Categories
Weblogging

Weblogging as novel

Weblogging is the world’s greatest novel, written by me and about 10,000 of my closest friends.

Mike Sanders opened up a discussion about blogging communities today, which happened to fit perfectly with some thoughts that have been kicking around in my tired brain.

He mentioned the A-list bloggers and defined them as a community. I agree with Mike on A-list, but not community — community requires interaction and Cam and Meg and others of the A-listers seem to me to be strongly singular in their voices. In particular I see Cam as a man who is proud of being the lone wolf of weblogging.

I am part of a specific community of webloggers who I’ve come to know and admire. They are my friends as much as fellow bloggers. Unlike the A-listers, our weblogs take on the aspects of cooperative writing, with one person starting a conversation and others adding to it, within comments, weblog postings, or both. The effect can be profound, rich, and rewarding; a feedback loop that can send you at dizzying speeds throughout a loop of interconnected nodes.

In Mike’s posting he quoted a snippet from an email that Jonathon wrote:

I love this group. Being a member is one of best outcomes that flowed from starting my blog. I’m not sure how I became a member and I don’t know who all the members are. That’s very important to me. The amorphous quality of the group. It may well be that if you sat us all down in separate rooms and asked us to list the members, we would each come up with radically different lists. That makes it incredibly beautiful and special — because it means there are no barriers to entry and no possible sense of exclusivity.

Jonathon speaks for me with this paragraph as much as he speaks for himself — beautifully done.

Lately, though, I’m finding that, as with any new colony, the frenzy of early formation is now gradually giving away to a calmer and more mature community, attracting newer, vital voices just as the more mature members are becoming quieter — more thoughtful in our postings, perhaps posting more infrequently.

This quietness isn’t because of lack of interest in our weblogging community; it’s because the community is mature enough that we don’t have to post all the time — we’ll still be here when each of us has something to say, in our own time, and in our own way.

Categories
Weblogging

A-List and Metafilter

Poor Mike. I imagine he didn’t know what he started today with his posting on community, especially his reference to the A-List and MetaFilter.

As expected the MeFi gang picked up on the posting. This is a good thread to follow, with many good points.

There was also some similarity to the kite and the fickle wind described in one of my previous postings, in that Mike was picked up and slammed to the ground again and again. However, this is also a MeFi trait at times when the beast is irked — no offense to MeFi folks in the crowd.

I did some pick up of my own about “community” in my previous posting, and I find that this community thing can be “you there and me here”, and never the two shall meet at times. I would like to think that this weblog is good for a general audience, but I know that I’ve fallen into insider speak more than once. Still — this is my weblog, and I can use insider speak if I want to, can’t I?

(However, I am not happy about my previous posting aside from the reference to Jonathon’s email note, which was excellent. I won’t pull the posting, but ignore it and go to the “don’t post about your co-workers, your boss, your illicit love affair, and your drug use in your weblog” posting that preceded it.)

On to other things — I took some sunset photos of interesting places along the Embarcadero by my place. I thought I would post a few for your edification. One of the photos is of Pier 23, a biker bar that plays reggae and jazz, and which wouldn’t serve me yesterday. Maybe the place is run by MeFi and they knew I was a weblogger?

Bay Bridge and Boat

Pier 23 -- don't go here
Fog City Diner -- classic diner

Categories
Technology

Morpheus Shut Down

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

And over at John’s the discussion is about the shut down of Morpheus, software based on Fast Track, as is Kazaa.

I believe I mentioned this last week that any P2P network that has iron – no matter how minute – in the cloud can be shut down. I will refrain from saying I told you so. Well, no, I won’t refrain from this. I told you so.

Update: more on this story at ZDNet.

Question: Can you shut down a Gnutella network?

Categories
Weblogging

Bloggers with attitude

The Bloggers with Attitude webring now has 15 members, and growing. An interesting, eclectic group of folks, too!

The newest member is Sharon Campbell of Pet Rock Star. Loved her weblog slogan: Voice of an Angel, Mouth of a Truckdriver

Among the postings at her weblog I found (stealing liberally) the following:

Wrestlers in Minnesota tried to – once again – get girls banned from the sport by showing off a move called the high crotch takedown.

I don’t know what they’re so concerned about. All mothers teach their daughters the high crotch takedown before they’re allowed to date.

Categories
Writing

Editing goals

Edited two chapters today, meeting my goal. However, my goal for tomorrow (later today I should say) is four chapters. That little poof you just heard was my head exploding. All I can say is, it was nice knowing you before I fried myself to a burnt little cinder and a tiny bit of leftover ash that was instantly caught by the breeze coming through my window and wafted off to Hawaii.

Well, at least the ash will have a good time.