Pye in the Face turned 5 years old last month and there is a wealth of over 2000 posts from those first 60 months, some of them worthy of a second look, gathering dust. Don’t I sound like the proud papa? I found a plugin that automatically regurgitates old posts at random, but that seemed like cheating. Every Thursday I am going to manually reach back in time, dig in the crates and link you back to one or more posts you may have missed the first time. Or blocked out with the help of a capable therapist.
Our first trip through the Stargate/Pyegate/Nerdgate will revisit one of my most popular posts ever in terms of page views, comments and (to this day) search engine traffic. My best 80’s songs post from October, 2004 saw me thinking long and hard about my 10 very favorite tunes from that ridiculous decade. Upon rereading it, it holds up and I still wouldn’t change a thing.
The coolest incident which resulted from this post was that I was contacted by a member of one of the bands I heralded – namely, Drew Arnott from Strange Advance. He found the article via Google and cleared up some of the facts I’d gotten wrong. Follow the link to read our back and forth.
Step back in time. Get all “Bill & Ted”. Have a look at the list of 80’s tunes which I agonized over for a couple of days and then share your own favorites in the comments.
Let’s “face” it – since the mass influx of Facebook into our collective worlds, having a blog isn’t such a big deal anymore. Maybe it never was to anyone with a girlfriend. Likewise, having a Flickr account isn’t such a big deal anymore. Making an Evite seems like an enormous extra step. Why would you join an old-fashioned forum when you can just search for a related group? It’s an incredible, incredible (I hate to say the word) phenomenon the likes of which we won’t see again for a long time.
That having been said I know there are a lot of readers, or former readers, I might just win back one day when I increase the frequency of my posting who do not use FB and definitely never will. I was reminded of this last week when I received an email from my buddy Taz in Germany to let me know that 5 years after the last time I saw him in person – he’s still reading regularly, and what am I up to? That got me thinking. Got me optimistic and inspired. Tingly in the pants.
The first step of my long-overdue comeback will be to update my galleries – exported from Facebook using an incredible Wordpress plugin which is probably my favorite add-on of all time. I pray that Mr. Harp never stops updating and evolving this wonderful tool and I encourage you to donate some money if you end up using it. I have, and I may again someday. On to the galleries…
- Mobile Uploads: These are photos I take with my iPhone. Possibly through your bedroom window. Keep an eye on this one.
- Summer is Upon Us: Miscellaneous photos not falling on big holiday weekends. Lots of unfortunate evidence from Duck’s Roadhouse.
- Bonnie’s Memorial Weekend: We sent Mom off in style and over 100 people traveled from as far away as Florida to wish her a fitting bon voyage.
- Straight Outta Storage: Whilst going through my parent’s things I’ve found a treasure trove of funny family photos. I be scanning and yes, there are bathtub photos for the pedophile crowd.
- April Flowers: Includes my attempt at a St. Patrick’s Day party and shots of the brand new man-cave in use for the first time.
- Canada Day 2009: Half the fam-damily joined me for fireworks and lots of silly fun and silliness.
- July 4th 2009: Jason and Jim came up for a weekend of Canadian revelry and brought more duty free vodka with them than I’ve ever seen in one place.
- Kim and Gooch’s Wedding : People told me I had a good time. Congrats to the happy couple and thanks for the skidoo.
That’s my last 4 months or so in pictures, and I sincerely hope you enjoy them. It’s been a wonderful summer so far, and if you’re a friend of mine I seriously encourage you to drop me a line and come up for a visit. If you have any questions, comments or the number of a good rehab facility – please leave them below.
I’m beyond happy to announce that the bastard hackers have been thwarted and my humor and pop culture blog, “Pye in the Face” a.k.a. www.DavePye.com is back and better than ever! New energy, new backend, new design and all the previous posts were saved and restored. That was a close one.
It’s scary to have a labor of love you’ve been plugging away at for 5 years vanish in the blink of a 12-year-old Korean’s keystroke. If I’ve learned one thing from this nightmare it’s that it pays to have long, intricate passwords. Let that be a lesson to you all. “%afwr&kjhk*()-=-&%$@yut” over “ilovemykitty” – always. I know you love your kitty. We all love your kitty.
I won’t stop until the momentum and commenting community I had circa 2007 has been fully reinstated, and even then I’ll keep polluting your RSS feeds with my own brand of silliness. I have missed having this outlet like you couldn’t imagine. I’m back – and I hope some of you are still listening.
