As you all may have noticed, this journal doesn’t really get updated anymore. Keeping a Wordpress blog was a nice experiment, but really, I just couldn’t keep the interest up for it. News stories that get me riled up enough to passionately write about them are few and far between, and the perceived need to keep my blog updated distracted me from the original purpose of this, which was to encourage myself to update my actual website more often.

So, consider this blog dead. In its place, I’m implementing a proper CMS for my website, which will hopefully allow me to keep its content more frequently updated and easier to manage. Individual files for each article is a nice idea, but it’s rather daunting to try to manage, and there are some limitations to that approach even for a programming nerd like me. I’ll even add an RSS feed to the site if people want one.

I greatly appreciate everyone who’s been following my blog over the last year or so, and I hope you’ll all continue to keep an eye on my site. I have a lot of changes planned, including a much-needed revamping of the site’s content and focus, and some reorganization. Lupinia has been using the same basic structure for over five years now, and my hobbies have shifted several times since then, so it’s time for a change.

As part of the reorganization effort, I’ll be dismantling my Wordpress blog entirely. Content will continue to be available here through the end of the year; after that, the entire /journal/ directory will be gone. I’d keep it if I could, but simply maintaining this blog on top of all my other projects is more than I can keep up with right now.

Due to the amount of travelling I do, and the fact that I don’t have a quick, easy way to look up weather conditions in a half-dozen different locations, I added a page to this site to do it for me. The new weather page shows conditions for five different cities, with links to full forecasts. Handy!

The locations are:

• Harrisonburg, VA
• Pittsburgh, PA
• Seneca Rocks, WV
• Breezewood, PA
• Washington, DC

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, and I’m also sorry to report that the lack of blog content will continue for a short while. I need to focus on other things in my life, and this is taking up a lot of my time.

I’m not sure when posts will resume, so check back later.

Ever since I started this blog, posts related to local news stories and events have always been prominently featured here. Since I currently live in Harrisonburg, VA, my local-interest posts have focused on the Shenandoah Valley.

However, a large portion of you don’t live here, and while I try to make my posts as universally interesting as possible, there’s a limit to how much one can really care about news that doesn’t happen where they live. Since I have a lot of friends (and at least a few readers) in/near Pittsburgh, PA, and I spend a lot of time there (a long weekend at least once a month), it’s the next logical choice to look for material.

I didn’t really have any local readers in Harrisonburg until very recently (thanks Harrisonburg Blogs), and in light of some responses I’ve received to local posts, I’m a little curious as to where my readers are. So, I made a poll, asking which location(s) you’re interested in seeing local-interest posts from. I appreciate any and all votes, even if they’re for “Neither”, and you don’t even have to login to vote.

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Whatever the outcome of this poll, I’m not going to stop writing about Harrisonburg news (unless I move), or stop writing about Pittsburgh news (unless interesting things stop happening there), this is for my own curiousity. If anything, this will help me decide what sort of priority to put on each city’s news sources when looking for material. And, local news posts are never going to make up the majority of my posts here, that’s just boring, and doesn’t really suit the original purpose of this blog.

For the last several months, I’ve attempted to stick to a very stable, predictable update cycle. This is my preferred way of running this, having spent most of my internet-based life manually visiting sites like this for updates. Unfortunately, it sometimes causes my posts about current events to be a bit out of date by the time they’re posted.

The alternative to this would be to post current-events articles immediately as I write them (or, at least, the same day), like most other blogs seem to do. And, I should note that regardless of the outcome of this poll, I won’t be posting on weekends. The vast majority of users who read my blog do so on weekdays, so with the exception of travel notifications, I’ll continue to only post Monday through Friday.

So, I’d like y’all to vote on this, and let me know what you think. It’s quick and easy, you don’t even have to login or anything. Would you rather see things continue unchanged, with stable posting three times a week, or would you rather see a more flexible posting schedule, with time-sensitive material posted more quickly?

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A good friend of mine writes a blog called “For the Love of Candy” which focuses on reviewing different types of candy. From classic, everyday favourites, to local delicacies, she has an impressive talent for taste-testing sweet treats. Her site is currently on hiatus for a short while, but she’ll be back. In the meantime, I wrote a review of my own, inspired by her site, that I felt like sharing.

