Image: www.msnbc.msn.com

I can listen to MSNBC Meet the Press on my iphone. I can listen to CBS Face the Nation on my iphone. (Keep reading for some sketchy instructions.) Why not ABC This Week?

With a simple link to an audio mp3, I can put the phones in my ears, turn on the audio, lock the iphone to accidental tapping, put the iphone in my pocket, and go for a walk while I listen to the show. With a simple link to an audio mp3, I don’t have to futz with “subscription” to a podcast, nor with downloading and eventually deleting a podcast, nor with signing in to itunes, nor with indicating my agreement to legal threats, nor with downloading and maintaining an app.

I would be pleased if ABC This Week could provide the audio on mp3 for simple download and play on my iphone. I don’t want to watch a video.  I don’t want to subscribe to anything. I don’t want to log in to itunes. I don’t want to agree to legal threats. I don’t want to download an app. I can tolerate some stupid advertising. I do want to listen to the audio. ABC seems to provide no way to do this. ABC doesn’t provide the video or the audio for play on iphone.

MSNBC Meet the Press provides the audio within a few minutes of end of the broadcast show. They could just give me the audio link, but they make me either find the hyperlinked word “Audio” on this page http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8132577/t/get-podcasts-nbc-news-msnbc-msnbccom/ or use an audio app downloaded from itunes. The app works ok, but it’s really unnecessary, and the app clutters my machine. All I really need and want is http://msnbcpod.vo.llnwd.net/content/audio/podcast/pd_mtp-09-25-2011-093313.mp3.

CBS Face the Nation provides the audio within a few minutes following the show. I use an audio app from itunes. I have to put up with a little stupid advertising. It is impossible to click the right links on an iphone to simply get the mp3. On a laptop, I don’t have to search much on http://www.learnoutloud.com/Podcast-Directory/Social-Sciences/Current-Events/CBS-News-Face-the-Nation-Podcast/7263#listen to find the hyperlink for “Download”, which gives me http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~r/podcast_nation_1/~5/dM4ZcXWtAZw/1081460.mp3 which is all I wanted.

For the Meet the Press iphone app, on your iphone, go to the App Store (the icon on the button looks something like a capital “A” in a circle), and search for “Meet the Press”.

For the Face the Nation app, on your iphone, go to the App Store, and search for “CBS Radio News”.

"I will find a way, or make one." -- Hannibal (248-183 BC)

This article provides step-by-step instructions for activating SSH on GoDaddy.com.

With SSH, I can get a Unix login shell on my hosting service. With this access, I can use Unix commands to search through my website content and to make changes on the hosting server. At the same time, SSH gives me access to a very capacious Unix box for a wide range of utility computing tasks.

SSH is a secure login access method, in use on Unix hosts since 1995. Tatu Ylonen at the Helsinki University of Technology (a.k.a. Aalto University) developed SSH.  SSH is widely-used, well-tested and trusted for high-security computing. The software tool Putty uses SSH to connect and establish a command window. There are other methods. I use Putty. (At the end of this article, find links to SSH and Putty and other tools mentioned. All are free or nearly so.)

When I got my hosting service at GoDaddy.com, I believe they didn’t make SSH available or I would have used it. Maybe they’ve always made it available, and I misunderstood. In any case, I can get SSH with GoDaddy.com hosting now.

It surprised me that setting up SSH on GoDaddy.com isn’t straightforward if you have databases installed. During the process, GoDaddy will present this message to you:

If you have databases, then I recommend you allow up to four elapsed days to activate SSH.

If you don’t have databases, you merely need find the button and click it. Given GoDaddy’s ease of navigation, finding the button can take a couple of hours if you don’t know where to find it already.

Before we dive into the dreadful details, please know that your situation might differ from mine. Circumstances and time may introduce differences, not to mention errors, both yours and mine. With that understood, and before we really get started, let’s go over something we will use several times.

Here is the procedure we call

GO TO THE HOSTING DASHBOARD
1. http://GoDaddy.com
2. Log in with username and password.
3. On the horizontal green menu bar, click the My Account tab.
4. Ignore the sidebar on the left.
5. Scroll down about half way till you see a horizontal black bar labeled Products.
6. Below the black bar, click on the link Web Hosting. You will see four columns named My Accounts, Plan, Billing Date and Control Center.
7. The account names under My Accounts correspond to domain names. Find the row with the domain name you wish to work on. On the same row, on the far right in the column labeled Control Center, find and click on the button labeled LAUNCH.

