Category: Burningbird

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Just Shelley

Necessity

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I was supposed to be on crutches this week, but couldn’t afford them so am using my hiking stick to lean on. I was supposed to not put weight on my one foot, but I have to get up and down the stairs to get food and water, so I don’t have a lot of choice.

I am not supposed to wear my shoes for a while, but I have to go to the store today. And maybe while I’m out I’ll even go to my favorite river spot, look at the water, and listen to music.

I am injured and therefore have certain rights, such as being able to stay in bed and have a loved one wait on me, bringing me soup, fluffing my pillow, and telling me ‘poor baby’ at frequent intervals. (Properly appalled looks at the bruising on the foot and leg are also appropriate behavior in said loved one.)

But I don’t have the luxury of a loved one to care for me in my injured state. Necessity is forcing me into assessing my injuries from the fall last week, deciding which pain really isn’t endurable, and which one can I live with. Doing so, I’m finding that taking away the state of ‘being injured’ takes away some – not all, but enough – of the effects of being injured. And I get by.

In a way, the hacker last night, with his deliberate attack on me – not generic blogger me, but me – was an injury, and my first reaction was to pull back and just say, no, not playing any more.

But if I really wasn’t playing anymore, I wouldn’t do anything differently today then what I did yesterday. Turning off comments this morning, was about equivalent to me staying in bed and getting lost in the nice purpleness of my foot. Being a victim.

So I’m turning comments back on. But I am taking no measure that I wasn’t going to take yesterday anyway before the attack. A little tweak here, a simple little tweak there. Some good precautions, but no extraordinary measures – that’s just as much a dancing to the tune of the beast as turning off the comments.

So comments back on – and if the crapflooder takes down the weblog, so be it. I’ll survive. You’ll survive. All god’s chillen will survive.

And maybe I’ll even bring back a photo from the river for you.

Categories
Burningbird

Looks and thoughts

I have been playing around with new sites and new looks. For instance, one new look for Burningbird can be seen here.

I also started a couple of new sites, at Tin Foil Project and Tin Foil President. I was going to use these for both social and political commentary, separating these topics from the Burningbird weblog.

The name ‘Tin Foil Project’ came about last year when I noticed an older article in a Texas newspaper about campaign donations from Alcoa for President Bush’s campaign. Of course, the former head of Alcoa. Paul O’Neill, is now famous for the revelations he’s making about President Bush when he was serving as Secretary of Treasury. But at one point the two were cordial, even sympatico.

I then started doing some research into Bush’s tenure as governor of Texas and found myself having to change my viewpoint of George W. Bush the man. I found myself asking a very basic question: Assume that Bush is not an evil man. If so, then why is he making decisions that are completely anethma to myself and to so many others?

I know that a lot of people who read Burningbird cannot see Bush as anything but an inherently evil man, but to do so means that you can’t understand why people in this country support him. Making foolish claims that only ’stupid’ people vote for Bush is only going to give Bush that many more votes. His reach to the American people is more complex than that, and those that indulge in primitive rhetoric only have themselves to blame if Bush is elected for four more years.

Anyway, that’s the premise behind the two new sites. However, I’m finding that the fragmentation of my site isn’t necessarily the way to go. For one thing, as has been noted, having different weblogs and then repeating comments across them is creating havoc with Blogdex. I’d rather Blogdex not have to resort to removing my weblogs from the database to prevent me dominating the top weblog spots on a too frequent basis, so I’ll need to consider alternatives.

More than that, though, is the fact that splitting my interests into different weblogs removes the context of the writing. The same person who writes about tech, is the same who writes about hiking, is the same who writes about Bush. How can you accept or even understand the context of any of the work if I splinter it off into isolated little pieces?

I orignally split weblogs off so that non-techs wouldn’t have to read my tech stuff, but the little icon I show with each entry should be warning enough – if people don’t want to read tech, they don’t have to. What I need to do is incorporate this into my RSS/Atom files so that people don’t have to click through from their aggregators if they’re not interested in the topic.

Besides, a lot of my tech stuff transcends just tech folks as an audience. In fact, my favorite tech writing is for a non-tech audience (hence the For Poets weblogs).

No, the separate weblogs are a mistake and I’m going to start pulling these together. I’ll still continue to keep separate weblogs for books I have written and am writing, but I’ll split these off from Burningbird in totality, not replicating comments from this site.

