The beginning of a new year seems like an appropriate time to get back to the blog. It’s been a month and a half since my last entry, but I’ve decided not to judge myself about that. It is what it is, and the fact that I haven’t been blogging is of no real consequence. Life has continued.

The truth of the matter is that I blog for myself. The fact that other people have commented on some of my posts and given me encouragement is a bonus. I can’t blog for other people, though. That kind of thinking sets me up for failure. If I try to make my blog into something that will please a certain type of person, or a certain group of people, then it’s not authentic. The blogging has to come from my true self, and if other people connect with that, then the blogging experience is enhanced for both writer and reader alike.

So, yes, it’s a brand new year. I’ve mentioned on both the Twit thing and the Face thing that I’m not into making New Year’s resolutions. It’s just not something I do. I feel it’s over-hyped and that it’s a thing that people do because it’s a thing that people do. (Sorta like Paris Hilton, who’s famous for being famous.) It’s kind of a collective mass-consciousness phenomenon, and it rarely turns out well, because people set the bar too high for themselves and ultimately fail in their attempts to make changes in their lives.

Okay, so, I’m a party pooper. (more…)

About a year and month ago, I posted a small gallery of photos on my blog (the old version of my blog… the one I had to delete because it got hacked… but I’m not bitter). I had taken some pictures at Lawrencetown Beach (here in Nova Scotia), and they’d turned out pretty well, especially considering that I’d been using a little HP Photosmart M437 that had no viewfinder. The LCD screen had been damnably hard to see in the bright sunlight, so I really wasn’t sure if I was getting the shots I wanted.

Thankfullly, most of them came out pretty well. Well enough that I felt inspired to post them on my blog. I received some nice comments from readers (including a photographer friend of mine, whom I deeply respect and whom I am interviewing for this blog’s Voices of Reason Project… no, the project is not forgotten… it is still in progress), and I got to thinking how nice it would be to get back into photography again. Time was, many years back, that I worked at the camera counter of a department store and learned quite a bit about photography from the experience. I took some fairly experimental pictures back in those days, and my Lawrencetown adventure stirred in me that old familiar longing to get out and start a-shootin’. (more…)

I’m not going to tell you all about my computer woes again. I’ve already done that once in the last incarnation of this blog, back when I reinstalled Windows XP after buying a used computer. Suffice it to say that my website/blog has been hacked twice now, and I’m concerned that it was malware on my Windows XP providing someone with my ftp password. What I’ve done has been rather drastic, but it’s been a long time coming. I’ve abandoned Windows XP and am now running Ubuntu 10.04.1 on my computer.

That’s the nutshell version. You probably don’t want to know the gory details.

Of course, this switch of operating systems is going to come with some growing pains. Some of the tools I’ll have to use now will be different from those to which I’ve become accustomed on Windows XP. For example, I’m typing this text in a program called TextRoom, which is similar in basic functionality to my beloved WriteMonkey, but lacks a metric ton of WriteMonkey’s features. I hope that maybe, someday, if I’m very, very good, Iztok will port WriteMonkey over to Linux and allow me the freedom to jump around my document (like a monkey) and quickly export my Markdown formatting to HTML or RTF.

In the meantime, I’ll use the Perl script provided by the Markdown site to convert my text files to HTML and paste the results into my blog posts. It sounds cumbersome, but it’s really only a few steps. Given all that, however, I’d still prefer WriteMonkey. But I’m done with Windows XP, so I’ll have to make do.

But all that’s just an aside, really. I little bit of “What I’ve Been Doing With My Week”. Other than training in the new job, that is.

I’m here to revisit the idea that I put forth in my last blog post: The Voices of Reason Project. (more…)

As often happens, I’ve gone more days than I intended without writing a blog post. This is not unexpected, but I still don’t really much like it when this happens.

It’s been a whirlwind of a summer. I’ve changed jobs twice in a matter of eight weeks, and there’s been a lot of family stuff going on. (This group I created on Facebook tells the tale.) So, yes, the blog, despite the revamp and reboot, has fallen to a lesser priority.

But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking about it. In fact, I’ve been thinking about it rather a lot. My redesign has come from some careful consideration of what’s important to me and what I really hope to achieve through blogging. Having my values spelled out graphically in my header is almost akin to having a contract with myself to actually use this piece of the web to promote the things I feel are important.

So, I’m embarking upon a new project. (more…)

Well, I guess the old blog has a new birthday.

I don’t mind, really. I like September 1st. It always speaks to me of the start of fall, and to me, fall has always been more of a beginning than New Year’s Day could ever hope to be. January 1st might begin a new calendar year, but it’s stuck in the middle of winter.

Fall, on the other hand, marks the start of school, the end of vacation, and harvest time. The air becomes cooler and crisper (though, unfortunately, we’re in the midst of a heat wave as I write this), the sun’s angle gives everything sharper edges, and there’s the smell of change in the air.

Call me crazy, but I like fall better than I like summer. I’m no fan of the heat (or humidity), and the cooler, crisper weather gives me energy I could never hope to drum up in the dog days of summer. The only real down side to fall is that it leads directly to winter, of which I’m not such a huge fan.

So it is with fresh starts and changes in mind that I write this, the first official post of the new, improved, streamlined, redesigned, and rebooted Faltarego.com. (more…)

Dear Readers:

As some of you know from my Twitter and Facebook updates, my site was recently hacked. This has proven to be a powerful pain in the ass, as my web hosting provider later informed me all my files had been compromised and my account needed to be reset.

This has now been done. All my files and databases have been removed, and all my account settings have been reset back to their defaults.

Because I had no proper backup, I am basically starting this site over from scratch. I do have all my earlier blog posts saved in text format, and I have copies of all the images I’ve used, so that is some comfort.

I also had a backup copy of the theme I designed, as you can see from this page.

I have more tweaking to do, but at least the site’s look is back. I’ll mull over what to do with all my older posts, but I’m going to start blogging anew over the next couple of days.

Thanks to all who’ve been reading this blog, and here’s to better days ahead.

Stay tuned.

All the best,

–Eric (aka Faltarego)