Back to using WordPress.com

I’ve decided to switch back to using WordPress.com for a while, and domain forwarding to it. So, all the links and stuff should still work. Only problem in the switch over was that my tags and categories got messed up so I’ll have to spend an hour or two just going through all of them to fix them up.

For those that don’t know, wordpress.org is the open source website, where you can run the software yourself. WordPress.com is a commercial arm (they have to make money somehow) where you pay for certain services, and have a lot less freedom.

I decided to “downgrade” because there’s blatantly something wrong with my server. I don’t think it’s anything on my part, more on the part of my VPS providers (since their websites were down too). After weeks of slow loading, and database crashes, I’ve decided to just go self hosted for  a while.

The blog should be way faster now, and always work. Downside is it cost me £7 to have the domain forwarded. And I can no longer installed plugins, or themes. I can only use the ones WordPress.com offers. I can’t show ads the way I used to (only to first time visitors, on certain single pages/posts). I wasn’t making much money off them anyway, so it’s not a big loss. And I’m a little worried with putting my information in someone else’s business. I’m really hoping I’m not surrendering any copyrights to this data by putting it here (I’ve not read up enough yet).

Other than it being managed by someone else, I don’t see any up side to WP.com. I’ll be switching out as soon as I get a better server.

Could be the DNS playing catch up still, but it doesn’t look like I can use my OpenID any more…

Where did I get this reputation from?

Google seems to think that my blog is porn centric...

Was just checking today’s search results that found their way to my blog and find these…

Where did I get this reputation from?

Google seems to think that my blog is porn centric...

Was just checking today’s search results that found their way to my blog and find these…

Serendipity

To the person who keeps getting to my blog by searching for “shamess the elf.wordpress”, bookmark my blog! Gosh. It’d be quicker than searching for me every time.

And "anal porno", wtf? How did you even managed to find my blog searching for that.

There's a down point to SEO

I allow search engines in my robots.txt and immediately get flooded with spam. Thank gosh for Akismet, eh?

Fair use is totally an excuse to break the law

You may notice that I’m putting a load of course stuff online. This may take a while. I should have done this back within the first week and just kept up with it, but I guess I didn’t and now I’m paying for it.

On the other hand though, it kinda means that every scrap of information that has been taught to us within DMU will be put online… I feel like I’m divuldging trade secrets which may well be illegal… I mean, why go to DMU – or university at all – if you can just come here and look at the material, right? So I’m going to avoid posting actual links to presentations and stuff, and just summerise it in my own words, which I’m fairly sure doesn’t evoke any copyright stuff.

And if it does, I’ll plee educational use, which is covered under fair use. S’all good.

I didn’t know that my systems analysis stuff had to be submitted on- as well as offline. I’m hoping she’ll still accept and mark it without me getting in trouble with due dates and stuff. To be fair, I submitted it by hand weeks before it had to be, that must count for something. She’s knows I did the work on time.

I got 1% chance of plagorism though, which is awesome. Most people get around 30%, apparently. I’ve always prided myself on having my own writing style – even if it is too informal sometimes. When people assume that I’ll steal someone elses work I’m kinda offended because… well, I’m the only person that can ever write like me.

Anyway, computer technology lecture two.

Oh, almost forgot. These computers have CS Flash on them! I’m totally going to learn it some time.

A clear outlook

I only have one exam left now, which is one that I’m expecting to be hugely easy so I’m not at all worried about it. Getting an A in it would be awesome though… It’d definitely help me out with UCAS points, since I’m really worried about those at the moment. Looking at my AS results, I really don’t feel like I can get what I need for Brighton – which is a near impossibility – I might just scrape DMU, which is a sucky thing to say since I slated them for giving me a really low offer… I guess the main lesson I’ve learnt with A Level is that even if you think they’re likely to be easy, you still have to put in the effort. Kinda like even if you’re a level 42 hunter, if you take on six level 30 you’ll probably get beaten.

I’m not at all worried about getting into university though. The way I see it is that I’m likely to get into DMU. If I miss that, it really won’t be by much, in which case I can fight my way through clearing. If all fails miserably, I’ve still got all of next year to reapply. I can even resit an A Level unit or two if I really have to, not getting into university won’t push my timetable back at all.

The problem of this being my last exam though is that I’m actually unemployed once it’s over. Dad’s nagging me that my child support money will stop in September so I’ll have to get a job to pay him the money he’s losing out on. What I think he meant though was that I needed to get a job in order to pay him board money. Which is really a dumb thing to say, since I’m hoping to have moved out of this house long before September anyway. I just have to start looking for a job now; I’m not really sure where to start though. I’ll make an appointment at the Job Centre tomorrow, I guess.

Meanwhile though, I’ve bought shamess.info and I’m using part of that to advertise freelance, hosting and SEO services I can start offering. That’s something I wanted to do before, but never really had time in between World of Warcraft and college. Now it’s just World of Warcraft I can start focusing on that full time, till I get a job, then I can focus on it full time.

Side note: I’ll start to move this blog over to shamess.info too soon (probably tonight) so things may get a bit confusing, since I’ve never migrated a WordPress blog before. I figure I won’t touch the files, and just change the ServerName. Hopefully, most people won’t even notice the URL change, if I set it up right.

Oh, also, I’m going to start updating DebianTips again. It still gets okay traffic for a neglected blog. I need to touch up some of the older posts with stuff I’ve learnt new though, before I start doing more stuff.

Google's stalking me

I’ve been intentionally avoiding linking to this blog on other sites (and if I have, I’ve made sure that Google can’t see the link), but still they found me! I guess when you ping Google’s blog service it actually does listen and comes to check out your blog. Who’da guessed, eh?

It’d be very interesting to see if I get any hits from people searching for legal help and stuff, and they found my revision. Heh.

Update: I took this screen shot a few minutes after I posted this entery. That’s pretty damn fast.

My revision

I used to pester LiveJournal with my revision, but I decided I’ll just keep personal stuff to LJ and my revision stuff here. Plus, it’ll be nice to try out the commercial version of WordPress since I’ve always just hosted my own. Maybe I’ll stop being lazy one day and export all these entries to my own hosted version (if they let me take my data…).

I stopped being lazy.