About
. . . the Site
The Sordid Blog started in December 2003 as a Moveable Type blog. In graduate school, I began doing research on blogs and how bloggers construct performances of themselves in the blogosphere. It occurred to me that I needed an “insider” look at that process, and the best way to do that would be to start my own blog.
In the last two years, particularly given the instability of Moveable Type (and my server’s shutting down cgi/perl), I migrated to WordPress. Just recently, I updated to WordPress 1.5.1.3 in the Strayhorn line.
Over these two years, the Sordid Blog has changed. What started as a few random thoughts shifted into reflections (often on other people’s content) and thoughts on news items. Usually, those items are about gay-related things — that’s because I’m gay and those are the things I care most about. Someone has to; the mainstream news media in this country could care less, unless you’re talking “Michael Jackson” and some fear that gay men are always child-molesters!
More recently, in July 2006, I spent about 72 hours upgrading from WordPress 1.5.3 to WordPress 2.0.3. I had thought that would be a fairly simple process — uploading files, upgrading the database, installing the newest plugins, etc, but the “simple” process didn’t work because of database conflicts between my 1.5.3 install and 2.0.3. I finally resolved those issues, and relaunched the Sordid Blog 3.0. In that arduous and frustrating process, however, I learned how to work with MySQL even better and purged a lot of garbage from my database, reducing its size from 16M to 3M, and making it work faster and more efficiently. That which does not kill us . . . and all that.
. . . the Author
“From humble farm beginings, sprung up from sandy earth . . .” Thus starts the alma mater of Georgia Southern, a small teaching-centered college that I called home for nine years. I did my undergraduate and master’s degrees at GSU and loved every minute of my life in Statesboro, GA, which must be hard for anyone to imagine.
But those lines from the AM are a lot like me: I started in small town just below the Georgia piedmont, a little unincorporated community of about fifty people; we called it “Moxley” — and look how far I’ve come! 
In 1999, after teaching writing and rhetoric at Georgia Southern for three years (including a stint teaching senior English at Vidalia High School), I took off for Illinois State University to take my PhD in English Studies. Now, I’m an Assistant Professor at East Carolina University, enjoying — as per usual — small town life.
Other than teaching writing and rhetoric courses for undergraduate and graduate students, I spend much of my time continuing my research on blogging and other types of “writing technologies” in online/digital environments. I’ve resisted bringing work into this blog space for almost two years, but it’s hard to stop since my “work life” and my “private life” constantly intersect and overlap. So who knows where this blog will go . . .
WordPress Plugins Used
- Audio Player 1.2.2 by Martin Laine
- Akismet 1.15 from Automattic
- BDP RSS Aggregator by Brian Palmer
- Bad Behavior by Michael Hampton
- Exec-PHP by Soren Weber
- FAlbum by Elijah Cornell
- Get Recent Comments by Krischan Jodies
- Image Browser 1.5 by Martin Chulpac
- Quicktime Posting 1.3b by Shawn Van Every
- Spam Karma 2.2 r3 by Dr. Dave
- Sideblog 3.3 by Kate Gasis
- Admin Menu 2.8 by Denis de Bernardy
- WordPress Reports 0.51 by Joe Tan
- WP Google Analytics 0.3 by Levi Buzolic
- WP Email Notification 2.3.1 by Brian Groce
WordPress Themes
- Dilectio Theme by Design Disease brought to you by Smashing Magazine.
Previously … - Christmas Days by Design Disease.
- CrayonWorld by WPThemes.Info, modified significantly for multiple headers, wider layout, etc.
Rockin’ the RAZR
Here are a few sound files I’ve edited/created for use as ring/alert tones on my RAZR v3 — feel free to download and use as you please . . . most of these files are sampled at 44,000 hz and 64 kbps. Those marked “sm” will probably be at 48 kbps. Music files come first; after the line, voice files. These are all stereo-quality “real tones” — so if your phone needs mono or polyphonic tones, these won’t work for you.
- Black Eyed Peas - My Humps (211kb) |
- Kelly Clarkson - Hazel Eyes (177kb) |
- Kelly Clarkson - Since U Been Gone (263kb) |
- Geto Boys - Damn It Feels Good to Be a Gantsta (227kb) |
- JayZ - 99 Problems (126kb) |
- Missy Elliott - Lose Control 1 (252kb) |
- Missy Elliott - Lose Control 2 (264kb) |
- Gwen Stefani - Holla Back (252kb) |
- Butters - “But a Cap” (short alert)
- Butters - “We Don’t Use Money in Hell” (long alert)
- Butters - “Don’t Ice Me, Homey!” (short alert)
- Cartman - “You Know, ‘Escarto, My Car Go” (long alert)
- Marjorie Dawes - Dust (long alert)
- Stewie - Kirk Cameron as Jean-Valjean (long alert)
- Stewie - Curtain Up! (short alert)
