Revisiting Blogger

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Note: the following post contains affiliate links.  I receive a portion of any purchases made through these links, at no additional cost to you.  —TPP

Back in 2018 I shifted The Portly Politico from the old Blogger/Blogspot to WordPress.com, and I’ve never looked back—until now.

I’ve dedicated the last two Wednesdays to highlight some of WordPress.com‘s functionality; you can read those posts here and here (for those of you that read last week’s post, I’m happy to report that I was able to deactivate the “Classic Editor” plugin with no ill effects—everything converted back to the blocks editor seamlessly). I thought it might be interested to go back and remind myself why I made the leap to WordPress.com, and to see if maybe I was too hasty in making the change.

I decided to compare Blogger/Blogspot to WordPress.com in three areas: overall interface (looking at the home screen, for example, when you first log into your account); the posting interface/editor; and the final published content (what the blogs look like when published).

Note that I have the free Blogger/Blogspot account that anyone with a Gmail e-mail address can get, while with WordPress.com I have the Premium plan, which is $8 a month when paid annually (or $18 a month otherwise). Blogger/Blogspot does not have any inherently paid options, but lacks the ability to purchase a domain name from Blogger/Google directly. You can purchase a domain name from a number of third-party providers (that’s my approach with www.tjcookmusic.com, which I built using Google Sites), but it’s not integrated into Blogger/Blogspot the way domain name purchases are in WordPress.com.

Regardless, the basic functionality of posting, checking analytics, etc., is analogous enough between Blogger/Blogspot and WordPress.com to make fruitful comparisons.

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New Music Tuesday XVI: “Old Boy”

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Like last week’s piece, I’ve got another experiment in multitrack recording recording using Audacity and my Logitech Blue Yeti USB microphone (that’s an Amazon Affiliate link; I receive a portion of any purchases made through that link at no additional cost to you). My workflow was a bit different. I did start with a Voice Memo recording while driving to play at a Sunday morning camp service for the local Presbyterian Church (the summer is always a good time to be a sellsword hedge pianist), and I used that as the template for building today’s piece.

I tend to walk around the house singing and/or chanting weird little phrases or songs I make up. Dr. Wife calls these my “vocal stims“; she claims (correctly) that I do them the most right before bed, as I get the “zoomies” before crashing out for the night. One I do frequently is saying, “Old Boy” in a slight British accent in a very low register.

To illustrate, here’s the track I recorded on the way to play that morning (converted to a lossless WAV):

I used that track as the base for recording other parts. I used the count-in to assure that I came in with the vocal harmonies correctly. I did a major third, a fifth, and a major seventh, then re-recorded the root note so I could ditch the above track, as I didn’t want the road noise in the mix. I also re-recorded the beatboxing as part of the root track.

To keep effects consistent, I mixed the four fresh vocal tracks down to a single track, and applied a 1980s chorus effect, as well as a “large room” reverb preset and some kind of mastering preset. The only downside was that, for some reason, my mic did not pick up the new beatboxing well at all, even though I was “performing” directly into the microphone, with my generous, pouty lips touching the mic’s grill. Maybe I screwed something up when I was playing with noise reduction, which I tried initially to avoid re-recording the (admittedly) short base/bass/beatboxing track.

Next came the saxophone parts. I wasn’t sure what key I was in, I just knew it was major. It turned out to be something approximating B major, with the vocal parts forming a Bmaj7 chord (B, D#, F#, and A#). That works out to an Ab major on the alto sax, but due to some intonation (and possibly the slight tonal ambiguity introduced by the major seventh A#), it didn’t sound quite right until I started recording. It felt like I brute-forced the song back into major—the vocal parts were taking a minor flavor—with the punchy, vibrant saxophone part. Regardless, I riffed out parts that, to me, sounded like a celebration, which really changes the entire mood of the piece (although it probably does capture something of the chaotic joy of vocal stimulation).

