Categories
Just Shelley Writing

Hiho it’s off to edit I go

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I kept waking up last night with answers to the questions from yesterday’s interview popping into my head. The experience is comparable to a web bot being sent for information and returning two days later. Nice, but a little late.

I’m feeling more than a little tired today, so not much in the way of interesting or compelling reading for you, aside from a few notes about writing.

As much as I dislike to, I’m going to start running my weblog posts through Word for spell checking. The reason I’m so adverse to this is because one thing I’ve always liked about weblog writing is that I can relax a bit, and not worry about my usual problems of mixing words, dropping words, bad spelling, and totally screwing up all the subtle nuances of grammar. I can just write. It’s a very liberating experience.

However, this generates problems for people who quote me because they copy the words as they are, misspellings and all. That’s not particularly fair to them. Additionally, as one person was kind enough to mention in my comments not too long ago — one can easily drop the intelligence of a posting by just turning off spellchecker, a not so subtle reflection on my misspellings.

In addition to the spell checking, I’m considering using other more formal editing processes. For instance, when I write a book, the first draft is nothing more than a way for me to try and record my thoughts in a coherent manner, while I’m also figuring out how to create the examples, work the technology, and so on. The real writing doesn’t start until I start editing the work; smoothing it out, making sure it hangs together, flows well, and doesn’t leave topics abruptly. As Shrek would say, writing is like an onion, consisting of layers.

Some writers can put words down in perfect form the first go around. I can’t. However, I don’t normally apply the more formal writing process to my weblog posts, but I’m thinking of doing so. Unfortunately, this has a side effect of removing some of the spontaneity of the writing — that bit of me that leaks through in the words.

What I might do is continue with my usual haphazard style (except for spell checking) in my regular posts, and then save the formal process for postings that are longer, more complex. So, when I write about my cat, I’ll just write about my cat, and as long as cat is spelled c-a-t, don’t worry about the rest. But if I’m writing an essay about my anti-war views, take more time, and edit the material more carefully.

Ah, well.

In the meantime, if you like my little Talkback feature, there’s a web form you can use to lookup comments by URL or name. I have a question, though, for you: does the ability for someone to look up all your comments make you more aware of what you write, or do you comment as you always have?

Geodog made a good point about this in my posting on Talkback:

 

I’m with Ruzz and Dorothea. Stupid late night comments preserved for eternity? Let Stavrosthewonderchicken’s comments be highlighted. Maybe I should start posting as him?

In any case, I’m glad I use my online name. It isn’t hard to find my real name, but I would be even more self-conscious if the first thing that popped up when someone put my name into Google was a half assed comment on somebody’s weblog.

Or maybe that’s the idea? Discourage half-assed comments?

 

Does Talkback make you uncomfortable?

Categories
Weblogging

Globble globble

And this week’s award for best irony goes to…

…Me!

For being underjoyed about the Blogger + Google deal; for discussing some of the negative consequences of the deal; for demonstrating, visually, a sense of perspective regarding “world” and “world with blog” and…

…still managing to capture the top search position at Google for the terms Google Blogger. (screenshot)

I want to thank my readers, my linkers, and my headers. Without them, I wouldn’t be there today.

Categories
Just Shelley

Blew it

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I didn’t want to say anything before hand but I had an interview with Anhueser-Busch today. It was a J2EE developer position, and the location was ten minutes from my house.

I met with the manager and four other people, and they started asking about EJB containers right off the bat. And I froze. I completely froze.

I couldn’t remember anything about Java, J2EE, design patterns, any of that. I know the stuff. Hell, I can sit here now and answer any one of the questions asked then. But in the room, where it mattered, I kept having to say “I don’t remember”.

I could answer the XML and the C# and the other questions, but I kept drawing a blank on the Java. I know Java, but I just couldn’t remember in the interview. Nothing. All of it became a blank.

It became so embarrassing, but the people were just so incredibly kind. And that made it worse, because I would have liked to work with them. I can’t stand this worrying about money. About paying bills.

Categories
Weblogging

This is your world on blog…

The excitement about Google and Blogger continues, though I wonder if we’re not drifting to the extreme goodness end of the spectrum in our view about what this will mean in the long term.

Ben Vierk wrote:

 

Noone can ignore the increasing space weblogs take in search results on Google. Weblogs are becoming Google’s primary content source. What if Blogger had built it’s own search engine? With direct access to the data it could have yielded search results on content as soon as the content was posted rather than waiting 1 to 2 days for a Google spider. Why wait for Google when you can get the information you want now from somewhere else? In the first 6 hours of any new story people can’t go to Google for relevant content. Google is too slow.

 

Tom Matrullo follows this same belief when he writes:

 

The linking of Google and Pyra fired a teensy synapse felt around the world: The advent of the blog as where events happen and are reported, and travel through the network nervous system that Bill Gates could never quite imagine but once dreamed he could own

 

Jeneane also continued this theme:

 

A one-stop-shop for voice? Maybe. Weighing search results in favor of the common-voice news and opinion and entertainment offered by us bloggers (as opposed to big media)? I hope so! Google already does this–they’ve been doing it for at least a year. God bless them.

 

She also writes in my comments in the Cut the Ribbon post:

 

I will be busy fighting the anti-greed war over in my neck of the woods for the near future. I figure it’s the least I can do to help change the world. With the Google/Prya deal, we have a real opportunity–if they enable us, and I believe that’s the whole point–to flip the power structure globally. Dislodge the greed model and be surprised what else follows. I’m not insane. I think it could work.

