Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
Bloggers Unlimited — now twenty-five members strong.
Because webloggers can never have too many places to write…
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Category: Weblogging
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Sappy Woof!
Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
I am more than a little fuzzy tonight — way too much technology. However, in between tarring, gzipping, ftping, installing, testing, breaking, and re-installing, I’ve had time to keep up with all the linguistics discussions and I have to say how much I’ve enjoyed these.
It started with the now legendary Linguistic Relativism and Korean essay by Stavros, which Tom calls the …Stavrosian linguistic relativism thread. Then Jonathon sat down, joined the discussion, excusing himself momentarily for a quick cuppa, before returning to the talk. Language Hat, a very welcome addition to my blogroll, joins in, not surprising because he is a linguist after all. A New York linguist at that.
Is that an oxymoron?
Jeff joins with Tom in defending Chomsky, who must be tickled pink to be discussed within a linguistic context, rather than the usual “Let’s string the commie Arab loving bastard up” context he’s normally discussed within weblogs. Norm teaches us how to say ‘shit’ in Danish, which will come in handy some day. He also introduces his youngest son to weblogging. Since his son is a chip off the old Jenson liberal block, the conservatives in the audience are probably practicing their Danish right now.
My evil twin’s lover, Happy Tutor joins in, but people still come around.
Dorothea provides a wonderful discussion of Cave linguistics. Now you all know why she was the perfect editor for a book on RDF. Correction: David contributed this gem.
And these are just the more formalized writings. You have to read the comments associated with each to get the full, rich flavor of this discussion. Altogether, grand.
Og like.
I want to go back to school.
Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
Howdy. Burningbird’s evil twin here.
I wanted to send out a hail and hie thee well greeting to Liz and the new Many to Many (M2M) weblog at Corante. Especially since this drags Clay Shirky into the murky, strange sea-green depths of the weblogging world. Damn glad to have you here Clay. And with comments, too.
This is a good move. I’ve been out and about reading and one issue that seems to be coming up frequently is that folks feel there is an elitist as well as exclusionary aura to the whole social software milieu. While some of this feeling is warranted, some is not.
Dave, in a rather breathless and impressive display of seeing how many people he can offend in one week, on topics ranging from RSS to Moveable Type to social software, wrote:
It’s wrong. We don’t need this. Weblogs are about punching through the hype machine of idiot analysts and reporters who go for their BS. Social software has existed for years. What’s the big news? A few people are looking for a pole to fly their flag on. Pfui!
While I also dislike the we’ve found the ultimate solution hype that goes with too many “new” things today, seems to me that Liz and Clay and the gang are actually trying to bust the hype surrounding social software, as well as making it accessible with their new effort. And considering it’s a weblog, which should automatically make it holy and free from harm, like the cows in certain parts of India and oil companies in Washington DC, I’m surprised to see such vehement pushback in response to Liz’s gentle introduction at the blogrollers interest group and elsewhere. Boys and, well, urh, boys — if this ain’t your thing you don’t have to go to the party. I’m sure that M2M folks will find someone else to play “pin the tale on the donkey” with.
I’ll have to admit after this discussion, BloggerCon holds little hope for being a venue of open and honest discussion from differing viewpoints and interests.
Instead, I hereby invite all folks who would rather just chat and smile and talk and have fun, join me in St. Louis at that time. We’ll hitch a ride on the river boat, plug in our laptops, and blog the waterways while sipping bourbon and listening to the Blues. We’ll call it the “Blues and Bourbon” Bloggers Anti-Conference Mississippi Social. Leaves are right pretty that time of year here. Right pretty. Why they even match my tasteful, warm weblog decor.
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Winer Number?
Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
I missed all sorts of fun being on the road. For instance, there’s this Winer number thing that Mark Pilgrim came up with. According to Mark:
Here’s how you can determine your Winer Number:
Dave Winer has Winer Number 0.
If you have been personally abused by Dave Winer, your Winer Number is 1.
If you have been abused by someone who has been abused by Dave Winer, your Winer Number is 2.
Mark also lists criteria for ‘personally abused’, such as in an email or forum, or in Dave’s weblog. However, for those who have been multiply zinged by Dave, the number is modified, and your count becomes 1/n, n being the number of times zinged. So, the more you get zinged, the smaller the number.
Well, I used to mix it up with Dave fairly regularly but haven’t since I reached a surfeit on discussing RSS and RDF’s evil influence on it. According to Mark’s criteria, I’ve been ‘personally abused’ in group and personal emails, in my comments, in online forums including the RSS Development forum, and in his weblog, though the entries are usually pulled. I don’t beat out Bill Kearney for number of times hit by The Man, but I probably am the top rated, or should I say lowest Winer number, woman.
My evil twin says have fun with this, but then there’s this part of me that remembered the times when Dave pointed to something I said and made nice comments. And the times that Dave has pointed out people who’ve needed help. And I remember how much Dave has done for weblogging. There’s even been a few times when Dave’s joked rather than zinged, which he should do more often because we all win when he does. So my evil twin’s nasty but deliciously fun inclinations were suppressed in this instance.
However, I’m about to rejoin the RDF/RSS fandango again, because, well, girls just want to have fun. So I imagine that my evil twin will get her way eventually.
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So much to say
Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
The best thing about a road trip covering a lot of miles (4300 miles, round trip) is returning home, sleeping in one’s own bed, and waking up in the morning realizing that you don’t have to drive through the pouring rain. It looks like the storm that’s haunted my steps this entire trip has followed me home, but today I can ignore it. Neener, neener storm.
I want to thank Jonathon again for setting up setting up a fund raiser to help me get server space for this weblog and my other material such as the photo gallery. I had reconciled myself to losing my web sites at the end of April and thought I was adjusted to the situation. However, on the road, I kept experiencing things I wanted to write about and share, and I realized that the share part had become just as important as the writing. Not just the writing — I found that my interest in technology is actually starting to re-awaken and I want to finish my online C# book, re-join the RSS fandango, play around with RDF and a new Poetry Finder, create all new photo albums and… well, Thursday I arrived home wanting desperately to find some way to keep all of this alive. Only to see this:
This graphic or the fund link was repeated over and over again at other weblogs (Monica, Liz, AKMA, Allan, Tom, Steve, Chris, Gord, Dorothea, David, Norm, Karin, Jeneane, Karl, Gary, Hylton) many times associated with the kindest words from the nicest people. I feel like I’ve been living under a cloud for so long only to have the sun come out; and it blazes with a lovely, warm, caring fire.
I’m not one to ask for monetary help. I’ve always taken rather arrogant pride in paying for my own web server and in providing web space for others. What I’ve forgotten in my pride is that help from friends when it’s needed is about the best gift one can ever receive and give in return — it’s a true two-way gift. Virtual or ‘real’ friend, doesn’t matter — Jonathon’s the absolute best to start this drive, and you’re all the best to help.
Best of all: just think of all the trouble I can continue to cause.