Now, let’s get underway. Here are the steps. (In these instructions, “->” means “Choose”.)

1. Find out whether you have any databases.
i. Go to the Hosting Dashboard
ii. Read down the leftmost column till you come to
Database
MySQL:
iii. If you see “MySQL: 0 …”, then you don’t have any databases.
If you see “MySQL: n …” where n is a non-zero number, then you have databases.

2. If you use WordPress, then export your blog. With the export files, if something goes wrong, then you can take your blog to some other hosting provider if necessary. Export runs quickly.
a. -> http://myblog.com/wp-admin
b. Log in with your admin id and password.
c. From the left sideboard menu, in the Tools section,
-> Export -> Download Export File -> Save File
and choose a place on your computer to save the file. Choose a place where you can find the file, surely and quickly. I put mine in a folder named …/myblog.com/bak . Write in your notes the name of the file and the folder in which you put it.

3. If you use Joomla,
a. -> http://myjoomlasite.com/…/administrator
b. -> Log in with administrative name and password.
c. -> Site -> Control Panel -> Global Configuration -> Server
Write the values from these fields in your notes:
i. Database type
ii. Hostname
iii. Username
iv. Database
v. Database prefix

4. (Optional) Stop any running databases. If you don’t have any databases, then just skip this step. If you do have databases, then maybe it doesn’t matter whether you stop them or not. If you have a lot of money or a lot of customer activity or potential income loss or national secrets involved in databases on this website, then you probably want to stop them. If all you are running is your personal blog about favorite recipes from Nebraska or pictures of your dog, then you can probably skip this step. If you want to stop the databases, then find somebody who knows how to do database administration. I would have to spend several days figuring this out.

5. If you have databases, then back them up. A larger database takes more time to back up. Do this:
a. Go to the hosting dashboard.
b. Click on the horizontal bar labeled “Databases”.
c. -> MySQL
d. For the database you wish to back up, click the pencil icon. (I don’t know why it’s a pencil.)
e. -> Backup. Write the file name in your notes.
f. -> OK.
g. -> MySQL and repeat with the next database.

6. Back up the contents of your website. If something goes wrong, it will be easier and quicker to restore your website from backup than to find somebody to sue. For your recipe collection blog, I suggest you use FTP to make a backup copy onto your local computer hard drive. In my opinion, the best FTP client for this purpose is FileZilla. It costs a few minutes or a few hours to back up your website. GoDaddy doesn’t back up your website automatically. They will sell you FTP Backup Space. I don’t know what it costs.

7. Enable SSH.
a. Go to the Hosting Dashboard.
b. On the green horizontal menu bar near the top of the window, under the words “HOSTING CONTROL CENTER”, find the tab Settings. Hover the mouse pointer over the tab Settings to see the dropdown menu. From the dropdown menu, choose SSH.
c. Enter your phone number where you are right now, because GoDaddy’s robot will call you in just a minute. -> Enable
d. Wait for a call from a robot. I had to wait less than one minute. An English-speaking robot called and gave me a 5-digit pin number.
e. Enter the 5-digit pin number -> Verify.

8. GoDaddy warns you may have to wait up to 72 hours.
a. On hosting without databases, I was able to log in with Putty not more than a minute later.
b. On hosting with databases, I was able to log in with Putty about 26 hours later.

9. If you have databases, you may wish to check on progress from time to time. To check:
a. Go to the hosting dashboard.
b. Click on the horizontal bar labeled “Databases”.
c. -> MySQL. If the process isn’t finished, you will see the words “Pending Account Change”.

10. When the process finishes, GoDaddy will notify you by email. I received an email saying:

11. Try connecting using SSH-enabled software. I use Putty. It should work now.

12. Software applications such as WordPress and Joomla and others may need configuration adjustments to recognize the transformed databases. See the well-written http://products.secureserver.net/products/hosting/connection_strings.htm for instructions how to adjust your applications.

