Categories
Weblogging

Loss of Intimacy

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Have we lost the window of opportunity for intimacy in our writing? Did we have it once, but then we stood at the edge of change, and in one direction lay power and glory, the other obscurity and intimacy, and we chose the glory?

Somehow when we stopped using Blogrolls and started using aggregators to keep up with each other’s writings, we started to lose our touch with each other. No matter how many readers we did or did not have, when we had to visit each other’s weblogs, it set both a tone and a context for the writing.

Now, we have a wonderful ability to consume mass quantities of data, and we are probably the most well informed citizens of this world, if not the known universe. If all this data were food or beer, the sound heard the loudest would be a hearty belch.

Perhaps it’s for the best, because there’s something distasteful about putting your most delicate thoughts into a writing, which then just gets shoved up next to a video of a basketball game riot, half a dozen dire political announcements, an adorable picture of a kitten (which will upstage everything else), and a bit of code. Perhaps we what we need is mood aggregators, similar to the old Mood Rings popular decades ago.

With the increased popularity and scrutiny of weblogs in the press thanks to the American political scene, putting one’s thoughts online is somewhat like standing in the middle of the T station in Boston and shouting out for all to hear what is or is not on your mind at the moment. Even if you’re in a group of friends, there’s something about the surroundings that keeps you chit chatting on common place things. We have lost the internet equivalent of candlelight dinners, Sunday morning brunch, and a late night chat over cocoa or beer.

Oh, we still have voice for anger, no worries there. In fact, we have even greater capacity for anger and rightousness and umbrage. But then, there’s something impersonal and dispassionate about anger. Anger is the ultimate camouflage for what’s really going on in our heads and our lives. People don’t look too closely at you when you’re angry.

And look at the marvels of technology available now. There’s room in syndication feeds for ads and images and podcast enclosures, and who are we to stand like frozen blocks of salt in the path of progress.

I wonder though, since I’m in the mood and it’s a cloudy day and suits the topic, have we achieved this massive information input, increased exposure, and technical supremacy by sacrificing a space for either exquisite beauty or exquisite pain?

Categories
Technology Weblogging

Just around the corner

If I were a betting woman, I would bet that WordPress 1.3 (or would it be 2.0?) is releasing sooner rather than later. At least it looks that way from the code, though the developers are going back and forth on a couple of items. Even though I plan on doing my own development from this release on, I’m still interested in WordPress, and plan on being so in the future. After all, my decision to go a new direction has less to do with WordPress and more to do with wanting to try some ideas of my own.

Who knows, maybe some of those ideas will make their way back into WordPress. Life is full of both surprises and variety.

I’ve helped several people move to WordPress, and thought it might be of use to write out the major changes that I’m seeing in this release, and point to any additional information of which I am familiar. That’s the great thing about an open source project that’s being implemented in an open environment – we can all peek in while the work is underway.

Themes

I’ve been using themes over at Kitchen, and just implemented a Theme Switcher, so that the readers can pick their favorite. Ryan Boren wrote an anatomy of a theme, and the WordPress Codex wiki has an overview of how to develop a theme.

From a user perspective, a theme consists of two parts: one or more templates, and an associated stylesheet. The theme template can be as simple as a single index.php, which replaces the one that exists within the weblog root directory; or it can consist of a whole group of template files, such as comments.php, sidebar.php, footer.php, index.php, and so on.

The template files and the stylesheet and any incidental material is placed in it’s own subdirectory under wp-contents/themes/. For instance, one we have at Kitchen is called “Kitchen One”, which is located in a subdirectory called kitchen-one.

When the files are copied into the wp-content/themes directory, they’ll show up automatically within the themes selection list in the new Presentation page within the WordPress administation page. You can then activate whichever theme you want to use. Currently the theme at Kitchen is Kubrick, but that could change tomorrow.

