Looking for D. B. Cooper

RSS Feed Homepage

Articles: 1, 2

New Theme: A Simpler Time
2012-05-17 16:48:00
There’s something about this time of year that always makes me wistful for the good old days—the simpler times, if you will—when all that mattered were family, friends, and a whole lotta blogging about everything under the sun. I miss those days, don’t you? Fear not, my fellow blogging friends. We’ve got you all covered today with a theme that will make you want to stop time and write about everything in your lives until you can’t write anymore. A Simpler Time , designed by Denise Chandler, is a theme that’s beautiful, bold, and memorable—pretty much exactly like the types of stories you’ll be writing alongside it on your WordPress.com blog: A Simpler Time: Single Post It’s a traditional blog theme in the sense that it offers everything you’ve come to expect from a WordPress theme—widgets, custom menus, and custom headers, and more—and it also looks incredible. If you’d also like to mix it up with different colors and fonts...
More About: Theme

Photo Blogging 101, Part 1
2012-05-14 17:00:00
Spring is in the air. With the weather warming up, now is a great time to get started on a photo blog. Creating a photo blog is a wonderful introduction to blogging on WordPress.com or an opportunity to refresh your current site. Ready to get started? You can sign up for a new blog right over here. Getting started Photo blogs, sometimes called phlogs, use pictures instead of words. While many photo bloggers choose a type of photo that they want to focus on, such as portraits, others use their photo blog to document their life’s events. Photo blogs come in a variety of styles, including those that focus on vacation photos or even snapshots of friends. With images, we can capture moments in our life in a way that sometimes words cannot. When starting a photo blog, you’ll want to choose a theme with a wider content area to help to showcase your photos at full size. Similarly, choosing a theme that is minimalistic helps to reduce any noise that may detract from the focus on ...
More About: Blogging , Part

Add Spotify, Rdio, and GitHub’s Gist Embeds To Your Site
2012-04-19 01:14:00
We’re happy to announce three new things that you can embed into your site! Spotify Embed music from Spotify by right-clicking any song, album, or artist in Spotify and selecting “Copy HTTP Link” or “Copy Spotify URI”: Then paste that into your post editor, making sure that it’s located on its own line all by itself. You’ll end up with something like this when you view your post: Rdio If you’re an Rdio user, you can embed music from them too. Copy the URL from your address bar when looking at a track, artist, or playlist and paste that into your post editor. Here are a few examples: If you use the Mac application for Rdio you can copy URLs from there as well. If you click the “Share” button you’ll see a URL to copy right at the top. Paste that in to your post editor and you’re all set. GitHub’s Gist We’re big fans of the code repository website GitHub here at Automattic and many of us use the...
More About: Site

Bestselling Author Shares 3 Tips for Building Your Blog Audience
2012-03-16 00:02:00
After moving from New York City to Chicago and getting married, Rachel Bertsche realized that her new life was missing one crucially important thing: a local best friend. So she decided to go on one friend date every week for a year, and she documented her quest on a WordPress.com blog at MWFseekingBFF.com. But before Rachel even started the blog, the 27-year-old writer put together a book proposal based on her search for a local BFF, and successfully pitched it to agents, and then editors. She says, “After I sold the proposal, I decided to start a blog so that I could have a place to document my journey and some of the research I was finding. I also wanted to start building a community and to engage with readers.” It’s now been over two years since Rachel first launched MWFseekingBFF.com. So did she accomplish her blogging goals? “Absolutely!” Rachel says, “When my book, MWF Seeking BFF: My Yearlong Search for a New Best Friend, came out, I had a...
More About: Building , Tips , Blog , Author

Posterous Joins Twitter
2012-03-13 18:40:00
It’s been just over two years since we first launched our Posterous importer and I never could have predicted how the blogging space would evolve so quickly in that time. As you may have seen in the news today, the Posterous team is joining Twitter , which we know will be exciting for our friends at Twitter and well-earned for Posterous co-founder Sachin Agarwal. We’ve had an over 250% spike in the number of imports the past few hours, so it seems timely to recap how the importer works: Sign up for a new WordPress.com blog. In your dashboard, go to Tools → Import and click on “Posterous.” Enter your Posterous login details, and we’ll email you when the import completes! Take the time while it’s running to have a sarsaparilla, then explore some of the great designs available for WordPress.com, and start following your favorite blogs from your WordPress.com account so that you can read them all in one place. Once you’re all set up, you ...

