Categories
Social Media Web

Guest Blog #1

Originally posted at Many-to-Many, now archived at Wayback Machine

Software developers have traditionally used one phrase when testing text output in a new programming environment — “Hello, World!” We need to devise a new form of “Hello World” when testing unfamiliar weblogging software because every weblog post we write is a form of “Hello World!” Our words are recorded and literally thrown out, bounced against the aether, hanging brightly on the page like lures to little fishies. Except the little fishies are people like me, and you. Come here fishy, fishy, fishy.

I wrote once, long ago, that sometimes you have to stop in the middle of writing a weblog post and realize exactly what you’re doing: You’re writing into this void, hoping that someone wanders by and is interested enough to stop and read what you’re saying. It’s equivalent to being in a big room full of walls, and you’re shouting at the walls and faintly you hear other people shout at their walls and every once in a while, someone hears you crying out “Hello? Hello?” and answers back. Contact!

“Hello? World? Is that you?” “Yes! Yes! I hear you! “By the way, your taste in poetry really sucks. Did you know?”

What a unique out of body experience. You can take the voice out of the body, but you can’t teach it manners.

I guess this writing, this post (a word I dislike) is my equivalent of a weblogging “Hello, World!” — a rambling, disjointed shout out on nothing in particular into the threaded void. A tap at your monitor to let you know I’m in the neighborhood and tomorrow, I’ll be by with something useful. Or not.

Categories
Technology

Server update

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I just put in for a quote on a dedicated server, hopefully running Linux 8.0. The plan is to add the following software:

Python 2.2
Tomcat – limited use since this is a CPU hog
Perl 5.8
PHP 4.x
Apache 2.x
MySQL 4.x
ImageMagick
Other (TDB or requested by co-op members)

Plus whatever software each person wants to run their weblog in — Bloxsom, Movable Type, or just plain Blogger-maintained pages. As long as it can work in the server, we’ll install it.

I experimented around with this setup in another environment last week and ran into problems with PHP 4.x and Apache 2.x. Compatibility problems. Everything else worked fine. Bugger.

New server should have unlimited bandwidth and space for lots of pics and bloggers. Fast CPU, too. By the end of the year, the server should be self supporting if all works well, and will have funded the seed money for a second co-op server. At least that’s the plan.

We’ll also run a Kiosk weblog on the new server for other webloggers. If a person’s weblog is down because of hosting problems, they can send an email to the co-op members, who will post a weblog entry in the Kiosk to that effect. Then, if people can’t access a weblog — DNS or server errors — they’ll have a place to go to check for a note about the weblog. Additionally, weblogs that moved can also post a hote.

Not sure if it will fly, but it’s only a weblog and takes no resource if it isn’t used.

Categories
Just Shelley Web Weblogging

Server update

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

The money received from the sale of Threadneedle, combined with the other money you were all kind enough to contribute to a server will enable me to get a dedicated server. I’m looking at RackForce, a Canadian provider. Then, if what I write becomes too hot for Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Bush and Mr. Rumsfeld, they can’t have the content pulled since the server will be, in effect, offshore. And I plan on writing a great deal of hot things in the months to come since the current administration looks to be up to its old and bad games again.

I’ll have enough room to provide homes for other webloggers who have run into some financial challenges and need a place to stay but don’t have a lot of cash. This will be the start of that co-op I’ve talked about in the past, and something I’m looking forward to working with.

I also wanted to extend a thank you to AKMA, for suggesting the name of “Threadneedle” for the application that led to the domain. With the new server, I would have the capacity to work on the Threadneedle application, except now that we have Trackback, it’s not needed. However, I have some other things to work on, which I’ll roll out if I ever complete them. Except this time, code first, talk later.

Categories
Web

Press Release – for immediate distribution

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

St. Louis, Mo. Burningbird completed its first international transaction this week, with the sale of the threadneedle.org domain to an undisclosed overseas company. Acting as agent for the Bird, Malcolm Baker, otherwise known in financial circles as Baker’s Dozin’, was heard to say, “Well, that was fun. Time for a beer or two.” The Bird is quietly counting her freshly gotten gains in a vault in an unknown location and declined to give a comment other than to say that the beer is on her.