The style sheet is named style.css, and this is critical because the theme name and what pulls it together is found in the stylesheet. The theme definition block for Kitchen One is:

/*
Template: gemini
Theme Name: Kitchen One
Description: A deep warm rich kind of style.
Author: Joni Mueller and Shelley Powers
Author URI: http://itkitchen.info/

Odyssey interface and Gemini template for WordPress 1.3 designed and built
by Root http://www.atthe404.com/blog/

CSS Design by Joni Mueller http://jonimueller.com/wordpress/ and Shelley Powers
Photo by Elaine Nelson
*/

The values on the left have meaning to the theme system and should be written as shown here. From the top, these provide for the theme name, a description, the author, the author’s web site, and any incidental information. The key variable is the one named ‘Template’. This points to the template being used for the one theme, because one template can be used in many themes. In fact, all the themes at Kitchen use the Gemini template except for one, Kubrick.

In this case, the Gemini theme is a simple one – a single index.php page. For all other functionality, this theme uses the existing default files, such as wp-comments.php. For Kubrick, the theme uses several template files: 404.php, archive.php, archives.php, comments.php, footer.php, header.php, links.php, page.php, search.php, searchform.php, sidebar.php, and single.php.

So how can a system handle one theme that has one file, and other theme that has many? Simple, it checks for the existence of files when a page is accessed, and if the file exists in the theme, it’s used. If not, the default file is used instead.

So for Kubrick, when you access a single entry page using index.php, the application checks to see if there is a single.php page in the template subdirectory. If there is, it loads this; if there isn’t the index.php page handles the request. The same functionalty is used for archives, category, author, searching, and so on.

This is a very effective way of managing file-based templates without having to worry about overwriting a user’s existing modification when you upgrade the application. No more going, “Oh crap, I just copied over the index.php file.”

You can check out the use of templates and themes at Kitchen, and even use the new theme switcher (look at the bottom of the right hand column).

Pages

Another significant change with the next release of WordPress is the existence of pages. A page is like a post except that it’s not included as part of the archives or categories. For instance, the link titled “How to Participate” at the Kitchen is built using the page functionality, not the post. If you click the link, you’ll see it opens at the top-level of the site.

The challenge with a page is that each one requires a new entry within the .htaccess file. So if you want to create a page and have it immediately accessible, you have to make your .htaccess file writeable. Or you have to re-generate the permalink entry for .htaccess every time you create a page.

Still, you’re not going to create that many pages. Rather than make .htaccess writable, I’d recommend creating the pages, and then generating the permalink entries for .htaccess all at once.

There is a new status appearing in WordPress code of ’static’, which makes me wonder if these pages are going to be created using the regular weblog post page and then statically generated – which would make more sense for this type of page. Once one moves past the same problems we’ve had with writing to a directory. Stay tuned…

Paging

Nothing more fun than to go to a weblog that’s been around for years and search on a popular term. What returns is an extremely long page with every entry that matches that search term. If you’re lucky, you’ll only see excerpts. If you’re not, you’re in for a long wait.

WordPress has dealt with the problems associated with too many entries being returned by implementing a thing called ‘paging’. You can see it in the Kitchen, if you access a popular category like Administration, a frequent poster, like The Chef, search on a popular term like weblog, or access an entire month’s entries. At the top and bottom of the page is navigation to go from the current group of posts to the previous, and so on.

The count of posts displayed is based on the same number of posts that you display on the front page of your weblog. You include the navigation bar using something like the following, from the Kubrick theme:

<div class=”alignleft”><?php posts_nav_link(‘’,’’,’« Previous Entries’) ?>&;lt;/div>
<div class=”alignright”><?php posts_nav_link(‘’,’Next Entries »’,’’) ?></div>

At this time, the Gemini template does not have the navigation links. What will happen, then, is that the last specified number of posts show in the results, but there is no navigation for older posts.

Which is a very effective demonstration about how themes can have different behaviors, as well as different appearances and layouts. This has some interesting possibilities for experimentation.

Change is Change

There are some changes that may or may not make it into the finished problem. For instance, the previous nightly build included enclosures, which would automatically pull images and audio files into enclosures in RSS feed. This has subsequently been removed, and hopefully will be implemented as an option.

