//Jason

Going to consume an entire coffee this morning before I start making updates to the remote Redis database..

Ha! Not 10 minutes after writing a post about Migrating From Wordpress.com to Micro.blog I began getting a flood of spam notifications on the Wordpress blog. Add that to the list of “Pros” of migrating!

It’s really too bad the Safari Extension Developer program is no longer free. People already were relucant to port their cool extensions to Safari and now there is a -$99 reason to do it.. I bring this up becasue I came across 2 today that ceased dev becasue of this.

I have been thinking long and hard about micro.blog and how it fits in. From wondering if this will allow me to remove myself from Twitter, or if the platform will expand and grow into the masses, and how I see ‘regular blogging’ fitting in. This post only covers the last one.

Instead of pointing my Wordpress blog to publish on micro.blog, what if I just used micro.blog as a one-stop shop!? I started the journey of mirroring everything (that is possible) on my Wordpress site over here on my micro.blog site to see how it worked. I didn’t want to just jump without some testing, so here is a list of my finding on migrating. Some good, some bad, some in between.

Currently pointing to http://micro.burk.io but who knows maybe it will be http://burk.io soon!?

I also want to mention that the site I would be moving is a hosted Wordpress.com blog (Premium level $8/month), not a self -hosted Wordpress.org blog

Pro’s of Migrating from Wordpress to micro.blog

1. A single place for both ‘short’ and ‘long’ form posts.
2. The ability to have a theme that you can customize to be unique.
3. You can have static pages linked from your main page. Be aware that these only support html and markdown.
4. A bit cheaper at $5/month rather than $8/month. I love the idea of backing a “social network” with direct compensation rather than forcing shitty ads into my timeline or selling my data.
5. There are first-party iOS apps (iPhone & iPad).
6. There is a first party Mac app.
7. Third-party apps are starting to pop up as well.
8. You can map custom domains.
9. Typo? Need to update data? All posts can be edited after posting!

Con’s of Migrating from Wordpress to micro.blog

1. Importing posts changes image hosting from the current location to Micro.Blog hosting. I use S3 for image hosting, so the posts are very portable between platforms. I would love to see an option during import to not update hosting locations of images.
2. No mechanism currently for uploading themes.

Somewhere in between depending on your usage..

1. No ‘traditional’ commenting system. People can reply to you via micro.blog (must have an account), which would be ok for a couple of replies, but the lack of threaded replies would make it cluttered and hard to navigate. Traditional commenting systems are mostly broken trash, so maybe this is ok? Just something to be aware of for those looking to transition I suppose. Standard replies in micro.blog would work fine for me most likely.
2. There is no mechanism for getting stats (page views, viewer locations, etc.). If this is something that matters to you.
3. You can’t add authorized users as “editors,” “authors,” “contributors.” It’s your account.

With all this, it has to be understood that micro.blog was never designed to be a 1:1 replacement for something like Wordpress. I am personally really liking the fresh take on microblogging that micro.blog is building toward! For me, I think the migration would be a good move.

I am going to keep adding to this as new things are discovered, or new features are added! See anything I am missing? Let me know! Thanks!

Puzzles for @alcedine and me! 🃏

I have dabbled in time tracking tools in the past (RescueTime & Timing), but most of them were far too granular and only worked if I was sitting at my ‘computer’. With more work moving to mobile and some being nowhere near a device, I needed a more flexible solution. I decided to go with more of an open-ended ‘traditional’ time tracking tool to accomplish my needs this time, the tool/service I am using is called Toggl. I picked this one because it’s a simple tool that allows me to track the time I want in the way I want.

So what am I going to track? Well, the breakdown changes slightly as I progress through the year and get a better understanding of what types of activities I am doing day-to-day, but at a high level, these are the things I am going to be tracking.

Work

• Meetings (Internal vs. External)
• Presentations (Creating vs. Presenting)
• Project Management
• Spreadsheets
• Software / Hardware Testing (Related to work products)
• Travel (Actual time spent traveling for work)
• Writing
  School (Arizona State University)
• Time spent completing coursework
  Personal
• Career Growth
• Writing
• Reading
  Volunteering

As of this post, I am 17 days into tracking, and it’s beginning to become a habit. The hardest part or tracking time is remembering to start and stop timers when doing various activities. Regarding this, Toggle does make it easy to go back and fill in time slots from earlier in the day or for previous days. This function is quite helpful when I do a daily recap and find items that I forgot to track.

I would like to keep this up for all of 2018, so I can see what a year of data looks like concerning how I have spent my time. I think this could be very useful in both a personal and professional capacity.

Do you do time tracking for personal or professional reasons outside of billing clients? What do you do similarly or different? I would love to know!

UPDATE 2018-03-05
I think I have finally made a decision. I am going with Tyme instead of Toggl.

Why?

1. I prefer the UI
2. Method of creating time entries
3. The apps (MacOS & iOS)
4. Feels like less work

I really like the emoji categories in the discover section. Having a standard catalog of categories could be a nice way to curate and find posts.

👾 (games) 📚 (books) 🍴(food) etc..

Search within categories. Find ‘pasta’ in🍴

Filters Only show 👾, 📚, 🍴

🤔 (thoughts)

I think I finally have my desk setup working smoothly! 💻

Writing up the pros and cons of moving entirely from Wordpress to micro.blog. A lot to think about when it comes to long term.

This new Pencil holder looks great! PencilSnap Going to need to try this one out I think. ✏️

Blackbox Puzzles is such a great game!! Ryan has done such an amazing job with every aspect of the game / experience! 👾

The new Welcome to Night Vale novel is great! 📚www.welcometonightvale.com/books/ as always, I recommend the audio book because Cecil Baldwin’s voicing is a MUST! 😀

Never heard of WTNV? Preapre yourself for hours of enjoyment! welcometonightvale.com

Just found the option to import your twitter archive into micro.blog. I am torn.. I want to import it, but maybe it’s best to just let it go? Decisions..

Most people on Twitter are using the same username here, but a directory search would be super useful too! Maybe there is one and I am missing it?

Overcooked! on the Nintendo Switch is great! (and can get quite stressful!) 🍽

Hmmm.. my blue ring broke. #AppleWatch

The thing I miss most is Twitterrific..