March 29, 2006
day one or so...
Stowe Boyd,
who has been placeholding my “links” section in the right sidebar [at listics.com] began
an experiment in mindful traffic growth almost three months ago. Stowe
started his /Messages blog with a Technorati rank of 1,088,376 (zero
links from zero sources). Since I’ve been dithering and testing here
for about a year, I actually have 4 links from 2 sites (one of them
mine) and a Technorati rank of 864,574. That’s a head start. Between
now and June 30, I will do what I can to migrate from TypePad to WordPress, from Sandhill Trek rel. 2.0 to Sandhill Trek rel. 3.0 - now at Listics.com
Just as a benchmark the ‘rati data on Sandhill rel. 2.0 are:
Technorati Rank: 9,200 (580 links from 161 sites), or 10,807 (448 links from 142 sites) depending on how you form the URL. The old Radio blog that saw its last post in December of 2003 ranks 313,538 (14 links from 9 sites).
So let’s call today day one, even though there will be much
hammering and sawing, shouted obscenities, and all the other dust and
background noise associated with building the sets. And let’s see where
we are by mid-summer. I’m sure there will be some cross posting the
first month or so, but ultimately, the goal is to provide a higher
quality blog from a more intentional blogger and cut out some of the
middle-men whose performance problems turn into my own.
[cross posted from listics.com]
March 29, 2006 | Permalink
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March 28, 2006
now we're clicking...
after much cut and pastage entirely contrary to the Wordpress plug and play philosophy, I have the Stat Counter site linked up to the listics site. Now I don't know how accurate any of it is, or what I'm really going to see, or why I would want to see that anyway, but heck...
Did you hear that Cap Weinberger bit the dust? There's a Bohemian Club membership available.
March 28, 2006 | Permalink
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Stat Counter
I feel like izzyp.
March 28, 2006 | Permalink
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grrr...
Having problems making Stat Counter work over at Listics. All this php scripting is a baffler. I'd like to just be able to stuff the code between the <body></body> tags of a plain old html page. Thanks to those who are clicking over there from time to time in order to help me test.
March 28, 2006 | Permalink
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March 27, 2006
Listics
I am involved in serious doinkage on my new site, Listics.com. I expect to move over there in a while. Hell, it's been fallow for a year while I played with WordPress and themes and such. It's about time I got started on the biennial Sandhill blog migration.
I need a favor. In return you can ask me for any content you'd like to see on the new the site. (Cackle... you can ASK!)
I've set up the Stat Counter, I think, and I need a few visitors to see if it works. It's pretty arid over there... but if you have a moment, please click through to these test links...
link
link
link
(I feel so "Shelley"...)
March 27, 2006 | Permalink
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December 15, 2005
Saving the Best for Last
How I Blog
by clocke/RageBoy®
Hmmm, OK, so Frank... you want to know how I blog. Right? I take that to mean the nuts and bolts stuff. If that's not what you meant, then tough, because that's what I'm gonna write about here. And the first thing I'll tell you is that I'm in a crappy mood. Well, a little crappy. I guess I've seen worse. I guess I've seen a whole hell of a lot worse, so I should cheer up and get on with it, I suppose. But a little bit grumpy, anyway. So watch it. Don't fuck with me.
Had to get that out of the way first. I knew you'd understand.
And the second thing is: I sure don't type into anything like this ugly-ass plain vanilla HTML page. I'm only doing it because I don't know -- how could I? -- what you're going to do with this. So I'm taking pity on you and not linking this up to 32 stylesheets and sticking in all kindsa javascript. (Actually, I just threw in that last part because the only way I ever do javascript is by stealing it and taking about a year to figure out what any 14-year-old whippersnapper hacker can do in three minutes.)
The second thing Part the Second is that I'm very proud to be blogging on Blogspot. That would be Mystic Bourgeoisie, of course. Some folks seem to have nothing but disdain for Blogspot, but here's why they're fucked, if I may say so. They're fucked because Blogspot is free, just as Blogger was free in the Olden Times (or just about; we had to help out Ev if we could, so we ante'd the 25). And that means more people can blog. Lowers the barriers to entry is how we business types would put it. I'm reminded here of how I once wrote: "People often stop me on the street and say, 'Chris, you're a successful business-type person. Tell me, how do you...'" But I better not go any further down that road if I expect anyone to ever read this. However, if they don't like it, well fuck em. That's what I say. I suppose I should interject here that one thing I do in my blogging -- though I don't know if this would count as nuts and bolts, exactly -- is swear a lot. So this is what I like to call Demonstration By Example™ -- and that little ™ sign there means I'll sue your ass if you try any copycat cussing.
