Woes of Self-Hosting

You don’t realize how good you have it at WordPress.com until you start to self-host your own blot. All week I have been having issues with spam, the site going down, HTML errors, incompatible plugins, reCaptcha API key link issues and so on. I sort of expected most of those issues. But nothing prepared me for the issue that just transpired after my most recent post. My Feedburner RSS Feed stopped working!

I have been a Feedburner booster for years. I even suggested it to somebody recently. I love the ability to jump between hosting services and not have my jump affect my subscribers because the feed stays the same. It has been a valuable and always-reliable service. So I was shocked when it stopped working because of a meta tag!

At first I thought something happened to my site again (as it has happened throughout the week), but Feed Validator showed that my sites feed was a valid RSS. So if everything is fine on my side of things why is Feedburner going kaput? My other Feedburner RSS feeds seem fine (which is good otherwise the podcast would be screwed too!), so why is this one having issues?!

I couldn’t figure it out so I decided to resolve the issue “Julio From NY” style (my highschool buddy, Yomar would get a kick out of this). I nuked the feed and recreated it. It seems fine now. Both my original feed and the “new” Feedburner feed is up and running again.

How this will affect my current readership, I have no idea since the RSS feed is exactly the same as the original (well actually it’s spelled in all lowercase this time around instead of a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters). According to the stats I now have 0 subscribers, but once I post this entry I don’t see why my “original subscribers” won’t receive it as well, since the URL is essentially the same. I guess we’ll find out together. Feel free to comment below whether or not this blog post got to you or not. I could use all the feedback I can get.

UPDATE:

After updating this post a bit, with the new RSS Feed, I got the same issue again but then after 10 minutes or so it righted itself out. I decided to experiment and change the RSS FEED back to it’s original form (http://feeds.feedburner.com/JulioFromNy) and it seems to be working fine now. I guess Feedburner was just having a hiccup at the moment in time and I should’ve just waited it out. I guess you live and learn.

Oh What To Do With Squidoo!

So my buddy and co-host of the Mundane Chatter Podcast, Yomar, kept talking my ear about this social networking too called Squidoo (Pronounced Squid-Dew) and finally I decided to give it a try. Yet another night taken away from my much valued tv watching!

Anyway the way the folks at Squidoo explain it this platform is:

The popular publishing platform and community that makes it easy for you to create “lenses” online. Lenses are pages, kind of like flyers or signposts or overview articles, that gather everything you know about your topic of interest–and snap it all into focus. Like the lens of a camera, your perspective on something. (You’re looking at a lens right now).

It’s a supersimple, fun and powerful way to share your interests, build your online identity and credibility, and connect with new readers and friends.

So basically you create a “lens” or page dedicated to an interest you may have and try to create a community gathering around it. I guess it’s kind of like a forum thread only with the look and feel of an interactive blog (if that makes any sense). I’m still trying to make sense out of it. All I know is that it took me a hell of a time completing one.

If anyone’s interested, feel free to check out my “lens” about my favorite sci-fi show of all time, Farscape. Here’s hoping to see you there.

Oh yeah, Yomar also made a Squidoo lens for our podcast if you want to check that out as well.

What Profession I would Have If I Didn’t Need Money

If I didn’t need money I’m sure I would be a professional student. I just love learning about new things. Just today I went to a demo or open house of the Institute of Audio Research to see what this place was about. As you already know (if you aren’t sick of me still saying it), I currently do my own little podcast. I’ve been fascinated with this new hobby of mine ever since I started listening to podcasts back in 2006. Prior to this I was always into music and wondering about how a song was made.

With this new idea in my head of really wanting to understand the science of sound I decided to check out this school and see if it’s a possible new professional direction I might want to take. I definitely left the place looking forward to my own one-on-one tour later this week and breaking down the financials and see if it’s possible for me to undertake this new line of study.

That along with the Long Ridge Writers Group course I re-enrolled and it’s not hard to imagine that if it were such a career, I would be a professional student.

Another Crazy Week, More Fun To Be Had

Last week I had an interview with Tekserve, “New York’s premiere authorized Apple Reseller and Service provider”. They were the Apple store in New York City before Apple opened up their own flagship stores. They’re a great company and I even got my current MacBook Pro from them. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the job. But as they say, when one door closes another window opens. That same night I was told of another job opportunity and hopefully that will yield better results.

Before I got my email regarding my job application rejection, I was of course recording another episode of “The Mundane Chatter Podcast” (available here) and spending most of that night editing it and getting the show ready to post. The following day, Thursday, I noticed that I was having RSS feed validation issues and spent most of that day tinkering with it and finally figured out the solution. If that wasn’t enough to keep me away from blogging this week, yesterday was the beginning of the annual Keith and The Girl Standup and meetup events (which I won a SuperPass for. Yay me!).

Every year on April 15, fans of this well-known podcast meet up around the birthday of the host, Keith Malley, and witness his once a year stand-up performance. He’s had 7 consecutive performances thus far (they’re recorded as albums which you can get at their online store).  Circling this night are other events that are set up to keep these fans entertained throughout the week. Last night was Karaoke night. I’ve never done Karaoke before and I attempted and mumbled through “A Blister in the Sun” by the Violent Femmes. It was a hell of a blast.

Tonight is of course Keith Malley’s standup which I’m eagerly awaiting as I type up this entry. Saturday will be a rendition of Matchgame and Sunday caps of this year of events with the first ever Roast of Keith and the Girl. It’s going to be a hell of a weekend of events. But I couldn’t let this stop me from getting at least one more blog entry up this week for you guys.

I also promise to get another article done this weekend for the ezine I’m working on, for the next issue. If you haven’t subscribed to it yet you can do so at the KingDeems’s NoF Portal blog. Anyway, let me go get ready for tonight’s event!

New podcast episode is up

Just finished posting a new episode of the “Mundane Chatter Podcast“. This time Claudia is taking care of co-hosting duties.  Give it a listen and let me know what you think 🙂