Today, I’m moving a few blogs to a new host, consolidating them into one place. I’ve been meaning to do this for about a year now, but I kept putting it off because something almost always goes wrong, and it winds up taking me 10 times longer than it should.

And this project, now that I’ve started, doesn’t seem to be much different from any of the other times I’ve had to do this. There have been server database connection errors, slow internet connections, DNS service problems, and a general grrr-ness to it all.

But, I’m getting there.

And, best of all, this move will save us about $300 this year (which should pay for most of one of the plane tickets for next year’s trip to New York.)

This month’s theme on National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo) is “Maybe”. I tried doing this daily-blogging-for-a-whole-month business once before in October 2009, but I gave up after a week. And like most NaBloPoMo themes since then, I wasn’t planning on participating in this one either.

But I’ve reconsidered because I’m attempting to do some of the same things that I have yet to see to the end, and this month’s NaBloPoMo theme fits in with my goals for the next 31 days.

So, today, I start (re-start) some big projects. With some motivation from some of my closest friends, and my lovely Cindy, I’ll be working this month towards writing 50,000 words of one of the stories I’ve been kicking around in my head.

I’ll also be making conscious efforts to write a daily blog post, eat healthier and exercise more.

And maybe, just maybe, this month, I’ll actually do it.

Not to fret. I’m moving hosts, and obviously I need to take some time later and fix everything, but things will be back to normal shortly.

Last month, Todd and I ran across this article (via Consumerist) about how Charlie Munger, the Vice-Chairman of Warren Buffett’s investment company Berkshire Hathaway, used to set aside one hour each day to work on personal side-projects for himself. I like this idea for a couple of reasons:

1. One hour is about all the time I can spend on a project right now.
2. It’s such a small amount of time that the pressure of producing something “epic” is kept at bay.

Over time, these little actions will yield big results. It’s not a new idea, I know. But it’s easy for me to get caught up in a mental gumption trap, believing that I shouldn’t or can’t start something right now because I don’t have the time to give it the attention I feel it deserves or needs. Of course, that is complete and utter bullshit.

Over the past week, I’ve been trying to keep this in mind, working on various side projects I’ve intended to get around to someday. Not surprisingly, at the end of each hour, it’s satisfying to have been able to work on something that’s been sitting around in my head for weeks, months, and years.

After doing this for just one week, a couple of things become obvious:

• I still watch too much television.
• I don’t get enough sleep.

And these two things greatly influence how well I do other things throughout the day. I need to fix that.

As the article asks

“…if you aren’t satisfied with your current situation, why not work for yourself an hour each day? Instead of just idle dreaming, set aside specific time for action. Perhaps the key is small chunks of time, but at regular intervals.”

How very Kaizen. How very Bird by Bird.

At the end of the month, I’ll have a better idea of which projects I’m actually enjoying spending time on, and which ones I’m better off ditching.

For my three readers that stop by on a quasi-semi-regular basis, you’re probably stunned to see a new post here. It’s nice to be surprised every once in a while, isn’t it?

The thing is that writing has been on my mind lately, and I’ve been pondering and cobbling together bits of a story that will eventually become a full-fledged novel. I haven’t written fiction in a long time, and I’m mentally stiff and creatively out of shape. What I wrote this weekend took way more effort than I expected. It was the creative equivalent of trying to eat a candy apple.

They say the more you write, the better you get, but I wouldn’t know because I’m always restarting from square one. One of the reasons I started a blog was so I would stay in the practice of writing something — anything — no matter how little, on a regular basis. Even if I wasn’t working on anything else, I could mentally shadow box here. Obviously, I made the mistake of neglecting this space. Then again, maybe I needed to be away from it for while, so I could miss it, and get to that point where I wanted to be back here, you know.

Well, for better or worse, I’m back.

So, most of the people in my Inner Circle know that a few years ago, Todd quit keeping a personal blog. Well, under threat of being forced to watch Richard Simmons’s 20th Anniversary Edition of Sweatin’ To The Oldies, he’s back on The Tubes. His blog is here.

Oh, yeah. He and his wife, Yuko, had a baby boy, Lio, on Saturday. (Yep, you read that right.) He doesn’t have a blog entry posted yet, but don’t let that stop you from going over and saying hi.

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Flock, Inc. The Social Web Browser!

Okay, I’m not really all that jazzed about Flock. I’ve tried it before and thought “meh”, but it’s been a while so I thought I would give it another go. This is just a simple test post to see how well it works.

I usually use Ecto at the house (Mac), and ScribeFire on Firefox when I’m at work (PC), but I try to give other options a fair shake if they look promising.

If any of you out there use Flock, feel free to give me  a few tips on how to use it, or let me know some of the features you like.

This concludes the test of posting a blog entry with Flock.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: Flock, web, browser, Ecto, ScribeFire, Firefox, Mac

One of my favorite lines from Scrubs (and there are many) is something Dr. Cox said: “I’m fairly sure if they took all the porn off the internet, there’d only be one website left, and it’d be called “Bring back the porn!”

Well, guess what? They might not have taken all the porn off the internet, but there is a site called — and the following link is NOT safe for work, BTW — Bring Back the Porn.

I think it’s funny that the prediction was made by a character named Dr. Cox.

Also…in other porn-related news…

I saw this entry on Gizmodo and wanted to see what my site was rated. As Gizmodo entry points out, the rating tool (obviously “for entertainment purposes only”) “rates blogs by searching for keywords in your front page content.”

So, I put my URL in and here’s what Numskullery is rated.

Not bad, I guess. But, then I put in the URL for Bring Back the Porn.

Ha!

I’ve been moving our sites over to Dreamhost because they have such a damn good deal on hosting that I really couldn’t see why I shouldn’t. They offer lots of space with weekly increases, and unlimited domain hosting, which is enough space for me to work on any project at any time.

My new hosting space also came with a free domain, and I chose fuckablerobots.com. It seemed like a good idea at the time. The thing is, now that I have it, what do I do with it? I considered maybe using it for a political blog or for bashing religious fundenmentalists, which are, given the current state of affairs, two areas of lunacy too closely related for my taste. I can’t see that being fun for long, but I think it’d be nice to have people reference Fuckable Robots in “serious” political and religious “debates”.

Stumped about what to make of this domain, I started thinking, “How many fuckable robots are there anyway?” So, for now, Fuckable Robots will be used to list, uh, fuckable robots. I’ll probably only add two or three a week, but if you have any suggestions/nominations email them to suggestions-at-fuckablerobots-dot-com.

Just admit it, you’re probably thinking of a robot right now that you’d fuck.

By the way, in case you’re wondering where I got the name, watch this and all will be illuminated.