Comment Notifications!
2012-02-10 18:46:00
A few months ago we added Notifications to the WordPress.com Toolbar and recently we released a Chrome extension so that you can always keep up with the activity on your blog. Today we’re adding comment notifications, complete with comment moderation and reply functionality.  When your post receives a comment, you’ll get a Notification that looks something like this: If you’re using threaded comments, you’ll see if someone responded directly to you, right in the notification. You will see Approve, Spam, and Trash links in your comment notification if you have permission to moderate comments, allowing you to moderate the comment from within the notification: Clicking Reply automatically approves a comment and displays an area for you to type a reply in. When you’re done, just click Reply and you can get back to whatever you were working on, without having to navigate to the dashboard to manage your comments. You can still manage comment...
More About: Comment

Post Videos from Your iPhone or iPad
2012-02-03 12:01:00
Would you like to post videos to your blog while you’re on the go? Are you interested in a photography theme that’s also video-friendly? Well, look no further, because we have some news for you. The VideoPress upgrade, which allows you to upload and embed your own videos on your blog, now comfortably handles videos from iPhones and iPads. You can shoot vertically or horizontally, and we’ll take care of rotating it for you so that your video looks great when it’s published on your site. If you don’t already have VideoPress on your WordPress.com account, head on over to VideoPress.com, we’ll get you up and running in no time. And don’t forget to install the free WordPress App on your iPhone or iPad! Duotone: Now Video-Friendly If you’re a photoblogger, you’re probably familiar with the cool Duotone theme, which changes color to match the first image in every post and page. The big news is that Duotone now seamlessly supports Video...
More About: Videos , Iphone , Post

Chrome Users: Try the WordPress.com Extension
2012-01-27 20:54:00
Want to receive WordPress.com notifications instantly, even when you’re not on WordPress.com? Add the new WordPress.com extension for Chrome and as soon as you get a new follower or a new like on one of your posts, a notification will appear in your browser: Simply click the icon to view your latest WordPress.com notifications: Start following new blogs without visiting WordPress.com The Chrome extension also makes it easy to follow sites from your WordPress.com account by displaying a Follow button whenever you’re browsing a site that has an RSS feed. Clicking the Follow button will add new posts from the website to your reader, and send you an email each time an update is published. (You can change your default email settings if you like.) When you visit a WordPress.com site, you’ll notice that the extension icon will turn blue, but keep in mind that you can follow blogs on Blogger, Tumblr, and other services, too. Quickly post cool stuff you find while browsi...
More About: Wordpress , Extension

New Theme: Fresh & Clean
2012-01-13 00:40:00
Today we’ve got a new theme for you that is so fresh and clean that it’s called…Fresh & Clean . Designed by AJ Clarke, Fresh & Clean is a responsive, spick-and-span theme that lets you put your best content forward with minimal frills. Fresh & Clean utilizes Featured Images to help you to easily transform your blog into a stylish online portfolio. There’s a featured slider on the front page that highlights Sticky Posts that have large Featured Images. All other Featured Images appear as prominent thumbnails next to their respective posts. Not looking to build an online portfolio at this time? No problem, Fresh & Clean is great as an all-purpose blogging theme! Take a moment to read more about Fresh & Clean and its features on the Theme Showcase.

New Themes: Duet and ThemeMin
2012-01-05 09:51:00
I’m excited to announce we’ve added two great new premium themes to our ever-growing collection of themes today. First up is Duet – a responsive, minimal, and sophisticated design from The Theme Foundry. Duet is tailored for writers, journalists, and business bloggers. Meticulously crafted and refined options provide you with the power to effortlessly customize your theme. Choose and mix from ten accent fonts, and five body fonts to discover the perfect typographic style for your website. You can also upload a custom logo image to put your own personal stamp on your blog. With a flexible featured slider, your readers have no chance to miss your important posts. Duet comes with more great features, so be sure to read about it on the showcase page. Next up is ThemeMin, designed by Themify. ThemeMin is a minimal, light-weight, and fast-loading theme that focuses on typography. Together, all of these elements help to provide a comfortable reading experience. ThemeMin comes ...
More About: Themes

Kick Off 2012 with Project 365
2011-12-27 19:41:00
If you were going to blog about one thing for an entire year, what would you choose? Would you post photographs of your favorite place? Interview different people from your hometown? Create a new piece of art each day? Here are eight unique blog projects (some are updated every single day) to inspire you to kick off 2012 with your own Project 365: Blog Radstone RichardRadstoneBlog.com The goal, every day for the next year, approach one stranger, photograph them and promptly blog the experience. Rain or shine, hot or cold, healthy or ill, no days missed. I’ll do my best to create interesting photos, and for the sake of entertainment, work to get myself into a sticky situation from time to time. It’s a huge commitment. I’m sure there will be some hero photographs and some not so magnificent ones. Let’s see what happens! The Creative Panic TheCreativePanic.com The project right at this moment is to illustrate something (anything!) as quickly as possible every day. 36ixty5 36ixt...

