Month: June 2004

Categories
RDF Semantics Weblogging

Common interchange format

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

After sleeping too late this morning and then waking with a headache–a response to long hours this weekend, culminating with finding out late yesterday the work was for naught and has to be re-done–I didn’t have enough time or energy to go for a hike somewhere, so I started playing around with technology.

I know this doesn’t make sense: why would a person spend all weekend with code and then spend time coding during off-hours? It’s really a variation of setting your alarm for Saturday morning just so you can turn it off when you don’t have to get up on your day off.

What? You don’t do this?

Anyway, I’ve been playing around in the WordPress code because my outgoing trackbacks and pingbacks have stopped working. I’ve also been playing around with some new PHP toys that I’ll cover in an upcoming new LAMP essay. However, most of the day has been spent thinking about interoperability.

The biggest challenge to industries in the past has been to establish a data model for the industry that all the participants could agree on. Once agreed on, then the groups could generate a data format that allows companies to electronically transmit data back and forth without having to go through a lot of transforms.

Some people think XML has eliminated the data transform problem, but XML is nothing more than a structured syntax – there is no ‘data’ within the XML model. It’s the same as having an alphabet, but no common agreed on language. I can scribble letters and you can scribble letters but if we don’t agree on what those letters mean, all we’re doing is creating pretty pictures.

Even RDF isn’t data. It’s a step up from XML in that it provides a structure for how objects relate to each other, but you still have to define the ‘objects’.

Anyway, I was thinking of data interoperability today because of the recent closing of weblogs.com, not to mention other recent movements between Movable Type and WordPress, Movable Type and Textpattern, and so on. I was reminded that one of the original purposes behind the Atom project was to define a common interchange format between tools, so that people could easily move from one to another. With this, people wouldn’t be facing some of the difficulties the weblogs.com folks are now facing, trying to get their Manila based exports into a format usable by other weblogging tools – something I’ve heard is not trivial.

However, the Atom folks went the syndication and API route and put an interchange format on the back burner. Too bad, really, because something like that would be rather handy now.

As coincidence would have it, one of the architects of Atom, Sam Ruby, volunteered to help write a data transform for those who are currently impacted by the weblogs.com shut-down. He wrote:

However, this is not a time for religious debate or partisanship. It is a time for compassion and an opportunity to learn and improve. Enough so that I am willing to step forward and offer to help with writing of conversion and migration tools. Assuming that the input looks anything like this format, I am willing to write conversion tools to either a comparable format or to a blosxom’s directory layout.

As Sam mentions, escape sequences and odd characters will now take on special interest, because these usually cause problems when either exporting or importing data. As he also mentions, getting one’s own domain is also a good think to think about now, too.

It’s great that individuals are stepping up to help out during this ‘crises’, but the better environment in the long run is to agree to a common interchange format and have all tools support it. Then people could export their weblogs weekly, or even daily if they’re paranoid enough (and no one could blame people for being paranoid now); if something like this were to happen again, the impact would be minor at best.

We have to stop putting those who aren’t technical into the position of being dependent on the technically proficient to come riding in to save the day every time a new ‘business decision’ is made. I like riding white horses as much as the next person, but it’s hard to walk about when people are kissing the tops of your boots.

However, technology is easy, business agreements are hard–in this environment, business agreements are damn near impossible. So until utopia hits, I also volunteer my help for those displaced from weblogs.com who want to move to WordPress or Textpattern. You’ll have to find your own server space, but I can help you get the tool installed and get your data ported to this environment.

Categories
Weblogging

The value of free

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

There is much to be learned about the incident of Dave Winer shutting down the free weblogs on weblogs.com this weekend; much beyond the obvious of always having a backdoor for your weblog. The real heart of the matter has to do with free, and the value we place on things that are ‘free’.

It wasn’t long before folks started rolling out the fact that people were hosted for free, and therefore haven’t a right to complain once the ‘free’ ride was over.

Doc Searls writes:

Thousands of us got a free ride from Dave, and Userland, over the past five years. What we got was far more than we didn’t pay for. For many of us (certainly for me), the benefits have been incalculable.

Let’s keep that in mind as those of us involved try to make this transition over the next few weeks

Archipelago responds with:

How about the folks bellyachin’ that Docs’ site is still running. Sheesh. I understand how annoyed folks are locked away from their writing and cats… but I also know that a lot of folks were happy to not pay, and not worry, and feel free to complain now that gravy train is over. If you’ve ever hosted sites and had folks who are getting free service call to yell at you at some ungodly hour on weekend that the site is down (regardless of the actual condition of the site) then you can feel some of the pain on the other side. And if you never have, and just annoyed that you can’t get to your stuff, where was you’re backup? Where’s your responsibility?

