Blog Facelift
I’ve redone some of the custom CSS for my blog. Observe:
Before:
After:
That’s one of my OLD headers on there; I don’t know if I like it. I don’t like the other one anymore. Maybe I’ll make a new one.
In This Blog: Eigenblogger Gets a Facelift
Heyo, nerd buckets!
So if you’re reading this, it’s probably 2021 because that’s when I’ll likely get these blogs published you’ve obviously visited Eigenblogger. And if you’re one of my regular readers (or if this is at least your second time stopping by), you may have noticed the redesign.
Now that I’m in a position where I don’t have to freak out every three months or so about having a job in the upcoming semester, I finally felt like it was safe to spend some money on a blog upgrade – specifically, upgrading to WordPress Premium.
My mom had gotten me WordPress Personal a while back, which allowed me to have the domain of eigenblogger.com instead of eigenblogger.wordpress.com, which on its own is super cool. It also gave me three more GB of storage space (up to 6 from the 3 I got with the free WordPress version).
WordPress Premium allows me to keep my domain, upgrade to 13 GB of storage space (which will definitely be needed if I keep going at my current rate of posting media), the removal of ads, and (what I wanted most of all), advanced design customization. This meant that I could go into the CSS of my current theme and adjust it to be whatever I wanted (whereas before I could only change a limited number of things, like the background color, border color, etc.).
Now. Do I know CSS? LOL NOPE. But did that stop me from mucking around with my theme’s CSS until I got something that I liked? LOL NOPE.
Actually, I like the mucking around bit. That’s actually how I taught myself R (for the most part), LaTeX, and whatever the hell weird mishmash of code WeBWorK uses.
So what do y’all think? It hurts to lose my signature lime green background, but I can now begrudgingly admit that lime green is not the most “easy on the eyes” option to use as a background. I also wanted to simplify the color scheme a bit, so picking dark blue and yellow as the main colors seemed nice.
And I changed my header! FINALLY! Do you like it? It’s a little jagged ‘cause I don’t think I had the text parameters right in Photoshop, but maybe I can fix that with relative ease.
YAY BLOG FACELIFT!
Warning: excessive cursing ahead (blame Google)
What the fuck is this
What in the fuck is this
WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK IS THIS
Google, you inconsistent pile of nonsense, what was wrong with your previous logo?
Hell, what was wrong with your previous font? Anybody who knows me knows how much I hate sans serif fonts.
(For anybody that doesn’t know me: it’s a lot.)
I don’t like that using a sans-serif is becoming the equivalent of being “modern.” It’s not being modern. It’s being shit. I think there’s a correlation between how long a site’s been using a sans-serif font as their logo (or as part of their logo) and how much that site sucks.
Let me give you some examples:
Twitter has always had a sans serif font, and Twitter has always sucked. And what’s with the “t” in this font? It looks like a little airplane seat.
An airplane seat for losers.
Facebook has always had a sans serif font, too. Coincidentally, Facebook has pretty much always sucked as well.
Now let’s look at some websites that don’t suck. Notice that they all use serif fonts.
HOLY SHIT IT’S A CONSPIRACY.
Nnnngh the sans serif nonsense is such an annoying fad. Like, I know Google has changed its logo in the past, but this is too dramatic, I think. Seriously, Google, you were doing fine with variations of this…
(source)
It’s a good font. A good font. But then you somehow find the font equivalent of diarrhea residue and MAKE IT YOUR NEW LOGO’S TYPEFACE?
I am so irrationally aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaangry because of this.
At least they’re still capitalizing their name.
So help me god, if they stop capitalizing their name…
Edit: if you search “Google logo” you get this field of insanity. I don’t know about you, but this looks terrifying.
YO LISTEN UP, here’s a blog post
Hey, look who’s been on WordPress for three years now.
Here are my top countries by viewer count since February 2012. I don’t know if I just have one stalker in a few of these high-ranking countries or if just that many people have looked at Eigenblogger once, thought, “OH GOD, NO!” and moved on.