There is no longer an option to turn auto pinging on or off at the page level, but you’ll want to turn it off for the application, because it’s a performance killer.

There’s a new one that allows users with rank of 9+ to post as another person. Based on this, I’ve updated all the Kitchen writers that were 9 to 8, and changed the menu options accordingly. There’s discussion about turning moderation on automatically for all posts over ten days old, but most of us are doing this anyway. Or closing old posts off completely.

The global variables such as $tableposts are now deprecated, but should be around for at least one release so that old plug-ins won’t break when the application first releases.

There is now a WordPress export, which will be handy if you’re merging weblogs, which I had to do recently. From what I can see, there’s also been improvements in the other imports.

And looks like we’ll be able to have email list management to all users. That’s good news for the Kitchen.

And so on

There are a lot of other changes, many of which take place under the skin so to speak. The development team is working on new comment spam prevention techniques, as well as doing some good code clean up such as moving SQL statements into the functions and out of the pages. The GEO fields have been moved from the administration pages to a plug-in, though I know most people didn’t use this. Then there’s the mysterious Dashboard, but we probably won’t get a peek at that until the tool releases.

All in all, some very tasty additions, with only a few hiccups now and again.

Didn’t notice until today that the WordPress development team released a heads up on 1.3 at the Development weblog November 17th. This lists out some other new features, and confirms the themes and pages additions.

Categories
Connecting

How is a Mac like a scholar’s den

I had an extra day with my broadband coverage today, and I thought I would use it to the full to stock up on reading material, as well as put several things online. My Mac desktop is now littered with dozens of web pages that I’ve saved, like parchment skins in the study of a miserly scholar. I may not have the ability to immediately interact or instantly pursue a new tangent if it arises, but at least my gleanings won’t attract bugs or mildew if it becomes too damp.

Categories
Stuff

It started with a chair

It started with a chair. I had no comfortable chair in my room, but there was one not being used in the living room. However, the chair takes up more room than I had, so we had to move the computer table.

The computer table wouldn’t fit where we moved it, and we had to move the large bookshelf downstairs to make room. Once moved, we still found the long table wouldn’t fit, so I decided to move the white fold up table into the corner as a computer table.

But the white computer table wouldn’t fit in the corner, and besides we had to move the bed and now it was too close to the table on the other side that held my stereo and television. I asked my roommate how big were the tables in his room, and would he be up for a trade?

We then moved my bigger table out, and my smaller table into the corner and moved his smaller tables into the other side of the room to hold the TV and stereo.

But after we moved the chair upstairs, and it fit nicely into the corner of my room, right by the window, there was a space left in the living room; we moved the full size futon over and then placed the bookshelf where the futon was. However, we had to move the tall, square table over behind the couch, but I get the Rembrandt lamp for my room. And the Marvin picture.

Since I really don’t have as much room as I did, I gave my older printer to my roommate; when he was connecting it up to his computer, he happened to notice that when he unplugged his laptop that the batteries are no longer working. So I’ll be giving him my Dell laptop, which I’d planned on anyway, going purely with my Mac.

Moving the bookshelf meant I now I had a bunch of music CDs covering my bed, and no place to put them. We solved this problem by moving the two, slim white wire bookshelves up into my room, and the half circle table over by my bed to hold my lamp and the three books I’m reading at the same time. We had to move all the rest of the books downstairs to the bookshelf; it seems brighter in the room, but I am going to miss not being surrounded by books.

My roommate is downstairs exhausted, mumbling something about thinking he was exempt from all this shit now that we’re divorced. I said it only works that way when you have a bad divorce. I said next time he should cheat on his wife and leave the toilet seat up, and then he wouldn’t have to spend his Saturday re-arranging furniture.

Categories
Weblogging

Build the walls higher, boys

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I was astonished to read this morning, a little brain storm between Don Park and Dave Winer, to have ‘refereed conversation’, i.e. a conversation between two people on their weblogs, given a special category, which is then aggregated and captured into a weblog and managed by a third person. Or I should say ‘refereed’ by a third person.

