Jacob Grier

I always forget my blogiversary, but a fifth birthday is worth a quick look back. In the past few years at the blog formerly known as Eternal Recurrence we’ve waxed lyrical about coffee, obsessed over cocktails, gone tripping on miracle fruit, landed on the front page of The Wall Street Journal, uncovered the stapler’s secret, examined weird fish with Mark McGrouther, pondered the surprisingly large size of prosthetic bull testicles, confused hundreds of foreigners seeking GMail accounts, helped save a local magic shop, encountered my nefarious twin brother David, witnessed the Queso Crusader battle Taco Boy, met a magical politician, proposed an economically-oriented alarm clock, visited a raw milk dairy, combated the nanny state, raised a glass on Repeal Day, practiced Aikido in the cold and rain, faced a surreal navigation problem, received an Aerobie signed by inventor Alan Adler, documented great moments in heterosexuality, nearly burned down the house of one my best friends, and much, much more.

Thanks for reading, commenting, arguing, linking, and sending in tips. And if you’re not reading regularly, please subscribe with RSS. I hope the next five years will be just as fun, and I’ll keep writing with my rules for good blogging in mind:

Rule #1: Be meaningful.

Rule #2: If meaning is elusive, be amusing.

Rule #3: If meaning and amusement are both out of reach, be brief.

If you take a peek to the right, you’ll see that the del.icio.us feed is no more. In it’s place is a mini-blog where I’ll be posting collections of links, short reviews, and brief asides.

Two complaints about the del.icio.us links were that they required a separate RSS feed and that they couldn’t be commented on. Thanks to the handy Sideblog plugin, both those problems are solved. Side entries will show up automatically in the main RSS feed and are open to comments; just click on the headline to get to the form.

If for some reason you want to search my del.icio.us archive, it’s available here.

If you’re reading this, you’re seeing the site on its new server. Things are looking good so far, and this time we’re in the hands of smart people I can contact personally if I run into problems. Hopefully this will put the past few months’ hosting troubles behind us.

Sorry for the lack of updates — the combination of an overloaded server, no wi-fi, and being on vacation put writing at the bottom of my priorities. But there is some good news: I’m on a new server now and there’s good coffee in Texas!

First, the coffee. Starbucks is still the only decent option I know of around Spring, but Austin’s got the good stuff. Caffe Medici makes a good cappuccino in a cozy space. JP’s Java boasts the only Clover in the state and uses it to serve up delicious single origin coffees from my favorite Seattle shop, Zoka. They’re both a long way from home, but it’s good to see great coffee making inroads into Texas.

Then, the server. Good things come from complaining sometimes, and after enough service requests DreamHost transferred me over to their new virtual private server plan. What does this mean? That I’m paying a lot more per month to have dedicated server resources, thus escaping the commons problem of shared hosting. I still have some adjustments to make to improve the efficiency of the site and may increase my server resources, but so far pages seem to be loading much faster. If you any problems with the site, please let me know.

Yeah, I know, the downtime and page load times have been awful this week. That will hopefully change soon. It turns out that the Google web crawler has been hogging resources on the site. To stop it, I’ve got to sign up with Google webmaster tools and tell it not to visit so often. This would be easier to do if my laptop AC adaptor had not also broken this weekend. Technology is conspiring against me.

I’m also now on the waiting list for DreamHost’s virtual private server option. Within a few weeks I should be transerred to it, and if all goes well I’ll be able to adjust settings to make this site load as quickly as it should.

Until then, subscribing to the RSS feed would be a good idea if you haven’t already.

It’s come to my attention emails sent to my addresses at this domain are being very delayed or possibly lost before forwarding to GMail. If you’ve sent me something recently and I haven’t replied, I probably never received it. Please resend to my GMail address directly (jacobgrier@).

Details about the problem are here. I’m not sure to what extent the fault lies with DreamHost, but I’m still looking for new hosting recommendations. Thanks to everyone who’s responded already.

