Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
I just finished an article for O’Reilly in support of the RDF book rollout. It’s a bit longish so I’m expecting edits.
In the meantime, I want to get my domain, forpoets.org, up and running. I’ll move my first entry, Internet for Poets: DNS – what’s in a name?, and the second Echo for Poets to the new site once it’s finished.
The site is going to be broken into the following categories:
internet.forpoets.org
rdf.forpoets.org
linux.forpoets.org
weblogging.forpoets.org
I owe at least the first of a set of articles on RDF For Poets, to Professor Duemer who started me thinking of a ‘…for poets’ line of articles and essays. Perhaps I’ll combine it with AKMA’s Impractical RDF, which truly awakened my evil twin. I could have fun with this.
Two other essays I’ve been working on are:
Linux for Poets: The Ten Commands of Unix
Internet for Poets: Permalink like you mean it
The first article covers 10 Unix facts/commands that every person hosted in a Unix environment should know. With these, they can effectively manage their own pages and directories. Yes, just these ten things.
The latter article on permalinks I started when I read Joi Ito’s discussion about the permalink issue when moving weblogs about in a hosted environment and between weblogging tools. Don Park also covered this as did Matt and Marc Cantor. There’s been discussion about using Purl.org as a way of working around this issue, which I think is about the worst idea I’ve heard yet. My apologies for my bluntness, but I have to call them as I see them.
Before the N/Echo geeks jump on this for the pure geek approach that this is, I need to get this article written to discuss why it’s a Bad Idea, and to provide alternative approaches. First, though, I need the web site.
I’m thinking of using a different weblogging tool for the site, perhaps a PHP-based one such as pMachine or bBlog. The technology I can work through but my problem is design – I can’t think of a good design for the site. Chances are I’ll put something quick together than then refine it over time – that’s the best way to do web site design. I’d rather get the site up and running and post my three inaugural essays, than delay their publication working on the pretty pretty.
One thing the new site won’t have is any connection in any way to the “For Dummies” books, which I’ve always thought was an appalling name for a series of books; and I’m not that fond of yellow and black, which reminds me of a big, fat bumblebee. Besides, even a hint of this association can cause trouble, as qB recently highlighted.
No, the For Poets essays assume that the readers are intelligent, creative people who want to learn more about technology, but don’t want to be overwhelmed by the minutiae, and don’t want to be bored. Not sure how successful I’ll be, but I’m having fun with it.
As for the site design, perhaps I should run a contest – an autographed copy of Practical RDF for anyone who can help me come up with a great design. I’ll even inscribe it with a poem. No, not one of my own – I want to attract help, not scare it away.