Dave Winer’s idea runs as follows:

Suppose there’s an issue, say Choice vs Life (to pick something heavy) and you’ve got two people who like each other enough to be willing to have a refereed online back and forth. So there are three people, one on each side of an issue, and the third making sure that there are no personal attacks. The discussion takes place only between the two people, for two months, two years, two decades, two lifetimes, however long it takes, however long both have something to say. (Of course people can comment on the discussion on their own blogs, on mail lists, radio shows, where ever.) A document with three authors that’s constantly being revised. Sure you can take vacations, maybe a month or a year at a time, as-needed. This would be different from a mail list, or a blog, or anything else. A deliberate respectful discussion, more about the respect and exposure of issues, than about settling the unsettleable. An interesting idea?

We have come so far in this medium to do what we can to open the doors on conversations, to enable the technology to allow people to join in based on interest, only to turn around to purposely pursue a path that guarantees to shut most of this down.

Mike Sanders in comments loved the idea, writing:

It’s a great idea and I hope you focus some of your seemingly endless energy to show how well it could work. Maybe you could get it going by picking three high profile bloggers to take on one side of an issue and three relatively unknowns to take on the other and have three high profilers moderate. I think this would give it a nice dose of drama (ie big guy vs little guy).

Here are some possible topics/bloggers: Rich Interface Apps vs Web Apps (Scoble vs whomever) Foreign Policy – Preemptive or Protective (Daily Kos or Atrios vs whomever) Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Resolution (Eric Alterman vs whomever) Limitations of Blogging (Dave Winer vs whomever) Limits of Indecency (Jeff Jarvis vs whomever) Truisms/Fallacies of Cluetrain (Doc Searls vs whomever)

I wrote at Mr. Winer’s weblog the following comment:

What you’re proposing is to increase the voice of the elite, while simultaneously shutting down the voice of the dissident.

Mike Sanders, look at what you’re doing? You’re promoting those who don’t need more voice. Why?

Do we need to hear yet more opinions from Jarvis and Scoble and Winer and Kos? Why even have weblogs? We’ll just install random link generators to these gentleman, and call it quits.

Are you all so afraid that fresh voices will take away some, even a tiny bit of your audience?

As for moderated conversations, I responded in Don Parks’ weblog on this.

To be fair, Mike did recommend that on the other side of the ‘fence’ there be relative ‘unknowns’ — but why can’t there be unknowns on both sides? Why do we keep returning to these men, again and again. Are we so dazzled by the light of their linkage?

Don wrote about the idea:

Very cool. Dave’s blog-based debates can be implemented using a new type of blog category: Conversation Category. The idea is for a small number of people to share a single blog category and converse over a long period of time through their blogs.

A conversation aggregator subscribes to the category feed of all the participants and merge them into a single feed and publishes a mini-website dedicated to the conversation. The ‘referree’ of the debate or the conversation moderator gets editorial rights over the merged feed and the mini-website.

There, I responded with:

What you’re doing is taking what we’ve achieved in weblogging, and then limiting the number of participants (which smacks of elitism) and allowing an outside person to constrain the conversation even further (which smacks of censorship and control) and then wrapping it up with a syndication bow (we’re assuming RSS 2.0) and calling it new technology.

Are you and Tim adults? Can you manage the hypertext link? Are you willing to turn off comments on those posts to eliminate distraction? Guess what — you’re all set to have a conversation in weblogging. And if you need examples of how to do it, I can point out about a couple of thousand.

Whatever happened to people monitoring and being responsible for their own behavior? To allowing fresh voices into a conversation? To keeping the barriers to participation low?

What’s even sadder is the number of techs who have jumped on, specifically talking about this implementation or that, not even really paying attention to the social ramifications–somewhat like the scientists who pursue research regardless of the consequences, just to see if they can make it happen.

Here at this site, we kept the Kitchen door open. We’re using basic weblogging technology. We want fresh voices, and diverse views.

Shame on us for doing this all wrong.

There is precedence for a formalized match between webloggers, refereed by other individuals.