category archive: meta

WARNING: “The following post contains graphic violence, strong language, nudity, and adult situations.”

Not this post you’re reading, but the next one. The post after this one. It may not be there yet. (If it’s not — phew — I warned you ahead of time.)

The warning isn’t completely true.

But the wording occurred to me as I wrote this, remembering the old HBO warning from the ’80s. It was like a blinking sign for aggressive and horny teenagers as we feverishly perused the guide: “This is the good stuff.” *

To clarify the warning:

My growing use of Instapaper and reading on the Kindle has contributed to this focus on “just the words.” Both writing them and reading them. There’s so much junk piled around the words we read online. You’re liable to step on a rusty nail and get tetanus.

Have you ever thought to yourself, “Gee, I really like visiting the Moving to Freedom web site and reading the many entertaining and educational posts there, but I wish I could also read it as an ebook. Specifically, as an ebook on my Amazon Kindle compatible device. That would be so cool.”

If that sounds like you, then today your dream has come true. Moving to Freedom, Waypoint #1 is here.

After you buy your own copy, I’m counting on each of you to convince five of your friends to buy a copy, and they in turn will insist that five of their friends buy a copy, and so on, until I can quit my day job and focus on providing you with a quality content stream.

This web site is five years old today.

You’re reading post number 352. (Many Most of them have been “meh,” so there’s no need to check out the archives if you’re late to the party.)

A million unique visitors have come through the doors. Mostly these are Google searchers landing on the technical posts that I’ve said I’m not going to do anymore.

Thanks to everyone for your patronage, but especially to you regulars who keep coming around despite erratic posting, both in terms of regularity and content. (And quality.) Still, there is only one month where I failed to post something, and I’m going to count that as a blogging victory.

I’m not going to write about what comes next. Back in April I wrote about how I had “turned pro” …

I came up with the domain name of “Moving to Freedom” for this site as a nod to my desire to move from using proprietary software to free software. I still like the name because it works for just about anything. We can always aspire to greater freedom in different areas of our lives.

I want to find that freedom in words. And sentences of dubious grammatical correctness. And poorly constructed paragraphs. I want to tell stories that matter to me, or simply amuse me, and with any luck, you too.

Thanks for reading. I hope you’ll be with me, helping on this new move.

First, everything is still here!

Second, check out the new look! (If you’re reading this in your feed reader or email, it’s totally worth your time to stop by.)

After 3.7 years of “Moving to Freedom v1.0,” I’ve done some redecorating. I think the new design is amazingly cool, but I’m counting on you to let me know if I’m wrong.

So what’s behind this change? I think Martin Sexton best explains it, in the lyrics to “Women and Wine”:

Last night I woke to the sound of a dream on fire
Burning a ring around my golden cage
Flames hissed a chorus that said changes to come
I downed a drink for comfort, but came up with rage

Oh, wait. I guess that doesn’t explain anything. But I love that passage.

And there are changes to come. If all goes well, I’ll be announcing …

This is prompted in part by Tony Lawrence, who has been wondering about the accuracy of his feed subscriber count and today asked for comments from his feed readers as a kind of survey of actual readers. (Tony in turn was prompted by: Dear Reader, Who Are You?)

Well, I’m curious also: How many people out there are actually reading this site? I know at least one of my sisters is subscribed and a regular reader.* How about the rest of you?

Please leave a comment with this post and tell me if you’re a regular (or even irregular) reader, and if you follow the feed or just pop in from time to time. Or maybe you visit only when I flog a post on …

I try to make standards-compliant web pages here at movingtofreedom.org. It appeals to my petty, detail-oriented side. The compiler in me loves it when W3C or xmllint or tidy reports a valid web page. A pass from xmllint or tidy, or the green “valid” result from W3C is like a pat on the head. Good boy!

Why do I use XHTML for this place? Because that’s what WordPress templates were using when I started this site in 2006. I’m sure that’s still the case today, although some searching tells me it doesn’t have to be that way. XHTML seemed like the thing to do three years ago and I was happy to learn about it and conform to the transitional XHTML doctype. I wasn’t so excited about the strict doctype, but figured that was a concern for another day.

(Tangentially, an …