The point I was trying to make... I am proud of being on Blogspot mostly because I am showing the world (that exceedingly small slice of it that actually reads my shit anymore) that it is not necessary to use one of those ready-made templates they give you. Well no, actually you do use one -- pick something dead simple -- and then you hack the crap outta that sucker. That's what I did, yes. On the aforementioned Mystic Bourgeoisie. You bet. I made it so complicated that it took me a month to figure out how to post into it. But you pick these things up. Trust me.
"Do not affect a breezy style," Strunk & White tell us. Well fuck Strunk & White, OK? They never had to blog. And if they had, they'd probably have said all the same things they said back when they wrote that fucking book, and they'd have traffic up the yin-yang. Which is precisely why I hate those sons-a bitches and spit on their graves.
Hey Frank, I should have asked, but... is it alright if I put in some of my various views?
But getting back to business. One thing I should mention is that I switched to the Mac a couple years ago, I guess it was (christ, time flies, does it not?), and as a result, had to rebuild my entire blogging (a.k.a. writing) kit -- my heap big mojo-gris-gris shaman spirit bag o' software tricks, that is to say. (What do they call those damn things? And why does Stephen King have it in for adverbs? He does, if you didn't know that, particularly.) Anyway, yes, I wrote something for Meg (a.k.a. Michelle, a.k.a. Mandarin Design) about the tools I used to use when I was working on a Windows box. So if you still are, I already wrote that one -- employing far fewer digressions, I hasten to add -- and it is here.
Hmmm, looking that over, I think perhaps I'll rip the HTML and try to follow form, only listing Macish tools, instead.
No, I am definitely not going to do that. I just grabbed the code and dropped it in here, and I just about fainted at the work I'd have to do to make it look as good as that looks, and I was getting paid for that one (thanks, Meg). But here's what I'll tell you about the tools I use these days, pretty much in the order of how much I use them...
- Amazon - of course
This is where the ideas come from. And the books. And the copyright-freeee grafix! (Big Valuable Hint: if you're advertising, you're not stealing.) And where all the money goes. (What money?)
- Google - of course II, The Searching
And its many sub-Googles. Scholar blows, imo -- all those damn academic presses that want 29 bucks a pop for a 6-page journal article are clogging the web, the bastards. What'd they ever do for us? But it does have its uses. Better and more fun is Google Books, though I still default to Amazon if they have the full "text" -- actually, those damn hidden JPGs. But Gbooks can do some tricks Amazon can't (yet), so they're complementary. Froogle, I've just learned -- duh! -- also sells BOOKS! Otherwise, what would I ever use it for? Except to post my wish list.
- BBedit - "it doesn't suck®"
You need an editor, natch. And this is one of the best. It took me a while to get the hang of it, and it's a text editor, of course -- because that's what it takes -- so it's uglier'n sin. But I've hacked up a bunch of macro sortsa things that enable me to blog three or four hundred words in a mere six hours.
- CopyPaste X
The Mac does suck when it comes to retrieving stuff you deleted yesterday. So does Windows, actually, but there are more tools to get around the problem on that side. CopyPaste is the only damn thing I've found that works, and it doesn't work quite as well as ClipMate (see previously alluded to post). But it works. And to be fair, I should say that it does a whole lot of stuff I haven't figured out yet.
- Snapz Pro X
A screen grabber to die for. It's so cool. I know I shouldn't put drop shadows on every goddam thing I crop off the screen, but I can't help myself.
- GraphicConverter X
I have Macromedia Fireworks on my disk, but I very rarely start it. What does this tell us, class? That's right. If you're on a Mac and you work with pitchers, get you a copy. It can do things you've never even thought of, probably half of them illegal.
- Transmit
An FTP client. It's simple. It works. It's prettier than Fetch. What do you want? I don't use Blogger to put graphic files on the web. No, no. I use FTP. I am a professional, after all.
- Camino
For all you WindowsHeads, this is a browser. And a pretty good one, too. It's my default web client. Why? I'm not sure. There are things it can't do, because no one takes it very seriously. Whenever something doesn't work the way I know it's supposed to, I know it's probably Camino's fault. Why do I put up with this? Because it has a hackable search thing that blows the doors off most everything else. If, that is, and only if, you figure out how to hack it. I did, but I'm not telling. OK, OK, gee, quit crying already. Here, I'll give you a hint...
