Author: Shelley Powers

Categories
Weblogging

Knock, knock! Who’s there?

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

My DSL connection is supposed to be down but was able to connect just now. Hmmm. I wonder if they’ll leave the connection on until the phone is disconnected? Oh well, gives me time to do a couple of additional posts before turning all of my attention to packing, packing, packing, storing, driving long distances (3000+ miles by the time I’m done), and then unpacking.

(Join us in the latest saga of “Shelley Powers: Women on Wheels” as she continues her quest to live at least once in every point of the known galaxy.)

Instead of packing this past week, I’ve been working on a new contract of which I can tell you no details other than it’s good to be back in operation. Very good. I’ve also worked through the details of my two week trip back to St. Louis. No peekies – my itinerary is known to no Man nor Woman. Well, me. I’m a woman. So I guess it’s known to No Man, One Woman.

In the meantime stuff’s been happening. Jeneanne Sessum was interviewed by Frank Paynter, supplying yet more needed discussion about life, work, family, and sex. I tried to find the interview with Denise, but couldn’t locate it. Frank, suggestion – can you pull your interviews into separate pages?

In addition, I’ve also been interviewed – by none other than the Head Lemur. Yup. We have buried the hatchet and become buddies and Lemur was kind enough to allow me to have a say at his web site. So, move your cute butts over to Head Lemur and read the interview.

There was also some rifting going on in the virtual neighborhood earlier in the week – a subject I suppose I shouldn’t discuss. However, I am the Bird, which means it’s my job to tromp all over taboo and delicate subjects with the grace and precision of a stoned elephant with an inner-ear imbalance.

So…

If we’re truly a “connected community” rather than brain dead news linkers providing inane commentary while worshiping at the footsies of technology, then we should be able to:

 

  • disagree with
  • appreciate
  • squabble
  • agree with
  • get mad at
  • like
  • be hurt by
  • hurt
  • respect
  • tease
  • laugh at
  • laugh with
  • admire
  • worry about
  • worry with
  • share with
  • be shared by
  • love

 

…one another. Life happens.

Categories
RDF Technology Weblogging

Technology to enable community

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Serendipity is such a major component of my life, never more so than when I read Gary’s attempt to manually connect the multiple threads to the whole discussion about Identity.

While I’m on my long journey through distance and time, I’m working on a new application that will provide a means to track cross-blog discussions, such as those my own virtual neighborhood (and others) participate in. The specs for the application are:

 

Project is called Thread the Needle, or “Needley” for short. Its purpose is to track cross-blogging threads.

How it works:

You register your weblog, once, with an online application I’ll provide (i.e. provide your weblog location, name of weblog, email). Frequently throughout the day, the Needle service bot will visit the weblog looking for RDF (an XML meta-language, used for RSS and other applications) embedded within the weblog page. Note that this may change to scan weblogs.com for changed weblogs that are registered, or based on the first time a person clicks the link or some other procedure – testing these out as you read this.

The RDF will be generated by the service now and copied and pasted into the posting; hopefully someday it will be generated automatically by the weblogging tools.

The RDF either starts a weblogging subject thread – starts a new subject – or continues an existing thread. The bot pulls this information in and when someone clicks on a small graphic/link attached to the posting, a page opens showing all related threads and their association with each other.

Example:

AKMA writes a posting on Identity. Because he starts the discussion thread he creates and embeds RDF “thread start” XML into the posting (generated by the tool using very simple to use form, results cut and pasted into posting). Included in this RDF is thread title, brief description, posting permalink, weblog name, and posting category, accessed from pulldown list.

The generated code also contains a small graphic and link that a person clicks to get to the Needley page. Clicking another small graphic/links opens up a second form for a person wanting to respond to this posting, with key information already filled in.

The posting would look like:

 

This is posting stuff, posting stuff, words, more words more words
more words and so on.

link/graphic to view page Needle thread page,
link/graphic to respond to current posting

Posted by person, date, comment

 

The embedded RDF is invisible.

David Weinberger creates his own posting related to AKMA’s posting, and clicks AKMA’s “respond” link and a form opens with pre-filled fields. He adds his own permalink info, pushes a button and a second page opens with generated RDF that David then embeds into his posting.

Stavros comes along wanting to continue on David’s discussion and follows same process. Jeneane responds directly to AKMA, and Jonathon, responds to Stavros, and Mike responds to David, and Steve responds to Jeneane and AKMA responds to David and Steve, who responds back to AKMA.

The Needle page for this thread shows:

AKMA
David
Stavros
Jonathon
AKMA
Mike

Jeneane
Steve
AKMA

Each of the above names is a hypertext link to the discussion posting. Some visual cue will probaby be added to assist in the reading of the hierarchy of discussion. (I’ll also work to make sure that this page and its contents are fully accessible.)