I vote for the latter.
Blah.
Sorry, my head hurts.
COLOR!
I was planning on doing my first “Canadian Mall” installment for Calgary today, but I had to wait around for my new fridge and didn’t have enough time to walk before any of the malls closed. So that’ll probably happen tomorrow.
BUT ANYWAY.
I know this blog probably won’t be posted until like November with my horrible uploading schedule, but I’m assuming that by the time you read this you will have noticed that there have been some design changes to my blog—specifically in the color and font departments.
That’s because I was talking to my mom tonight and debating whether to buy the custom colors/fonts option on WordPress ($30/month) and she ran and got her credit card and got it for me.
My mom is awesome. Now my blog can be even more eye-gougingly colorful!
Thanks, mom!
10,000 Views!
I hit 10,000 views on Eigenblogger this afternoon.
Shoutout to you readers! Thanks, you guys, for sticking with this blog through all its crapspazzle.
Have some pics/gifs.
1 Year as eigenblogger.com
So I’ve had my domain name (eigenblogger.com) for a year now. The WordPress map was implemented at about the same time:
Every continent except for Antarctica, bitches!
More specific viewing locations from ClustrMap:
Cool, huh?
I’ve actually got a couple milestones coming up:
10,000 views (since I’ve been on WordPress)
My 2,500th post (a fourth of the way to my goal!): that’s coming up in like 15 days
7-year anniversary: May 1st…it’s awhile until then, but still.
VROOM!
Update nonsense
So if you’re reading this you’ve probably seen the changes I made with respect to the title and color of my blog. Purple and blue are nice, but rainbows are “me.”
I had some other colors for the lettering of “Eigenblogger” other than the yellow—purple, white, black, blue—but I think yellow works the best.
There might be a few other tweaks in the next few days, so if things are tripping around, don’t freak out.
As if anyone visits this thing daily.
It’s my WordPress and I’ll post when I want to
Blahasfhsalrghs sorry guys.
Actually, I should be more specific, huh?
1. Sorry for getting around to posting these like every 25 days or so, and
2. Sorry for the extremely erratic posting shenanigans of the past two days.
With regards to #1:
I know I’ve been totally slacking when it comes to getting these posts up, so I want to apologize for making you all wait (‘cause I know you totally wake up in the morning thinking, “I wonder if Claudia’s blog is updated? Oh sweet Jesus, let her blog be updated!”) and also for inundating those of you who’ve subscribed with dozens of “Claudia has posted a new blog!” alerts all at once.
With regards to #2:
This one wasn’t entirely my fault (or so I’m going to claim). Yesterday I posted a whole slog of blogs within like 30 seconds because I had them all saved as drafts and I just had to press one button to get them published. Anyway, I think WordPress saw it as some sort of spam blogging account and put a block on my posting abilities. I contacted them and it got resolved this morning. That’s why you saw like 10 blogs yesterday and the rest of them today.
Also, you guys are super quick to comment (TOTALLY NOT A COMPLAINT, I love you all). But it’s 10 PM and I just got home from work, so it may be a bit before I acknowledge your comments, haha.
Anyway.
A new blog year is coming up for me TOMORROW, so I’ll make it one of my “New Year’s” resolutions to try and get these things posted within two or three days of their creation. I know it’s not a big effort to copy/paste/press “post” but I’m a lazy butt. And I’ll update my “About” page finally.
Apologies again, and hopefully this won’t happen anymore.
(Haha, I can dream, right?)
NEW STEPS NEW STEPS NEW STEPS!
Haha, the blog’s gettin’ revamped all over the place. Today’s upgrade: my own domain!
I can now be found at www.eigenblogger.com (the old eigenblogger.wordpress.com will redirect). Yay!
I also added a “Best Of” tab at the top which contains my ten favorite blogs. Just in case people who are passing through would like a taste of some of the better posts of mine (because 95% of them suck).