Om Malik writes about the ease in which to export from Movable Type or Blogger compared to other tools, and problems he had this weekend:

In comparison, switching from Manilla, or Word Press is painful and hard for those who are not blogsavants. (You can export the database or import using a RSS feed, but that is tough for people who just want to write.) I tried to move hosts this weekend and man it was a problem. Had Matt not helped me out, I would have never been able to do it. I guess, that is the penalty of free.

Anyway, this rant has become too long – I am going to say this, sometimes free is not good, and can be a bit of a pain. Weblogs.com users are finding out.

The same Matt offered to help with redirection , which is generous, and ‘free’. But as I wrote in David Weinberger’s comments, if the resources to run redirection in Matt’s space are trivial, wouldn’t they also be trivial in weblogs.com?

Frank Paynter has been collecting links and had an interesting take on the sudden revelation that this was all about Dave’s health:

The part about “Dave can’t program because it’s a health risk” troubles me… does this mean Dave can’t think because it’s a health risk? Or Dave can’t use the keyboard because his fingers might fall off? What is it about Dave’s style of coding that’s unhealthy I wonder?

Nothing to do with ‘free’, but I was curious about this myself. Personally I find coding to be unhealthy for me because I can’t hike and code at the same time, and therefore gain weight because I’m sitting on my butt and someday I’m going to fall over dead because I provide helpful, and free, tips for all of you…and it will be all your fault. You free weblogging scum, you.

Now, where was I?

Jeneane, well, now that lady is on a mission, providing good commentary, pointers to new weblogs.com webloggers homes, and demonstrating that she’s the fastest damn typist by immediately transcribing Winer’s audioblog to text.

(I’ve been chatting with Jeneane in emails about the demographics of those rallying around in support of Dave Winer, and those criticizing him. Interesting patterns developing – where’s the social software folks?)

Ralph has my favorite quote from this whole mess:

So now 3000+ webloggers have been summarily evicted with no notice. Dave has perfectly reasonable excuses for his actions. But he has no excuse for the lack of action that led to this. And UserLand really screwed up as a company by surreptitiously abandoning a huge user base to the fortunes of one person with a bum ticker. I guess when you play with a cactus, you’re bound to get pricked.

I guess when you play with a cactus, you’re bound to get pricked.

Most of these discussions are strongly reminiscent of the same discussions when Movable Type went from free software to having a fairly hefty licensing fee – and without warning. There were those who were unhappy, and were vocal about it. And then there were those pointing fingers at the rest of us and calling us cheap bastards.

What we’re finding in weblogging is there is no such thing as free forever. The medium has grown up; it no longer has the feeling of being something self-contained and measured and people who were doing ‘free’ earlier are bailing from doing ‘free’ forever.

There’s nothing wrong with not doing the free thing. However, there’s also nothing wrong with the people who accepted the free thing, freely given. No one begged to be allowed to use Movable Type, it was provided for download; no one whined to be allowed to weblog on weblogs.com–they were invited to participate. Each person who accepted these free things also gave something back in return: whether it was bodies when webloggers were few, or grateful acknowledgement when webloggers were many. Though those who have benefited from these free services in the past should be grateful, they don’t deserve to be called ‘cheap’ or cut loose without warning. Free does not equate to no value.

I wonder how far this loss of weblogging ‘free’ will go? To weblog reading? We don’t charge people to read our weblogs, but does that make our readers cheap, and valueless? I don’t believe so, though I haven’t always acted so.

I believe we should value those who have so many weblogs to choose from now, but still take the time to read what we write. It’s true that we should write for ourselves, but that doesn’t make the value of what our readers contribute to this whole experience any less. I hope that none of us–no matter how erudite or eloquent, no matter how popular or successful–forget the value of our readers, as this medium continues to grow in respectability if not size.

All the more so because being able to read weblogs seems to be the last ‘free’ in weblogging.

Categories
Stuff

The ultimate wakeup

I have a task that needs to be finished tomorrow and am most likely going to be working all night, or close to it. The work is such that I can’t do it for many hours in a row, without getting frustrated, so I take breaks–such as the break to work on the new looks for the weblog.

To help me focus tonight, I pulled in the big guns: grande caramel machiotto with four shots instead of two. And Krispy Kreme donuts. The combination of extra caffeine and sugar is guaranteed to keep me going for 24 hours; after that, I’m a goner.

As effective as my ultimate solution is, a problem with it is that the strangest things enter my head when I’m so buzzed. For instance, I came this close to naming the Fire & Ice stylesheet Burningberg.

And have you noticed how slow everyone drives on Sundays? The roads haven’t changed, but you always end up behind some SUV or mini-van, with a couple of kids in the back, poking along at five miles under the speed limit. The rest of the week, Mom or Dad will haul butt down the road, but not Sundays.