~/Library/Application Support/Camino/SearchURLList.plist
But oh mama, watch out for those ampersands!
- iSeek
If you don't want to screw around with all that, go here.
- Firefox
For those "other times" -- and to run Gmail in a whole separate app. You know what it is. It's the browser what's whuppin Microsoft's ass. Or at least keeping em good and nervous.
- Gmail
Do you still need an invite to use this? I don't know. If you want one, just ask. I put this among blogging tools because I also email (some of) my posts to about 3,000 subscribers -- used to be 5,000; see Strunk & White, above -- who either a) haven't figured out RSS feeds yet, or b) haven't figured out how to get off my list. If you want to try your luck at option b, you can sign up here-- then earn extra miles by unsubscribing!
- DigitalColor Meter
How many times have you wanted to match a color somewhere else on your screen? Somewhere you can't go with your grafix editor, that is. This little baby is just the ticket. Simple but slick. If you don't know what it is, you need it. (I just found out, while searching for a URL for this, that it's an Apple app that comes with the OS. Gee. I did not know that. Of course, there's nothing about it on the Apple site. That I can find, anyway.)
- Color Consultant Pro - "Point & Click Color Theory"
I don't use this one very often, though if you check my various designedly undisciplined blogs, you may come to think I should have. Instant color schemes is what you get. Very nifty. But I mostly just threw this in at the end to look hipper than I really am.
There are probably more, but those are the high points. I think, I read, I think some more, I grab some book covers and some URLs offa Amazon, I cram the lot into BBedit, stir over a low flame for nine hours, season to taste, then FTP the grafix over to panix.com in NY City (!) -- which has been comping my site(s) for about ten (10) years now (!!!) [thanks, Alexis] -- then I copy the stuff I've tested a million and a half times in my magic proprietary local template mockup, then jam the whole works down Blogger's throat via the web interface. I edit it there another couple hundred thousand times, and voila -- another meaningless blog post! Simple.
Look, Frank, you better spellcheck this, dude. It's already after 9am and I'm too fried. Hope it works for ya.
clocke/RB
December 15, 2005 | Permalink
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How?
On a desktop baby... thanx to Madame Levy for the link. You might want to just cut the volume after the opening anniversary song, since Madge Weinstein gets a little fartological with overflowing toilets and what-not.
Then I got this message from Kombinat!
How do I blog? You seem to be asking about mechanics of blogging? I use
Ecto for Mac posting to Kombinat! I am lazy so I don't edit. I don't even check
my grammar and spelling. I just vomit language onto a page in real time. Bada
Bing. There! Language! Sprayed on the page. - And 5 minutes later I might delete
it; or 3 days later I might edit it and sculpt the dried up vomit to make
something out of it. Or I will delete it because it was of no use to what I am
building. Actually I am building something with this blogging I just don't know
what it is. It's like hundreds of possible projects and all just sprayed there,
just splattered. I think I actually blog to wake myself up from the 'agreeable
somnolence'. I write as if it's not me so when I visit my blog I can read and
say "what kind of a stupid ass wrote this shit" and kind of look for clues to
wake up from the predictability of life. It works sometimes.
But 99% of my time blogging I spend by hanging out on other people's blogs.
For every 67 posts RageBoy makes I make one. I can read Mike Golby and
Matrullo's stuff all the time. And of course "wood s lot" is a constant
archeological dig months back. All of it good. All this blogging with time
stamps is really irrelevant. My blogging is all about reading other people's
stuff from way back. I just read, surf, listen to music, talk on the phone,
that's how I blog.
I actually noticed that I've spent this year splattering lots of comments
at WealthBondage using incomprehensible logic and obscure themes, weaving
personas, digging for gold of human thought. I have incredible allergic
reactions to cliches, to reasonable sentences. I actually developed allergies to
descriptive language and fully formed sentences. Thanks to blogging I finally
have found out that most people write about the same boring shit. So I try to
cut up language into pieces. Hack it. Vomit some verbs. It's incredibly
refreshing to find people struggling with birthing new conversations. Not
repeating the same old shit but really strugging in saying new sentences
inaccessible to them before. Reading blogs is the new blogging for me. I want to
read stuff that wakes me up. I want to blog stuff that wakes you up; best yet if
it just makes you cry for the lost days of life you will never get back because
you sold your life for daily comfort of ordinary vomit of language running in
your vains. Shit like that you know.