Further upgrades will occur throughout the week. I also only have to work Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday because Arizona is apparently obsessed with rodeos enough to shut down the community college.
OOH and I got a new bike! Pics soon.
Click Clack Bric-a-Brac
BAM, new WordPress theme! Like it? I like how the sidebar (the content to the right) is separate from the main blog. I also like how each post gets its own little box.
Anyway, I’m still having the WordPress vs. Typepad argument in my head. If I stay on WordPress, I’m going to buy my own domain and be www.eigenblogger.com, because that looks awesome and I think (nearly) six years of blogging deserves its own domain.
Okay, that’s all. Sorry. Short blog time.
I’ll Get You, My Pretty, and Your Little Blog, Too!
Hello ladies and gents. There is something special about today’s blog.
Today is my 2,000th blog!
YAY!
This means it’s been 2,000 days since May 1st, 2006. That simultaneously sounds so long and yet so short.
ANYWAY!
In modest celebration (“modest” meaning “not extravagant;” all my crap’s packed up and I’m sitting in a hotel waiting to go home tomorrow and thus haven’t really had time to make a huge celebration blog), I’m going to list my top 20 blog titles and top 20 blogs. Because that’s kind of what I do.
Titles first!
Top 20 Titles (yes, most of these are stupid puns. Deal.)
- Are the bulbs of mercury at the bottom of thermometers collectively known as H.G. Wells?
- I just realized I’m illiterate and now I cacng apbtrtht kd thactgs
- Do physical comedians suffer from post-dramatic jest disorder?
- Circular reasoning works because circular reasoning works because circular reasoning works…
- Do philosophy departments have Causal Fridays?
- My new position at the PepsiCo factory isn’t the greatest job in the world, but I’m making Dew
- Waiter! There’s a tachyon in my—oh wait, there it goes, never mind.
- Is a theorem about pickles called a dill lemma?
- I am 95% confident that the population parameter ‘love’ falls between you and me
- If you want to eat an apple pie, you must first consume the universe
- Yo blog title, I’mma let you finish, but this entry holds one of the best blogs of all time
- I used to teach a failing fly-tying class until I realized my efforts were all for knot.
- I used to work at a bridal shop specializing in headdresses. My work there was to know a veil.
- Hammer Time is the fifth dimension
- How much fit would an index fit if the index indexed fit?
- Is Superman’s costume considered his strong suit?
- Silly Rabbit…Trix are for Magicians
- This just in: geophagists across the globe are biting the dust!
- Some Days I Miss My Sanity. Other Days I’m Just a Toaster.
- Waiter! There’s an infinite loop in my Waiter! There’s an infinite loop in my Waiter!…
Top 20 Blogs
- The Second Continental Chatroom – This is probably the only halfway funny thing I’ve ever written. Fueled by Chips Ahoy, baby. Fueled by Chips Ahoy.
- Claudia the Angry Blogger Presents: Yet Another Rant against Pretty Much Everything – This blog started as like three paragraphs and ballooned to a full-on “I hate change, especially on the internet” rant. It makes me happy.
- U Can’t Prove This – I’m really not sure how I managed to rewrite U Can’t Touch This while under the incredible stress of a 25-credit finals week, but here it is.
- HOT DAMN, Tukey Sandwiches! – I think the “pun to normal content” ratio is at its most ridiculous in this blog.
- Multicollinearity: The Silent Killer – If you don’t talk to your kid about near linear dependence, who will?
- A STATELY CHALLENGE – Because my first draft of the US without reference to a map is hilarious.
- My new position at the PepsiCo factory isn’t the greatest job in the world, but I’m making Dew – Philosophy of science stuff.
- Damn this infernal 95 character limit! I have witty things to say in my titles! This is crap! – Bashing Microsoft ’07: a happy pastime of mine.
- Pi vs. e – Alternate title: “R has two subsequent heart attacks.”
