If change is good, then I’m heading into truly grand times.
Effective now, the domains yasd.com, dynamicearth.com, p2psmoke.org, and burningbird.net (and several others) have been merged into the primary domain of burningbird.net. I’ll be using Movable Type to manage the content for all, but instead of creating a ‘weblog’ for each domain, I’m creating one for each sub-directory: Articles, Distributed Bits, Interactive, Tutorials, Expressions, OpEds, and so on. Then I’ll use categories to mark each item as “YASD”, “Dynamic Earth”, “P2P Smoke”, and use the MT category tag to load related logos and style sheets.
A small application will then poll new items from each sub-directory’s RSS file, as well as this weblog, and roll them into one main Burningbird RSS file — burningbird.rdf. That’s the file I’ll ask people to subscribe to. A little PHP application embedded into the burningbird.net main page will display the contents of this file.
All the older tutorials, articles, etc. will be converted into the Movable Type content management system, and I’ll use my PostCon post-content management system to re-direct the pages to the new locations. Since I don’t have Tomcat/JSP with this move, I’ll be using the PHP-based PostCon system.
Old weblog postings archives will remain, but I’ll be removing the comment form from the pages because when I remove any entry, the comments will be effectively orphaned.
Another major change I’ll be making is moving the technology-related weblog postings into appropriate locations within the entire system (such as Distributed Bits or Tutorials). Since all the Burningbird weblogs use the same numbering system, this is as easy as modifying the blog identifiers in a couple of tables. I’ll also be moving all political postings to the OpEd sub-directory.
During all of this, I’m going to be using Movable Type and RSS, but I’m not going to be writing about either (except a post-mortem document after all the changes are implemented, complete with links to source code). I need to re-focus my technology energies back into applications that I can demonstrate to potential employers, such as my PostCon system.
I found out the hard way in the last few weeks that many employers have never heard of weblogging, and could care less about weblogging. Talking about technology in relation to weblogging won’t get me a job.
As for the weblog, I’m going to be focusing on my mix of writing combined with photography, as was demonstrated in Wrapped in the Warmth of Glory or Parable of the Languages. Marc’s Voice, who linked to the Wrapped posting calls this type of writing, Multimedia Conversations. This is type of writing I love, and this is the type of writing I want to do in this weblog.
As for writings about the neighborhood — one whole new sub-directory is called Neighborhood, and is specifically for metablogging and my virtual neighborhood.
Watch me now as I light a match to this weblog.