Photos and comments

I just figured this out myself, so I thought I’d share for anyone else who might be wondering.

There are two ways to add a profile pic next to the comments you write here.

The first way is to sign up for a gravatar, which is nice because it works on any WordPress site as long as you use the same email address when you leave your comments.

The other way is to register on this blog and upload a pic to your profile.

Another blog change

After 8 years of using Movable Type software to power my blog, I’ve decided to switch to WordPress.

Most of you probably don’t know what that is or why you should care. I hope that it means a better blog for you, one where comments work better and where you can use Facebook or Twitter accounts to leave comments here if you want.

I took the opportunity afforded by this change to freshen the look of the site. It’s just a slightly modified version of the default WP template, but it looks good.

I liked MT, but it stopped growing in ways that are important to blog writers. What I like about WordPress are things like automated installation and the huge number of plugins available. MT seems to me a dying platform, and it didn’t make sense to stick with it anymore.

About comments — again

I was recently made aware of a problem with user registration. In short, people who wanted to create a “Movable Type” account (which I recommend), were unable to do so. This issue is now resolved.

So please — register and post as many comments as you’d like!

(P.S. You can also use your login from other services like Google or Yahoo, if you prefer)

When people look for “the weird guy,” they find me

Through the magic of referrer logs, one can find out what search terms or phrases people typed into a search engine to get to your website.

For the heck of it, I was looking at my logs for the past year and thought some of the entries were interesting or amusing. Here’s a small sampling of what’s on the list.

Continue reading “When people look for “the weird guy,” they find me”

Blame it on work, or the girls, or whatever

I know the pace of this blog has been a bit slow lately. There’s a couple of reasons for that. The first is that I now work a four-day week. On those four working days, I have far less free time. The second is Josie and the girls. Josie has been quite fussy the last few weeks, and the harness has undoubtedly exacerbated that to some degree. When she’s crying, she only calms when we hold her a certain way and rock her, and it can be exhausting on nights where she won’t go to sleep.

But thankfully we’ve also had some really nice peaceful times with Josie. I think we are getting better at caring for her.

Of course the other girls continue to be demanding, too, always wanting to be in action, especially with the recent spate of warm weather.

One way to take care of everyone is to go for walks in Ferguson, which tires out the girls, and lets Josie sleep on my chest in the baby carrier. We went to the library and Walgreen’s yesterday morning, for example, and ran into a friend on our way back home.

Right now all three girls are sleeping. I’m enjoying a bit of time to import some video of a family history interview I shot earlier this week during my furlough from the Post-Dispatch. The subject is Mr. Richter, who is the only living first cousin of my great-grandfather, Frank Becker. A couple days after our interview, he had an operation to remove some cancer. If you think of it, please pray for his recovery.

Comments are working again (hopefully)

Lately I’ve been feeling bummed. I had been writing a lot more on the weblog the last few months … but there were no comments.

So I posted the video of Jadzia. After a couple of days, still no comments.

I thought: “Sure, maybe people aren’t interested in what I’m writing. But how could anyone not respond to this awesome video?” I was puzzled and began to investigate.

Turns out that the problem started when I upgraded my blog software a couple months ago.

And it turns out that you all HAVE been writing comments … it’s just that my weblog classified all your comments as spam!

Thankfully I have been able to salvage all the comments made in the last two months. Unfortunately any comments you all posted between mid-April and mid-May were deleted automatically by the system. (feel free to go back and post more comments though!)

Anyway, order has been restored and comments now should work normally, so please post away!

Bolivia-ho!

Later today we’ll be off to Bolivia. We should arrive some time early Thursday morning in Santa Cruz. To follow our adventures while we’re there, visit our Bolivia weblog. A new, somewhat controversial president will be sworn in while we’re there, so who knows what might happen!

–Josh

It’s splittin’ time

Okay, here’s the deal… I started my Bolivia weblog several years ago to chronicle my adventures as I traveled to a new country and spent time with the woman who would later become my wife, Yoli. Over the years, that weblog has stayed fairly Bolivia-focused.

Recently, though, we’ve been putting a lot of our family news on the Bolivia weblog, and that’s been bothering me because stuff like our baby pictures is not particularly Bolivia-related. So I decided a while I ago that I wanted to create a separate weblog where we could write about our family news and what’s going on here in the Renaud apartmenthold.

It took me a while, but I have finally done it! You are now reading the “Renaud Family” weblog. All the entries related to Jadzia have been moved from the “Bolivia” weblog and placed here. We will continue to update this weblog to talk about what new stuff is going on here and what Jadzia is up to.

As for the Bolivia weblog, it is not dead. We are planning another trip to Bolivia that will take place in January 2006. We will chronicle that trip on the Bolivia weblog. We will also write from time to time about things going in bolivia with our friends there as well as the political situation (there are important elections scheduled for the end of this year, for instance).

So, to sum up. The Renauds now have 2 weblogs: A FAMILY weblog and a BOLIVIA weblog. We hope you’ll keep reading them both!