- Blameworthiness and the Anonymous Judge: An Analysis of FML Categories – My hypothesis was supported! WOO! I’d also like to expand this study at some point.
- If a blog falls in the forest… – Because of the Pokemon card.
- Gordon Freeman: A Case Study – Because of Gordon Freeman.
- Apple stores are goddamn scary – In terms of frightening corporate power, Apple is still < Google, but both should be watched carefully.
- An analysis of statewise uniform population density (according to Craigslist) – More stats fun.
- I’ve been waiting years for this – I remember being SO HAPPY when I opened the M&Ms package.
- Piece of Pi – More song parody! More math!
- Are the bulbs of mercury at the bottom of thermometers collectively known as H.G. Wells? – I really don’t know why I like this blog, I just do. Hippos.
- In This Blog: My Data Look like a Napkin Swan – Because of the uncanny and hilarious resemblance.
- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is like a bad drug trip – It is! Seriously!
- Waiter! There’s a hippo in my Taco Grande! – Ye olde rant against pants. One of my early blogs.
Yay for 2,000 blogs. Here’s to 2,000 more, eh?
30-Day Meme – Day 21: A recipe.
YAY, a recipe! Cooking = win. Here’s one from the internet and one of my own.
1. Internet recipe
This makes a phenomenal breakfast/anytime bread. Super easy to make and crumbly as hell, this bread has a really good texture to it that adds to the sweet (but not overly so) taste. The only problem is that it goes moldy quite quickly if you try to stretch its life for more than five or six days.
2. Claudia recipe
You know I have to plug my Tukey sandwiches again (even though I just did), made and named in honor of the brilliant John Tukey. Because nothing says “you’re an awesome statistician” like a punny sandwich.
Dear people who have found my blog by searching WordPress for “Leibniz porn”:
I don’t know who you are or where you come from, but I have a feeling we are kindred spirits.
Unless “Leibniz porn” is slang for something else entirely. In which case, someone please inform me of its meaning so as to allow me to avoid amy embarrassment if I were to go to any given public area and say, “gee, I could really go for some Leibniz porn.”
Which has been known to happen.
And on another Leibniz-related note, we are to read part of the Leibniz-Clarke correspondence for Philosophy of Physics this week. This correspondence consisted of a series of letters exchanged between our hero Gottfried and Samuel Clarke, an ardent supporter of Newton and basically a speaker on behalf of him. The two men’s correspondence began in 1715 and ended a year or so later with Leibniz’ death.
Anyway. The two talk mainly about the dispute between absolute vs. relational space (Newton’s/Clarke’s and Leibniz’ views, respectively) as well as things like whether our universe could have been created by god earlier or later than it was and whether or not space is mostly empty. It’s super interesting and fantastic if you get a good translation, ‘cause then you get the snarkiness that was exchanged along with the ideas. For example, at one point in Leibniz’ fourth letter to Clarke you get this little jab as the two debate the meaning of the word “sensorium’”: “The question is indeed about Newton’s sense for that word, not Goclenius’s, Clarke shouldn’t criticize me for quoting the Philosophical Dictionary, because the design of dictionaries is to show the use of words.” Clarke’s got a couple good ones in there, too.
Okay, that is all. I’m in Leibniz ecstasy land today. It’s a good, safe, happy place. Full of wigs.
Oh hey
Hey, guess what? Today marks my 1-year anniversary on WordPress after freeing my blogs from the tyranny of MySpace.
WOO!
Stats:
Number of views
2,599
Top posts
Scrabble Letter Values and the QWERTY Keyboard
TWSB: Well, it certainly would make the cartographer’s job easier…
Some pretty funny stuff
Claudia’s 365 Days of Music – A Review
An analysis of statewise uniform population density (according to Craigslist)
Top search engine terms
“eigenblogger”
“scrabble letter breakdown”
“scrabble letter values”
“science plushies”
“le seul mot juste”
Here’s to another year!
