Categories
Books

The times that test us

I am hard at work trying to finish the last of my due and overdue projects. I attend the first of my Red Cross disaster training sessions next Wednesday and will most likely be deployed south as soon as I’m finished–where is anyone’s idea, but it could be Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, or Texas. If you need anything from me before hand, now is the time to holler.

This is a short post. It was a much, much longer one earlier. I had said a great deal in this post that I ended up pulling. It was filled with frustration, anger, and a lot of “I told you so’s”, directed at politicians, some religious groups, and several prominant political webloggers.

I wrote into this post, as if it were a sponge for all my dark thoughts. I wrote them down, one by one, and then deleted them in one single swoop and click of the mouse. This is my last post written out of frustrated anger–doing so is the typographical equivalent of kicking a flat tire: it does no good, and it really doesn’t make you feel better.

In the meantime, I have two exceptionally good books that I strongly recommend you read, especially now. The first is John Barry’s Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America; and Ted Steinberg’s Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America. I’ll have more to say on both of them, and then some, in the future.

Categories
Just Shelley

Maties!

Avast ye dirty dogs! Today be Talk like a Pirate Day!

Clear winner so far is Planet Arrrr! DF! As in: Arrrr! you scurvy dogs! Get yer hands off me bnodes!

In honor of Lady Pirates the world over, repeats:

The Jolly Rogerina, co-created with Elaine of Kalilily:

Categories
Burningbird

Splitting by topic

In the past, I have split the weblog into pieces based on subject matter and interest. However, most folk read weblogs through aggregators now, so it makes more sense to split weblog topics into different syndication feeds rather than different weblogs.

This is a mixed-bag weblog, which means I write on anything, and I mean anything. Not all of you are interested in reading everything I write. For those who are interested only in writings on certain topics, I offer to you the following syndication feeds. My posts are guaranteed to fall in whichever of these is most appropriate:

Technology Feed: All items related to technology and the field of IT, web, and computer science. This includes RDF and semantic web postings, as well as weblog tech how-tos, digital identity writings, and so on.

SemanticWeb Feed: All items specifically related to semantic web and RDF.

Directions Feed: All current events commentary, discussions on politics, and opinion pieces. This includes the writings that also incorporate history into the work, and the discussions related to women and feminism, gay acceptance, and human rights–both national and international.

Sensory Feed: All writings about photographs, featuring photographs, poetry, reviews, literature, personal philosophy, cooking, relationships, art, and so on.

Outdoorsy Feed: All outdoorsy, environmentally related discussions, including those on weather and the environment, space, giant squid, my walks throughout the Ozarks, and so on.

Folk Tales and Stories Feed: Featuring the longer posts that mix reality with imagination, throwing in a little culture and history; mixing it up into a soup of humor or humanity. This also features my more oddball posts, and the humorous ones like Parable of the Languages.

I’ll be adding these to the header for autodiscovery, and there’s still the main feed, which includes everything. The comments feed will also include all comments for all posts.

Then there is, of course, the ‘nofeed’, where you don’t subscribe to any feed, and no longer read this weblog. That is, also, a viable option.

Categories
Just Shelley

Threshold

I had to borrow the car today so I took my roommate into work and picked him up. As usual, I hung my arm out the open window when I drove, and when I got to roomie’s place of business, I noticed I had these tiny little blisters over most of my arm. I knew it was burned from the trip last week, but it looked more tanned than not. I guess the exposure to the sun today was too much.

I look like I have white measles. But you don’t want to hear that. You might want to hear, though, that I’ve removed the Google Ads. Again. See what you miss when you read this through an aggregator?

I’m not sure if it was the fundamentalist religous ads that kept popping up, equating disasters such as hurricanes to loss of faith; or the ’sell your blood’ ad associated with the posts encouraging people to donate blood to the Red Cross. I do know that the pennies I get each day to run the ads aren’t worth seeing crap like that in my weblog. Once I went to full syndication feeds, the click through rates tanked, and I don’t want to take time to tweak the ads through channels to filter out the type of businesses that seem to be making Google rich.