13. You are finished.

Sources:
1. On SSH, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Shell .
2. On Putty, http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/ .
3. On FileZilla, http://filezilla-project.org/ .
4. On WordPress, http://community.godaddy.com/help/article/6606 and http://wordpress.org/
5. On Joomla, http://community.godaddy.com/help/article/6262 and http://www.joomla.org/
6. On GoDaddy, http://GoDaddy.com .
7. N. Adekoya and K. B. Nolte, Struck-by-Lightning Deaths in the United States, Journal of Environmental Health (May 2005), http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/jeh5_05_45-50.pdf (retrieved November 14, 2010).
8. Lawrence J. Magid, As North Learned, Deleted Files are Retrievable (Los Angeles Times, August 10, 1987), http://articles.latimes.com/1987-08-10/business/fi-58_1_computer-files (retrieved Feb. 25, 2011).
9. Image: Hannibal in the Appenines, http://hannibalthewarrior.com (retrieved Feb. 26, 2011).
10.  Hannibal, http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hannibal (retrieved Feb. 26, 2011).

Image: Rochester & Genesee Valley Railroad Museum (August 27, 2005), rgvrrm.org

When I get a new loginid on a Linux (or Unix) system, there are a few things I set up right away. While I will expend surprisingly many words to tell you about this, the action only takes a minute or two when you know how. This article uses a very basic set of Linux (or Unix) commands. If you are a newbie who wants to get started quickly with Linux (or Unix), then learn the contents of this article. Harass your colleagues for help if you need it.

First, I set up my own ~/bin subdirectory to hold my glorious creations, including mcp.

$ mkdir ~/bin

Next, I create mcp, which I use all the time. mcp is an acronym that stands for something I don’t recall. mcp is a shell script that contains this:

#! /bin/sh
cp ${1} ${1}.`date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S`

I use mcp to make a copy of a file before I change it. This gives me a ready fallback. If I find myself on an unproductive coding tangent, or if delete my working file by mistake, or if it was working before I fixed it and now it’s not, then I can get back to where I was and save the galaxy after all. My colleague may hose up the program she’s been debugging for the last three weeks, and try to recreate if from scratch, but not me. Nor do I have to beg the indulgence of an overworked and underpaid system administrator to restore the working version from backups. The timestamp works much better than a suffix like .o or .old, since these accommodate only one backup copy. The timestamp also works better than suffixes like .1, .2, .3, etc. because every timestamp is unique, and you don’t have to wonder whether the .2 copy was made recently or last year, and you don’t have to wonder whether it’s old enough to discard. When my colleagues ask, “How long should we keep multiple timestamped copies?”, I usually say “90 days or make an executive decision.” When it comes time to clean out the debris, a simple command used with care like

$ rm *.200906*

usually works nicely.

The copy I made with mcp has the unique and never to be repeated timestamp. The time stamp formats the date and time so that multiple mcp copies will sort in order.

I suppose one could create mcp using cat, or even emacs, but I like vi for this purpose. Also, I test mcp immediately to make sure it works. Here are my steps:

$ mkdir ~/bin
$ cd ~/bin
$ vi mcp
$ chmod +x mcp
$ touch bozo
$ mcp bozo
$ ls bozo*

This would display something like

bozo bozo.20110220-114919 mcp

Ta-da! It’s working.

I thank Phil Greiper at Bank of America and my colleagues at Mellon Capital Management for inspiring the hyphen between the datestamp and the timestamp for readability.

A variation we used at Mellon to help accountability was

#! /bin/sh
cp ${1} ${1}.`date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S`.`id –un`

though I sympathize with those who feel it adds too much clutter to a filename already too long,  and it exacerbates the spelling challenge. I seldom use this variation because the value of simplicity usually trumps the value of accountability. We must consider all things with balance and in context.

A cousin to mcp is mvp:

#! /bin/sh
mv ${1} ${1}.`date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S`

I use mvp to delete a file or directory. By renaming it with mv, the file no longer serves its original purpose, in nearly all cases, yet I can get it back tomorrow, without waiting for the sysadmin’s 72-hour restoration request fulfillment policy, if I have second thoughts about having deleted it. That virtue acknowledged, I’ve seldom used mvp in practice, so I don’t bother with creating it until a specific use arises.

But enough of this fascinating digression. A little more work will make mcp fully useful.

