A death in the family, other examples of life—see our first post—and almost nothing goes as planned. Still, it’s all been exhilarating, and I find new things to write out of it, if not the sorts of things I was intending to write when all these things happened.

From the first, this site (still simply a blog) was intended to be a running commentary on what I discovered while working on other sites. It so happens that back when I first got the idea to produce it, I was conducting a lot of testing and intensive coding rather than simple posting, so a lot of the work I was doing at the time seemed worth sharing with others. And still does—if only I can get back to it.

Since then, however, my concerns have been more from a practical end-user perspective as I have attempted to make steady enough posts on at least one site (Health Spectator) so that a sense of presence can be established. That’s where Lennon’s reference to life as what happens while you’re making plans came in.

My wife had been supporting all these efforts not only with encouragement, but by keeping the wolf away from the door (though he could be heard howling, not too distant). Then, through a bit of beautiful corporate double-cross, she found herself out of work.

Then her mother died. This was not entirely unexpected, but happened in a sudden enough way that it was wrenching. Pat barely had enough warning to be by her mother’s side during the final week or two of a protracted illness.

What, you are wondering, does all this have to do with web development? Well, my own meager contribution to all these proceedings was to show up and stumble through the exhausting parade of family obligations, all the while trying to do research and file posts pretty much literally on the fly. We stayed in a bed-and-breakfast, we slept in spare rooms. That’s what portables were made for, right?

And, indeed, my faithful laptop—by now the only family computer because our backup machine had recently fried and there was now no budget for replacing hardware—rose admirably to the occasion. I became, as one does under such circumstances, an expert tracker of wifi signals and a usurper of others’ machines with dial-up connections when necessary. I was prepared to write at any time in any place, given the opportunity. There just weren’t enough opportunities.

Then, while wandering around in a fog after yet another sleepless night and readying to spend the coming day at a different in-law’s, I dropped my laptop. Hard. It was still working when I picked it up—it had not shut down yet—so I breathed a sigh of relief and put it back in its case, making sure to zip it securely this time.

Only to find it would not revive when I was ready to use it at the next stop. From the messages I was getting, it was clear the hard drive was disabled. I couldn’t tell if it had just jarred loose (pray, pray!) or was total toast. The main motherboard (well, ROM BIOS, at least) and the display still seemed to be performing.

That was the day before we came home. So now, in job-search mode, we had no computer. I do have a Palm TX, which has wifi built in. But its uses are limited and I was stretching it to those limits.

In the process, I discovered how you can—horror of horrors—maintain a blog (at least barely) without currently possessing your own computer. It isn’t fun and it isn’t pretty, but it will get you through if you have to do it.

Most of us work in environments where we have heavy backup from corporate IT, but those who are vulnerable to a little computer downtime—even just a sustained loss of electrical power—might do well to consider preparations for such emergencies, which I will detail in a piece to follow.

I will also mention, for those who have been following this blog, that I have begun the (so far, painless) upgrade process to Wordpress 2.2.1. I may also add a post on this, if time permits. So far, as I say, there doesn’t seem to be much to report, however.

My other discovery—hardly unique—was the lesser horror of dealing with a new computer and a new operating system (Windows Vista) which I hope also to describe for those who may be interested. As always with these “upgrades,” I found some good and some bad. For the moment, I’ll just say that Windows Vista is very pretty.

As to how good the Geek Squad turn out to be at servicing disabled laptops, only time will tell. I can report that they’re about four days behind schedule so far.

Well, I’ve been planning a website (Techismo) and have been working on it in various capacities for over a year now. I’ve done design work—including coding the usual infuriating hacks and workarounds, because I just cannot accept that it’s gonna look different in IE and possibly others no matter what I do!—planning, conceptualizing, writing, gathering sources and so on.

In some ways, no doubt, I went considerably overboard. For example, I designed an original CSS cum Javascript menuing system that at this rate I may never put to use. (But it sure is purty, and it was an exhilarating challenge to write.)