The Long and Short of It
2011-12-08 19:00:00
Would you like some more Twitter in your WordPress? We got ya. As an update to our ever-popular Tweet embedding functionality we’re supporting Twitter’s new embed API to enable richer, better looking, and more functional Tweets inside your blog posts. To embed a Tweet just put a permalink to it on its own line or use our new shortcode that allows for extra formatting. But wait, there’s more! Have you ever wished that when you’re on Twitter and come across a link to someone’s blog post, like this one, you could see a preview of the post without having to click on the link? Now you can, our friends at Twitter have made it so that all wp.me links can be previewed, including snippets of posts and photos, directly on Twitter.com. In addition to this being something I’ve personally wanted for a while, we think it’ll get a lot more people visiting your blog.   Finally, if you link your Twitter account on your Gravatar profile we’ve ...
More About: Long

It’s getting cold in here
2011-12-01 23:49:00
Oh the weather outside is frightful, but this blog is sooo delightful Until the internet gets slow, Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! That’s right, it’s that special time of year where you can show off your holiday cheer with a little special blog flair — falling snow. To get it started: Go to your dashboard. Navigate to Settings » General. Check the box next to “Show falling snow on this blog.” Roast some chestnuts. Even Texas boys like me who only saw snow a handful of times growing up can enjoy it all month long, until we turn it off on January 4th. If you are a terrible Grinch or if the snow just slows down your computer or confuses your cat, you can go to your personal settings page and hide the snow everywhere you go.
More About: Cold

Google Knols Move to WordPress: The Annotum Platform
2011-11-22 22:42:00
Today, we’d like to give a warm welcome to Google Knol users who are migrating to WordPress.com. Begun in 2007, the Google Knol project has provided people in many fields with a place to share their knowledge and expertise with the world using a platform designed for scholarly authoring and publishing. Starting today, those same authors can move their articles and collaborative journals to WordPress—and they have the power to choose whether to move to a self-hosted WordPress installation powered by the freely-available, open-source Annotum themes, or to have their Annotum-powered site hosted for free here on WordPress.com. Knol will slowly shut down over the next year, and we’ve worked closely with Google, Solvitor LLC, and Crowd Favorite to make this transition as simple as possible. We here at WordPress.com are thrilled to provide an easy, fast way for Knol authors to move to their new homes without the need for configuring their own installation. And WordPress.co...
More About: Wordpress , Move

More Custom Headers, Color Schemes, & Theme Improvements
2011-11-21 20:12:00
We want everyone on WordPress.com to be able to find the best theme possible for their blog. Something beautiful, amazing, and cool. A theme that makes you want to jump up, run your laptop next door, and show your neighbor your awesome blog. That’s why we love bringing you so many new themes, why we have over 150 themes for you to choose from, and why we have even more on the way. It’s also why every day you let us know different ways we could make all our existing themes just a little bit better. You contact us in support, add your suggestions in the forums, comment here, and — of course! — blog about it. Because of all that we took as many of those little bits as we could and made our incredible collection of 150-plus themes even better for you. More Custom Headers and More Color Schemes We know how much you love customizing your themes and making them your own so we made sure that our best, our most popular, and our most beautiful themes let you do just that. The ...
More About: Theme

New Mobile Theme: Minileven
2011-11-03 00:04:00
There’s a good chance that visitors to your site these days will be using a smartphone. We feel it’s important to provide them with a great reading experience while on the small screen, so today we’re announcing a new mobile theme: ‘Minileven’. Minileven: A clean interface, gorgeous post formats and custom headers/background Minileven is based on the popular and beautiful theme Twenty Eleven, with a lot of tweaks to optimize it for mobile screens. It will use the header image, background and widgets from your current theme for a great custom look. Post format support is included so your photos and galleries will look fantastic on a smartphone. If you were using the old mobile theme on WordPress.com, you will automatically see Minileven when visiting your site from an iPhone, Android or Windows Phone device. You can enable or disable the mobile theme in the new Mobile settings screen: We will continue to improve on Minileven in the future. What else wou...
More About: Theme

New Theme: Strange Little Town
2011-11-02 00:13:00
Introduce a hint of wonderment into your blog with our latest free theme! This is your invitation to take an enchanting voyage to a Strange Little Town . Our latest release is designed to transport your readers to a magical place where imagination fills the air. Nestled below a star-studded sky you will find a cluster of crooked little houses covered in a blanket of fog. Some dwellings appear to have minds of their own while others defy the laws of gravity! Strange Little Town provides multiple options for customization including the ability to add custom header image, change the background color and customize the links in the menu. You can also choose to enable a sidebar by adding widgets under Appearance → Widgets. You can read about all these features and more in the Theme Showcase page. Strange Little Town is available now in your dashboard under Appearance → Themes.