A bit about the mood; I blog when I fight my own desperation. When I deal
with my own cynicism and resignation about life, then I blog, but also when I
love life I blog, a paradox. But hen I am full of opinions I don't fucking
blog. It's dangerous to blog when I am full of opinions. Only shitty stuff
comes out of that. I get fucking cliche attack a 'look at me how fucking
original I am just like every body else". It also extends to when read something
really really great and I really really want to comment on it and I don't
because I am afraid I will fuck it up by posting a stupid comment. Actually most
of the time commenting is too much fucking work to tell you the truth. And I
blog usually when I am pissed off about being asleep to life, those are those
rare moments when I know I am just passing through on this planet and fucking up
my life by being reasonable and nice and pleasant and 'have a nice day' and
'would you like fries with that". It happens rarely you know.
Thanks for asking.
Head Janitor of Kombinat!
J. Maybe Elvis
Bada Bing to you too!
The Internets abound with artists. Madame Levy and Kombinat! are two that I like best. But Kombinat! seems to be fading, fading into a Tinkerbell-like transparency. Perhaps if we did the Peter Pan "do you believe in fairies" number... not a gay type thing, not some kind of sexist or gender based slur, not that at all... I'm talking about Peter Pan here and Tinkerbell, the part where she's dying and only a professed faith in fairies will possibly bring her back, and you don't want to get eaten by a fucking alligator do you? Well DO YOU???
December 15, 2005 | Permalink
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A whole lotta links...
About six months ago Gillian Gunson let me know that all the leet h4ck0rz use vi. I found this hard to believe since it took me back twenty years or so to some UC Extension unix class in Santa Clara taught on screaming fast 16 bit microprocessors and I suppose I knew that there was still grepping going on in the world, but....
Ms. Gunson is a little shy about sharing tips and tricks, and right now she is deep into "Watership Down" which she hopes provides some context for her answer "How do you blog?"
I know I commented on your blog that I was going to come up with another sarcastic quote for your general question, but I couldn't think of anything good. You left the interpretation of the "how" up to us, and I just can't come up with an interesting answer to any possible versions of the question. I could've written about how I administer and run my webserver at home so that I can have full control over my blog. Bo-ring. Or I could've tried the smart-ass angle of a year ago and say something like, "I blog by sitting in front of a keyboard and hitting at the keys with my fingers, duh!" Still bo-ring. Also insulting. You gave me too much freedom, and I am like a rabbit in a cage, with the cage door left open. I just sit there, because I wouldn't know what to do with the door.
I'm sure I'll have a better answer for your question next year, "Where". I have a couple answers for that one. Or, if you switch to something like "What are you wearing", or "What are you not wearing". I could write pages on those. Until then....
Gillian, I will save the "What are you wearing?" question for late night phone calls, if you don't mind. Meanwhile, thank you for sharing. No, seriously....
I was reminded of gg (for whom I have the greatest fondness and who
knows I am only teasing about the phone sex since her dad - who,
incidentally, gives his best PC chair to the cat - would hunt me down and have serious words with me if I was actually creepy).
Gillian's "bat clogging" post (see prior link) got me thinking about Niek Hockx, of shutterclog who said, "I don't blog. I clog... ;-)"
But Gillian also got me thinking about Miss Andrea Roceal James, who is blogsitting fishrush while Kent Squarks,
and Andrea (another vi user as it turns out, and most recently from the
NorthWest like Gillian, before she went down under) Andrea put together
a nicely crafted post at geekicon in which she said this about that:
In my little command window, I type ssh jngm.net and connect to my ISP. Then I type vi. And then somehow words flow out of my fingers and I'm writing the thing that has been rolling around in my brain for a while.
You should read the whole thing, and when you've done that, check out the post Betsy Devine shared
with us this week on this topic. In that post Betsy says
"Tool-istically, I use Manila on weblogger.com because that's where I
started out. When I started blogging, Paul Boutin was the only blogger
whose blog i had ever read--and he used Manila on weblogger.com. QED."
And that makes me think of Dave Winer, author of Manila, amonmg so many
other things. Dave posted on how he blogs. The post was to the point and surfaced OPML as the cornerstone for his blogging these days.
Blogging from Italy, Gaspar Torriero
says, "First and foremost, I *read* blogs, and this is 90% of my
blogging. I fire my aggregator first thing in the morning and start
reading. What I read prompts me to respond, comment, add, digress: I do
it in a post. It really *is* a conversation."