Meanwhile, I’ve started two blogs (this and Health Spectator) and gotten another website/possibly blog (Spotless Form) partially off the ground. In fact, if I hadn’t fallen in love with an idea for the opening page of Spotless Form that requires consent from a so-far non-responsive Latvian photographer, it would be publicly posted by now. As it is, it may be weeks or months before I actually make pages public, but there’s some copy in the can. Meanwhile, I’ve ordered some original Chinese watercolors that convey the mood I was trying to capture with the photograph. So after some scanning and Photoshop work, I should be ready to go. I’ll redesign the opening page as soon as I have a chance.

So the work goes on.

But what I wanted to talk about here—in keeping with our “what happens while you’re making plans” theme—is that I’ve discovered blogging software. (Yeah, I know—I wasn’t the first.)

Somehow, I now realize, I always thought of using blogging software as a cop-out. Or cheating. Not that I didn’t think it was appropriate for actual bloggers–whom I defined vaguely as people whose primary purpose was news, gossip, or commentary and who were less concerned with visual aesthetics than with message.

Which is to say that I basically knew nothing about it. But with three different sites under construction, I was starting to get desperate.

A lot of that was because I was suddenly presented with situations or news opportunities that actually lent themselves to blogging, or at least a blogging approach. For example, it was difficult to pass up the announcement of Elizabeth Edwards’ cancer relapse as subject matter for Health Spectator. Not as a news announcement per se—it didn’t even occur to me until about a week after the occurrence that this was an opportunity to summarize the latest in cancer knowledge and cures. So a general advice column for those facing either primary or secondary cancer seemed in order, given the national attention the issue had just received.

Next thing I knew, I was working on a blog post to cover this aspect of Health Spectator’s coverage.

Meanwhile, Techismo covers the general beat of music delivery technologies, among many others. Thus, the Copyright Royalty Board’s decision to increase Internet royalties to the point where small, independent Internet radio stations (just the kind we like!) would no longer be able to survive became not just a matter of newsworthiness, but a matter of social responsibility. So I began working on a pre-launch editorial that would inform any readers who stumbled upon my blog.

Urging people to contact their congressmen (congresspeople? yech!) er, congressional representatives and so on seemed like the least I could do. The effort would support an excellent cause, even if reaching instant readership for the piece itself was a longshot.

So next thing I knew, I was investigating blogging software. If you’re in the same position, I can recommend this Blog Software Chart to allow you to compare features across packages. There’s also a similar chart provided by the USC Annenberg Online Journalism Review. Or, you can take my word for it and go straight to the Wordpress site.

This is not a full-fledged review, so I’m simply going to let you have a look for yourself (I have nothing at stake here) and tell you that Wordpress does just about everything you could want it to do and is well supported with plugins and extensions. Also, there are several plugins for Mozilla Firefox that allow you to post from your browser. (You do use Firefox, don’t you? If not, click here.)

What’s more, installation is a snap if your web hosting service happens to have a script that does it for you, like mine. All I did was go to my cPanel login, select Fantastico under the heading Plugins/Addons, then select Wordpress from a list of blog software, tell Fantastico where I wanted it installed, and that was it. I was up and running. It actually takes more time to read about it than to do it.

I’ve also since noticed that upgrading will be even simpler. When I clicked through to confirm the exact sequence of steps mentioned above, I found that Fantastico was already telling me that there was a more recent version of Wordpress available and all I have to do is click on the supplied link to install the upgrade. My individual sites are listed in the Fantastico panel with the versions of Wordpress I have installed. Talk about easy!

But just as important for me, Wordpress is free, and that part won’t change. It’s covered by the GNU General Public Licensing agreement, so even if the current band of developers decide to abandon the project, someone else (maybe even you!) can pick it up and run with it. What’s more, since the source code is publicly available, you are free to alter it as you wish (not high on my personal priority list, thank you, but for some this is key!).

Another item not to be overlooked is the wealth of user support for Wordpress. In fact, browsing through the support pages of the Wordpress site, you might easily think you were dealing with a commercial package. Then there’s Lorelle’s site devoted specifically to Wordpress, and so on. The product really has user-community support. There’s even at least one book on the package.

So all in all, if you’re still hand-coding web pages (and God bless you if you are–this site is for you!) but need to crank out a blog as well, Wordpress gets my vote for the way to do it. It’s also versatile enough that you can eventually give up the hand coding if that’s your interest, but if you’re like me, website design can give a sense of hands-on satisfaction not unlike, say, woodworking.

And there’s so much less sawdust.