If I embedded the ads directly in my posts, I might break a buck a day; but I’m already feeling a little disassociated from the weblog by providing the full feeds–I don’t want to add yet more ’stuff’ to the site. What can I say? I suck at marketing.

I think ads work when you have a focused site on a ’safe’ topic, like photography. They’re also profitable if you really work it, like those who supposedly make thousands of dollars a month. If I have a focused site, I may add them back, but not in Burningbird; not when I talk on so many different topics. Yeah, I know: I suck at marketing.

I’ll have to send a note into Google to cancel the account. They take up to 90 days to pay when you cancel–it takes so long for them to process an email since they won’t automate the cancellation process. I guess the company is a lot like the Hotel California: you can checkout any time you like, but you can never leave. However, Google doesn’t suck at marketing.

Categories
Writing

Frolicsome reading

Fridays are a good day to indulge in the work of others that gives me so much delight. I am lucky in your gifts–too many to list all, so I’ll just have to pick out a few this time around.

Jerry has a photo of a rather intimidating looking spider and I really like the poem he wrote to accompany it. He also has started a great new site on electric cars and other fuel alternative modes of transportation.

Loren has been publishing some pretty damn amazing pictures of birds and I also like the philosophy that accompanies them. However, he doesn’t post enough cat pictures. Still, I guess the world needs variety.

Dori posted a link to a site that features the work of graphic artists who are bored. My personal favorite is the fisherman.

(Oh, the cable company came out to disconnect the video and leave the internet, but he disconnected both. I caught him before he left, he checked his order and saw in small print that I was keeping my internet but dropping the video. He didn’t have a filter, so he disconnected the video and internet on the ground floor (since the router is on the second floor), but left both cable and internet for the second floor. For the nonce, we have free cable TV upstairs, including my bedroom/office/sitting room. So tonight, Firefly, Stargate, and Battlestar Gallactica, watching I am. I wonder who will get pregnant next on Battlestar? I’m banking on the President.)

Gordon writes on a “who’s turn is it to make tea application” written in .NET. So that’s what you folk in the UK talk about on Fridays? Huh. Anyway, Gordon, I hate to break any possible myth, but I am not a foxy chick. I am a tough, old, bird. Oh, still with a puff or two of smoke in me. Maybe a faint sizzle. A zing or two. Or three.

Elaine talks quietly on loss and paths taken.

Christine is returning to school. Good on you, Christine! Because I think this is a cool thing she’s doing, I have heeded her request and turned photos back on in my syndication feeds. With a wistful hope that you all still do stop by from time to time. It’s lonely at times, me here with just the bots. Millions and millions of bots.

(A hint: I’ve been thinking about going back to school myself…let’s hear it for the League of Grey Freshmen!)

I can empathize–so much!–with Pascale. I am also to her sending my most positive thoughts and bestest of good wishes.

Here’s to Julie and Ted Leung, who are probably one of the nicest couples in weblogging. Tech, too. And gardening. Between Loren’s pictures and the Leungs’, I’ve been getting homesick for the Northwest. Maybe it’s time for a move. If I did, though, who would serve you Missouri Green?

Dorothea Salo, who has a great new job and a wonderful new location, has a black cat, a bat, and a Thing in a Box, so she’s ready for halloween.

I started playing around with the NewsGator API yesterday, and so has Danny. Oh, how much I love REST APIs over SOAP. Sigh.

Jeneane is a real mensch. Phil is still one of my bestest buddies (no, you can’t go on break, Phil — too many of my favorites are on break).

Finally, a shout out to those webloggers who write long posts they never publish, for one reason or another. You know who you are. I have three posts in my drafts–really, really good ones–that I’m holding until you publish.

I just noticed that like the speech of Yoda, my writing is becoming.