Another creative genius, Gary Turner of memoria technica, turned up with a thoughtful message. Gary, the managing director of a UK software firm, but perhaps better known for his inventions such as fake helipads (it's a status thing) and the Web Torch (use your CRT to light your way after dark), said:
I have recently fallen in with the tagging crowd and I have
abandoned categories as too clunky a method of obtaining some order and
meta-structure to my blog. I love the free, make it up as you go along
nature of tagging compared with the plan ahead approach required to
achieve good categorization.
Rarely, when I put together a long post or a post which I care
about, I occasionally go back and tidy up grammar and spelling - mostly
to make me sound all big and clever - an effect I rarely achieve first
time out the traps. But mostly I don’t erase, wholescale edit or modify
posts.
Among other ingenious schemes Gary came up with is "chalkchalking."
A few years ago a practice called War chalking emerged among h4ck0rz
doing a reccie for free wi-fi. Gary, brilliant entrepreneur that he
is, immediately saw that the foundational supply item for this market
is chalk.
I remember Doc Searls writing a few posts about war chalking. When I asked him how he blogs, he said:
I blog by writing.
That is, I blog the same way I write emails, chats and sometimes articles: conversationally.
I write in response to what other people write, sometimes in
response to what I've already written, sometimes as a way of blabbing
whatever is on my mind at the time.
"Hey look at this!" is a big part of my blogging. Sometimes.
"You might think..." is another big part.
"Anybody know more about...?" is another part.
Blogging is different than article writing in one significant
respect: often it's provisional. It's not finished. It's not issued
from a virtual lectern or pulpit. It's what I think might be so,
offered in a way that invites others to add more, to disagree, or
whatever.
In any case, it's participatory. There is feedback involved. It goes both ways.
Usually.
I've sometimes compared blogging to rolling snowballs down a hill. You can look it up.
Blogging is like that, too. It's look-upable. I like that.
Doc also pointed me to a nice interview that David Newberger did with him. Doc has a lot of good answers to the "How do you blog?" question layered in this interview.
Liz Ditz, another left coast blogger has a post at I Speak of Dreams that covers her platform and her process. Liz says she's developed policies and principles at Lisa Williams' urging, guidelines that set expectations regarding her work. She says,
If I can't verify the truth, (see below), I won't post it. If it
isn't in service of the good, I won't write about it (I've violated
this one several times in the past, let me tell you). If it isn't
useful to me or to others, I won't post it.
Purpose:
I maintain this blog to write about issues and events that interest me,
horrify me, enrage me, amuse me, or enlighten me. This blog reflects my
views and opinions. Feel fee to disagree, be bored, or offended. I
do hope you will find things with which to agree, be entertained, or
pleased.
Truth, assertion, and speculation:
I will clearly label matters that I know to be true, assertions of my opinion, and speculation as to the truth.
Privacy:
Does It Belong To Me, and Me Alone?
I will try to respect the privacy of others. I won't write about
the private lives and issues of those around me, no matter how I hear
about them. (This is a lesson I learned the hard way, and yes I have
failed this test in the past.) CAVEAT: If someone has published
information about herself in her own blog, I will feel free to blog
about that information. I won't reveal email addresses.
Bob Frankston, who blogs with Dan
Bricklin and David Reed -- together three of my all time tech heroes,
was kind enough to share a brief technical response. Bob said,
I do more essays than blogging but I also participate in email discussions.
I maintain a database of public posts and generate an index and
RSS feed at http://www.frankston.com/public/writings.asp. The index
points to my posts on SATN, Frankston and other public forums.
I have my own display engine for longer essays and other postings at that site.
I use blogger and my own posting tools for http://www.satn.org
I asked Jenny Attiyeh how she blogs and she said,
I don't really blog, I podcast. And I feel perpetually guilty
about it. There's a divide of sorts between audio blogs and text blogs.
But what exactly that divide is, or isn't, is an interesting question
to me. With the web taking off primarily as a means for people to
interact, argue, agree, podcasters are at a bit of a disadvantage. We
still are in the business, or pleasure, of putting content out there
for people to listen to, or not. Sounds like the MSM to me. There's of
course plenty of room to comment on my site. but it's not so easy to do
so if you first have to listen to the content! Which in my case usually
runs half an hour in length.
So how do I blog? Poorly. Over time, if and when I attract more
eyeballs/ears, I hope to build on the idea of participation -- of
getting input from bloggers (and their readers) on the various guests
I'll be interviewing -- in advance. The more disagreement the better!