I can’t take it anymore. My current install of Wordpress, the application which powers this blog, is currently so corrupt that most people can’t comment and I can’t save any backend changes whatsoever. Might as well rename it www.Blagojevich.tv. I have tried to avoid a complete reinstallation but at this point I don’t think there is any way to avoid it. I recently migrated a Wordpress blog for a friend and my confidence in that process has increased a bit, so I am thinking now is the time for action. Now is the time I reclaim Pye in the Face from the wee gremlins and ghosties that have been gumming up the works for the past 6 months. It must be great again!
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of the times. Now is the winter that, discontented, I reinstall Wordpress.” – Me
If you pass by and see anything wacky going on in the next few days, you’ll know why. I refuse, however, to be held responsible for any and all niche Austrian pornography which may appear here in my absence. Especilly those midget clowns that pee on female ringmasters. I may have just dreamed that, though.
It’s been awfully quiet around here this week, and I’m not too certain why. My head wasn’t in the game, I suppose. I am trying to eliminate a lot of the things I spend time doing that don’t make me money. Silly websites, controlling Nico Bellic, Forensic files, etc. This is all in the hopes that I will spend said time doing constructive things. Working on sites that may actually make money someday or already do, yard work, walking the puppies. I think authoring this website, as scattered and therefore un-monetizeable as it is, falls into the latter category, as it’s the closest thing to a head-shrinker I’ll see round these here parts.
This reminds me of a post I wrote about three years ago, which I can’t seem to find for the life of me, where I spoke to my blog as if I were a douchebag boyfriend. “You’re my blog, baby. And I love you. Don’t listen to them busybodies down at the hair salon. I’m not going anywhere, baby… cause I love you.” Well tonight I’m that same scumbag slinking back to further ruin the life of the naive young lass. “It won’t happen again, baby. I’ve changed, baby – I’ve changed!”
I haven’t changed, and neither will Lorenzo. Truth is – it’s getting hot. Damn hot up here and I think I’ll be spending a lot more time at the computer over the next 4 months. People think Canada is cold. Well it is – a lot frickin’ further far North than I currently live. In Southern Ontario it’s no cooler than the hot asphalt of the North End between the months of June and October, and I don’t do well in the heat. I sweat like a fat person. OK, like a much fatter person. So I’ll be inside quite a bit, in the cool air of the basement office I plan to construct this weekend, and therefore a little more prolific. You lucky people.
After – no kidding – 2 years of humming and hawing, DavePye.com has finally been migrated from the infantile Blogger to the almighty WordPress platform. The design you see today is not final, and the incredible functionality of WordPress will make this site more interactive and fun for the 13 readers I have managed to retain during this slow summer. It’s time for me to get this old clunker back on the road.
As anyone in the know knows – I am gearing up for a big, and technically international, move. I am attempting to build a department at work, hand off building management duties and financials to the owners, finish taxes, organize satellite internet access to remote wilderness locations, have a tooth replaced, sort personal accounting, get a new laptop and – oh yeah – blah dee frickin’ blah.
DavePye.com will be back – and better than ever when the dust settles in a couple of weeks. A redesign and move to a different backend will follow shortly after. I look forward to documenting my new adventures in Canada, and will not disappoint. Also, if you’re not already on the Evite for the going away party Saturday night, and feel like you should be, spare yourself the wee dejected sniffle – and just email me for details.
Don’t think I don’t know it.
I don’t want to hear myself sing this song more than anyone of you do. If I could truly visualize the audience I have built, I would never dare to take a hiatus. As I once said, a blog is like a puppy – if you fail to give it attention, it will die quickly. Or at least shite all over everything you have. Maybe a blog is like a pimp, or Godzilla, or some kind of giant pigeon. I’m not sure.
It’s definitely like a German dictatorship who have just developed the Panzer. Or Jake Gyllenhall’s nemesis in The Day After Tomorrow. A giant, wet thing that envelops me and washes me out to me sea. Cutesy begone.
I love this domain, this website, this entity. And I will be back when the dust settles over here.
This blog has been sitting neglected for the past week like a red-headed stepchild. And I’m sorry, baby. Of course I still love you. Even though I was stupid enough to create you in Blogger two years ago instead of Wordpress. Even though I use you to annoy people, find homes for roaches and tell far too many dead prostitute jokes. You’re my one and only, and I love your little blue, green and orange ass. No I don’t think you’re a baboon. You’re putting words in my mouth now, baby. Shhhhhh.
No you did NOT see me at the movies last week with Squidoo. That is so over. What do I have to do to prove it to you? Add another bad radio program to the sidebar? How about another guestmap, would you like that? More news about my leaky roof? I’ve got it – another piece about how rainy it is this summer? A picture of my cat? How about another joke about how I’m going to die alone beside a trunk of DVD porn? I haven’t used that one in a while. What’s it going to take?
