I use this website as an archive of my scientific publications and as a place to post occasional observations on life, the world, and whatever comes my way. It's all very indulgent at this point.
I've just completed migrating the site from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9, which was more work than certainly I'd have liked. But Drupal 7 is way out of date now, and they say future upgrades will be pretty painless. We'll see about that.
I looked at porting over to WordPress, which is an excellent CMS. I host a WP website for a friend but had no real experience building a website with it. I found getting a basic website up and running with WP was pretty easy and I'd recommend it to someone getting started with a small website. But after a while I realized Drupal was actually much better at some things. Drupal's Custom Content Types and Views modules are really powerful and to do similar things in WordPress press requires paying for plug-ins, which can be a costly rabbit hole.
And too, I've already invested in the Drupal learning curve. So for me, I think it was better to stick with Drupal despite the fact I had to rebuild a lot to get a Drupal 9 site working roughly like my previous site.
Since 2006, I think, I've been using a VPS from Digitalocean.com provisioned with BOA to host my Drupal websites. BOA is installed on a fresh server, taking over just about everything about managing and tuning the needed server software, and provides a front-end for managing Drupal installations. It made spinning up a new Drupal website an easy matter of a few clicks. Really, a lifesaver when I was hosting quite a few Drupal sites for clients.
Faith is the worst curse of mankind, as the exact antithesis and enemy of thought. To rest one's case on faith means to concede that reason is on the side of one's enemies - that one has no rational arguments to offer.
When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
Widely attributed, probably inaccurately since Mark Twain’s father died when he was eleven years old
If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede
Letter dated October 31, 2006, to Daniel Turkewitz. http://www.newyorkpersonalinjuryattorneyblog.com/uploaded_images/Scalia… 25, 2014, at the Wayback Machine
Did anyone ever tell you you have the face of a Botticelli and the body of a Degas
I think, too, that we’ve got to recognize that where the preservation of a natural resource like the redwoods is concerned, that there is a common sense limit. I mean, if you’ve looked at a hundred thousand acres or so of trees — you know, a tree is a tree, how many more do you need to look at?
Candidate (not yet governor) Ronald Reagan, while speaking before the Western Wood Products Association in San Francisco on 12 March 1966. This is often misquoted as "If you've seen one Redwood you've seen them all"
I saw them; there is nothing beautiful about them, just that they are a little higher than the others.
Speaking of Redwoods on 15 March 1967
You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him get a vaccine or booster.
He who lives by denying science dies denying science.
There are no atheists in foxholes or deniers in hospitals.
He died doing what he loved: being an idiot.
FLM: Fox Lies Matter
https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2021/02/05/lou-dobbs-canceled-fox/