Basically outsourcing/open sourcing my research. And then, of course,
this treasure chest of ideas would be woven into the interview, when
appropriate -- with credit.
This is a way I can see podcasters like myself morphing into
bloggers, and interacting better with the web community. Ideally I'd be
able to get a conversation going on the topic both before and after the
interview is completed. I'll keep plugging away at this -- but I
welcome any input/critique on how to make podcasts like mine more
blog-friendly.
Also, it perhaps doesn't help that the subject matter of ThoughtCast is
somewhat 'old school' or perhaps the word is old-fashioned --
interviews with academics and intellectuals, for heaven's sake. But
this is what makes me happy. I'll find out in due course if it makes
others happy too.
I heard from Brian Dunbar, the IT guy for the LiftPort project, who lives in Wisconsin. Brian said,
I'll attempt to address this at space4commerce.blogspot.com - but since I may not get around to blogging about how I blog and my email is open.
I blog with panache, baby. I blog in slacks and shirt, I blog in
jeans and boots, I blog in my pajamas. Well, I don't actually have
honest-to-God pajamas but I blog in my sweats and t-shirt.
I don't blog while dead drunk or otherwise out of my head. I do
blog while imbibing the occasional beer or glass of wine. I do blog
'tired' and 'exhausted' and I probably should not but (as we used to
say in my long ago studly Marine Corps youth) there it is.
I blog at work (all three of them) I blog at home I even (I blush
to admit this but I'm on a roll and damned if I'll stop now) I blog in
the john.
My name is Brian. I am a blogger.
My friend Jim Roberts, author of Duly Noded, a photographer, and another midwestern blogger, says,
I blog constantly, in my head that is, I'm always putting
together posts that never see the light of day, some of these die
because we seem to have a very short attention span. Linking to a week
old post labels you as someone not quite with it. Like "come on that is
so old news." If I can't get to it right a way it loses potency.
I do most of my writing on Snidely the Powerbook. I like the
keyboard and I'm less encumbered by bells and whistles with Snidely.
One of my only requirements is to write in an environment with a spell
checker, not that I'm a bad speller, I find it very distracting when I
am worrying about the spelling of a word - It distracts my chain of
thought. I am more than willing to skip the word and come back to it
later if I have software that will mark it as misspelled. While I could
use Word on a PC all the formating tools and other wild and wonderful
stuff it doesn't help keep my mind on what I want to do. Plus Word has
a tendency to hammer hand crafted html when copied and pasted into a
browser.
I've used Movable Type at http://www.noded.com/noded almost from
the beginning (2 months on blogger was enough). I type right into the
MT's web browser no frills text box. For the most part I use Safari
which is interesting as it is the one browser that does not show the
short cut buttons for making links etc. What is does do is spell check
right then and there. I find that it's ability to check my spelling
outweighs any need to automatically wrap text in html codes. So I hand
code all my html stuff. I do have some CSS that frames my pictures
that I used constantly.
I usually start with a very small idea of what the post will be,
I'm not one to have everything I want to say planned out ahead of time.
I will have a germ of an idea about what I want to say but I let my
research lead me to the ending that may or may not be anything near
what I started out to say. I need to be able to pop up a browser and
research a thought, Idea, or person as I am creating the post so I only
create posts when I have access to the internet. I find that online
research directs me to the post I want to make. Writing to me,
especially blog writing, is best when you are just riffing on what is
going on in your head tempered by the facts as you find them when you
go looking for them.
I also edit ferociously. I let the words come out any way that
they will just to get them on the screen. Then I go back and edit,
edit, and edit some more. I move sentences around, eliminate a whole
bunch of useless words and try to make my writing sharp and to the
point. Please note, I have no knowledge of proper punctuation so you
may find many more commas in my posts than are necessary. When I think
everything is set I post. Then I go to the page and read it as a
finished item. I usually end up doing more editing after it's posted. I
miss a lot of mistakes that I don't see until all of the html framework
is removed. I take another pass at sharpening the sentences. There has
been some posts where the post you find after an hour doesn't look
anything like the post when it was first published. The posts I feel
the best about are the ones where I am trying to convey things I feel
passionate about.
Enoch Choi, of medmusings, whom I had the good fortune to meet at the first BloggerCon shares the following:
How i blog in terms of hardware is hosting my own server at home with a Cobalt Cube and dynamic DNS.
