Remember that time you moved from Textpattern to WordPress about 5 years ago and had all those uncategorised posts and missing images and meant to fix it but never did because it was like 15 pages of posts to go through and it seemed like such a hard job to fix and then you did it and now it’s 12:20am. Yeah.
Boring Site Stuff
17
Aug 09
Happy 9th Birthday
Nine years ago, I jumped on the burgeoning firstnamelastname bandwagon and ventured out of the world of ISP and Geocities websites.
I had started a personal website in about 1997, back when you could say pretty much whatever you wanted without fear of getting dooced (only because it hadn’t happened to anyone yet). I started writing random articles and putting up pictures and generally fiddling around with HTML and teaching myself “the internet”. In 1999, around the same time that Blogger started serving the angst-ridden Gen X/Y generation, I started a journal which didn’t get me dooced but did get me called into the HR manager’s office at my then-job. I learned it is best to not talk about annoying co-workers and their hairy cheek moles. And on 16 August 2000, I bought this domain.
I was talking about this with a friend the other week; about how I have been doing this for so long. I remember the time where there were only a small number of bloggers in New Zealand (namely Robyn Gallagher, Dean Gray (where did he go?), Starla Jo, Ryan Wataki, and of course Olivia). It really was a pretty tight-knit and small community, and looking back over the past 9 years, it seems weird how mainstream both blogging and the internet in general has become. It seems weird to have been there pretty much right at the start and that for some unknown reason I haven’t really stopped. That is probably my obsessive-compulsive tendencies, if I stop now what does that mean? Perhaps I like continuity. I also think it will be interesting to look back in 20 years and see what I was doing, what I liked, what inspired me.
Over the years, I have noticed I write less about my personal life. I think that comes with the internet becoming so mainstream, and also when you go through major life changes you don’t really want to document the hardships quite so openly. This isn’t LiveJournal or 1999 after all. I have gone from a (relatively and comparatively) naive 19-year-old girl, to a confident and self-assured 29-year-old woman. (Eek, woman! I suppose I can’t really call myself a girl any more.) I moved to Austin Texas, got married to the fantastic Ben Brown, sadly got divorced, slept on couches for a few months in Houston Texas, sorted my shit out and stayed in Houston for a couple of years, travelled around Europe, moved to Manchester England, and in 2006 came home. This is a record of my life.
In a year from now I will do a recap of what I’ve loved about this past decade, the things I am proud of. Ten bloody years. I look forward to it.
Until then, happy birthday!
28
Jun 09
Flickr Gallery: A Sweet Plug-In
I have always wanted a gallery on my site, but until only recently I have used a CMS that wasn’t WordPress. I have to say, WordPress is bloody excellent With those widgets and plug-ins, it takes away everything I hated about the internet before. Sure, I could do it, but it was hard. Having to write code that I didn’t want to, and try to design shit; it would just make me angry. I have bad artistic temperament.
So, tonight I thought, “Hey! I’ll see if I can do that easily with a plug-in eh?” I found Flickr Gallery, which is so easy!
- Download
- Install to wp-content (I always forget and have to hunt for that)
- Activate plug-in in dashboard
- Enter settings, once you get a Flickr API key
- Create new page, with just nothing but the text “flickr-gallery” in square brackets
- Save!
- Look!
Man the internet is just so easy these days!
24
Jan 09
Importing TextPattern into WordPress
The wonderful Jake has resolved the majority of my website issues, and my old TextPattern posts are now all back online. However, the comments are not! They show as being imported but they are not assigned to any posts and I can only see them in the admin panel. Very strange! Google or WordPress.org also do not help me with trying to solve this issue. I also can’t figure out why when you click on a post the sidebar navigation disappears.
I think maybe I am not very good at the internet.
9
Oct 08
Farewell Exorsus
By the end of October my host is closing down after a great 8 year run. So over the next few weeks ANIMOLLER.com will be closing down, and in theory reappearing (in theory being I have already paid for a year of hosting so it better be!). However, seeing how I have only the faintest of ideas on how to move servers, I am probably going to break things and lose data and who knows what else. Oh well, one can only try.
Until then, adios!
P.S. Thanks for everything, Richard!
17
Oct 07
Feeding Addictions
Unfortunately for you all this is NOT your favourite blog poster Ani Moller, but is in fact her ‘intern’ Tui. It is clear from her last post and the time that has lapsed since then, that she has not rekindled her love for this website as yet, but has instead hired me to give this extremely deprived site and its devoted readers some much needed love.
