I have something to say!
It's better to burn out
Than to fade away...
...There can be only one!

Kurgan, Gimme the Prize / Highlander

When I look back at those summers of ago, that time of '96 into '97, Queen's It's a Kind of Magic comes to mind, an album that served like a soundtrack to Highlander and by extension, the TV series by the same name starring Adrian Paul (a show I absolutely loved). I say "served like a soundtrack," because the album itself can stand on its own without a movie. I also played the first 4 selections from the actual CD that feature the franchise's scores, though its sequels were rubbish (and the 4th song sounds like this from Band of Brothers which makes sense as they are both from Kamen).

I look fondly back at that old Queen CD, because I never returned to it as I grew older, so as I listen to it now, it reminds me of all those drives with the top down, feeling invincible with a wide open horizon to explore and love life. I TOTALLY bought into the paradigm of being among the Princes of the Universe, from those iconic lyrics that might describe how I viewed my existence at 18-19. I've already written how my first presence on the Internet autoplayed a piano MIDI of Who Wants to Live Forever. Playing that old song reminds me of who I once was...perhaps at my core, still am...

...and these 44-year-old eyes now look back at those 18 and 19-year-old days and consider how the rain fell on that sunny ride. Looking back at 18 and 19 when you've got 44-year-old eyes that see how things the machinations churned out..I guess I'm reminded of Wahlberg's Invincible, a movie with a great soundtrack in its own right. It would be naive for me to believe I'd keep the top down forever on my convertible.

I have no interest in fading away. I know at 44, this might seem to be a silly thing to say—gosh, when I see "44" I find in of itself to be UNREAL. I'm still me! I just employ a collective use of EM dashes, ellipses and semicolons now!

No, I have no interest in fading away. If I'm not cranking out the reps when I'm 60 to 80 years old, it doesn't mean my will has been snapped; it means a hot balloon wicker basket has come crashing down to Earth on my noggin'.

I suppose I wouldn't be me if when arguing the strengths of one position, I flip the next day to consider the strengths of its opposite the next day. Perhaps that's the freedom of the INTJ, that we can navigate life's Fords and Chevys to find a Toyota. But, I'm not going to do that here today! "No, no no, no."

OK, real quick: if I want to post words, I run Jekyll. If I want to run a place that feels like a hub of activity to me, that promotes my weightless approach, I gotta go with Wordpress. Its just feels...alive?

And maybe the tension I have is found in everything I've written. I begin seeing what I write from a historical perspective as I have the words I wrote 20-25 years ago now on this site—how can I not view it from that context? So, I think long term, what sticks around? Well, text files, of course. I mean, I suppose I could convert a doc file from 1994's Office 4.3 though I bet I'd have to use LibreOffice to pull it off (LibreOffice is the grandkid to StarOffice of that same era). But, I shouldn't view that way with my public facing stuff. I'm not preserving this for my rocking chair. Content that has value ought to be put into one (very long) document. No, I shouldn't be affected if a Cylon hacks this site and replaces my content with actual toaster uploads. And yes, I have backups but that's not the point: there's short-term purpose and then that other thing.

The thing is, after I figured out how to setup Jekyll on NearlyFreeSpeech (and I posted those instructions on this site), it's not difficult for me to...

1. Spin up my text editor, throw a few words down and match the Markdown schema;
2. Upload that file via SSH with FileZilla;
3. Log back into the terminal to run my shell script to move a couple of files and render the site.
4. Dance like Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder.

But, this isn't about simplicity. It's about role and how this site may augment my existence. I don't write for external customers. None of that Instagram "shiny happy people holding hands" nonsense! I think that's like it when I run my weightless graph showing those rollercoaster rides. It shows that I fail and yet...well, there's a good reason why we love Rocky.

And I ought to be sensitive to design things like viewport and whatnot, but...I dunno, I'm getting too old for this sheet of style. Let some of the young bucks fool with that for web standards have all the stability as a tissue paper; when I pick up a mechanical pencil, it still functions like one from 1990. As it relates to the Internet, well, remember when frames were all the rage?

Back on point: But, this isn't about simplicity. It's about role and how it may augment my existence. And hey, 2023 is almost upon me: it's going to a be a special one.

Today's album continues into that first year of college and remained a theme throughout: Robert Miles Children. It reminds me that the period was more than the tropes and stereotypes held for that era. It's like how we perceive the '60s as a bunch of dirty hippies. In reality, there was a lot more horn-rimmed glasses with suit and ties.