Much Ado About Blogging
HEY LADIES AND GENTS!
So even though I’ve got (at most) two regular* readers, I’ve been thinking as of late of leaving WordPress and getting my own blog with my own domain name.
Why?
Because I think five years of continuous blogging deserves its own special place on the web, even though nobody else really cares about it. I’ve been looking into TypePad for the next move ‘cause I’ve been following a few blogs based off of TypePad, and they all look nice and run smoothly.
TypePad is also pretty customizable, so it seems, and affordable and secure.
However, I’m a lazy butt and just got done moving all my MySpace archives to WordPress, and I’m not sure how difficult moving the archives again would be. I suppose I could do a bit of research into that, but, you know…lazy butt.
Anyway. Just thought that would be my post for today, since everything’s been pretty uneventful apart from thesis writing for the past few days.
*“regular” as defined as those who keep up with my erratic posting habits. Sorry about that.
Madness?! This…is…BLOGGING!
Well, it’s that time of the year. The anniversary of my blog. But this isn’t any regular anniversary.
This is five years.
That’s right. I started blogging five years ago on May 1st, 2006.
At one blog per day, that’s 1,826 blogs. Doesn’t seem like that many when put like that, in my opinion, but there you go.
Anyway. Here are the last five years of my life as put down on paper (note: that’s a 7” thick binder):
Stats:
- The last five years of my life weigh a total of 10.4 pounds and stacks up a little bit shorter than a Red Bull
- Total word count: 479,955
- Total number of pages (1.25” margins, 10-point Times New Roman): 1,552
- Year with the longest daily entries: May 2007 – May 2008
- Number of people who actually care about these stats apart from myself: 0
Whatever. It’s my blog, I can post what I want!
And you know what I want. Stats!
Here’s a month-by-month line graph of word count:
Here’s one of the Gunning Fox Index rating of each month:
And one of the average number of words per sentence for each month:
A Wordle cloud for all the blogs:
A Wordle cloud for all the titles:
I was hoping to have transferred all the “friends only” blogs from MySpace by today (they didn’t automatically transfer when I moved to WordPress, so I’ve been doing it by hand), but that unfortunately wasn’t possible. They’ll all be here soon, though.
Yay!
Woah
DUDES, WHAT?
Somebody must have found my blog and stumbled through it using the “random post” button, ‘cause I got a total of 127 views today.
That’s insane.
Haha, sorry, not much else has been going on. I’ve been working for like 14 hours straight every day on this stupid thesis and I’m to the point of sleep deprivation that the walls have become sentient and enjoy gyrating in space.
Blaaaaaaaaaaaaah.
I’ve been on WordPress for 6 months now
Ha, cool, I’ve been on WordPress for 6 months now. I must say, I’m much happier here than on MySpace, though the old, crappy social network will always hold a special place in my blogging heart (I know, I know, gag).
Views: 1,083
Posts: 1,423 (this doesn’t count the couple hundred that were private/friends only on my old blog and thus weren’t transferred; the total number of posts thus far not counting this one is 1,765).
Comments: 80
My top-viewed blogs:
Home page (658 views)
Scrabble Letter Values and the QWERTY Keyboard (36)
Who wrote all this drivel? (29)
Some pretty funny stuff (18)
Recur, recur, recur! (13)
There’s a tunnel! And there’s a light at the end of it! (13)
This Week’s Science Blog: The Robots are Getting Creepier (10)
Claudia’s 365 Days of Music – A Review (7)
A Blog for Jim LaFortune (7)
An analysis of statewise uniform population density (according to Craigslist)
The Scrabble one’s so popular because apparently people really like to search for Scrabble letter values on WordPress. Here are a few searches that brought people to that page:
scrabble letter breakdown
scrabble how many points is qwerty
all scrabble letters
scrabble letter ranking
letter ranking on scrabble
“frequency of use of letters” scrabble
And here are some more amusing searches that brought people here:
jokes about leibniz cookies (whoever searched for this is my soulmate)
le seul mot juste
geometric multicollinearity
mice smelling photons
Fun times! I’m bored.