Let’s make sure mcp is on the path. The command set

$ cd ~
$ which mcp

will show us the mcp we will use when we invoke the command, or will show us the list of directories in which it didn’t find mcp.

(If the instructions that follow seem like gibberish, then don’t worry about it. Just give the commands, because the instructions will either work or they won‘t, and will do no harm if they don’t work, and it’s easy to try it, and so go for it. If they don’t work, then bribe your overworked and underpaid sysadmin with a cappuccino and ask her to help you “put ~/bin on my path”, which will probably take her about 90 seconds of direct effort, tops.)

If we get the list of directories and if we tested mcp with bozo as above, then most likely our new toolbox ~/bin subdirectory isn’t on the path. We can fix that in file ~/.bashrc . (If you aren’t using Linux or if you aren’t using bash, and if you aren’t using csh, then use the file ~/.profile instead of ~/.bashrc and also instead of ~/.bash_profile in the instructions that follow. If you are using ksh, then use file ~/.kshrc instead of ~/.bashrc ,  and use ~/.profile instead of ~/.bash_profile .)

Also, at no additional charge, we will here cover how to fix the annoying multicolor output of ls with a simple alias.

Here are the commands:

$ cd ~
$ ~/bin/mcp .bashrc
$ vi .bashrc

Scroll down to the bottom of .bashrc and append these lines:

alias ls='ls -AF'            # omit this line if you like multicolor ls output
PATH=${PATH}:~/bin
export PATH

Save the file, then source the profile and check:

$ . ~/.bash_profile
$ which mcp
$ touch bozo
$ mcp bozo
$ ls bozo*

That’s all until next time. Happy trails!

Photo: Burg Eltz by Erwin Kuhn (2009)

Last week, I migrated this blog from the free WordPress.com to private hosting on Godaddy.com. In this article, I attempt to recount the steps of that process. The presentation here is “how-to”, but beware of shameless inaccuracies.

Other sources on the net leave out some details. So do I, though not by intention. I tried to record every step, but I didn’t test them. I didn’t diligently try to repeat these steps myself. And I know I got tired toward the end and missed a few details.

Therefore, be warned, these steps probably aren’t exactly what you will encounter, especially since all documentation ages with time, and I have no intention of updating or correcting this. That I leave as an exercise for the reader, that is, for you, gentle reader.

Before proceeding further, obtain web hosting service. I’ve used Godaddy.com for years. I find them satisfactory, reliable and inexpensive. Their website navigation is complex, intricate and baffling. The system described in their help pages vaguely describes their website. The customer service on the 800 number is excellent. Godaddy offers WordPress software for free. I think most competing hosting services do so as well. The description that follows describes migrating to Godaddy.com.

If you previously set up some files or data on your domain, then make a full backup of the domain files before you proceed, because you might want to get them back sometime.

[ "->" = "Choose" ]

1. login at wordpress.com
2. -> My Blog -> Dashboard
3. -> Tools -> Export -> Download Export File
4. Save the file to your disk in a place where you can find it. The file is named wordpress.yyyy-mm-dd.xml
5. login at godaddy.com
6. -> My Account
7. Ignoring the left sidebar, you may have to scroll down to a region of the page labelled “Products”
8. -> Web Hosting
9. Directly below the word “Products”, find the domain name of the hosting account where you want to install your blog. On the same line as the comain name and to the right of the domain name is a button labelled “Launch”.
10. -> Launch
11. You will see a new window. The rightmost column is labelled “Install Apps”. Find Wordpress in this column.
12. -> WordPress
13. On the menu bar, don’t click the tab labelled “Support & Community”. Look straight down from the “Support & Community” tab to find a button labelled “Install Now”.
14. -> Install Now
15. Installation can take a few minutes. Long enough to take a nap or a coffee break, if you want. Eventually, you will see the legal threats called “End User License Agreement”. Scroll down.
16. -> I Agree
17. Choose the hosted domain you wish to use.
18. -> Next
19. Type something in the database description. I wrote “myblogname blog”. Create a database password. Unless you are storing Swiss bank account numbers and/or national defense secrets on your blog, I recommend you use a simple password,like maybe the same one you use to subscribe to ezine sites.
20. -> Next
21. Name the install directory (folder). You might choose

    http://www.mydomainname.com/myblogname

    or

    http://www.mydomainname.com

    Your reader will use this name to read your blog.