I was recording the sax part yesterday morning in the waning minutes before I had to head out for an afternoon of tasks. That said, I managed to squeeze in four quick sax parts, with the result being today’s track, “Old Boy”:

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Cromwell (1970)

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YouTube has a treasure trove of classic films that are free with ads—legally. Indeed, in watching some of these films on my desktop, I’ve had no ads actually pop up (and I’m not using some kind of cheeky ad blocker). YouTube has fed me some great films, mostly from the 1960s and 1970s.

One of the best I’ve seen so far is 1970’s Cromwell, a historical drama based on the life of the the Puritan warrior and later Lord Protector of England Oliver Cromwell. The film also stars Obi-Wan Kenobi—excuse me, Alec Guinness—as King Charles I in a pitch-perfect performance (Richard Harris also delivers a fiery performance as Cromwell).

Here’s the entire film here; it is well worth investing in the runtime, and I found it gripping for the entire duration:

Now that you’ve spent the morning watching the movie, on to the review!

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Lazy Sunday CCCXCII: Coffee

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Looking back at the my oeuvre, I’ve written precious little about my favorite breakfast beverage, coffee. However, I’ve done just enough to phone in this smooth and nutty edition of Lazy Sunday:

Happy Sunday—and Happy Brewing!

—TPP

SubscribeStar Saturday: The Portly Politico Summer Reading List 2026, Part II: Non-Fiction

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

Today’s post includes Amazon Affiliate links to the books referenced. I receive a portion of any purchases made through those links, at no additional cost to you. If a book is linked, it is an Amazon Affiliate link.

See Part I here, and read the full post here. —TPP

I’m back with Part II of The Portly Politico Summer Reading List 2026, with a focus on non-fiction. As a history teacher and a writer primarily focused on non-fiction, I possess a particular interest in non-fiction writing of every stripe. While I do love reading history, I enjoy reading broadly, so today’s list will have works of non-fiction from multiple genres.

Typically I leave the full list behind the paywall for paid subscribers; however, as several of these authors are indie/self-published and/or newer authors, I would like to boost their works more broadly (and, naturally, gain access to those sweet, sweet affiliate clicks). So, here are four books I’ve read and/or am currently reading that I highly recommend you order:

  • Nicholas R. Ochs, Age of Rot: A Right Wing Dissident’s Prison Dispatches from a Torn America – Nicholas Ochs was arrested following the Epiphany Protests for covering the events as an independent journalist. His association with the Proud Boys made him an easy target for Biden’s Justice Department, and he ended up with a four-year sentence (!) in a maximum security prison in Butler, North Carolina, where he faced a number of abuses (including an arbitrary stint in solitary confinement in winter without a mattress or blanket for his cot; he burned so many calories trying to stay warm that he became dangerously emaciated). This book is his collected prison writings, and it is a stark window into the political persecution and prosecutions that faced so many patriots in 2021.
  • Landis Brown, Life Under the Shadow of the Almighty: A Journey Through Psalm 91 – My pastor while I was living down in Lamar wrote this book. Pastor Dana, as we call him (his middle name is “Dana”), had an issue while preparing his manuscript: his editor backed out of the project. Pastor Dana contacted me and asked if I could edit the last four chapters, which I did last spring. I finally ordered a physical copy earlier this week, so I am excited to read the first two chapters (and re-read the four I edited). It’s an interesting blend of scholarly work and devotional.
  • H.H. Scullard and A.A.M. van der Heyden, Shorter Atlas of the Classical World – I picked up this delightful little survey of the classical world, which focuses on ancient Greece and Rome, when I was a teenager. I devoured it, cover-to-cover, and I love all the maps and the lithographic plates.
  • Walter Martin, The Kingdom of the Cults: An Analysis of the Major Cult Systems in the Present Christian Era – I borrowed—and never returned, gulp!—a copy of this book from my Aunt Cheryl some years ago. It is the “textbook” on the various cults of the twentieth century from the perspective of an Evangelical Protestant Christian theologian and historian. Martin gives detailed historical information about the foundation of a number of cults, including the Nation of Islam and Mormonism, and offers Christians useful theological and historical grounds for arguing against these movements. My (well, my aunt’s) edition is from the twenty-fourth printing in 1977, and it certainly reflects the cultic activity of the time (some of the movements are now just footnotes in religious history, while others are still thriving).