If a person is responding to two or more of the threaded postings, they can add the generated RDF for each posting they’re responding to – there’s no limit. So Dorthea responds to Jonathon’s and AKMA’s original posting:

AKMA
David
Stavros
Jonathon
Dorothea*
AKMA
Mike

Jeneane
Steve
AKMA

Dorothea*

The asterisk shows that the posting is one response to multiple postings.

It will take approximately 30 seconds to click, complete, generate, cut and paste the RDF for a response; about 1 minute for starting a thread.

The results can either be hierarchy ordered, by response, or time ordered. The thread page starts with the thread title, category, description, date started, date of last update and each weblog entry is associated with a link that will take a person directly to the specific posting.

With this, people can see all those who’ve responded, can reply with new posting, and the conversation can continue cross-blog, many threaded.

I’ll probably try to add in graphics to create a flow diagram, similar to the RDF validation tool (see at http://www.w3.org/RDF/Validator/ and use http://burningbird.net/example12f.rdf as test RDF file to demonstrate).

Discussion thread titles and associated descriptions and categories will go on a main page that is continuously updated, with a link to the main thread page for each discussion. I’d like to add search capability by category, weblog, and keyword.

(e.g. “Show me all discussions that AKMA has originated that feature Identity”)

 

I’ve already incorporated RDF into Movable Type postings and have been able to successfully scrape and process the information.

I’ll be asking for beta testers of this new technology in July, and will be hosting the discussion server at first. My wish is to distribute this application rather than centralize it, and will look at ways this can occur (one major reason why I went with embedded RDF).

Update: AKMA and Gary Turner are collecting suggestions and requirements from the weblogging community for this application. A basic infrastructure is in place, but the user community needs to provide information about how this product will work, and what it will do. Please see AKMA’s posting to get additional information.

 

Just read Meg’s What we’re doing when we blog article. Though I can agree with many of Meg’s sentiments, I totally disagree with Meg’s philosophy that the weblogging format is the key to weblogging. Last time I looked, I thought it was the people. Meg truly missed the boat on this one. In fact, she wasn’t even at the dock to wave her handkerchief good-bye when the boat left.

The Thread the Needle application will help weblogger discussions, but it’s just an enabler – weblogging discussions can continue without it. We are connecting because of what we say, not the technology we use. Weblogging tools help, but they don’t create community.

Another instance of serendipity because the same day Meg’s article appears, I stated in the Pixelview interview:

 

Too many people focus on the technology of the web, forgetting that technology is nothing more than a gateway to wonderous things. The web introduces us to beauty, creativity, truth, new people and new ideas. I genuinely believe there are no limits to what we can accomplish given this connectivity.

Categories
Writing

Typos, screw ups

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I just had to fix several images for the Essential Blogging book. There was a typo in several of the screenshots – I used “weblob” rather than “weblog”.

It would be funny, but after a while, I get tired of mistakes. I get tired of using the wrong word, but one that’s phonetically similar. I get tired of misspellings. I get tired of not being able to type “wierd” without error even after months of trying to train myself to spell it correctly.

I get tired of the embarrassement.

I typed a comment in a weblog once that had to do with President Bush and the so-called “choking incident” that happened a few months back. Except I used “chocking”. My typo generated a lot of joking. Not the nice, gentle jokes and teasing that I usually get with my regular weblog visitors (all of you). Nasty, demeaning stuff. Needless to say, I never went back to that weblog.

To add to the problem, my keyboard is going bad on my laptop and my SHIFT, CTRL, ALT and several other keys aren’t working properly.

Typos and keyboard problems. And stress because of the move – stress makes things worse. I’ve actually written some emails that were completely illegible though they passed all spellchecks. Why weren’t they legible? Because when I’m overworked, when I’m stressed, I use weird (did I spell it correctly that time?) words in place of the intended ones. Perfectly good words used absolutely incorrectly.

Reading’s a problem at times, too. The Unix Power Tools book is based in SGML rather than Word. I didn’t know it was going to be SGML-based or I would not have taken it on. I can read XML, HTML, and so on, but not when there’s extensive use of what I call disruptive markup (contained within the text rather than surrounding it) and named entities. These things disrupt my reading, make it difficult for me to “see” the words. Long web pages do this also – anything longer than the width we tend to use for our weblogs.

Don’t get me wrong. I can read books, magazines, content in Microsoft Word, standard text editors, PDF files much faster than normal (last time I was tested, I checked out at over 2000 words a minute). But new environments make me extremely uncomfortable until I “train” myself with them.

So I use “vi” or Notepad instead of sophisticated development environments because I’m comfortable with these simpler tools.

I don’t play games because they frustrate me. I can’t play chess. Computerized tests scare me to death. Math has always been a challenge. However, these things don’t bother me that much. Well, not too much.

