Blog Updates

As you can maybe tell (if you aren’t reading this from RSS), I updated the theme a few weeks ago when I started blogging more consistently again.

I tried to go for a cleaner theme and I’m open to suggestions or criticisms.

Additionally, I’ve added some commenting options. People have had trouble with my CAPTCH code in the past, so it’s a bit cleaner now. Alternatively there are options to comment through Facebook or Google+.

Finally, I deactivated a few old plugins that are pretty redundant now and re-added Google Adsense to the posts (just a text banner here or there). Sadly blogging isn’t profitable enough yet for me to live off it full-time (or any amount of time) but maybe one day I could have some spare pocket change from this.

Feel free to make any other suggestions below. What should I be writing about? What do I not cover enough or too much?

And those who just want my travel updates can follow my Tumblr.

This blog has been running for 6 years and 4 months!

Hacked by Hacker

My blog is hosted by HostPapa, which up until now has been a fantastic host.

Unfortunately, a few days ago (and I didn’t notice until this evening) this host got hacked and many WordPress sites were replaced with the ingenious slogan “Hacked by Hacker.”

Luckily, I was able to quickly reset my admin password and discovered by blog database was intact (it was a host-wide rather than targeted attack) and replace the theme, fixing everything.

My other sites on this server: bushfield.ca and secularstudents.ca were also hit, but my home subdomain ian.bushfield.ca somehow avoided the attack.

For now, I’ve reverted to an older theme to keep the site running.

I guess I got off lucky this time but it’s still annoying to deal with at 1 am on a Saturday night after a few glasses of wine.

Mobile version!

Since I know own a smartphone (the HTC Incredible S to be exact), I felt it appropriate to bring a mobile version of my site online.

Now if you’re visiting from a phone, iPod or what-have-you, it should look prettier (or at least load quicker).

Please let me know if you have any troubles.

Theme update

Every so often I get bored and change my blog theme.

Today was one of those days. Hence what you get is this LightWord theme.

I’ve also rewritten my “About” page and cleaned up my widgets a bit so the site works a little more.

A final note: Google ads may appear above posts now (except on the front page). If you don’t like them, read me via RSS, where I promise never to post ads.

Where have I been?

Damn, no posts here in over a month. Did not mean for that to happen.

This is not to say I haven’t been blogging. Most of my writing has just been shifted to Canadian Atheist, where I’ve tried to consistently get at least a couple posts per week there. Of course it’s mostly on atheism/freethought/skepticism but there are still a lot of political opinions I have but time is always short, so they’ve fallen by the wayside.

It makes me tempted to advocate for splitting CA up a bit into more of a blog aggregator like Science Blogs where each author gets their own space to talk about anything they want and the front page simply highlights the different topics/authors. Then I could basically park this blog over there and say everything I want. However, ideas always seem to come with work in the volunteer sector, so unless I work on the implementation it may not happen. And maybe it is just better to keep these blogs separate for now.

In terms of politics, I’ve been quite busy launching Reason Vancouver, and after this past weekend where I attended a productive Olympic Dialogue (which I’ll try to write up later), I think may be the right thing at the right time for this city.

I also have to admit that after my initial scepticism of the “Big Listen” project, I’m really starting to like the direction the Alberta Party is headed and with the potential success evidenced by Naheed Nenshi’s win in Calgary, I think they’re really on to something. Although I may never come around to using the buzz phrase “post-partisan politics,” I do think they are on to something (which is another post I need to write up).

As for graduate studies, despite my committee meeting being thrice rescheduled, things are progressing well, and I was happy to receive the second place award (first for visuals) for student seminar talks this term (out of 10 talks) in my department, losing only to my fiancée. Perhaps if I really feel like I have too much time on my hands I’ll write that talk up with the slides so there can at least be a text-representation of it (I won’t just post the slides since they are almost meaningless without a dialogue to follow).

So don’t take this as a pledge that I’ll write more often here, since bloggers often make the false promise of “I’m going to post here more often” and then you don’t hear from them for another 6 months, but merely take this as a “I’m still alive, writing and busy, and if possible I may post some more here, but no promises.”

I’m a Canadian Atheist

I’ll probably be posting a lot less on religion/atheism here (unless I want to get really defamatory), since over the past week I have joined the new Canadian Atheist group blog.

I can’t promise how much more I’ll post here, since I like the communal, grassroots nature of this new project, and it’ pays off with more page hits than my own site. I also have my personal blog, which covers more mundane aspects of my life which leaves little space for this site, although I may still do the occasional overtly partisan rant here.

So check out the new site, it has a lot of great writers, and I have a series of posts coming up on the intersection of politics and atheism in anticipation of the VanSecular Party meeting on Tuesday.

Calm before the storm

I won’t be posting much here (or at my other site) till next week since I’m off to Victoria this weekend with some of the Vancouver Skeptics in the Pub people. We’ll hopefully be meeting up with some fine island-folk while we’re out there.

The other reason for a bit of calm is that I’ve been recruited into a group blog that I’m hoping to have a bit of content filled in for Monday when we publicly announce it. It should be good, so stay tuned for the announcement.

Fixed my personal site

I’ve rebuilt my personal website at http://ian.bushfield.ca since I’ve finally given up on Drupal and am now a WordPress-only junkie.

This blog will keep going as a place for me to rant about science/religion/politics while that blog will deal with my personal activities, including my goal to develop a business plan for a freethought cafe. I probably won’t cross-post anything, so if you follow both you won’t get overwhelmed.

Just out of the rankings

The results are in and Terahertz Atheist placed fourth in the Religion & Philosophy category of the 2009 Canadian Blog Awards. Not too shabby for my first showing in the competition, maybe next year I’ll have to bump my writing up a notch.

Thanks to everyone who supported me.