Every Time You Misinterpret a Confidence Interval, God Kills a Statistician
HI AGAIN!
So I’m liking WordPress. I’m liking it enough that I’ve started an entirely new blog dedicated to R. It’s right here. It, unlike this one, will actually kind of look professional and will not consist of my daily ramblings. Rather, it will contain info on using R as well as little tricks, ’cause we all know R can be a pain sometimes.
OH YEAH, I also found an old high school project of mine that revolved around quite a nice little dataset. My “statistics” back then were horrendous, so I’m thinking I might re-do the whole thing and post it up here. Plus my graphs were made in Excel and look terrible. That has to be remedied.
WOO SHORT BLOGS! School starts tomorrow, I’m stressed, deal with it.
The Inaugural Blog
Well hi there ladies and gents, and welcome to my first blog on WordPress. All past blogs have been uploaded from my old MySpace blog (except for the private ones…they didn’t automatically transfer, so I’ll have to do them individually, which will take some time).
Some things are different, of course–this blog’s theme is not nearly as ostentatious as my old one, and the default font for my blogs is no longer Times New Roman at 10 point font, but what’re you gonna do, eh? I needed a format change, anyway. I also apologize for all the broken pics/links/YouTube videos/what-have-yous in the older blogs. They’re, well, old. Haha.
So yeah! Pretty snazzy. Oh and here, for anyone interested: MySpace profile
Those of you who are new to this particular blog…have fun!
Yay!
Today’s song: My Own Way to Rock by Burton Cummings
Hyperness is next to godliness. Why do you think He only needed seven days?
A few days ago I blogged about what a pain MySpace is with regards to letting me actually post my blogs more than once a fortnight (if I’m lucky) and was wondering about possible exporting tools.
Well, I found one.
Yes, you have to download it, and no, I haven’t actually tested to see if it actually works as an exporter, but when I ran the program I actually saw it go through all my old blogs (that’s 1,571 blogs) and when I opened the raw file in Word, all of them actually showed up. So I’m hopeful.
Now I have to decide between WordPress and Blogger. I like WordPress ‘cause it looks like you can comment without having a profile there; I like Blogger because it looks more customizable from what I can tell. However, I dislike WordPress because, as someone who probably needs quite a bit of storage space, I’ll probably have to pay for the premium account. I dislike Blogger because it’s owned by Google, and I don’t know how I feel about selling my soul just yet.
But yeah. Planned export scheduled for September 1st; if it works, my blogging shall be moved there for all subsequent years.
Hooray!
Today’s song: All About Us by t.A.T.u.
Screw you, MySpace.
I’m getting sick of MySpace serving me with divorce papers every time I try to post my blogs, so I’ve been giving some serious thought as to where I would like to restart blogging. I don’t mean “start from this point forward,” though; I would like to be able to export my MySpace blogs to said new site (Blogger, WordPress, wherever the hell) so that they’re all in the same place, ‘cause I’m anal like that.
However, this seems to be an issue. MySpace is also very clingy, as it does not want to give up its RSS feed to anybody. The closest I’ve been able to get to exporting was with WordPress, but that would involve having to export only 10 blogs at a time, so HOLY GOD NO, but that’s the best I’ve gotten so far. Maybe I’m not looking in the right place.
So if any of you happen to know of a blogging site that allows for mass importing of MySpace blogs, please let me know.
WOO!
Today’s song: Kelly Watch the Stars by AIR
Eigenblogger 
Spambots! Why u no shut up about Viagra?
Point of interest: Word 2010 automatically capitalizes Viagra.
Point of interest II: The spambots of WordPress really seem to think I have a penis.
Point of interest III: I don’t quite know what I did to provoke them; all of a sudden I’m getting like 30 spam comments per day. Odd.
That’s all. Sorry my life isn’t exciting at all.