Categories
Diversity Weblogging

This is not a feminist weblog

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I’ve been informed that I can no longer call myself a feminist because I don’t agree with the other feminist webloggers as regards to the Alas a Weblog issue. To be honest, after reading some of the responses, I must say I don’t feel too unhappy.

I’m not sure where this new breed of feminist webloggers has come from. I do know that I’ve seen a breathless amount of intolerance practiced this week, not to mention enough group think to bring down the house.

It’s not an issue of disagreement–no one denies anyone the right to disagree (including myself). It’s that we can’t disagree and still call ourselves ‘feminists’, at least within these so-called feminist circles of weblogging. In a way, this is rather scary stuff: the more we participate as a ‘community’ member, the less freedom we, as individuals, have.

This has been a rather eye opening experience.

Categories
Weblogging

Gems

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Better than diamonds:

Mark at Wood s lot just celebrated six years of doing what he does so well, without apostrophe, comments, and a syndication feed. He also seems to be very happy, as well as a member of a community of people who hold him in both affection and respect (which implies that one doesn’t have to have the ‘trappings of technology’ in order to be part of something).

Mark also stubbornly persists in doing what he wants in regards to his space. I must remember to chastise him for this…someday.

Jeremy Zawodony writes on using Amazon S3 as backup and the concept is intriguing for those of us with multiple discs full of photos or movies or music or whatever. Unfortunately, though I thought tools were helpful (especially Jungle Disc), I found the backup to be abysmally slow and failed more often than not. Another approach that might be better is to get one of the monster accounts at Dreamhost, where you pay 9.95$ a month for 200GB of space and 2T (that’s terabytes, that’s huge) of bandwidth for the express purposes of backup. Then I can just use FTP to upload all my stuff. 

Why do this? For redundant backup in case my primary backup fails. Additionally, if there’s a fire I’ve got my stuff all backed up offsite. Plus, if you have multiple machines like I do (Mac and Windows), this allows you to access the backed up material from both machines, or when you’re on the road.

I like the S3 approach if the bugs ever get worked out. In the meantime, I may look at DH as a backup site.

Any other options?

I remember once reading about a new hard drive coming out that was going to have a whole gigabyte of space! Wow, we could never fill that up.

I’ve been critical of much of the Ajax stuff, probably because there’s a dangerous amount of hype in some of it that will backfire against the tech. But I did want to point out some of the more positive things I’ve seen recently.

Fellow O’Reilly Ajax author Chris Wells pointed out this site providing free mind mapping software.

Ajaxian pointed to new photo slideshow software, called Smooth Slideshow. I have my own slideshow software, but I may end up ‘stealing’ some of the ideas from this, because I think it’s a really nice implementation AND it validates!

Did you all know that Missouri played host to Jesse James and the James/Younger gang AND Bonnie and Clyde?

Reading 3 Quarks Daily on a regular basis is a guarantee to boost your IQ at least 10 points, but I especially wanted to point out a recent post, The Real Lady Chatterly that, in turn, posts to a fascinating article on Lady Ottoline Morrell and the Bloomsbury group.

That’s Bloomsbury, not Doonesbury.

Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society points to a wonderful story and new artist exhibit based on Humbolt’s parrot: the parrot that was discovered by Alexander von Humboldt in the early 1900’s that could speak 40 words from a extinct South American tribe.

Battlestar Galactica just released its new season on iTunes this morning! Now I can watch it. Joy, joy, joy!

Sheila Lennon’s Subterranean Homepage News is becoming another one of those must read sites that point out fascinating stories you might not hear about otherwise. For instance, Twisted Sister does Christmas, and this story in how not to apply for a job.

I promised to leave for a time, so we could have the joy of a reunion in the future. Well, here I go.

Seriously, a personal matter has come up that requires my attention. And though the Weblogging Rules and Procedures Handbook states we don’t have to say anything if we’re going to be offline for a time, I didn’t want those who see this as something more than Yet another Block of Text in an RSS feed to be concerned that I have a) fallen into the Mississippi, b) been eaten by a bear, or c) am off making a deal with a porn site to sell Burningbird.

Though come to think of it, “Burningbird” has a slightly erotic sound to it.