It’s a shame, though. I love the names of ‘Tin Foil Project’ and ‘Tin Foil President’. And I like the looks of the sites, too.

(Yes, that is President Bush, as a child, morphed into the photo of the Alamo.)

Maybe I’ll start my own set of group political weblogs: polemic free social and political weblogs with viewpoints welcome from all peoples, not just ‘right thinking’ people.

Oh sure, and what’s the interest in that?

Categories
Burningbird Just Shelley

Bored and bruised

A friend wrote that rather than do any kind of formal break, just write when I feel like it, don’t when I don’t or don’t have the time. Good advice. I also heard from old friends, in comments and in email, and well, it was nice. Meant a lot to me – about as much as the old, and new, friends mean to me. Time to kick this bird in the butt and do some damage.

Besides, I was getting bored. I hadn’t tangled with anyone for the longest time. So, to make up for it, earlier today I tangled with the Little Green Football folks – yeah, the Chartreuse Balls Gang – over their warped sense of humor (and most other things, too), but that’s for a later post.

I’m on a strict getting in shape campaign that has been doing wonders for my physical well being. For breakfast I have orange juice and a banana, cheese and salad for lunch, good, well cooked meals for dinner and little snacking. Hard work with weights Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and strenuous hikes Tuesday and Thursday and on the weekend. It’s paying off too, my stress is down, and I feel better.

It’s paying off, too, in general physical health. For instance, my blood pressure today was 112 over 72, which is pretty darn low. Of course, I know what my blood pressure is today because earlier this afternoon, while I was hiking, I fell on a hill when I slipped on loose rock.

Yeah, rather than paying attention to the walk I was looking around, which is mistake number 1 to 100 while hiking. When I started to slip, I tried to dig my foot in and managed to twist it completely end over end, and then joined it falling down the hill. I lay there at the foot of the hill for some time calling out for help because I had thought I had broken the ankle, but no one was around. Finally, I just picked up my butt and limped out of the park, drove home (oh, and that was really fun) and then had my roommate take me to the urgent care clinic.

No breaks, but I am on crutches for possibly several weeks with a badly sprained ankle and foot, torn ligaments, injured knee, and all sorts of fun stuff. Not to mention bruises all over.

Still, could have been worse. And I managed not to break my camera and was actually able to bring you one whole photo from today’s hike. Oddly appropriate looking, don’t you think?

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Categories
Burningbird Photography

There’s a mountain with my name on it

Now, what was there about a mountain and my name, and not pestering nice people?

Oh, yes. I had somewhere else I was supposed to be, now. I have a book to write. I have some friends I’m helping. There’s a hundred hikes with my name on them, and I am not packing my computer when I go. And I dropped my sense of humor somewhere recently, and have to go back to look for it.

Ta Friends.

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Categories
Burningbird Social Media

Focusing on the social in social software

Yule, who is about the most wonderful kicker of butts I know of, posted a link to my previous entry in a comment at another thread related to comment spamming. Unfortunately, the tone of my post had more impact then the words, which shows the dangers of writing in anything other than the most non-emotive manner. But then, what’s the fun of that?

I am frustrated, and I have no qualms about introducing a frustrated tone into my writing when it comes to comment spammers, and webloggers and their reaction thereof. For a people who pride themselves so much on being social software devotees, I’ve never seen a group of people less likely to recognize brilliant social software in action then webloggers. And yes, it is frustrating.

The comment spammers have met and pushed past any barrier we put up. They do so by listening to what we say, and then acting accordingly. They move past the barriers because anything we do other than a re-engineer of the MT comment system is nothing more than an obstacle, not a closed door to the spammers. What we do, though, is overreact. We put on the most amazingly complicated code that if we’re hit with anything approaching some of the new Script Kiddies MT comment attacks, we’re done because the machine can’t keep up the processing. We blacklist at the drop of a hat, using each others blacklist import lists without once considering that each might have good URLs in addition to the bad.

In other words, we take it personally, while the comment spammers take it professionally, and we’ll never win the battle with odds such as these.

I used to take it personally until I started following the actions of the comment spammers. Now, sorry for offending folks, I’m filled with admiration for them. I still think that Tim O’Reilly should have featured comment, and email, spammers as speakers at the Emerging Tech Conference. These people really do know the concepts behind social software, and we could do well to emulate them. In other words, they learn from watching us? We should learn by watching them.

But I’ve said all this before, and this is frustrating.