The irony is not lost on me
2006-11-10 17:15:02
Well, I’ve found the funny again.  Unfortunately it’s not here.  So this will be my last post. I enjoyed my time away quite frankly and have done a lot of thinking about this site and blogging in general.  Looking for DB Cooper was fun but it’s become an inside joke that I just don’t find funny (or  fun) anymore.  Acting sophomoric and egotistical and outlandish was fun but I’ve grown tired of it as a steady diet. I learned a lot about myself and other people blogging here.  I learned it’s better (easier) to just be yourself than it is to be a character.  This was building in me long before last weekends mental melt-down.  No one is to blame for this site closing.  If anything last weekend just confirmed to me it was time to grow up and move on. I intend to continue blogging, as a matter of fact, I already have another site up and going where I’m blogging under my real name and identity about my life and the stuff that interests me.  I’...
More About: Lost , Irony , Iron

Remorse and a public apology
2006-11-07 05:09:01
flic, I owe you an apology. I did not pick up on all the hints you were leaving in the comments of A. You would like to be credited (rightfully so) for originating the alphabet post idea I used on A and B. Truthfully I had forgotten that I read it at your site, I visit a lot of sites. I was trying to come up with a post idea yesterday and this alphabet idea popped into my head. In hindsight it must have popped into my head because I saw it at your site I guess. I’m sorry for not giving you the proper credit you deserve. I am posting this apology publicly because I made the oversight publicly. The idea for my posts A and B originated with flic @ the American Center for Surreal and Paranoid Life on a post written October 31, 2006, entitled Art Act, Number 2 Pp. The American Center for Surreal and Paranoid Life is a wonderfully creative blog and flic is a top notch blogger. I highly recommend you pay both a visit. I owed you that apology and link and I meant ever word of...
More About: Public , Mors , Apology , Ology , Remorse

taking a blogging break
2006-11-07 05:09:01
I’m going offline for a few days. I just need some time to clear my head.  I need to go find the funny again.  I really need to find the funny again.  If I find it I’ll be back.
More About: Blogging , Break , Blog , King , Blogg

B
2006-11-05 11:00:02
B - central to verbose Photo credit: Indy Charlie.

A
2006-11-04 22:57:02
A. That seems as good as any place to start. Seeing as how it’s the first letter of the alphabet and all. I ought to be able to build a post off an A wouldn’t you think? The problem is I have no idea where I’m going with this, I’m just typing. Words are going down on the page but so what, does it mean anything or is it going anywhere? So far it sure doesn’t look like it. Helen is afraid I’ve lost my damn mind. What do you think? This post isn’t helping alleviate those fears any is it? I don’t think I’ve lost my mind at all. Isn’t this supposed to be a release? Isn’t this site supposed to be all about the fun? Have fun damn you! I’m dancing as fast as I can and you ain’t laughing… and you sure as hell ain’t dancing. I wonder how many words this is? It’s hard to know without checking but I don’t want to stop typing to check because then I would lose my train of thought...

Fark U: I?m back in the closet!
2006-11-03 10:54:01
Just when you thought he was out… he’s back in again!  My closet has a revolving door. Bwahahaha!!!!!  You people are so fun to play with!  Mind games are the best games! Damn it Shaymus!  Why’d you have to go and out my outing?  Fark U… Fark U… Fark U… and especially you Helen!  :: smack ::  I’ve been on the run and hiding for almost 35 years now, you think I’m gonna out myself that easily?  People, people, people!  Tsk.  Tsk.  Tsk. Let’s see… who am I going to be today… Hmmm… Squishy squishy underpants on that you can depends.  Rule #1 @ Looking for DB Cooper… EVERYTHING is an illusion!  It’s ALL smoke and mirrors. Crank the satellite back up Helen and keep on looking for DB Cooper!
More About: Back , Close , Closet

