It’s been a long time since we’ve posted and a lot has happened and changed. We’ll get around to most of the details in future posts, but for now I would like to introduce our newest family member, “Blue”.
Blue is an Australian Shepherd pup and was born August 20th. He’s got quite a bit of energy and likes to keep our family on our toes. We got him from Jennifer Stagg, a wonderful breeder in the midwest with Integrity Aussies. He comes from champion bloodlines and his full name is “Integrity’s Blue Streak”, in part from his heritage and his blue merle color. However we just call him “Blue”. Blue has his own photo gallery which will be growing as we add more pictures. Welcome Blue!!
A couple of weeks ago our host made some changes to our website that left our entire blogging platform completely disabled. They lowered the permissions on some file settings to prevent unauthorized access (read: hacking) into our site as well as other sites on the shared server. I can’t disagree with this move; in the end it is a necessary inconvenience that adds an additional layer of protection but requires that I move blogging platforms and recode the vast majority of the site.
Until now I have happily relied on Movable Type as my blogging CMS of choice. MT provides all of the features I need; namely the ability to host multiple users with their own individual blogs on an easy-to-use platform with scalability and multiple plugins. On the down side, MT is written in Perl and is extremely resource intensive, taking a long time to do just about anything. When making a single blog post this isn’t so bad, but when making lots of template changes this can be very frustrating. A bigger issue is MT’s requirement to access files at CHMOD 777 permissions levels in order to generate content.
For those with an insatiable curiosity, CHMOD stands for “change mode”. The three numbers stand for “Owner,” “Group,” and “Everyone” in a UNIX file permissions hierarchy as to who can read, write and execute files on your site. 777 is the highest level of permissions, allowing global file permissions access and considered to be a security risk. MT requires 777 on many files and folders.
My search for a new blogging platform didn’t take long, as I had already been considering WordPress when I last refreshed the site. WordPress is a great blogging CMS that is easy to use, creates dynamic content using PHP and therefore fast, has a ton of available plugins, is extremely popular and well supported, and doesn’t require 777 perms. It’s not without its imperfections, however. It is designed exclusively for the single blog environment, an issue that doesn’t bode well for a multi-user family website. Sure, you can argue the availability of WordPress MU (Multi-User), but MU is a hacked-up hybrid of WP that isn’t easily installed and doesn’t provide all of the plugins written for regular WP which make it so attractive in the first place.
So what to do? Well, I have chosen to go the vanilla WP route and add additional authors to the single blog while creating some of my own widgets and hacking some of the templates to create a multi-user envirnoment. Since a large portion of the site will need to be rewritten, this will take several weeks. We appreciate your patience during the process.
Let me tell you a bit about what is going on with my family…
Mommy is so excited that she is out of school. Her last day was Wednesday. This summer Mommy and I will have our own school. She is reading me a book called Little House in the Big Woods about a girl named Laura.
Abba is fourteen months old. That means she is one year and two months old. She is walking and walking and walking all over. Friday was Abby’s last day at Ms. Debby’s house for daycare. She will stay home with us this summer.
Daddy is getting ready to go to work right now. We love him and tomorrow is Father’s Day, so we will do lots of things for him like say “Happy Father’s Day!”
Friday was my last day of school too. I will miss my teachers and I will miss the kids at school. This summer I will make my own school with Mom. I will learn math, reading, handwriting and other stuff. We will go on field trips and have water days.
Living in a condo keeps you from doing a lot of environmentally friendly things you might do if you lived in a house. One of those things is composting. Lately, I have learned about composting that I can do here, even though I am in a living space without a yard. I will soon begin to compost my kitchen scraps by vermicomposting. Vermicomposting is a large, unsightly word that describes the method of breaking down organic matter into dirt using worms. It is well-suited to small spaces where it may not be possible to have a typical compost bin.
While it is possible to vermicompost using buckets or totes, I am planning on buying a worm factory. A worm factory is a nifty contraption that allows the worms to move upward as they create “black gold” soil (see “continuous vertical flow” here). I am hoping to cut our trash down to a minimum and feed the worms! The worms run around $25 for a pound of red wigglers, which I am told is the best composting variety. I’m going to spend the next week shopping around before I buy, and I will post what I purchase and where in Post 2.
Happy Composting!
Yesterday, my big sister Ari graduated from Pre-K! Mom and Dad picked me up and we went to her school to see it all. Ari looked so happy! All of the kids sang songs and named the letters of the alphabet and her teacher, Mrs. Tracey, read poems.
Grandma came to see us and Daddy brought Ari beautiful flowers! Afterwards, Grandma took us out to eat dinner and Ari went to Grandma’s house for the weekend. I’m so proud of my big sister!
