Blog

Heroes among us

Found this on Twitter:

I couldn’t say it better. I’m proud of my heroes.1…and sometimes, worried af. :-/

Stay well!

Self-isolation, day 5

Frost-tipped grass
Daffodils in Circle Park

Today started cold and frosty. During Gilligan’s constitutional, we paused to appreciate the crunching grass. Because of self-isolation, I skipped Starbucks and headed into the spare bedroom to work. By noon, the weather had warmed up1It got over 60! so a solo walk through the neighborhood seemed like a good idea. Thanks to COVID-19, work had scheduled a virtual company picnic for today, so I pulled out my phone, logged into Zoom, and brought them along with me.

I’ve been working from home since late November or early December. For most of our clients, this was their first week of trying it. The following bingo card would have been fun in our conference calls.

Conference call bingo card

You can make your own conference call bingo cards or remix it on Glitch.

Stay well!

I’m now using MailPoet

You might notice this email looks a little different. That’s because I’m now using MailPoet to email my subscribers. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with MailChimp, which I was using.1and have (temporarily?) deactivated MailPoet is just so easy to use in WordPress.

As before, you have the ability to easily unsubscribe with a click (though I hope you don’t). And there continues to be a subscription form for new subscribers.

If you have any issues, please let me know. I have contact information on my site.

Thanks for being a subscriber.

Stay well!

Update: MailPoet seems to be working well. In addition to sending out new post notifications, I’m also able to use it to send out transactional emails. It’s a great simplification for me.

COVID-19 Resources

I’ve accumulated a set of resources on the SARS-COV-2 virus and COVID-19, the disease it causes.

Note: As this list will continue to grow as I find more resources, I’m pinning it to the top.

Dealing with the crisis

PSA Grocery Shopping Tips in COVID-19 (See Important Notes Below) www.DrJeffVW.com

Official Sources

Simulations

Statistics

Genomic analyses

Research

Testing

News

Social media

Wash your hands!

Photo credit. Novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. Colorized scanning electron micrograph of an apoptotic cell (green) heavily infected with SARS-COV-2 virus particles (purple), isolated from a patient sample. Image captured and color-enhanced at the NIAID Integrated Research Facility (IRF) in Fort Detrick, Maryland. Credit: NIAID.

My favorite photos of 2019

Ferry stern
Good morning, Portland!
Pole
All of us
The colors in the sky were picture-worthy
Lavender Valley
Watching the ocean
Looking up at Swan Island
Corbett View Point
Crescent Beach from Ecola Point. Cannon Beach and Haystack Rock in the distance.
Indian Beach
MAX train
Ecola Creek running into the Pacific
Flat sands at Cannon Beach
Gilligan explores Cannon Beach
Gilligan on Cannon Beach with her ball
Sea wall detail
The Needles on Cannon Beach
The Needles on Cannon Beach
The Needles on Cannon Beach

Every year, I post my favorite photos. Some years, I’ve been able to cut it down to my top ten, but not this year. For that matter, I couldn’t limit myself to fewer than eleven photos from Cannon Beach… :-D

Many years, I’ve also posted my top nine from Instagram, but again, not this year, as I posted fewer than nine on Instagram during 2019.

These picture all make my happy. I could imagine printing all of them and hanging them on my walls.

I hope at least one makes you happy, too!

Fifteen year blogiversary

Fifteen years ago, I wrote my first post here. Now, my archives page says there are 2,565 posts. That doesn’t count the many obnoxious posts I decided didn’t represent well. There are probably more that could be deleted. Yup.

Most of the posts here still make me happy. It’s common for me to have a conversation with someone and be tempted to pull out my phone and search for a relevant post.

Over the years, this blog has watched a lot of changes.

Infrastructure

This site has always been self-hosted WordPress. I started in the earlier days of WordPress, with version 1.2.1. Now WordPress and I are on version 5.3.2. I flirted with Blogger, but it wasn’t serious.

I started with shared hosting, then went with a dedicated WordPress hosting provider. Now I’m using a Digital Ocean virtual private server with free Cloudflare CDN and JetPack image processing/serving. It’s amazing what $5 per month can get you these days.

When I started, I wanted anonymity, using blogan.net as the domain. Sometime later, I removed the mask and transitioned to brentlogan.com. This is me.

Fellow Travelers

Those I started blogging with don’t anymore. Those I convinced to start blogging also don’t. Their sites might still be up, but they haven’t posted in years. To me, that’s sad. For them, probably not. They’re now on Facebook or Instagram, probably both. It works for them.

Popular Posts

I added some locally-hosted visitor analytics a while back.1It doesn’t track you and send your information to a third party. It allows me to see what are currently my most popular posts.

Yeah, I wrote only two or three of these this year, depending on how you count. A couple more are quotes from other people. It’s how the web works.

Series and Themes

Over the years, I’ve settled into a few themes. Here are links to some of them.

One of these days, I might settle down to a single topic. Until then, this will continue to be a place for me to experiment, learning web technologies, and have fun sharing what’s important to me at the moment.

And a place for visitors to learn a little more about me.

Welcome!