I?m not gay but I?m out
2006-11-03 04:51:01
Hello. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Mark Cross aka DB Cooper. Welcome to my outing. The reason I’m outing myself is simple. Hopefully my explanation will be too. I have another WordPress site. I know I said I was gonna drop all my other sites except Looking for DB Cooper but I’m a naughty little monkey. I did get rid of the third site. Doesn’t that count for something with you people? Anyway… both sites are under the same account. I updated my account with my real name and picture since I use both on my other site. As a result my real name and picture were going to show up here anyway whenever I left a comment from now on so my outing was inevitable. Oh sure I could just log in and out of my account whenever I wanted to comment here but I’m far too lazy to do that. The comment section of WordPress sites are the only place where this change will be visible. Among my current readership that means only Howard, Helen, Thirdedgod ...

urban gargoyle
2006-11-03 04:51:01
I watch from my perch as you go scurrying by. busy, busy bees. I’m seldom noticed - Hands on lap, gazing forward - but I’m always there sitting high above your heads as you move about. An urban gargoyle. Photo credit:striatic.
More About: Urban

stare at the ceiling til I get back
2006-11-02 16:48:01
Photo by elston. Crazy busy IRL (in real life) yesterday and today.  Sorry I haven’t had a chance to get on and respond to everyone’s comments on yesterday’s post yet.  Wasn’t that a sweet one?  :)  Maybe I’ll get a chance later today but it may not be till tomorrow.  :(  Not much I can do about those pesky real life demands sometimes. Until I get back… stare at the ceiling… or talk amongst yourselves.  No sports!  And no pets!  They both smell up the place. 
More About: Star , Back

happy halloween haikus
2006-11-01 04:42:02
Photo by ducminh0904529910 I’m there as you sleep, Watching your chest rise and fall. I have come for you. You are a dream kill. The fear so thick and instant as your eyes open and I’m all you see. Wicked the smile I offer. Silent is your scream. And then the stillness. Broken only by my slurp and one faint gurgle. Happy Hall oween to all my readers and friends I hope you sleep well.
More About: Haiku , Halloween , Lowe

Sleep is avoiding me like it owes me money
2006-10-30 10:33:01
Photo by welovethedark. Deep in the night, long after the witching hour, you’ll find me… plodding my way across the landscape of the Internet… reading, tinkering, writing. I am the undead. I am the shadow that has no name. I am the sleepless one. I am at my best after midnight, always have been. I used to have a job that required me to get up at 4:45 am. I did adjust to that schedule. Of course it’s pretty easy to do so when rising that early leaves you tired by 9 PM and usually asleep by 10. But I have a different job now and have once again found myself staying up later and later and sleeping less and less. Now 3, 4 and 5 AM are becoming my norm for bedtime and 3-4 hours sleep has pretty much become the standard. I don’t know how I do it. I don’t know why I do it. But I do it regularly and I do it well. And yet, I fear my soul is slipping from this realm of flesh and light. My jaw has slackened, my vision blurred, my gaze has fixed ...
More About: Money , Sleep , Like , Avoid

Sometimes life just isn?t what it seems
2006-10-29 22:30:02
Photo by ucumari. It?s all about perception isn?t it? I mean life that is. We say that this day is going to last forever when at most it?s gonna last 24 hours. We say that time is dragging when in reality time proceeds unencumbered by the events of our daily lives. We wonder if this day will ever end knowing full well they all do? eventually. I have a pair of sunglasses that, every time I put them on, makes everything I see look brighter and more vivid. The blue sky is bluer, the green grass is greener, etc. Sometimes while looking through those glasses I find myself thinking, ?Man, what a gorgeous day!? Only to pull them off and see that it?s really quite overcast & gloomy. Yea, perception changes everything. So does hitting the cow you didn’t see on the road because you were too busy pulling your sunglasses off and on looking at the blue sky, gray sky, blue sky, gray sky… I bet that cow thought she was gonna live forever… till the front end of my car chang...
More About: Life , Time , Just , What , Hat

Sometimes you just gotta throw leaves!
2006-10-28 11:24:01
Photo by Craig Lindner. When I was a kid I loved this time of year. My two fonded memories of fall in the Midwest were the sights and sounds of Friday night football (I could see the field from my yard) and throwing leaves! Throw ing leaves is a lost art to we adults. Me and my best friend Andy would spend an entire Saturday afternoon racking leaves only to end up throwing them all over the yard again. We would rack up the biggest pile of leaves we possibly could and then dive in! We would roll and laugh and kick and flail and then, covered in leaves and leave shrapnel, we would grab handfuls and just start throwing them for all we were worth. Why? Well, sometimes you just gotta throw leaves because you’re a kid and that’s what kids do. Other times it’s because Andy wanted to go home early so you hit him in the face with a handful because you were pissed he was leaving early again and so he blasts you back which pissed you off even more so you grab two handfuls an...
More About: Time , Just , Leave , Times