… is no more! Though with a finite number of desirable blog names and an infinite amount of time in which to use them, it will inevitably return.

In the meantime I’ve decided to remake the banner into something that better describes the content of the site. Eternal Recurrence seemed like a good name when I started writing in 2003, but no longer reflects much about what I’m doing here now. Obscure philosophy references out, SEO in.

The downtime and slow response issues with my current hosting service have continued with no sign of getting better. My contract is up soon and, though switching servers is a pain, I’m looking to sign up with someone more reliable. The main requirements are multiple domain hosting, multiple databases, and actually being online most of the time. Any recommendations?

Speaking of disgusting creatures, I apologize for the giant close-ups of presidential candidates that have been appearing in the sidebar ads. Newsmax.com has been hereby blocked from advertising on this site.

Remember, though, I can blacklist sites, but I don’t otherwise filter what Google throws up there. Given the long electoral season, there will likely be more ugly mugs sneaking through until election day.

The servers that host this site have been badly overworked the past few days, resulting in very slow page loads and some downtime. Dreamhost has addressed the problem with an additional file server and things seem to be working better now, but I’m told issues could reappear while they set up a more long term solution. Apologies if the slowness continues.

For four years I’ve tried to write interesting stuff here and sustained only a small readership. But check out the traffic stats from the previous 30 days, up to two days after the stapler post:

The people have spoken. From now on it’s all staplers, all the time.

[Thanks Stumblers and Lifehackers!]

I’ve recently learned the Twitter code was messing up the sidebar for all of you IE users. Using IE is a bad enough experience without this additional complication, so I’ve taken down the Twitter box till I get it fixed. If you’re on Twitter, I’m still using it here.

After reading this post on the new Rule the Web blog, I’ve been convinced that Twitter might actually be useful and signed up for an account. I’ll try not to get too distracted by it and use it only in moderation, just like I do coffee and alcohol. Oh, wait…

My Twitter updates should appear on the right sidebar. If nothing’s loading, it’s because of bugs or overload on the Twitter servers, so fear not. And if you’re on Twitter, add me as a friend. My username is jacobgrier.

After a long period of neglect I’ve finally updated the blogroll on the right, deleting some old sites, adding some new ones, and generally making it better reflect what I actually read. There are some good sites on there, so check it out.

I also deleted the “Friends” category and shifted almost everyone in it to “Wonks.” The distinction was making less and less sense. After three years of living in DC all my friends with blogs are a little bit wonky anyway, so it’s no real loss.

I do appreciate the irony of having my site go down just a few hours after requesting feedback on the content. It’s back now, and hosted on a new, more reliable company called DreamHost. I’ve heard nothing but good things about them, so hopefully this will solve the downtime problems that have plagued the site the last few months.

Below, entries from my other blogs, because contrary to rumor I don’t cross-post everything. But first, a request for feedback. With three other blogs on my plate right now, I’m not quite sure what to do with this one and posting has slumped after a good start in January. I’m open to hitting a few new topics repeatedly, like I have with smoking bans and coffee (and lobsters, oddly enough), or creating some regular features. I think I’ve also been relying too much on the del.icio.us feed and should write more short posts in addition to the longer stuff. What do you want to see here? Any requests?

In the meantime, recent posts from two of the other sites:

At A Better Earth, Posner and Becker on water conservation, Branson’s new prize, the Dutch back away from biofuels, a surprising look at hybrids versus SUVs, and an innovative approach to solar power adoption.

And today at EatFoo, three ways the government stands between you and a good drink.

Add this to my list of disappointments with Hostexcellence, the cheap but unreliable hosting service I’ve put up with for the past 8 months: going offline for several hours on the same morning I get linked on the most popular weblog in the world.

That’s just not cool, man.

To add insult to injury, the reason they had to go offline is because they screwed up their own power upgrade. The same upgrade that they had to go offline for three hours to perform last weekend. Idiots.

So now I’m switching hosts yet again. Right now I’m leaning toward Dreamhost. Any other suggestions?