I figured what happens is the family goes to church on Sunday and sings a rousing chorus of “Nearer my God to thee”; all the way home they think to themselves, “Nearer my God to thee…but not today! Nothing like church to remind you of your own mortality.

I also noticed today, when I went to get another cup of coffee, that you can tell an older man’s political affiliation by their hair and what they wear. You can’t always tell with a woman – well, unless she’s wearing heels and black leather and carrying a whip, and even then the same lady can be dressed in a demure cotton frock on Sundays. And you can’t tell with guys under, say 30-40. But guys over 40, sure enough.

Liberal guys almost always wear a beard. It’s gotten to the point when I see an older guy with a beard, I immediately think, “Yup, liberal”.

If they’re extremely liberal, they might also have long hair worn in a pony tail, though you have to be careful with pony tails – lots of real conservative folks in the back country of Missouri have long pony tails. Still, if you live in the coastal areas, or in most cities, the length of the pony tail gives away the degree of liberalness. That and the amount of cotton and natural fibers they wear. Wearing a button that says, “Anyone but Bush in 2004″ tends to give this away, too.

Now, conservative men keep their faces shaved as smooth as a baby’s butt–unless they’re a college professor or on the lecture circuit or in journalism, in which case they wear the beard as protective coloration. I wonder if this is a consequence of economics? Upper management in major western corporations haven’t worn beards since the 1800’s.

The extremely conservative men have a pinched look to their faces, as if they smell something bad all the time. Don’t have to believe me – just take a look at the current administration.

As for the libertarians? They wear black. Even when wearing white, they wear black. Oh, and sometimes they carry a gun.

Of course religion and culture and nationality and economics and education and marital status and personal choice changes all of this. And so does access to a razor.

I think I need to go get another coffee. And a Key Lime Krispy Kreme donut to go wwwwwwiiiiiiittttttthhhhhh iiiiitttt.

Categories
Burningbird

New look. Really new look.

I did testing of the new look in the validation engines, and several different browsers and it seems to work. I am aware of the float problem with IE 6.0 and will dig up the work around and add it. I’m getting to the point where if I no longer support Netscape 4.x, I don’t want to support IE 6.x, either.

But it is widely used so if you’re using it, be aware that I working the problem.

I have other new styles to add in addition to the ones you have now, but I’ll leave those for next week. I myself switch between Fire & Ice and Lemon Shake-Ups, depending if I’m in the mood for summer or winter. Shake-Ups is a bit busy, but it suits the photo at the top and is very cheerful.

Speaking of photos, yes I am using photos in the sidebar and yes it can slow load times. Hopefully once they cache, their bandwidth burden should be minimized.

The ice photos used in Fire & Ice are from the NOAA public libraries and they are lovely, aren’t they? The other photos that aren’t NOAA’s or mine are from Jon Sullivan who has generously placed most of his wonderful work into the public domain. (Jon has a weblog here. Read his disclaimer at the bottom for a giggle.) I will be using more of Jon’s work in upcoming styles.

I either created the clipart or downloaded it from the free clipart pages at about.com.

If you can try these different stylesheets in your browser and drop me a note and let me know what does or doesn’t work, I’d be appreciative. This is a very major change, and I imagine the site will be rough for a week, until I finish the transition.

I’ve had the old colors and look for so long, when I come to the pages, it doesn’t feel like my site. But change is good. Thanks again for those who have commented and tested; a special thanks to Roger for helping me with the Burningbird title positioning.

Fixed the layout problem in Safari and IE – I had an unclosed DIV tag within my last post (my update block).

Rah!

Categories
Burningbird

Fire and ice

Though I work primarily with backend development, my start in writing was front end design and development, working with Javascript and CSS. I know, hard to imagine.

Lately though, I’ve been in a design mood, and have designed a new format for this weblog, which you can see at the test weblog. I’ve borrowed Michael Hanscom’s idea of a style switcher, and his Javascript, and have created three styles so far. I have five more in the wings, waiting to finish, but you can see what I have now.

The (F) and (S) designate fixed background image or sliding. So far my favorite design is Fire and Ice, inspired by a posting title by Rogi. Check out the sidebar that changes with each stylesheet. The photos change in and around the ‘floating cloud’ segmented sidebar, as someone named it, and a lovely name it is. The difference from the original design is that I am now going fully centered.

I still need to play around with the stylesheets, make sure it works with the browsers I plan on supporting. And I have one last challenge – the Burningbird title. I want it to right align with the box holding the post text, but haven’t figured it out yet. If anyone has any ideas, I’d appreciate hearing about them.

Found, thanks to Roger.

This has been fun. Much more fun than being a pain in the butt to the WordPress people. But not as fun as paddle-ball, Dave.

Nice safe, topic.