Why not?

So...just in case anyone ends up here...

1. Further Thoughts, my main blog on WordPress, where I blog about science, politics and religion.
2. Tropical Ecology Notes, a column at ScientificBlogging.com; the name is pretty self-explanatory.
3. Omphaloskepsis, which is a blog about (science) blogging.
4. Plant News, a blog in which I try to keep up on the latest news in botany and plant biology.
5. Fish Stories, my hobby blog (about fish keeping, not fishing).
6. Tropical Dry Forest, an experimental blog related to dry forests ecology.
7. My profile on HubPages, where I've contributed a few articles.

My WordPress blog was suspended for a ToS violation. Huh? I have no idea how I am supposed to have violated the ToS. I have no idea what I did wrong. And that has me incredibly bummed. Just when I was starting to get a little traffic to the site...it's gone. Together with four months of blog posts (apparently you can't get your content back when your account is suspended).

I have no idea what next. Is there an appeal process? Will I at least find out what I did wrong? It really feels like a part of myself was ripped out. I put a lot into those posts. Oh well...it's a free service. Sucks.

Update: It's back.  Yay.  Apparently it was deleted "by mistake".  I should be annoyed, but I'm too relieved. 

My wordpress blog suddenly jumped to life this morning.  After getting 15-17 views in the last few days, and never having gotten more than 37, this morning I got 47 visits.  And I can't quite figure out where they are coming from.  Almost all the incoming traffic registered is coming from Yahoo logins, although several came from my original blog (although my sitemeter there records no traffic).  So did someone email links to my blog to people?  Quite mysterious.

I registered my blogs at Technorati, I signed my posts on ScienceBlogs with a link to my Wordpress blog, and I posted regularly.  And to my surprise, people started showing up.  Only two people have posted comments (interestingly enough, on my post about Technorati).  Both of them are people on whose blogs I have commented.

It's nice to know that someone is looking at what you have written.  But you really haven't had an impact until someone has linked to a post of yours.  Will it happen?  Maybe someday.

I suppose the most appealing thing about this is the possibility of "friends only" posting.  My wordpress account allows private posts, but what's the good of it when I have no friends over there?  When I publicly "claimed" my oldest blog I had to hide a number of posts that I don't really want the world to see associated with my name.  One of the dangers of talking about a job search is that the people looking at your c.v. may be able to see your thoughts and comments.  It's nice to be able to claim what I wrote, but it's also nice to have the ability to say what you really think.

It's equally likely, of course, that I never update this blog, much like I don't update the Plant news blog very much.  I think my greatest success in blogging was my Fish blog...but I ran out of things to say once the aquarium was fairly stable. There's only so much you can say about baby Macropodus.

Since Carol's blog is now private, I might as well add this to the collection of places where I blog (or usually, don't blog.  So what do I do with a fifth blog?  Who knows.