But I love to write. It probably means more to me than anything else in the world. I live for my writing.

And it’s hell being a writer when you have Dyslexia.

Categories
Weblogging

Rifting away

The buzz is all about the NY Times article, A Rift between the Bloggers.

Dave seems to be happy about it because the article called webloggers journalists. He would like to see complete transcripts of the interviews, though. (Sorry, Dave. If you’re a journalist then you understand that journalists don’t release unquoted interview material.)

Glen Reynolds thinks the piece was fair, and Doc says we (webloggers) are out of control.

File 13’s Amish Tech Support (sorry, that is the name of the weblog) thinks the article was a plug for the upcoming book “We Blog: Publishing online with Weblogs”. As a writer for a rival book, I wasn’t overly thrilled myself that only the one book was mentioned. After all, we also had Big Dogs among our authors. (Not me, I’m only a Pup.)

PhotoDude goes on to say that the article author, David Gallagher, is a weblogger himself, a photoblogger. Those two weblogs were a pleasant discovery – always looking for new photoblogs.

Rifts among bloggers. Sure. There’s rifts all the time. I don’t get care for certain bloggers and have criticized what they write. Certain bloggers don’t care for me, and criticize what I write. Life goes on.

To me this article is nothing more than Big Dogs talking about other Big Dogs, and, frankly, the whole thing is getting boring.

Categories
Weblogging

Categorization and identity

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I tried an experiment yesterday: I organized my blogroll into different categories of webloggers, such as Really Scary Smart People, Huggables, Life Twisters, and so on.

The intention was to have a bit of fun, and also to hopefully encourage weblog readers into visiting these weblogs. One of the problems with blogrolls is that they’re so uniform and so common we tend to ignore them. By categorizing my blogroll friends, I had hoped to make them all stand out a bit.

What I forgot with this little brain storm of mine is that categorizing a person is probably one of the most depersonalizing things you can do to another human being. My putting an individual in a category said to that person, this is how I view you. I told them, “Forget the richness of your voice, the strength of your personality, the warmth of your humor, and my regard, and yes even love for you. You are (pick one: a/b/c/…).”

I took each of my friends and flattened them into a cookie-cutter category, and then walked away dusting hands off, pleased at my own cleverness. There are times when the Bird screws the pooch, and this was surely one of those times.

AKMA’s been talking about identity lately. In particular, he wrote the following:

One of the complicating elements in our discussion of identity comes from our tendency to take the partial information we have about someone’s identity as sufficient to envision his or her full identity.

 

Yesterday, I took one characteristic of each person and used this to form a basis for insertion into one category or another. By doing so I said to my weblog readers, “this weblogger is a Woman who Kicks Butt”. I set the stage for that reader so that when they go to Shannon’s weblog, they expect to see primarily a Woman who Kicks Butt. However, they may be shocked to see that the Woman who Kicks Butt is also a sensitive, accomplished and talented singer and songwriter, loyal friend, and highly complex and rich personality.

AKMA isn’t “just” a Huggable, Really Scary Smart person – he’s the one person who has broken through my deep distrust of Christians by showing that a Christian can have a sense of humor, can be tolerant, can love others regardless of their religious affiliation, and can have a deep moral integrity and loyalty that transcends any particular religious belief.

Chris isn’t just a Life Twister or Unique or Huggable – though all three are part of him. He’s an extremely caring person who believes strongly that we, as a people, can be better than how we see ourselves. When I think of him, I think of this person who wants to grab the world in a big bear hug, and then slap the world upside the head for all the idiotic things we do.

Sharon transcends Butt Kicker and Smart person and Artist, because she’s a mother and student and a very good friend who is going to be the world’s best librarian someday. Why? Because she has a deep love for books that goes beyond their material worth – to her words are gold, expressed thoughts diamonds.

I placed Jonathon into that old Australian Delegation classification, which removed any vestige of his personality, reducing him to nothing more than a citizen of a country. I disregarded the fact that when Jonathon writes about The Pillow Book or Tales of Genji, I want to curl up on the floor putting my head on my hands and just listen to the beauty of the words as they flow over and around me.

Dorothea is more than a Really Scary Smart Person or Woman who Kicks Butt. She wrote in the comments attached to the category posting:

There’s an interesting blog lurking in the experience, though, one AKMA might want to take a stab at. However much we try, we have limited control over how we are perceived by others. Our identities, if you will, are as dependent on the interpretation of others as is our writing on our readers.

 

Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that BB’s genial attempt to lend us personality led to difficulties. How many of us are entirely comfortable with the idea that our identities are not under our sole control?

Dorothea is an astute observer of humanity, with an incredible knack for cutting to the heart of the matter. She is, by far, richer than any one entry in any one category.

I am a neophyte in this new brave new world where we connect to others through the threaded void, but I am learning. I am learning.