Atherton Family Notes

I decided over the Christmas holidays that it was time to expand our horizons a little bit by moving our blog to its own server.  The main advantage over this compared to blogging at WordPress.com is that I have more control over the overall look and feel of the site.  Wordpress.com has done a good job of setting up a sandbox where you can’t really get hurt, but given that I always lean toward being an expert user, it felt like time to move on.

In the short term, there aren’t that many changes.  I’m still using the WordPress blogging tool, it’s just on a server where I can control things.  I’m also using a theme that is very similar to the one we were using before, and I’ve moved all of the content over from the old site to here.  

I have added a few things, though.  On the side bar, there are two new widgets.  One is a Feedjit.com live traffic map, which shows where people are visiting from, and the other is a link to a sign up for to receive an email whenever the site is updated.

On the downside, this new site is not integrated with the WordPress.com tag system anymore, which is sort of a bummer.  The main issue is that clicking on a tag will only take you to a page that show other pages on this site using that tag.  On WordPress.com, it takes you to a page that show other blogs using the same tag, which often led to discoveries of interesting new things and sometimes led other people to our site.  There may be a way to add this sharing capability back, but I haven’t figured it out yet.

I’ll probably be tweeking things a lot over the next few weeks, so let me know if you see anything weird.

Technorati Tags: blog, Christmas, holiday, ken, site update

Local Tags: blog, Christmas, holiday, ken, site update

 Format this post for printing

It occurred to me the other day that The Atherton Family Notes is actually the second blog that Sandi and I have had.  The first one was put together in mid-2002 before blogging software was widely accessible, so we used a private MSN discussion group that we christened “Survivor Germany” to write posts and send them to our friends and family.  The primary purpose of this group was to talk about the new experience we had just started– an expat assugnment in Villingen, Germany.  Later, it morphed into a message board about our second assignment in Rennes, France.
(more…)

Technorati Tags: archive posts, blog, castle, expat, France, germany, heidelberg, holiday, meeting, moving day, sandi, survivor germany, triberg, villingen

Local Tags: archive posts, blog, castle, expat, France, germany, heidelberg, holiday, meeting, moving day, sandi, survivor germany, triberg, villingen

 Format this post for printing

I’ve now added all of the old Survivor Germany posts up until the end of May, 2002.  You can see them via the archive, or via the links below.

These are the newly added posts:

(more…)

Technorati Tags: archive posts, autobahn, castle, germany, heidelberg, rhein, rheinfall, stein-am-rhein, survivor germany, zurich

Local Tags: archive posts, autobahn, castle, germany, heidelberg, rhein, rheinfall, stein-am-rhein, survivor germany, zurich

 Format this post for printing

The next batch of archive posts are up.  It is taking longer than I expected to get even the posts that we still have in electronic form updated.  Part of it is because I start reading and thinking about the posts as I work, part of it is because I’m adding tags to the posts as I go along, but mostly it’s because everything has to be reformatted and the pictures have to be re-uploaded.  I’m making progress, though.

Below are links to the archive posts from June through August 2002:
(more…)

Technorati Tags: archive posts, autobahn, baby, baby names, budweiser, business travel, dachau, european weather, hohensalzburg, legoland, park, salzburg, survivor germany, video, wfms

Local Tags: archive posts, autobahn, baby, baby names, budweiser, business travel, dachau, european weather, hohensalzburg, legoland, park, salzburg, survivor germany, video, wfms

 Format this post for printing

Wow!  I discovered that the early archive I’ve been working from was missing a LOT of posts.  I pulled out the collection that my dad printed out at the time, and it turns out that in the period of time I’ve covered so far, I was missing about 20 posts!

I knew after the first year that most of the posts are missing in electronic format, but I was not expecting to find so many holes so early on.

Anyway, I’m starting to work through the posts I found now, which takes even longer to do, because I have to scan them and OCR them before I can even start the process I’ve been doing for the electronic reposts.  Yeesh.

Anyway, here are the newly reposted articles for today:
(more…)

Technorati Tags: archive posts, birthday, carissa, pretzel, survivor germany

Local Tags: archive posts, birthday, carissa, pretzel, survivor germany

 Format this post for printing

Today’s updates are from more items that I had to scan in order to get them back into electronic form.  In one case, I was unable to find the original picture that was used on the post as well.  That makes me nervous because it means my backup plan has a hole in it somewhere.    

Anyway, here are the updates:
(more…)

Technorati Tags: archive posts, disney, rome, strasbourg, survivor germany

Local Tags: archive posts, disney, rome, strasbourg, survivor germany

 Format this post for printing

Here is the next round of archive postings.  This will probably be the last round for a while for two reasons.  One, I’m at the end of the Survivor Germany postings that still exist in electronic form, and the non-electronic ones take much more time to repost and two, I’m going to spend the next week in Florida for work, likely doing 16 hour days.

This update covers most of the postings between October 2002 and March 2003.  There are a few holes, such as about half the posts about our trip to Italy and several posts about the German Christmas markets that I need to add in.

And now, for the links:

(more…)

Technorati Tags: archive posts, Christmas, driving, fastnet, frankfurt, geburtskunde, germany, italian drivers, italy, narrenumsprung, rainbows, rottweil, sadie, survivor germany, switzerland, thanksgiving, us consulate, vacation, video, wayne

Local Tags: archive posts, Christmas, driving, fastnet, frankfurt, geburtskunde, germany, italian drivers, italy, narrenumsprung, rainbows, rottweil, sadie, survivor germany, switzerland, thanksgiving, us consulate, vacation, video, wayne

 Format this post for printing

I’ve added some of the missing posts about our vacation to Italy in August 2002.

September 2002

Our Italian Vacation, Day 7: St. Peter’s Basilica

Our Italian Vacation, Day 2: The Ruins At Paestum

Our Italian Vacation, Day 2: Paestum and the Compania Region

Our Italian Vacation, Day 2: The Hotel Le Palme

My Name is Wieheissdu

October 2002

The Trip Itinerary

Technorati Tags: archive posts, compania, hotel le palme, italy, itinerary, paestum, survivor germany, vacation

Local Tags: archive posts, compania, hotel le palme, italy, itinerary, paestum, survivor germany, vacation

 Format this post for printing

As I predicted, the post archiving has slowed down a lot over the last week due to my trip to Florida.  I did get a few more uploaded, but next week is likely to be slow as well since it appears that I am going back to Florida on Tuesday.

Anyway, here are the latest couple of posts that have been added:

Our Italian Vacation, Day 3: Pompeii – A long post about the ruins in Pompeii and Ken’s fascination with them.

Das Problem mit Kinderlieder – A post about a strange, rascist song we accidentally discovered on otherwise harmless CDs of music for our kids.

BTW, This site is now being indexed by Google and you can get results specific to this site with this query.

Technorati Tags: archive posts, ken, kinderlieder, pompeii, survivor germany, vacation

Local Tags: archive posts, ken, kinderlieder, pompeii, survivor germany, vacation

 Format this post for printing

In honor of MLK day, I’m posting a school project that I made in 2007.  The topic for the project was Martin Luther King’s dream and my dream for the future.  I chose “education” as my dream.

I won first place with this video in a contest for my whole school district (Wayne Township, Indiana). I was also the only one who did a video like this. My friend and I are doing another one this year.

Daddy and I used a program to animate all of my drawings that I put together.

Technorati Tags: carissa, indiana, martin luther king, school project, video, wayne, youtube

Local Tags: carissa, indiana, martin luther king, school project, video, wayne, youtube

 Format this post for printing