And… SCENE. This week PITF turns two years old. To help you fathom how unlikely it is for a blog to ever turn two years old, that’s 14 in dog years, – and about 672 in blog years. I’d be giving myself a pat on the back, if I weren’t already giving myself a pat on the back. In honor of this miraculous occasion, I will be updating the “classics” list on the left hand side for the first time in forever to encourage a little nostalgia. Which is a little like inducing vomit, only less potentially damaging to the esophagus.
Last FM is extraordinarily cool. If you’re not familiar with it, sign up now. I have added a chart in the left hand nav where you can see, and listen to, the last few songs I have played for myself. It tracks all my preferences and creates an on-the-fly radio station which has no boundaries in terms of artist catalogues, bandwidth or diskspace. The only problem is it looks like crap.
Do you really care at what time of the day I listened to one of these songs? You probably don’t care that I’ve listened to them at all. If I can figure out a way to get the box narrower, it will be staying. If not, I’ll keep looking for another musical solution for PITF. In the meantime, you’ll have more Pixies, Happy Mondays and Tragically Hip than you can shake a stick at. Just walk away.
First off, right out of the gate, a tremendous thank you to whichever internet ne’er do well took the time needed to put this lovely Shakira montage together. Sincerely. That trunk is full. Put the luggage in the back seat with Grandma.
Next, a few kind words about RSS Bandit. You’re reading my blog, so you probably read a few others. Did you know you can also have your news, stock quotes, movie reviews, gossip, weather and just about every other form of data under the sun delivered via RSS feeds? Download the Bandit – for those of you who are RSS amateurs, or get laid regularly, the greatest feature is the application’s ability to take any URL you give it and then hunt for an RSS feed. Sometimes they can be hard to find. So you just tell it to add a new subscrition, type in the basic site name, and if there’s a feed there it will find it. You can keep your feeds organized in a left hand column similar to IE favorites, and I absolutely love it – and I had tried many aggregators before settling on this one.
Now that I’ve come off like a huge nerd today, let me wrap up by chatting about my weight like a woman for a few lines. I mean, we’ve already established that I’m going to die alone. When you lose weight, even a little when you have a small fluxuation range like I do, your wardrobe suddenly doubles. I am back into 36s and am steadily dropping weight like a hot air balloon headed for a forest fire. If I see another fucking apple I’m going to shriek, but it’s a nice feeling and I missed these pants. Welcome back Perry Ellis.
If I learned one thing from looking at the XMas photos I got from my sister today, it’s that I am a prime candidate for a face tuck. Regardless, my love/hate relationship with the gym is my problem. These photos are still keepers. Keep a lookout for Mamma Pye loving all the attention in the North End, an impromptu Guelph reunion getting all kinds of boozy in Burlington, Billy Frasier restraining me in an attempt to keep me from getting rolled by 6 teenagers and a chick, and a cat that only looks weirder than my hairline.
A grand time, and I wish I could get up there more than once a year. They say it’s easier to get into the NHL than it is to get an advertising job in Toronto. Still, Hal Gill has a job, eh?
It’s been about 6 months since I added the funny little testimonial section you’ll see over to the left there. Every time the page refreshes, a new quote is displayed from a list of about 15 which were submitted at the inception. They’re getting a bit old. A bit long in the tooth. A wee bit stale. If you’re looking for a little interactivity today, email me a testimonial or leave one in the comments for me to add to the fray. I’m not fussy, but the funnier the better. Thy will be done.
Got a second? Good. Want to see something funny? OK. Go to MSN. Are you there? Now type “outside sales calls” into the search box. Got it? Hit the search button. I have to screen-shot this as it’ll undoubtedly change soon. Anyway, for posterity’s sake:
In your face, U.S. Department of Labor. That’s for that time at summer camp you beat me in the sack race and then made out with my girlfriend behind the canteen.
Another whack of photos from my folks’ place in Ontario. Highlights include eerie campfire pics, killer ponies, newfies, funny hats, jetskis and my insane father’s many costumes. Have a wee peeksie and stay tuned for an imminent batch from Triconi’s wedding.
I think we’re taking one last trip up there this weekend, and then I can lay down in a bus station somewhere and expire. I feel like a nomad, a gypsy, a transient or maybe even Roger Miller’s trans-continental-backseat-bus-trip-conceived lovechild. I’m tired, see? And I don’t wanna go nowheres for awhile.