More below the punch. That said, each of these books if quite affordable on Amazon, and you can scoop them all up for under $70.71 at the time of writing.

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

TBT: The Joy of Coffee

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Blogger Esoterica over at Existential Ergonomics has once against inspiration for today’s post. She posed a fun question to readers in her post “Q&A: Are you a tea or a coffee person?“

It’s a smart title because it’s dripping (no pun intended) with engagement potential. Naturally, the comments section was poppin’—and yours portly was not shy about discussing coffee (and tea) with the other readers, especially after purchasing a new coffee grinder (that’s an Amazon Affiliate link; I receive a portion of any purchases made through that link, at no additional cost to you):

That got me thinking about a post I wrote way back in 2021. I looked it up, and was shocked to find that I’d never featured it in a TBT. Well, it’s time to change that and look back at a post about my favorite breakfast beverage.

With that, here is 24 March 2021’s “The Joy of Coffee“:

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The Impossible Dream: Restoration of Classic Editor in WordPress.com

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Note: the following post contains affiliate links.  I receive a portion of any purchases made through these links, at no additional cost to you.  —TPP

Last week I wrote about adapting to blocks in WordPress.com, as well as looking at some other changes WordPress.com has introduced recently, like badges and/or achievements for reaching certain milestones.  My overall verdict was that, while I miss the Classic Editor, blocks do offer a degree of versatility that make editing easier, even if there are some shortcomings to them.

While writing and researching that post, I noticed that there is a plugin native to WordPress.com that restores the Classic Editor—indeed, an almost even more “classic” version of it than I realized!—and realized that I had to give it a whirl.  Could it be that WordPress.com still had the coveted feature that many bloggers still crave?  And how would it stack up to the new block editing regime?

Everything you’re about to read is possible in any of the paid WordPress.com plans, including the Personal plan, which is $4 a month when paid annually (or $9 a month otherwise).  I use the Premium plan, which $8 a month when paid annually (or $18 a month otherwise).  I’m not sure if the Classic Editor plugin can be re-enabled in free plans; that said, if you use a free plan and it works, let me know!

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New Music Tuesday XV: “Groovable”

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Like last week’s piece, I’ve got another experiment in multitrack recording recording using Audacity and my Logitech Blue Yeti USB microphone (that’s an Amazon Affiliate link; I receive a portion of any purchases made through that link at no additional cost to you). I followed a similar workflow, this time using the Voice Memo app on my iPhone to record a percussion part on one of Dr. Wife’s mixing bowls. The blow in question is made from some kind of lightweight metal and has a rubber bottom, so it made for a pretty good drums.

The four sax parts are a bit chaotic. My timing does not always align perfectly, but there is a driving sense of forward motion in the piece. The melody is built on an improvised F major (concert Ab major) arpeggio, then I had a great deal of fun bleeding in different harmonies that sometimes work beautifully, and other times add strange (but, I think, still pleasing) colors, like major seconds and such.

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Backrooms (2026)

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Dr. Wife and I took in another indie horror-ish flick on Saturday, checking out the Internet sensation Backrooms (2026). The film is based on director Kane Parson‘s YouTube series, Backrooms, which itself is based on a 4Chan thread from 2019. “The Backrooms” are a series of liminal spaces that exist extradimensionally, but are accessible from the real world. They consist of seemingly endless corridors decorated in the drab yellow wallpaper and builder-grade carpet of every 1990s dentist office. Indeed, the original photo that inspired the Backrooms is from a Wisconsin furniture store renovation in 2002.

Neither of us have watched the YouTube series, and I knew very little about the Backrooms extended universe. I wanted to go into the film blind, although I knew a little bit of the plot and characters just from watching reviews. That said, here is a playlist of the original YouTube series:

Having seen the film, you don’t really need to watch the YouTube series to appreciate what the director is doing, and to get some hazy understanding of what the Backrooms are. However, be aware going into the film that you’re going to leave with more questions than answers, and that is the point.

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