Categories
Weblogging

Mess o links

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Herewith for fun and pleasure, but absolutely no profit: a mess o’ links. And yes, some of these posts link to me–vanity, vanity, all is vanity. But sometimes, I need to look in a mirror.

*****

Frank Paynter brings us the first installment of answers to the question How do you blog?. Interesting our different takes on the same question. Featured in today’s post are Jeneane SessumRebecca BloodRonni Bennett, and yours truly.

Elisa Camahort pointed out the Carnival of Computing, which I didn’t know about and appreciations to her for giving us a heads up. This is a good way of hearing the tech voices drowned out in the tech.meme.

You’ve seen his comments, now read his blog: McD’s McBlog. He’s already gotten into trouble — pretty good for a new blog.

Julie Leung has a lovely post about her husband missing her when she takes a break from her weblog:

In survival mode, I think only of the next minute. Typing seems tiresome. Naps are what I need. But as I begin to enter into health again, I find desire. I find dreams. I find creativity. I find the pieces of me that are here. And I find the ways I connect with others that don’t happen in any other aspect of daily life, perhaps even with the person who knows me most intimately.

Dave Rogers — the naughty one, not the nice one — has been writing a mess of good stuff lately. He just spent $150.00 at iTunes downloading Christmas music, but be sure to read his two posts on social hygiene.

(Juxtaposition of which is kind of ironic: Christmas has become too commercialized; ooo, look at what I downloaded from iTunes!)

From his Social Hygiene essay, the following rings true as Silver Bells (one of my favorite Christmas songs–especially with Brenda Lee or the Supremes):

My objection is that marketers are the people who are, more and more, driving every aspect of our lives. Our culture is becoming more and more commercial, with competition and consumerism being the two dimensions of commercialism. I don’t see many people objecting to this, and too many of the “authorities” on the web, high attention-earning webloggers, are little more than marketers, each with a commercial interest in advancing their own commercial message.

If we’re going to have any hope of preserving some space for purely social interactions, where someone isn’t manipulating us for the purpose of seeking a competitive advantage, we’re probably going to have to make one. But I wonder if it isn’t already too late?

No, not too late. It exists here. Unless I can convince you all to make me enough of a Successful Weblogger that I can retired from weblogging.

Seth Finkelstein who is always great about linking to other discussions on a topic in the A-Lister’s posts–thereby forcing them to look outside of their tight little circles–is feeling the pressure between life and weblog.

Phil Ringnalda summarizes his year in 12 copy and paste comments. Oddly enough, in response to my comment on this post, Phil wrote something that could be a copy-and-paste comment for me for December:

For now I’m still willing to play the hand I’ve dealt myself, but I’m thinking a lot less permanently about permanence these days.

Maybe even into January…

Dori Smith did a little matchup on the recent Backchannel discussion, with a comment something along the lines of …to be continued in March at SxSW.

I have started lifting weights; I’ll be ready.

Categories
Just Shelley

Finishing

The next few weeks are going to be busy. I’m finishing up my contract for Broadband Mechanics, and hope to have my work for the company completed by Christmas. I also have a tech edit for a book that’s rather enjoyable, and needs to be finished by month end; not to mention an older task that I’ve had some mental blocks with and we’re trying a different approach.

To me, December is a time of ends. It’s a time of completing unfinished tasks: meeting promises; reading that book you’ve put off; watching that movie you’re been saving for just the right moment. It’s a time of long walks and reflection and thinking back on the past year, and facing the truths you’ve put off for a rainy day.

Twice a week during December, I attack a room in our townhome and clean it top to bottom. If there’s a closet, I order it; if there’s clutter, I throw it out. With my roommates help, we use his sewing machine to fix clothes still good, but with tears, or splits, or frayed edges. I also organize my computers, and plan on cleaning up my photos.

All is not work: I am treating myself to a week off the last week of December. I have a set of books on order at the library, and a movie I received for my birthday I’ve been saving for a less hectic time. The Firefly movie Serenity will be out on the 20th and I plan on being first in line to buy it. I also plan on seeing both Narnia and King Kong at the theaters, on the big screen. With popcorn.

By that time the Battle of the Worlds BitTorrent download might actually be finished. Nope, nope — just checked and download time is still at 0.1 KiB/s.

Categories
Web Weblogging

Online

Aside from adding some links and text, my first release of OutputThis! is online. Notice the exclamation point? Punctuation is the new black.

The rollout of the Structured Blogging work is tomorrow afternoon, but I’ve been playing with it today. When SB rolls out tomorrow I’ll list links to the test weblogs, but for now, you can check out OutputThis! Yes, I designed it. Yes, I know you hate it.

There’s been some odds and ends about the ‘forking’ nature of Structured Blogging today. It makes no sense, and the folks who are concerned haven’t posted anything online expressing their concerns, so end of story.

What is it, though, with webloggers who reach a point of success and then seem to stop weblogging? Is that the key to getting rid of webloggers–help them become successful at weblogging, and then they’ll stop weblogging? For all those people who don’t care for me and who would like to see me disappear, here’s your chance: help make me a Successful Weblogger, and I’ll go away.

In the meantime, I have a couple of long posts I’m working on and a links post to some very nice stuff you all are writing. I am surrounded by such talented people, which is good for folks like me; too bad for you, though, that you’re not successful enough at weblogging to give up weblogging.

Categories
Web

Quick note before bed

Phil Pearson is talking about the project I’ve been working on for Broadband Mechanics the last few weeks. I’m not working on the Structured Blogging component; I’m creating a middleware server called Outputthis.

A limited version of the service will be up for Tuesday for the Big Rollout, and then I need to add the rest: autodiscovery of web services through RSD; full update and delete for the Profile and Targets. But it should be enough for demonstration purposes and alpha testing/use on Tuesday.

Outputthis provides services that allow you to register weblogs or other resources that you might want to post to through the Structured Blogging “Blog This!” functionality. When you click the Blog This button, one of my services returns a list of weblogs, you check which ones you want, click the button and the next thing you know: the post has been posted to all the sites.

Right now, we’re upgrading the database and I’m fighting a really odd incompatibility between mcrypt and the xml_parser so it’s not running; something I’ll fix in the morning. Besides, it’s too early to turn it on–the rollout is Tuesday, and the focus at the party will be on the web 2.0 stuff like the Structured Blogging plugins (which are impressive); not the web 1.0 stuff, like Outputthis.

In the meantime, whatever Phil and Kimbro and the others have done with the SB plugin is not forking.