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Burningbird Diversity

End of the week

hadn’t planned on jumping on to this year’s seemingly annual look at the appalling state of women in technology, as painfully demonstrated at tech conferences. It’s a subject I’ve lost a lot of heart in fighting–not because there are fewer women then ever before, but because too few people seem to think this is a problem.

The issue of women in technology will never be effectively solved, or even fought, within weblogs. I think weblogging is actually counterintuitive to true social change. If I continue to work for change, and that’s a big if now, I’ll do so outside of the weblogs.

So why did I respond to Eric? It seemed like the marketable thing to do.

I’ll leave the comments open for a few days on the post, but remember, none of these posts are being migrated to the new weblog; none of the new posts and the new comments. Feel free to copy what you want, but I’ve already made my snapshot. Don’t want to waste your good words, but I definitely don’t want to go through another WordPress weblog merge.

Categories
Burningbird

Cleaning House

I’m wanting to cut my online costs, including moving my account to a smaller one. Another cost saving move is to eliminate most of my domains.

Most don’t have any page rank, but a few do. One I’ve offered to someone, but I have a couple of others that might make good weblogging homes for new webloggers.

One is einsteinslock.com, which would be a good home for a philosophy or science weblog. Another is scriptteaser.com, which would be good for a tech. Both of these currently have a page rank of 7. The last few that have page rank are tinfoilproject.com and wordform.org. The wordform.org one would be nice for a word smith, language enthusiastic. As for tinfoilproject.com–eh, at least it’s unique.

I’m keeping burningbird.net, of course, as well as shelleypowers.com and possibly missourigreen.com.

If you’re a person who has thought about starting a weblog, and you think one of these domains would be a good fit, let me know. Note these would be for personal weblogs, only, though I imagine there’s not much I can do if you take it and then use it as you will. The domains are free, though if there is a transfer cost you’ll need to pay it on your end.

Categories
Burningbird

Last of the ‘Bird

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Note from 2023, when post was recovered: Never say never.

I am closing down Burningbird.

I’ve had several different reincarnations of the Bird on this location, and the site has become an unmanageable heap of old and older…stuff. I’ve started dropping old pages and old sites–the old Alter Ego, the Practical RDF site, and so on–but each time I drop something, even more 404’s result.

As for the Burningbird weblog itself, my .htaccess rules files are a mess from all of the variations of links and tools. I’ve had Blogger pages, WordPress, my own Wordform, Radio, Movable Type. I’ve also had numerous permalink structures, links to code I no longer provide, old images that are gone or moved and so on. My .htaccess file is failing under all the redirects of so many other permalink structure changes. I had a post link fail last week because it accidentally triggered an old .htaccess 410 rule.

My site has come to remind me of the homes of people who never throw anything away. They still have their old National Geographics, Avon bottles, and disco pants that didn’t fit well when they were new, much less now decades later. Unfortunately, there is no jumble sale for web sites. One can only acknowledge the mess and move on.

I don’t want to leave others with broken links–though let’s face it, most of us have broken links in our past pages and it doesn’t really matter. Still, why add to the cruft? My plan is to clean out pages that haven’t been linked, physically generate a snapshot of this site, combine with the physical pages I’ve kept backup copies of from past incarnations– all mixed into one fixed set of static pages that can be moved without worry about weblog tool and databases. And then that’s it: no more pages at weblog.burningbird.net.

My Hosting Matters account comes up for renewal in June, and I’ve decided to move all of my domains over to my development server. I appreciate all the support HM has given me since I started with them in 2002, but I want to play in my own space from now on. If time permits, June, and most definitely July is when I’ll be making the biggest changes to all my sites, including the static generation of Burningbird. As for hosting my ‘production’ site in a development environment: thought I may, in my various tech explorations, end up taking my server down from time to time, there’s no permanent harm in doing such and life does continue after web access failures.

Karma demands that I learn to accept that my web sites may not be up 24 x 7; downtime is an opportunity, not a tribulation.

As for Burningbird the weblog, the persona, the concept–I’m not sure what I want from a weblog, or what I can continue to deliver. I have reached a point where I am repeating myself. I have reached a point where I am repeating myself. I have reached a point…

There are a lot of good times associated with an old weblog, but a lot of unhappy times, too. I’m not having fun with my site, and I think it shows in the writing. The only fun at the site has been what you all have been contributing: in comments, emails, and your own weblogs. That’s enough to continue reading you–it’s not enough to continue writing me, or whatever me is as the ‘Bird.

It must seem as if ‘quitting’ one’s weblog is the hip new thing. I appreciate the fact that this is one of those few times I may be in with the insiders–actually, I savor the moment, wonder if I’ve developed a golden aura as a result–but this wasn’t the impetus for this change. I don’t plan on ‘quitting’, but I do want to rethink what it is I want from my online presence.

Regardless of what I do, it’s time to retire the ‘Bird. I don’t expect this to be my last post, forever, but this will be the last I write as Burningbird.

Categories
Burningbird

The Escapes

I can see I need to improve my use of escapes with quotes in some of my semantic web technology, though the effect can sometimes be a bit humorous.

I’m about to publish a series of posts on photography, but before I do I have a question: has my site been as slow for you to access as it has been for me? I’m thinking this is a by-product of the Blonde Joke hits, but it could be my new DSL connection and only I’m having problems accessing pages.

Categories
Burningbird

On a lighter note

I have a post coming later on a lovely walk I had yesterday. With photos, of course.

In the meantime, I think I’ve made my last, my absolute last, tweak of the design for Burningbird. I’ve lightened the blockquote colors, and added a graphic at the end of the content column in the main page. I’ve removed the “Linked in” listing at the end of the post, as some aggregators think if a link is given twice in the same posting, it’s a spam, so I won’t repeat the link.

I’m also not going to be repeating photos in the main page, but only in the entry page. With this, I can use larger photos, and keep the main page from being too slow to load.

I have two other designs to complete on my site: one for my main burningbird.net, which will point to example code, tutorials, writings, work history, client sites, and the other things we like to brag on; and one for the experimental tech server and the newly re-designed and re-focused Tinfoil Project. The former will be based on ‘fire and ice’ after my new hand crafted marble picked up in Idaho; the latter will be in shades of dead leaf rusts and beiges, silver, pewter, and brushed aluminum. The Tinfoil Project site will also have a rather unusual organization.

But Burningbird the weblog is fully cooked and only wants some minor cleanup and accessibility tweaks, and a quick look in different browsers in different operating systems to make sure that I didn’t break anything. Huzzah. It only took me five years to get to this point.

update

I do have fun with the photos for my header, but I’m forced to admit that this is one of my favorites.

screen copy of web site with shark image