One: Dave Pollard has posted a really interesting (and quite long) series of essays, studies, and narratives about how to build the ideal collaborative team and the collaboration process in general. Though I haven't grokked all of the implications yet, I generally find their primary conclusion, that attitude is more important than experience or specific knowledge in collaborative work, to be quite true in my own experience. Two: I've posted a list of my personal and professional affiliations. As the traffic on my blog increases and I get some more feedback about some of the more "controversial" posts, I want to make sure I fully disclose what kinds of organizations and projects I'm involved with and have allegiances to - noting just as emphatically that none of them necessarily endorse or agree with what I write here. Three: As reported by Slashdot, the Federal Election Commission has issued a draft advisory opinion essentially finding that bloggers can qualify as journalists for the purpose of the 'press exemption' in federal campaign finance laws. As a blogger, I don't really consider myself a journalist, but I know plenty who do and it's interesting to see this conversation evolve about what protections and privileges bloggers should have.
Tag: meta
A few quick notes: 1) As promised, I've completed the transition to having all my photos hosted at my Flickr account, so feel free to browse around there. 2) I've posted a short little poem I wrote some time ago, but felt compelled to add to the site now. 3) I believe it's safe to say that The Review of Indiana Blogs has suffered and possibly expired at the hands of its own (perhaps unanticipated) scope - no real substantive entries since mid-October, a few links breaking, and no word from the maintainer. 4) I can't really talk, though - I've been working on several posts but none of them have made it out the door yet, and that developed into a more intentional hiatus from blog posting (if you can call two weeks a hiatus). But I'll be back soon with all sorts of self-indulgent musings. Until then, check out my favorite website after which Summersault models all its work, Zombo dot com. And as the recently spray-painted words of wisdom in the alley behind our office say, "fall in love, not in line."
Thanks to the folks at TRIB (The Review of Indiana Blogs) for the kind mention over the weekend. As I told them even *before* they were nice enough to link to me, it's good to see a resource like this devoted to covering the Hoosier blogosphere. I've already enjoyed reading through the posts and learning about other folks in Indiana who are bothering to comment on happenings around the state and in their own lives.
I've been slacking off for a few years on getting my photos online for folks to see. Partly that's because I've been slacking off in actually taking photos (has the world become less beautiful and interesting as I get older?...hmm, probably not...lazy ass) but also because my ancient and clumsy methods for formatting and posting them became a significant mental barrier to even bothering. So, driven by a desire to share and a need to have better tools for doing so (and not to mention saving some space on the Summersault webserver where my site is hosted), I've engaged in what is hopefully a mutually beneficial and long-lasting relationship with Flickr, an online photo sharing service. You can already check out my photos there, but know that it's all in flux as I transition my existing online photos, add and remove some, and rearrange how they're sorted. Let me know how you like it, and I'll post something when I'm done.
I've moved this weblog to use WordPress, instead of Movable Type. While I found Movable Type generally agreeable, WordPress has become a favorite as I've used it with the Summersault Weblog, especially in its handling of comment and trackback spam which, other than writing posts themselves, had become the most time-consuming part of having a weblog - not good. So, I'm still ironing out a few glitches from the transition, but otherwise it should be business as usual with a more consistent look thrown in; let me know if you notice any problems.
I recently wrote in the Summersault weblog about how website content syndication is changing the way we use the web. Of course, if the sites you care about aren't syndicating their content, the phenomenon is a little less exciting. For me, the only ones I cared about that were in this category were local news sources. For a few years I'd been running hacked up Perl scripts that tried to retrieve headlines from the sites of local papers, but it tended to be hit and miss and I never really took the time to take a more structured approach until now. Using the Template::Extract Perl module and a handy article from Simon Cozens about spidering hacks, I was able to formalize and simplify the creation of custom RSS feeds scraped from sites without them built-in. So, here are the first few, to which you are welcome to point your own newsreader:
Please avoid refreshing these more than once an hour. If there are other feeds you'd like to see, let me know. I'll add new ones on my feeds page as they come. Enjoy!
I've been doing more and more public speaking over the last few years, and find that it's something I enjoy immensely. There was a time when I was younger when I considered a "career" in it (as a minister, even), despite my introverted nature and the nervous shakes I'd always get right before beginning a talk. I'm still introverted and I still get the shakes once in a while, but I really appreciate opportunities to be a part of group learning and educational sessions, especially when I have something valuable to contribute and/or unique ways of contributing it. Lately I've been getting some good feedback on my approach to these opportunities and my ability to engage an audience; I've also found more and more sessions that fit well with other projects I'm pursuing. So, I've created a page on this site about speaking opportunities and requests, in hopes that it will lead to more of these. If you're involved with a group or event that might benefit from this kind of contribution, please let me know!
Jason Godesky has an interesting post up about why blogs are in a category all their own when it comes to publishing content online. It's a question I've thought about on occasion, given that I've had a personal website in some form or another since, um, 1994, and that I get indignant once in a while when people jump and scream that the blogging phenomenon is the shiny new thing that levels the playing field. It was the whole frickin Internet thing that was supposed to do that in the first place, people! But Jason has put his finger on some of the specifics about why blogging is different, though I have a few more to add.
Continue reading "Why blogs are different"
I thought I'd start a list of people in Richmond and Wayne County with active weblogs. If you have anyone to add, please let me know. The list will probably tend to exclude sites primarily dedicated to for-profit promoting of a particular organization, product or service. Enjoy!
You may or may not notice that I've incorporated some Google Ads into my weblog. It's my unabashed attempt to make whatever moo-lah I can off of this exercise in public writing (which does not, for what it's worth, have moo-lah generation as a primary goal). I'm not sure if I'll keep the ads: the concept in general already grates against my sense that there's too much advertising on your average website, and because of my affiliation with a certain company that does webhosting, it's not like I'm trying to cover any expenses of having the thing online at all. And yet, I haven't yet felt the need to take such a principled stand that I can ignore the allure of 5 minutes of HTML rearranging work translating into some level of income that wasn't there before. In any case, if they offend your (and here I am addressing the imaginary person who reads these ramblings with regularity because they are just SO inspiring) sensibilities, please let me know. Conversely, if you enjoy this stuff and want to cheer me on - financially or otherwise - I'll appreciate that feedback too!