Category: Burningbird

Categories
Just Shelley

The trouble with neighbors

No, not the virtual kind…at least, not this time.

Our housing complex is a very quiet one, mainly families, older couples, and long time residents. We’ve always been lucky with the neighbors we’ve had, but our luck was bound to run out, and it did with the newest neighbor next door.

I’ve had to go over twice to tell them to turn down their music, and each time, they then spent several hours pounding up and down the stairs or knocking on the walls afterwards–once until 2:30 and the other time until 4am. There are two men living there and they’re gone most of the time, but when they’re home, it’s a constant party.

The management has informed them of the rules, and has asked me to call the police now when there’s a disturbance, so they can get official records of the events. With these, if the neighbors continue, the management will be able to kick them out. As vindictive as they’ve shown themselves to be, I’m not looking forward to seeing their reaction to my calling the police.

However, there’s a bright side to all of this: when I can’t sleep and it’s late at night, like now, I just put a DVD in the player, put on my headphones, and get lots of work done.

Categories
Burningbird

Creaky stuff

I’m working on some components of Wordform in the next few days that could impact on weblog viewing and/or your comments. One of the downsides for modifying a ‘live’ application–but a great way to test. However, if you write a long comment, you might want to copy it into the clipboard before posting.

Also, if you notice that the site is running slow, after checking the running processes I found there is a great deal of activity associated with mt-comments.cgi now, as well as MySQL so I imagine there’s another comment/trackback flood going on with the server.

Categories
Weblogging Writing

The syndication feed fair warning indicator

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

This week I’ll be posting writings that violate the concept of ‘proper weblog entry’ all to heck–either by the use of fiction or the length of the writing, or both.

As happens most times I do this, one or more people access the entry expecting to find a traditional weblog entry and, instead, find writing. Good writing, bad writing, doesn’t matter. It’s the form that disturbs them.

If the work is fictional, I almost invariably get someone who writes in comments, “This is b***s**t” or a variation on, “This is stupid.” If the work is longer, some of the commenters sound a bit tired when they leave notes, as if I’ve made them run through a marathon they weren’t expecting.

Now, the longer writings will give a me a chance to test out my new Wordform Fulltext feature, but that’s not the reason for the writing. The writing is the reason for the writing.

However, in fairness to those who are expecting traditional weblog entries, otherwise known as the Slam, Bam, thank you Ma’am posts, I’m working at adding a new meta item to my syndication feeds called “The Fair Warning Indicator”. This indicator will, hopefully, get picked up in the syndication feed aggregators, letting you know whether the post is a traditional weblog entry or not. I have the meta-data part, I just have to figure out which field in the existing feed infrastructures to subjugate to my evil ways.

With the Fair Warning Indicator, when I do publish these works online, if you want forgo a ‘non-weblogging reading experience’, you can. And, hopefully, the brave and intrepid (or bored or unknowing) souls who do venture in, will then feel free to comment purely on the writing, itself–not the fact that I’m not following the Blogging rules of etiquette.

Now, for any syndicators in the audience, suggestions on what would be the best modification to the feeds to incorporate the Indicator? By feed type?

Categories
Writing

Any other updates

I caught up with the reviews of the book at Amazon. Ouch.

There was some blame attached to the tech editors on the book, and that’s not fair–they weren’t responsible. These are typographical errors, which are the responsibility of me and the final editing process; or errors in style of writing, and there’s really only me to blame for this.

I think, though, instead of chapter by chapter updates, I’ll just focus on writing about RDF and related material, and have fun.

Categories
Burningbird Photography Places

Ads are gone

Here are some of the photos from today’s Alley Spring Mill trip. I need to return in about 3 weeks when the trees have started to green. And I also need to go about mid-morning, when the light on the Mill will be better.

It is a wonderous place, though. As was all the countryside on the trip down, even in winter with barren trees.

You might notice, if you access this post individually, that the ads are gone.

After reading several negative posts about AdSense this week from people who read my weblog–two new ones just today–I have decided to remove my ads. Since I don’t provide full content in my syndication feeds, I don’t want readers to have to install special software to remove the ads just to visit my site.

The money from the ads would have been enough to pay for my web site, my internet connectivity costs, and maybe even enough left over for a Ted Drewes Frozen Custard. However, I also didn’t like seeing the drilling ads come up with my ANWR writing.

Which is too bad, because I really like Ted Drewes.

Speaking of ads and making money, AKMA wrote on this today:

But y’all didn’t start blogging just for my entertainment. If blogging is putting bread on a few tables, buying toys for a few kids, putting together the down payment for a newlywed’s house, then I’m the last one in line to bemoan times past. It’s all changed, but do you know what? It was going to change anyway. It was going to change anyway, and while it’s changing, there are no people I would rather have those changes benefit than the wonderful friends I met back when none of us was making a cent off blogging.

Odd thing about all this is, of all the changes I’ve seen over the years–in the character of our writing, our interests, and who we interact with and how–making money or running ads was never a cause.