This is good for me.

At least, I hope it is.

I can’t be too sure of anything anymore. I went from being confident in myself to learning too much and now I don’t know what I can really be sure of. It’s tough, but at least I’m not lying to myself like so much of the world. Seriously, do people actually believe all of the bullshit that they say? And that they hear other people say? I don’t know how you can take one person’s word over another anymore.

And that goes for the “highly educated” people, too. I mean, look at Michael Jackson’s doctors. At least one of them was found guilty of feeding him drugs. You can’t tell me that didn’t have ANYthing to do with money. Money was probably the biggest factor in it. He got rich prescribing drugs for MJ who then goes crazy and dies of an overdose. Poor bastard.

So we can’t even trust doctors, it seems. Sure there are some good ones out there, like your family physician. I don’t disbelieve you when you tell me he’s a good man and he takes care of you. But what about the rest of the world? To whom will they entrust their health to? Certainly not someone like Conrad Murray. Or at least you hope not.

So where was I? Oh yes, I think this blog is actually good for me. If I can get over the idea of having people read this. Even though it doesn’t seem like a lot of people do anyway, I just don’t want to embarrass myself like it seems I always do when I try something new. I just never really kept a diary (I tried repeatedly, but I couldn’t stay motivated to keep writing). I think this is the answer. The motivation I have is that the blog’s online and I don’t want my web presence to die out, so I keep writing… or tweeting… or sending pictures, etc. At least now I have a permanent home on the Internet.

I enjoy having my own website. Even if I didn’t build it from scratch. But I know how it works and I can maintain it myself. So there. And I’m not even halfway through my web design class. >-D

The future of my online self

This post is about what I want digitalRyan.com to become. Ryan keep left

I hadn’t quite thought about it to the fullest extent that I should (and probably never will), but I really ought to give some serious thinking time to what I want to accomplish with my own web domain.

Historically, I have wanted to host a website with the intention of showing off things that I found on the web. At the age of 11, I was designing HTML pages with Frontpage with all my Simpsons GIFs, WAV files, and writing Virtual Springfield walkthroughs… all for naught because I didn’t know how to register a domain much less get the content online. I resorted to very crappy Geocities sites which didn’t provide a fraction of as much creativity power that I possess now with all I’ve learned since then.

So now that I know how to publish a site with all the cool-looking widgets about my Twitter feed, Twitpics contributions, foursquare check-ins and badges, and blog posts… what next?

  • I want to detail the plans I have for my House of the Future (home automation with Aruduino, X10, and other electronics), so I suppose that’s a place to start.
  • I registered a Dozuki site on a subdomain to create online guides for God-knows-what, so I could work on authoring some sweet step-by-steps to show people how to do something.
  • I am passionate about a great many topics, some more controversial than others. I could start writing about those. Problem is, I don’t want to ostracize myself from certain social groups because of ideologies. It’s not that I’m ashamed. I just realize there is a time and place for all kinds of discussions and I don’t like being bombarded with people’s beliefs so I won’t do it to others.
  • I’m still in school – I’m using the back end of my site to practice in my web design class. CSS and XHTML is much easier to test when it’s live on a site and you can upload quickly via FTP.

So what to do? I guess I have all kinds of options. As Yogi Berra said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

Messin’ with Twitter and WordPress

I tried a plugin yesterday called Twitter Tools that didn’t work. Usually I’m not one to even mention things that displease me (a la W.R. Hearst [bah! I did it again!]), but I felt the need to vent on this. Apparently the developers just stopped supporting it and closed the forum topic to new posts. Nice.

I’m trying one today called WordTwit, and I’m hoping it will turn the tide. It would be fitting, then for this post to automatically feed to my Twitter account, so I know I can rely on the plugin for sure.

Here goes nothing! –> *hits publish with eyes closed*