Reboot

The past couple of years have been pretty crazy and filled with big changes in my life. I’ve been reluctant to say very much about any of it other than to a few people, especially on social media, because, well, social media just seems like a hot mess these days, and I generally find that having a handful of people liking a few pretty pictures every now and then is about the highest and best use of those platforms, for me anyway. And, keeping in touch with a few people who I would not be in touch with otherwise.

I basically stopped blogging in 2016, right around the time I was starting to WANT to blog again. But, my timing wasn’t too great, since my urge to write about my first international travel and my first trip to Greenland coincided with the 2016 Election, and most of my friends, or at least people I would hope would read the blog, were busy completely losing their minds and freaking out about The End of Everything, etc. Looks like that isn’t stopping anytime soon, though… 

So, over the past few months, as I’ve become increasingly annoyed and disgusted by social media, I’ve been thinking about re-booting the blog and website, as an alternative way to be online with pictures and words. An alternative that isn’t completely subject to the whims of a couple of massive, Silicon Valley tech firms to make all the decisions about what will, and will not be seen, by who, and why. Of course, this will be an imperfect effort, and something like talking into a windstorm, but I’ll make the effort anyway. 

So here it is, the early stages of the reboot of the website and blog. Coinciding with a pretty major reboot of my whole life, really… more on that in subsequent posts.

What used to be a hand coded, Web 2.0 website that was kind of an “about me”, and the things I used to do, plus an old WordPress blog living in a subdomain, is now gone, and I just installed WordPress in the root directory and will create the new website and blog off of that. The old blog still lives in the same place, at http://blog.redalderranch.com. [ database problem is now fixed ] There are still a few articles there that I continue to share links to when people ask, mostly kitchen projects. The Incident Report from LW 2011 is still there, too, and continues to get a little interest from time to time.

The new blog will have pictures, of course, posts about travel, kitchen projects, hunting and fishing, projects on the land, both at home and up on the mountain, and probably even a little political stuff from time to time. And whatever else comes to mind. Might go weeks or months with nothing, and then there will be some flurry of activity, and then nothing again. And this time, I’m going to try not to stress out about it… lol.

If you’re in to this kind of thing, follow the blog. I’ll make sure and set up an easy way to subscribe to an RSS feed in the near future. And, of course, I’ll still put links to these posts on FB, too. 

More later…

Mark
Qaqortoq, Greenland

3 comments

  1. I miss this longer form of sharing writings/photos/etc. It somehow feels like this form invites more thoughtful responses. I am a fan of your photos and writing on social media- so hooray for another form. I find your facebook posts thought provoking (in a really good way – example; I now have a much more multi-layered appreciation of arguments against some of the current calls for gun control – where none existed before for me- thanks!) …. and your images leaving chimeras of lingering beauty… I love your cigar/pipe and nightcap series, as well as the nautical Norway imagery…. and as someone undergoing a major shift (also not shared on social media) – I look forward to learning about your successes in navigating you reboot.

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