Look at the pop music of 1966, and what falls under #10:

1. California Dreamin' - The Mamas & the Papas
2. 96 Tears - ? and the Mysterians
3. What Becomes of the Brokenhearted - Jimmy Ruffin
4. Last Train to Clarksville - The Monkees
5. Reach Out I'll Be There - Four Tops
6. These Boots Are Made for Walkin' - Nancy Sinatra
7. Cherish - The Association
8. Strangers in the Night - Frank Sinatra
9. Kicks - Paul Revere & the Raiders
10. The Ballad of the Green Berets - SSgt Barry Sadler

Over the weekend, I successfully made the push to migrate all 581 posts on this site to Wordpress. I grabbed the XML template from Step 1 here, let my site be rendered in Jekyll, and ran WP All Import. I had to back-track and edit the XML template because the URL to EVERY link I ever posted had my domain name prepended to it! While Broken Link Checker is a fantastic tool, it can be disheartening to see I gotta fix 300 links. Nevertheless, I saw what was broken and fixed it. It even gave me the chance to yank all of the smart quotes and smart ellipses nonsense that sneaks their way into my words.

And thus, I had my site running sans these old rhymes I keep lugging around. And while I have 581 posts, gone are the 150-160 from 2019, lost are 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016...tomes on the shelves of my past places...come to think of it, I must be on my eighth or ninth domain name. And to its credit, this current one has had the greatest longevity. That said, time moves a lot faster these days.

And yet, I'm now back to relying on Jekyll to generate my code into static pages. More on that in a moment.

Currently, this website's TLS certification is broken until tomorrow for the subdomain www—its bare is fine. TLS is that lovely thing that gives me my HTTPS. Yes, it's pure vanity to have for a static website. All the flip, flop, the flippy, the flippy to the flip flip flop that I did between Wordpress and Jekyll made Let's Encrypt breakdown and sob long into the night.

The thing is, I gotta remind myself that Wordpress is slow and forever needs to be patched and re-patched while at the same, they don't release a long term support (LTS) version. When it comes to LTS, there are Linux releases that the ensure the user can use the same operating system for the next 5 years as its code would be maintained. There's no Wordpress LTS; stuff just happens to you.

For me, the strength of Wordpress lies in its plugin system where I can extend the functionality of a system, plugins that are built by authors who apparently have a greater mortality rate around buses or there's words nestled away in the Wordpress Codex that when read aloud after drinking a Monster drink at night, it creates a vortex to suck them out from this plane of existence. Yes, I'll find a plugin that I like that soon gets abandoned. And if there wasn't security holes when the thing was created by a guy hopped up on stale pizza and a case of Nattty Light, then it's sure going to have one when the plugin is alone.

I've read that Wordpress makes up about 40-60% of the Internet—I get it, it's free and easy to use. And not everyone is curious to run a speed check by Pingdom on their website—I just got a 98 A!. Wordpress is great for a large site littered with comments. But for that guy and his weasel swatting service and his 5 pages with all that white space?

Ultimately, even if all of that stuff was in order, I feel like my content is lost in Wordpress. It is somebody else's space; it is shoved piecemeal into a shaky database. While Jekyll generates the tags to make my Markdown shine, I am in the drive seat. And I can go in any direction with making my template, which for now, it is such a simple one. Not even a single DIV! If I cared to spend the type, I could have literally type up the code by hand. Check the source—VERY readable. Its CSS could be revisited as I'm not using the "accent" variable, but I basically treat the BODY tag as a DIV; I don't know of anyone who has done that, but in the context of an HTML tag, isn't that what BODY's role basically is?

And while this site is purposely basic, I have not built it to be read by Netscape Navigator on August 19, 1996, the day version 3.0 was released, for CSS wasn't a thing in those days! Yes, August 1996, the first footsteps upon my travels through the forest of college.

In 1996, KISS' MTV Unplugged album wasn't my first KISS CD; that distinction belongs to Smashes, Thrashes and Hits, an album that was the lead-up to my first KISS concert earlier that summer, a thrilling, pyrotechnic rock show that I chose over attending the pool party of my crush. While not as out there as Music from 'The Elder', there is a certain longing in MTV Unplugged, something I picked up as an 18-year-old, stretching out in the new space of college, leaving the confines of high school and exploring new possibilities—take a class just to learn? Sure! And hey, KISS MTV Unplugged's jewel case matched the red interior of my '86 Celica (with a Camry engine)!