22. Choose Admin name (choose a simple name, like “Admin”, for instance), password (choose a simple password, like the same password you used for the database, for instance), email address (copy your old one from your old blog on WordPress.com), blog title (copy your old one from your old blog on WordPress.com).
23. -> Finish
24. Installation takes a few minutes. An email will arrive that announces its completion. You can also click link “Manage My Applications” to see the progress so far. Watch for the message “…Sucessfully Installed…”.
25. Log out of Godaddy.com.
26. Go to

    http://mydomainname/foldername/wp-admin

    or

    http://www.mydomainname.com/wp-admin

27. Type in the Admin name and password.
28. -> Tools -> Import -> Wordpress -> Install -> Actions: Activate
29. -> Choose file wordpress.yyyy-mm-dd.xml that you downloaded previously.
30. -> Upload
31. -> Import Attachments (some people on the web reported trouble with this, but I had no trouble).
32. Scroll Down. See “All Done”.
33. -> Appearances -> Themes
34. Login to your original blog and check the theme name.
35. -> Install Themes
    Search for your theme by name. If you don’t find it in a search, then you may have to search the web for a zip file.
36. -> Plugins -> Askimet -> Activate (I think this is some kind of spam preventer)
37. -> Links -> Links
38. Follow instructions given in the article “Exporting Links in WordPress – Transferring Links to a New Website” by Chris James Hill at http://bit.ly/dWi5cw (January 11, 2011).
39. -> Tools -> Import -> Blogroll -> Actions:Activate and Run
40. Specify OPML URL:

    http://oldblogname.wordpress.com/wp-links-opml.php

41. -> category -> import -> Links
42. Adjust widgets -> Appearance -> Widgets. Refer to how you configured your old blog.
43. -> Posts. Delete the “Hello World” post.
44. -> Set up feedburner using instructions at http://www.google.com/support/feedburner/bin/answer.py?answer=79493
45. That’s it. You are finished. Your new blog is useable now. Probably, you will want to fix the things I didn’t tell you about.
    

    ---

    

There were a few details to fix by hand, but on the whole, it’s worked out pretty well. Things to fix yet:

1. Hit counter

2. Format of time & date of postings

3. Make a subdomain for a snappier blog url.

4. Gravatar or something like that.

5. Centering the blog banner text

6. Hook up with Technorati

7. Get some ads on here so I can make a few million in the next five years.

8. Default author name.

Your comments are always welcome. If there’s something I overlooked, please leave a comment.

Please secure your seat belts and prepare to migrate.

I hope this goes smoothly.

Maaris Dravnieks in San Francisco, 2009

The legendary programmer Maaris Dravnieks pointed out that a software firewall running on a PC can make it so slow that you will think it’s 1999. If you have experienced this yourself, then you may also have had the thought “Do I really need this firewall?”

In my opinion: No, probably.

I turned off my firewall years ago. If you have a local router, with NAT network address translation, then running a firewall is like fastening your seatbelt before playing a tango on your piano. That is, the firewall adds nothing essential and may interfere with your experience, especially if you have information less valuable than national nuclear weapon secrets on your PC.

Setting up a local router is easy. Let’s consider how to do it, if you haven’t already…

But first, let’s consider how to tell whether you have a local router set up already or not…

Here’s how to do it on Windows…
Open a command tool by choosing ->Start->Run->”cmd”.
At the command tool prompt, type “ipconfig”.
Look for the line labeled “Default Gateway” and at the IP address at the right end of this line.
The IP address has the format of a dotted number. The dotted number is four integers separated by three dots.

If the IP address begins with “192.168″, like “192.168.2.254″, then you have a local router set up already.
If the IP address begins with “10″, like “10.1.2.2″, then you have a local router set up already.

The authority rests with RFCs 1918 (1996) and 1597 (1994):

   The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
   (IANA) has reserved the following three
   blocks of the IP address space for
   private internets:

     10.0.0.0 - 10.255.255.255
     172.16.0.0 - 172.31.255.255
     192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255

In the Internet Protocol, addresses like these are reserved for private, nonstandard uses and testing, and they are “non-routable”, which means the Internet routing system treats them as irrelevant and doesn’t forward them to other routers. That means the non-local routers and the bad guys can’t find your PC by that address. If you are using a wireless interface (Don’t know? Watch this series for a future article.), then make sure you use WPA encryption.