Starbucks Vanilla Truffles are probably the most difficult to locate candies I’ve ever encountered. I bought a box from Wal-Mart in December that had expired in August, which wasn’t a good first impression. I kept looking for them wherever I went, though, and was surprised to find that no one else carried them. I couldn’t even find them in any Starbucks stores, so I figured they were discontinued. But, I stumbled across them at Wal-Mart on a recent shopping trip, and they were from a fresh shipment!

The overall composition is fairly simple: Dark chocolate for the outer shell, with a natural vanilla truffle filling. Being a fan of dark chocolate and vanilla, I couldn’t resist.

The packaging is kinda over-the-top, as with most things Starbucks does. They come in a highly figured folded box that stays closed the same way a McDonald’s french fry sleeve holds its shape, I’m not really sure how to describe it better. There are about a dozen truffles inside, individually wrapped in gold foil with a twisted top, and the make beautiful additions to a decorative candy bowl.

The dark chocolate shell is pretty underwhelming. It looks generic, like something you’d find in a Russel-Stover assortment, and doesn’t have a very strong flavour. It’s about on-par with Hershey’s Special Dark. The vanilla filling is a bit more noteworthy. It’s not tooth-achingly sweet, with a texture similar Oreo filling, and it has a spectacular vanilla flavour that really stands out. There’s no chemical overtones, just pure vanilla goodness. It even has vanilla beans inside.

As with most candies of this type, the whole is far greater than the sum of its parts. When the shell and filling are combined, it creates an amazing flavour that I’ve never come close to tasting before. The chocolate and vanilla compliment each other almost perfectly, and the texture is smoother than the silkiest fine chocolates I’ve ever had. It’s truly an experience to be savoured.

Since these are so surprisingly rich, it’s difficult to eat more than one at a time (at least, for me it is). But, one is all you’ll need. It’s like a fine gourmet meal; if you eat it all the time, it’ll become mainstream, but if you eat it only once in awhile, it’ll be quite memorable.

I highly recommend these to anyone who appreciates fine chocolates (not that cheap Hershey’s stuff), you will not be disappointed. Good luck finding them, though; I searched for them at Starbucks locations in six states (plus a couple in DC) and couldn’t find any, but your local Wal-Mart apparently has a chance of carrying them.

After having the ability for quite some time, the ability for users to create accounts on Lupinia’s main site is now public knowledge. Please note that this is seperate from Wordpress and Gallery accounts (someday, in the future, these are likely to all be merged), these accounts are for the main site, which is entirely custom-coded by me.

I’m still working on the system, as I try new things, but it currently provides the following features:

• Bypass the human-test on the Email Form
• Available option to send email to my cellphone
• Add new links to the Link Directory, and edit links you’ve created

More will be added later, including a Report Dead Link feature for the Link Directory, database-stored viewing options, and integration with Wordpress.

You can create an account here. Enjoy!

It’s been awhile since I added new pages to the main content sections of the site, but I felt that my review of Google’s Chrome browser would be a good fit. So, it’s now part of the writing section of this site.

This journal is now being re-syndicated at Harrisonburg Blogs, a service for blogs that talk about stuff in this local area (or, at least, blogs written by people who live here). I thought about signing up a few times in the past, but I wasn’t sure I posted about local stuff enough to really justify it. But, now that I’ve been doing this awhile, and significant portion of my posts (not counting the ones reposted en-masse from my LiveJournal) are about local news, I figured I’d give it a shot.

So, if you’re reading this on that site, or got here from there, welcome! There’s a lot more to my website than just a blog (though, admittedly, this probably gets updated the most), so feel free to look around. And, if you’re interested in hiring my web design services, don’t hesitate to email me

On this site, there’s a rather thorough directory of links to external sites, in a variety of categories. And, I’m always looking for improvement in applications I’ve written.

Currently, links in the directory launch in the same window/tab. I’ve been deciding whether or not to change them to launch in a new window/tab, which is a trivial change code-wise. This would keep the Lupinia site open while browsing other sites, and make it easier for visitors to return here after visiting external sites from our link directory.

So, if y’all could vote in this poll to help me decide whether a change is desirable, I’d appreciate it. And, if anyone has additional suggestions, I’d appreciate those as well. Thanks!

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