How i post is via movable type's web interface, but how i get there differs in each location:
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mobile option 1: OQO 01+ with bluetooth to treo 650 verizon NationalAccess cellular modem
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mobile option 2: wifi where i can get it
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mobile option 3: treo browser (painful)
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mobile option 4: net cafe (e.g. posts from bali/phuket/bintan/cruises)
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home: G5, wifi to cable modem
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work: Wyse dumb terminals to windows network via citrix
Dr. Choi's work during Katrina was written up by Mobile Enterprise Computing. He blogs about it here.
Sascha Meinrath,
a community wireless expert and PhD student at the University of
Illinois addressed wireless networking needs in New Orleans following
the Hurricane. Asked how he blogs, he replied,
Often I draw inspiration from the e-mails, discussions, news
articles, and off-the-record comments I gather over the course of my
work. As a nexus for a variety of information, I blog by synthesizing
many of the unconnected points -- weaving a tapestry that's often of
interest to a diverse constituency. The "how of blogging" is often
complicated by constraints placed about confidential information (which
need remain non-public) and the wealth of unverifiable and/or
third-hand information. I try to blog based upon primary sourcing,
first-hand accounts, and a strong desire to "do no harm" through my
reporting.
Martin Geddes, quiet genius author of Telepocalypse says,
The chaos of my blogging methodology reflects the disorder of my
mind! I frequently create draft posts with ideas for an article. Many
get abandoned -- maybe 1/5 of them, many of which are quite long but I
felt didn't make the cut.
There's no focus or agenda generally to my blogging, but I reject
everything that's outside the scope of my blog's subject. If I want to
write about politics or trivia, I'll do it elsewhere.
Because my blog makes me no money directly, and I've two small
kids, posts typically get fitted in to odd moments and hours. Rather
too many blog posts are timestamped in the early hours of the morning.
Some blog posts I'll brew over long periods. I've got one or two where I've been gathering links for almost 2 years!
I happen to use Movable Type in its native mode, but the tool
makes virtually no difference to me. As long as it doesn't get in the
way of what I have to say, I don't care for anything too fancy.
Unless you've got a passion for what you write about, you'll
never keep it up. The blog posts tend to get written when the passion
level exceeds the laziness threshold (quite high in my case). There's
also a "blog anxiety" where if I don't post for 5 days or a week I get
twitchy. But
I never lack for things to write about.
Ken Camp, the Voice over IP maven said this about how he blogs,
When I'm in the zone, on my game, how do I blog? With a
vengeance. I'm not always in that zone. It's frustrating to know the
zone is there. The topics that fuel the fire are there. To lack the
time to do them justice can be a source of frustration. In my case, I
find that if I don't feel I have the time, I will avoid the meatier
topics that I cannot begin to treat as they deserve. And shame on me
for that. Both for not having the time and for not making that effort.
I use a variety of tools My personal blog runs on Wordpress. A
new community site I help lead runs on DotNetNuke ( far more than just
a blog). Both have web interfaces, and I actually use the web interface
quite a bit, but I use other tools as well. That interface is probably
my primary interface for day-to-day blogging. I use it for the chatty
things, take advantage of the trackback capabilities and such that are
convenient there.
For the longer thoughtful articles, which have become so very
rare for me, and the ones that are just offline ramblings for later
posting, I have a much different approach using an editor in some form.
I use Notepad, Outlook Notes. Sometimes my editor is email and portions
of things written, collected and then sent to myself for processing. I
use wBloggar some for posting because I like the way it lets me
operate. I sometimes use HTML-Kit for editing at the end when I'm
getting ready to post. Mostly I do the writing in text format and then
apply any cosmetic changes in the web interface for the appropriate
blog. Cut, paste, finalize really.
Mobility is a big deal to me. I often write for the blog when I'm
away from my own computer, saving for posting later. Mostly saving
locally, not as an online draft, but as text to be pasted when I can.
My hardware tools blur together. I use multiple Dell laptops and a Palm
LifeDrive. They blur together. Tools to get the job done really. Most
often a Windows laptop or Palm. I also do a fair bit of writing that
gets either synched from laptop to Palm to some other laptop, or gets
saved to USB drive for moving from system to system before it sees the
light of day.
On my Palm, I use the Outlook Notes feature of Key Suite
extensively, but I also use mo:Blog. It's a really handy blogging
editor with support for html tags and such. I use a wireless keyboard,
so this is my took for writing blog entries when I'm away - on a plane,
in a conference, in a meeting waiting for something to happen. It's my
primary remote blogging mechanism if I'm not in a conference or seminar
where I've taken my laptop. I try not to take my laptop to those things
all the time. When I post directly from my Palm, there's a default
tagline to note that, but I've found I write a lot on my Plam and then
finalize the post from PC, so the tagline doesn't kick in.