(Thanks, Malcolm!)

Categories
Technology Weblogging

Returning to Business

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

It was interesting to read Evan William’s carefully written essay about weblogging APIs this morning, and watch his writing as it slowly revolves around to the need for standards, particularly in the chaotic and competitive world of weblogging technology. As he, and others, are discovering, they have to be prepared to take the steps necessary to work effectively in an environment in which no one person has, or should have, control:

 

The only way there will be a universal blogging API is if everyone who needs to has input and sign-off on it, and it cannot be controlled by any one vendor.

I perhaps now understand the need for standards bodies more than I ever have before—even though the term gives me willies.

I have spent too much time lately on technology, poetry, and photography, and need to return to the roots of this weblog, which is writing. But at the same time, I want to applaud Ev for taking a step in the right direction — acknowledging that there is problem in weblogging and that problem is that there are too many specifications and it’s only going to get worse before it gets better.

It started with RSS, it’s continued somewhat with Trackback, and now the lack of a standards body is impacting on weblogging APIs. For the non-technical, this may seem as if the issue doesn’t impact on you, but it does. When weblogging tools have to accomodate multiple APIs and multiple RSS specifications and so on, the tools get bloated, their performance suffers, and you, the weblogger, get hammered with demands that you support this RSS and that weblogging API by upgrading your installation and so on.

In addition, the energy that should be directed to new innovations or faster applications, or better security is being bled out to writing code that parses five different flavors of RSS, and three different flavors of weblogging APIs. This doesn’t even include recent discussions about what format to use for porting data from one weblogging tool to another, something that’s going to become more critical over time.

This is a no win situation. By what stick do you measure that continuing chaos is ‘good’ for us all?

Dave Winer wrote today today:

 

This morning I came up with a new app that that integrates weblogs like Scripting News with search engines like Google in a new way. It’s very exciting. I’m jumping up and down and giggling I like it so much. Now if I wanted to really be a bastard I’d hire one of your grad students to patent it, and make sure everyone who implemented it would have to pay me a royalty. But I’m a fool. I think people’s brains will explode when they get to use this. It’ll be an incredible research tool for busting patents, believe it or not. In that way it’s perfectly appropriate to give it to the world for free. Now can you come up with something Creative Commons-like so that when the poopy little wiener boys at the W3C claim I didn’t invent it (they think Microsoft or Guha invented everything) I can show them a record in some database that gives me appropriate credit for the invention. How about some middle ground for people who want credit for their work, but don’t care to erect a tollbooth?

 

Without knowing what Dave’s ‘new application’ is, we don’t know if he really did invent something that will withstand the patent process, but he has a right to patent any new technology he invents. However, he’ll also have to withstand the challenges to his claim that come with this process. Dave has a right to claim something as his own that he has invented, but he doesn’t have the right to claim something as his invention when there is prior art showing otherwise. He doesn’t have the right to rewrite history.

Issues of who invented what aside, the biggest problem with the current state of business in weblogging technology is that a few ‘giants’ in the weblogging industry, such as Userland, or Blogger, or Six Apart (Movable Type) can force decisions on what approaches are best, when the better quality effort may come from a much smaller company or even a single person. An independent standards body would allow all voices to be heard, and the best, not the biggest, would float to the top.

As I write this, I can already tell you, guarantee it even, who will now come out writing ‘in favor’ of Dave Winer and who will write ‘in favor’ of Ev (or against Dave), both sides not realizing that weblogging should be growing beyond dominance by any one person by now. We had our time in the sandbox and it’s time to grow up.

Unless that’s what people want — all of us in the sandbox, playing with our pails and our sand, and arguing about who has the bigger shovel.

(Thanks to Sam for the link to Ev’s post.)

Update

The thread that led to Evan’s essay is here. It demonstrates why a standards body is needed, why there will never be one, and why I need to stop writing about weblogging technology in my weblog.