 

Others have also spoken eloquently about the impact Blogger can have on ensuring that the news Google News reports is more timely; Through Blogger, Google will now have direct access to the data in the weblog posts of a couple of hundred thousand webloggers, as soon as they are published. Heady stuff.

Ignoring the fact that this still precludes the majority of webloggers, now is a good time to remember the incident between Google and the Church of Scientology before we become so sanguine about Google buying Blogger and other centralized weblogging tools. Rather than censorship at the server, after material has been posted, there is the potential of censorship at the source. Rather than wait for content to be published and ask for it to be pulled, don’t allow it’s publication in the first place. And if you control the tool, then it doesn’t matter where the content will be published — the source is controlled, not the destination.

I can’t help thinking the Scientologist are already preparing briefs to force Google into searching for so-called copyrighted material about the church in weblog posts before they’re published, and preventing such posts. And before you call me alarmist, look in the news at what’s happening to the country, to the US. Anything’s possible now.

This is, of course, the view at the extreme badness end of the spectrum, and this vulnerability exists for all centralized tools; however, it’s important to be aware that centralization can close doors as much as it can open them.

Reality check time: Perhaps we webloggers also need to remember that though it seems crowded out here on the boards, we are but a speck in the world. We are growing, our numbers are increasing by leaps and bounds, and we are having an impact, but we’re still a speck. Or, for a more visual demonstration:

This is your world

 


apollo17_earth.jpg
 

And this is your world, on weblogs

 


apollo17_earth.jpg
 

Any questions?

Categories
Government

Scorched Earth

Jonathon wrote a thoughtful and compelling response to my post Cut the Ribbon yesterday, using as counter-point the political and social condition of the Japanese people prior to World War II, and the prosperity these same people have enjoyed since. He doesn’t deny the “ribbon of folly and greed, arrogance and stupidity’; instead, he writes:

Rather I accept Thomas Sowell’s view that the evils of the world derive from “the limited and unhappy choices available, given the inherent moral and intellectual limitations of human beings.” In other words, folly, greed, arrogance, and stupidity will inevitably arise wherever there are people present.

I don’t necessarily disagree with Jonathon, though he and I do share somewhat different viewpoints of the inherent goodness of humanity as balanced against the inherent badness of humanity. I also respect and understand Jonathon’s expressed view that he’s not pro-war just because he’s not completely anti-war. However, I think at times we rely too much on the accidental successes of wars as a justification for war.

In my comments, Kevin Marks included the text of Tony Blair’s speech in response to the protests this weekend. Now that the terrorist threat has begun to recede as an impetus for the war, the talk turns to Saddam Hussein’s treatment of his people. Blair quotes letters from Iraqi people who talk of the deaths of innocents, Saddam’s brutality, the oppression. None of us deny this. This is the reason, all along, that we should have talked about war — to help the people of Iraq. We should have been discussing this thirty years ago.

But now the Iraqi people are being brought up as a justification for war because we need one more reason to fulfill our agenda of a unilateral invasion of Iraq by the US and a few allies. We need justification for our “righteous” war.

Blair’s speech sickens me because in his grand words in support of the war against Saddam Hussein, he neglects to mention why Saddam is in power; who put him there; who supported him while he killed millions in the war with Iran. Who brought about this horror we face now?

Ridding(sic) the world of Saddam would be an act of humanity. It is leaving him there that is in truth inhumane.

And if it does come to this, let us be clear: we should be as committed to the humanitarian task of rebuilding Iraq for the Iraqi people as we have been to removing Saddam

Who brought the horror? The very leaders who hold up photos of children starving in the countryside. The ones who only now talk of rebuilding Iraq “for the people”.

The hypocrisy makes me want to vomit.

The only planning Bush and Blair have done about the effects of the war and the people of Iraq afterwards is who we’ll put in charge, and how much oil will it cost for our occupation. And Bush and Blair will pursue their agendas regardless of what the world, including our allies, says..

No one wants Saddam Hussein to remain in power, but the cost of marching in with the sole goal of defeating Saddam Hussein and disarming Iraq will bring about horrors worse then any that have been perpetuated in this country in the past. Don’t trot out pictures of Afghanistan and Japan and other beneficiaries of accidental successes of war — the situation in Iraq is different. Amnesty International recognized this, which is why they call, again and again, for a discussion in the UN about the people of Iraq. But all we hear is “Weapons of Mass Destruction”. And 9/11.

Have no doubt of what will happen. Today the papers and the news talk about Saddam Hussein’s scorched earth policy, something which I don’t doubt he’ll follow.

I have no doubt he’ll kill millions, let loose chemical and biological weapons, blow up the oil fields — he is a cornered man with nothing to lose, and no concern about the welfare of his people. If this scorched earth happens, it will take years — years — to recover. And ultimately we will have bred more of the same terrorists we sought to confine and eliminate.

We talk of war, but what war are we fighting? The one Blair and Bush have packaged, and are now wrapping with a pretty bow composed of the faces of the children of Iraq we’re going to save? The war governed by sanctions that focus primarily on weapons?

Or are we going to focus our attention and our energies on finding a solution that will allow us to go into Iraq and help the people without destroying them?

These are two different wars. Which war are we to fight?

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