It’s no concern because you (if not your PC) are far more likely to die struck by lightning (odds less than one-in-a-million in any year, Adekoya and Nolte, 2005) than to get hacked by someone outside your local router. Want to improve those odds by, say, 1 in 4 billion? Then add another local router (see below).

A router must make known some information, especially its own addresses. Many routers have a HTML interface. If you have a local router, you can very likely see this information easily. Open your favorite web browser and type the IP address, dots and all, into the address field. For example, if you discovered your Default Gateway is 192.168.2.254, then type in “http://192.168.2.254″ .

Returning to the question of how to set up a local router…

Ooops! Sorry kids, but time’s up! We’ll return to this in the future. See you later!

photo: Theodor Horydczak, circa 1920, Library of Congress

Resources (retrieved November 14, 2010, except as noted):

N. Adekoya and K. B. Nolte, Struck-by-Lightning Deaths in the United States, Journal of Environmental Health (May 2005), http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/jeh5_05_45-50.pdf

Y. Rechter, B. Moskowitz, D. Karrenberg, G. de Groot, E. Lear, RFC 1918 (February 1996), http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1597

Y. Rechter, B. Moskowitz, D. Karrenberg, G. de Groot, RFC 1597 (March 1994), http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1597

Salzburg Strasse. Photo by Erwin Kuhn

You are overwhelmingly female, with household income exceeding USD 100,000. You are well-educated, with post graduate education.

Most of you admit to having read at least one blog article, but you can’t remember which one it was. Most of you would like to see a new blog article weekly or biweekly.

As for whether Dan’s Famous Blog is the world’s best blog, most of answered unequivocally “maybe”.

Most of you enjoyed the survey and want to take another one.

There was one respondent.

Till next week: Adios, senorita!

Contribute your immortal wisdom and pithy comments.

Click here to take survey

You could win big. On the other hand, maybe not.

Party on.

John David Drake

A: As far as blogging platforms are concerned, the two big sites are Blogger.com (Google‘s platform) and WordPress.com. Both of these sites offer what you’re looking for (although neither are 100% spam proof, comments can be flagged).

WordPress offers free and paid sites. Their designs are cleaner and generally more professional looking, but there are many embeddable widgets, pictures, videos, etc. that aren’t compatible with WordPress.

I use Blogger. It’s not perfect, but it’s easy to use, connected with my other Google accounts, allows others with Google accounts to follow the blog (which would be their equivalent of becoming members of it), can easily be linked with Google Analytics, and Google AdWords, which would allow you to post the small sidebar of advertising. I wish I could do more with the format than what they allow, but that’s being picky.

I’m not sure what Web browser you are using. Blogger works fine in Firefox and most of the time in Safari. Explorer can do pretty much everything, too (except cut and paste for some reason).

If you want to also post pictures from your phone or text a thought or easily post a PDF, MP3, or other file, then you might also want to consider a Tumblr account or Posterous account. Both are simple platforms for casual bloggers that allow you to post all types of multimedia from all types of computers and mobile devices. They’re meant more for shorter posts (somewhere between a tweet and a full blog post). I’m not sure what their comment or ad capabilities are.

Other thoughts/suggestions:

- add a widget or two for your other social media sites (Twitter, Facebook) if you want your readers to learn more about you.

- add an RSS feed for your blog so readers can easily follow when you post (but don’t have a separate RSS feed for your comments, it’s more annoying than useful)

- Add a blogroll of your favorite blogs/websites

- Add hyperlinks to your posts whenever you can, linking to other articles, websites you may reference. But don’t overuse it.

- Tag your posts

- Keep most posts on the short side (~300 words) with a longer post every third or fourth post.

- Tweet a link to a new post, and post on your Facebook page.

- Establish a unique voice, blog about what interests you. Keep a running list of topics to write about as they come to mind. If you have free time, write a bunch of draft posts to stock up on and gradually post them throughout the week (I always say I’m going to do this, but never get around to it). If you can never find the motivation to write about a particular topic, chances are no one would have much of a motivation to read it anyway.