I set my blog up so I can use an email interface to send pics
from my cell phone. I think I've sent two. Maybe three. I don't do that
a lot. Mostly because lately I've been tied to routine places a lot.
I've only email posted once or twice I think. It works, but just
doesn't seem to suit my needs. It didn't feel comfortable, although I
barely checked it out. Odd since I do like the convenience of an XMLPRC
approach even when it means I have to fight around security problems.
What I find interesting about my own "how" is the "where"
portion. I write posts at home, my office, conference rooms, meetings,
training classes, the airport, restaurants, airplanes, hotel rooms.
Often while I'm watching TV with my laptop in my lap. A couple times in
a car while someone else was driving. Please note that I do not now,
nor have I ever posted from the bathroom. That room is reserved for
reading, not writing.
Steve Himmer, a novelist whose onepotmeal has long been a staple on my menu shares the following,
Most of the time, my posts are the result of some other activity
I've just completed -- taking a walk, watching the bird feeder,
reading, making coffee in the morning, etc. Some phrase or image will
lodge itself in my head, and I'll sit down (usually at the desk in my
office) and work with that snippet until it says what I think I want it
to. Then I post it, and immediately after doing so realize that the
words are all wrong, so I revise and repost. Often, I'll look at it
again a few minutes later and tweak a bit more. So I guess I blog as if
I'm looking at clouds -- something drifts by, and I try to guess what
it looks like.
Another professional writer, Sheila Lennon blogging at Subterranean Homepage News says,
In the newsroom, I blog when I've finished writing headlines,
proposals, captions, briefs, survey questions, emails and code. It's a
frequency shift.
At home, blogging is a demented online game, a battle of wits
with a monster: My desktop went dark last month after a few weeks of
screen dementia, and even the big button wouldn't turn it off.
Now I use the laptop, but there's somebody on the other side of
that screen too. For a few hours one night he only permitted me capital
letters, even though I'd reprogrammed Caps Lock to a more useful left
Enter key.
Sometimes he's scrolling madly through mail and tabs, or
insisting we race to the top of the page when I want to scroll down.
He's taken over the laptop's keyboard, and only the far-left key on
each row works. The arrows and backspace are in play, but I can usually
seize them back.
I bought a cheap USB keyboard and use it on top of "his," but I'm
in the habit of mousing on the fringe of the keys, so I toss aside the
new keyboard, use the mouse, then type from habit on the now-dead keys,
toss aside the mouse, retype on the new keyboard, repeat.
How do I blog while battling the monster? Tersely, sometimes only a sentence pointing to someone else's good work.
I plan to get the desktop fixed, but I must place my Christmas orders in time to get them shipped, before he gets stronger...
As you can see, Sheila's contribution may better have been grouped
with yesterday's post on "the terse and the teleonomic," but what can I
say? In this case your humble editor nodded off. I have one more post
planned for the series (and I suspect there will be a recap next week,
perhaps referencing a few latecomers to the conversation). But for
Friday, I'm excited! I'm serving up a little audio hors d'oeuvre that Leslie Winer sent, followed by an amuse bouche by Kombinat! after which - the entree - a sixteen ounce serving of Chris Locke. Rare.
December 15, 2005 | Permalink
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December 13, 2005
If you're really getting into it...
If you're really getting into this "How Do You Blog" thing, I'd recommend reading Rebecca Blood's interviews with "bloggers on blogging."
Matt Haughey [ 06/05 ]
Jessamyn West [ 07/05 ]
Heather Armstrong [ 08/05 ]
Rashmi Sinha [ 10/05 ]
Glenn Reynolds [ 11/05 ]
December 13, 2005 | Permalink
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DrupAlert
I'm cross posting the "How do you blog" content at Doc Searls IT Garage. This morning I haven't been able to post. Might be because the head mechanic has reserved the space for his Syndicate conference blogging. Don't know, don't really care. I'll get the post(s) over there when my access returns. Housekeeping hints... there's no contact info for a user to submit an email query at IT Garage. Also, the user is able to create the post, and it seems to get queued, but this morning this user gets an access denied after hitting the submit button. Naturally this user submitted about three more copies expecting different results. Insanity.
December 13, 2005 | Permalink
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