What has Ani been doing that is so much more important than feeding your animoller.com addiction you ask? She tells me that she has been too busy feeding HER addictions which consist of surfing facebook, listening to lots of drum and bass and of course investigating the Shortland Street killer. She has also been spending a lot of time kidding herself into thinking she is going to redesign her website. Hmmm we will believe that when we see it (hopefully some reverse psychology will work its wonders there).
I personally think however, that the real reason Ani has fallen out of love with this site is a result of her having fallen IN love with Duncan (see hopelessly in love) which doesn’t leave her with enough love left over to share with the internet. By having a quick look at her archive you will notice a rapid decrease in posts from about February 2007 which coincidentally is the point in time that Ani and Duncan began their whirlwind love affair.
Who can blame her though as we have all been guilty of temporarily forgetting long time friends when we find a new someone special. So, I ask all you readers to be patient and I am sure that as the dust settles on her new and wonderful relationship she will be back to regularly (or at least semi regularly) updating us on the goings on in her life.
20
Sep 07
Ani Moller: Absent Blogger
I think it is quite obvious that I have seemingly fallen out of love with the internet, and in particular, this ‘ere website. The very one I have lovingly (and sometimes angrily) crafted from nothing more than words and web software I don’t like very much over the past seven years. I’ve lost a lot of motivation for writing over the past few years, which is probably because I haven’t redesigned my website in years, because everyone knows you will stop doing anything that becomes monotonous and uninteresting. Because I do actually want to keep writing, I have wondrous and grand ideas of pulling everything down to bare bones, installing a new CMS, and completely starting again. I want a photography portfolio, and something pretty and new to present my musings on life in. Instead, I think, “Damn, importing all those entries into the database is going to suck!” and, “I really don’t have time for this!”
What I am really saying is that I am excellent at procrastinating. What I am also saying is that my life has also been extraordinarily busy. Since my last update I have:
- Spent four weekend in Auckland visiting my amazing boyfriend Duncan
- Went to the most amazing drum and bass gig ever: Drumz 2007 with Marcus Intalex and Doc Scott
- Spent eight days in Tonga fighting rabid dogs and falling coconuts
- Started learning to become a super awesome drum and bass DJ
- Become obsessed with the Shortland Street serial killer
- Discovered Facebook
To be honest, I’m not sure what the conclusion of this post is – I’m not going to profess to write more, and I’m not even going to promise to do the things I said I want to do in the first paragraph. But it’d be nice if I did.
4
Jul 07
Writer’s Block
I feel like I’ve had a mental blockage for over a year now. I will sometimes sit in front of my computer, looking at the main page of my site and thinking, “What goes here?” I’ll lean back, thumb and forefinger on my chin, look up to the ceiling and ponder, “What could I even write about?” Then oftentimes, I will click through to my old archives, typically during the living-alone-and-slowly-going-mad-in-Houston era where I believe my funny was at its peak, have a wee chuckle over how I used to amuse myself considerably, which inevitably will always lead to the same place – crying into my pillow about losing my textual creativity.
I guess it isn’t altogether a bad thing though. My visual creativity (i.e., my photography) has increased significantly over the past couple of years. I have created a graph to demonstrate this from 2000 to now:
After mapping my interest levels and producing this graph I can see how my interest levels have panned out over time: 2000 – writing motivation levels at their highest due to the Internet Rockstar; 2003 – photography interest growing due to European travels, lots of looking at old things and lack of wireless internet beginning withdrawals from the internet; 2005 – quarter-life crisis hits and proceeds for some many, many, many months, motivation levels for all decline; 2007 – toyboy acquired to offset quarter-life crisis, motivation levels for favourite hobby increase exponentially.
I’m getting a lot more use out of my D70 these days as I have discovered that combining two or three favourite hobbies can create a “Super Hobby”. My Super Hobby is photographer+drum and bass+getting wasted. What could be better, well aside from getting my ass into gear and getting these photos published in music magazines or working on my stupid portfolio which is not really stupid but would be completely awesome but I have no time or motivation to do it myself and instead want my friend Matt to do this for me, not even for free, but he doesn’t have time either.
I also realised I have been writing for the internet for a decade. A DECADE. That is a very long time. After explaining to a friend why I didn’t update my site that much anymore last week, I was asked if I had retired from the internet and I realised I have semi-retired from the land o’ blog. That is, at least until my writer’s block has been cleared, which everyone knows only happens when you become addicted to heroin. I can’t wait!