfully include PHP into the blog.

WP Post Styling 

This is a very interesting concept, one that I was interested in doing myself, but Joe Dolson got there before I did.  This plugin allows users to add custom styles to be applied to specific pages or posts.  Sweet idea and good execution.

Check them out, give them a try and thank the creators for their efforts.

A few weeks back, when the Psolenoid launched, I semi-wondered if there is any need for the trackback feature bloggers use.  The whole point was for blogs to cross-link to related posts, but somewhere along the way it because a method to spam individuals with information totally unrelated – usually linking back to something I wrote and someone stole! 

One intent of the trackback was to continue discussion on your posted topic, but that can be accomplished by having conversations in your comment section.  If one wanted, one could force anyone who wished to comment to do so by creating their own post and then trackback to the original. Yes, it would be a lot of effort on all parties involved but it would create an environment that would keep only dedicated individuals from being involved in the conversation.   

In the past I would use trackbacks are sources for other information, and at times, inspired me to blog about other topics.  With spam being such a large problem I really have a hard time seeing how the service is useful any longer.

Just thinking about loud once again…

Last week I wrote about a new service called Twitblogs – essentially a service for Microbloggers that allows posts longer than Twitters 140 character limit.

I had two issue with the service – 1) Why not simply blog, 2) The involvement a person who has what I would consider a questionable background.  

Roger, a member of the Twitblog team contacted me regarding my second point. Sam Sethi, the individual who I was concerned about, has no direct involvement in the technical aspects of the operation.  Furthemore, there is absolutely no password storage of any kind.

While I not sure I see the point of the service – if you want to write more than 140 characters, why don’t you simply blog – I do now feel better about giving TwitBlogs a try.  

I wanted to say thank you to Roger for reaching out to me to address my concerns.

Update: Blogherald wonders some of the same things I did as well…

Wordpress 2.7 has officially been in the wild for about 5 days now, and I have to say I LOVE IT. 

If you are wondering, “hey, should I upgrade”, here are some of the features now available:

• Whole new, AJAX based user interface – very sweet
• Quickpress
• Comment Threading (and replying to comments right from your dashboard)
• Sticky Posts 
• Built-in Upgrade Feature