I have been changing the theme of this blog a lot this week.

I’m trying to make it look good on phones and tablets, which meant ditching the sidebar.

I’m also trying to adhere to good accessibility practices. The structure of the pages is good. I ran it through a couple of checkers. I was displeased with the color of the links. While I like this theme, I think clickable links should either be a different color from the rest of the text, or be underlined, or both. Themes these days are so damned complicated – they are hard to modify.

But anyway, I made all the links on the blog underlined. I’ll probably change their color too.

There I did it.

I was fiddling with this blog the other day and deactivated Jetpack briefly. Jetpack is the plugin that runs the email notifications for new posts, and collects stats. I turned it off because I no longer wish to see stats.

Now Jetpack will not reconnect.

For a non-coder I’m pretty good at this stuff, but damned if I can get it to work.

Honestly, I probably should keep it removed. I don’t like them tracking my website through the plugin. They might…you know…discover all the secrets I’m publishing publicly here.

The ability to do a free email newsletter summery of a blog is BUILT IN to micro.blog . I have considered moving this whole blog to that system. Actually I’ve tried it, but the blog is approaching 1000 posts, and lots of images and files, and micro.blog choked on it. I think the formatting of the WordPress site is just slightly not friendly to MB. I will try it again.

Anyway, if you are reading this and would normally have gotten it via email, this is the reason. There are about 23 of you.

I’m likely going to just keep Jetpack uninstalled. I really only want the email list if I can still get it, but with only 23 people subscribed it might be easier to just to start over.

I really recommend you use an RSS app, like Reeder or NetNewsWire to keep up with this and other blogs.

The internet has become a mass of click-bait bullshit and other crud.

Have you noticed that? Do I need to make a list of the 10 different examples of how the internet sucks now?

I’m sure it is just nostalgia, but man, I feel it is too easy to publish stuff on the web and make it look slick now. Because now, making it look slick is what it’s all about.

That late Bill Hicks lamented that it seems that “shilling” for products, like Doritos, seems to be the highest aspiration of anyone these days. I agree with him, and reject that non-ethic of marketing evil.

So I’m working on a new site that is hand-coded in a text editor, uploaded by FTP, uses Server Side Includes to create the header and footer, has the absolute minimum formatting, and just looks really bare-bones.

This new site will be, of course, about skateboarding. It is to be a back-to-the-basics webpage about back-to-the-basics skating.

It will have no social media tie-in. No “like” buttons. It will have no advertising. It’s videos will not be available on youtube. They will be hosted on my server. (I do have a test youtube video in there right now, but it will be removed).

My only concession to the modern age will be the use of Google Analytics to track my site.

Can a non-linked site that doesn’t participate in social media, accepts no comments, and has only an email address for communication actually get an audience in the age of tumblr, twitter, and facebook? I have no idea. It’s an experiment.

The new site is theinsanelament.org. This is the only link I will ever up up for it, anywhere.