So, I’ve taken some heat for apparently leaving my ability to blog in India.

The truth is I haven’t been real sure what to blog about anymore what with my Twitter feed covering any short snide comments I make and my Google Reader feed allowing me to share any interesting internets and make snide comments on them: what do I need this site for other than putting up pictures of my children, which would likely be viewed by more people on Facebook than here anyway?

So I re-kajiggered the page a little bit, adding my current Twitter up at the top and making my shared Google Reader more prominent to make everything a little more inclusive and I’ll be making an effort to actually talk about things again here.

I’m also adding a new category; Awesomeness in Parenting (nothing there yet) for short stories about the fun things I get to do as a father.

Happy New Year!

The site is upgraded and should hopefully be secure now.

Since I had to redo my gallery code I improved it. The old ones still work, but it would have been a pain to write the code to add new ones all over again and integrate it into WordPress.

Luckily with some of the new features in WordPress 2.5 I was able to use somebody else’s gallery code (Smooth Gallery) with some minor modifications.

I upgraded the most recent gallery to use the new code. Take a look and let me know what you think. You’ll be able to leave comments on the gallery or individual pictures now.

Now if I upgrade again I’ll only have to change one function in one class in WordPress, so I’ll be able to stay on top of security updates.

Just about every WordPress blog on the internet that’s not using the most recent version is under attack right now.

I haven’t upgraded mine yet because I did a fair amount of customization for the photo galleries, which I’ll have to redo if I upgrade.

I’ve blocked the hacker and shut down user registration for awhile. I apologize is you saw any inappropriate links in your RSS feeds (they would have been invisible if viewing the site directly).

I think that should do it for now, but the spam links may reappear.

If I do upgrade WordPress the photo galleries will probably disappear for a little bit.

Proof that Brie has raised the bar here since she started posting.
This site judges the reading level required to understand blogs.

Reading level for WithaK.org every month until Brie started posting:

Reading level for WithaK.org every since Brie started posting:

Thanks for raising the bar, baby!

Credit to Mental Floss for the link.

As you may or may not have noticed Brie has started contributing to the site.

Her contributions are very welcome as she is:

• An actual writer
• Way smarter than I
• Pretty

I expect internet fame to hit any day now.

Apparently her first post caused some confusion on account of the author names only being on the main page, not the individual articles and some RSS readers.

I’ve added the author name to the individual articles, but there’s not much I can do about RSS readers. The author information is provided to those readers and it’s up to them as to whether or not they display it.
I could technically hack up my RSS to display it, but that would mean that I would be duplicating data in my XML, which is a cardinal sin of data.

So, for those of you who can’t see the author listed here are some differences between Brie’s posts and mine.

Her posts will:

• Have 64% fewer spelling mistakes, 36% increase in paragraph length, and 103% fewer instances of the word “douche” in all of its forms.
• Rarely feature video games, unless it’s concerning the effect of Halo 3 on divorce rates.
• Frequently detail the 8 new books she bought this week.

Don’t expect a huge boost in maturity as she giggles with me when people use the phrase “do it”.

I’ve changed the comments up a little bit, so that I don’t have to manually approve each one, but hopefully eliminate spammers.

If your comment doesn’t show up right away or you get a message saying that my site thinks your a spammer let me know.

Except you probably won’t be able to do so by comment, so get ahold of me some other way.

Chances are you know how.

I’ve revamped the Photo Gallery area a little from the previous version of WithaK.Org.
Instead of having say one area for 100’s of freaking pictures of my child the galleries are now intended to be smaller, more event centered and easier and faster to navigate.

I intended for it to be very intuitive, let me know if you think I need any instructions.

There’s a fair amount going on behind the scenes, so let me know if something not working for you.

I don’t intend on leaving individual galleries up forever, and I certainly won’t be leaving the full size pictures up forever. I encourage you to save off anything you would want to see again in the future. If you want the high quality version of a picture that’s been removed, send me a note and I’ll hook you up.

Welcome to the new WithaK.Org.

A few months back my webhost, and former freelance employer, figured out that I hadn’t done any work for them in about two years and I was still getting free webhosting. They decided to start charging me, and I decided to go somewhere else for a 1/4 of the price with much better features.

I figured that if I’m going to actually pay for my webhosting now I might as well take advantage of it. Since the majority of the old site was written very quickly to get important news out to family members, also with one broken arm and under the influence of lots and lots of percoset, I decided to completely redo the site.

Which brings us here, to the new WithaK.Org. Let me know what you think of the new layout!

I’ve filled in a little content from some of my other sources and will likely add some more in from the old site and post date it soon.

Read about the new Photo Gallery system here.

My goal for the site is to include the previous family centered content for those that are interested, add some personal content as well as some interesting topics. Hopefully you’ll be able to sort out from the different categories which you are interested in.

If you use a feed reader such as Google Reader you can received automatic updates by subscribing to Withak.Org’s feed . There is also a feed for all comments posted to the site .

You may notice the “Recently Shared Feeds” area on the side. That is the five most recent items I’ve shared from the sites that I subscribe to from my Google Reader.

And because it’s impossible for me to make a major change to the site without an important announcement, check out our Big News.