Category: junk drawer

  • On carrying wooden swords

    1435 FORTY-SECOND YEAR, EIKYŌ SEVEN
    WOOD’S YOUNGER BROTHER, THE HARE

    Ikkyū spent some time down in Izumi [Sakai]. Whenever he went out in the city streets, he took along a wooden sword. As he walked, he rapped his fingers on its hilt.

    The townspeople argued with him saying, ‘The virtue of a sword is killing. What use does a monk have for one?’

    He replied, ‘You don’t know it yet, but these days the world is full of a false wisdom that is just like this wooden sword. As long as it is kept in the scabbard, it looks as good as a real blade, but if it is drawn out from the scabbard, it is seen to be only a sliver of wood. It cannot even kill people—much less make them live.’

    — Sanford, Zen-Man Ikkyū, pp. 91–92.

    Part of the reason I am not a serious practitioner of Zen is the number of props that someone being serious about Zen seems to require. Incense, robes, zafu and zabuton, chimes and gongs, and whatnot, along with a meditation space and a shrine (if you lean that way), blank walls to limit distraction…

    (more…)

  • How to reduce readership

    One of the problems of the statistics you see on your blog is that you have no idea just how many of those likes and visits are human.

    I think, on a “really good day” at the old version of this site (sceadugenga.com), I might have seen several hundred visits and more than half of them will “like” the content. It used to make me feel really well liked to have a thousand subscribers and so many visitors.

    That was before I switched domains to reflect my change in blog focus to be more centered on my own writing and the writing community (including music).

    Roughly 5% of that readership and subscribers followed.

    Let that sink in for just a moment…

    (more…)

  • Why is it?

    There’s a certain subset of techies who think because they speak a certain language, everyone else must. And that everyone else has the tools they have and know how to use them.

    I point out and give screen shots of an issue that I’m told doesn’t exist and then they say, oh yeah… I can replicate that — you should approach it with XYZ. And then give incorrect links and useless information on top of jargon that means nothing to your average joe. And then there is the feel of “don’t call us, we’ll call you…maybe.” Actually, I know just enough to be dangerous and it was all babble to me. Imagine if a person seeing support was unfamiliar with these kinds of things? Absurd.

    (more…)

  • Apologies for hiccups

    I have decided to add some additional security measures to account for malicious bot activity on the site. If you are experiencing or have experienced 429 errors, that is due to those changes rolling in. Everything should settle down within the next 24 hours or sooner.

  • Oh, bother.

    Just that. That is all. Nothing more.

  • What did my time away give me?

    It was only a week away from posting new material, although it seemed longer except when it felt shorter. I wrote daily; I didn’t post daily.

    So, where is the flood of new material, Michael?

    There is nothing I am willing to post here or elsewhere (i.e., discord) at this time, if ever.

    So, what was the point?

    (more…)

  • A long and winding road

    I will be taking a break from posting new material on-site for an indeterminate period of time. For the most part, anyway — if something tickles my fancy and I feel it inflicts maximum torture on you, the reader, I may post it.

    But the fun (sic) doesn’t end just because I am taking a break.

    I’ll be scheduling some repost of older pieces from the earlier iteration of the site over the coming days. You can marvel and be amazed at just how far I have or have not come in my writing skills (again, sic) since 2020 and onward. Some pieces might even be found in my book (now in hardcover and larger format!), which I have shamefully not promoted in the recent past.

    [You should know that I’m terrible at self-promotion, if you haven’t guessed that already.]

    I may also pop on by your lovely sites less often than I have as I try to limit my Pavlovian dopamine hits via interaction. Lucky you! Fewer undesirable and silly comments from me.

    Why? I am recalibrating.

    Self. Writing style and approach. Spiritual and emotional state. General burnout. Other things that I likely forgot to include in this short paragraph.

    I am tempted to set up a Discord to talk to myself and for anyone daring to peek behind the curtain during this time. But probably not. That seems like more torture than most people are willing to endure. And I never listen to myself anyways.

    Other side -> Seeing you

  • Dear interwebz

    Kindly recall the following guidance:

    • If you like 20 posts of mine that took several hours to write within 20 seconds, I will treat you like spam (seriously, I watch some people click the stars in rapid succession). I will not follow your stupid blog. Even if it is not a stupid blog. But it probably is.
    • If you write “Interesting post” as your sole comment on posts on my site (and on others’ sites), I will not follow your stupid blog. Your stupid blog is probably not interesting if that is all you can say about my posts (or others’). Bonus: I will mark it as spam.
    • If you like multiple posts of mine and don’t fall into the category of the first bullet and I hover on your site and see it is for gambling, crypto, property, travel, sports or scraped material — you guessed it — I will not follow your stupid blog. If you comment, I will assume it is spam.
    • If I happen to click on a link to your stupid blog and my screen is suddenly awash with ads and flashing things or popups, I will not follow your stupid blog. I will also mark all comments you make as spam. Yay you!
    • If you start preaching to me about religious matters or give me sermons in comments that are entirely disconnected from the conversation at hand, I will not follow your stupid blog. 9/10 times I will also mark you as spam. Based on the content I receive from people in this vein, you need to go study your own religion more before you should try to preach to someone about something you apparently know nothing about.
    • If your comment matches the content of your site, I will not follow you. Especially if it is the sermon you just posted as comment-spam on my site. And your blog is stupid.
    • If you do any kind of feed scraping to populate the posts of your site, your site is, by definition, stupid, and I will not follow it. And I will issue takedown notices if the content is mine and request your stupid site be shuttered.
    • If you are rude to any of my visitors and I do manage to follow you, you are stupid and I will unfollow your stupid site.
    • No. I am not interested in your widget, even if you make the best widgets in the whole wide world. Even if they have nifty images of Bettie Page endorsing them for you. Your widgets are stupid, as well as your site. And I will not follow you.

    These are just a few examples of things I expect out of the folks who visit Ravensweald. It does boil down to a simple, single rule:

    Don’t be stupid.

  • Small advice

    If you are receiving daily or multiple daily comment attempts from money-scam types of spambots, one of the patterns I noticed is that they seem to target older posts with open comments threads.

    Since my closing comments after three weeks (most real folks don’t comment much here beyond that freshness period anyway), the multiple attempts to necro my comment threads with silly, obviously bot-generated comments for illusionary money and get rich quick via virtual playing cards has evaporated. Poof!

    While Akismet has done a good job filtering those kinds of spam comments out of my comment stream, it was annoying to have to check for false positives and review those comments every day. A full 20% of comments on this site received to-date have been spam comments from the same two or three scambots.

    It’s only been a few weeks, so they might adjust their algorithm. Until then, I am enjoying not having to deal with them on a daily basis. You may want to adjust your settings for comments if you have a similar comment lice issue.

  • opinions, problems and solutions

    I’m tired of opinions presenting themselves as, “I have an opinion, and because it’s my opinion, it is the Truth or the only correct opinion one should have.”

    Or opinions in search of a problem.

    I’m tired of problems too. I’d like to hear more solutions.