Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
Whatever I’m geeking out about at the time.
Hot on the heels of the theatrical release of Pirates of the Caribbean (which I really need to see), Disney has released the trailer to their next ride-turned-movie, The Haunted Mansion.
I was a lot more interested in this before I saw Eddie Murphy in the trailer. Has he made anything even remotely funny since The Golden Child?
(via Cory Doctorow)
Reading Gabe’s musings on how to handle two blogs reminded me that I hadn’t ever answered my own question! At least, I hadn’t answered it over here — I did over on The Long Letter.
For the record, though, I’ve decided to put The Long Letter on hold for the duration of the TypePad beta, to give me the most possible opportunities to participate in the collective tire-kicking here. There are two projects that I’ve signed up for using The Long Letter’s address that I’ll post over there (26 Things and the Blogathon), but for now, everything else will show up here.
Aaahh — the eternal debate of nearly everyone who’s found themselves with a dual life: how do you cope when the two start to intersect?
During my brief contract earlier this summer, a jarring moment occurred when I walked up to one of the people I worked with and saw that he was reading my weblog. I’ve never had such an obvious mix of the ‘real’ world and this virtual world before, and I found it uncomfortable. He’s a very likable person, friendly and personable and now a budding weblogger — but it was still a moment that stopped me dead in my tracks.
I’ve rarely ever stopped to worry about the two worlds intersecting for me. In fact, there are often times when I wish they intersected more. As my circle of friends has grown and started to go our seperate ways, it’s gotten far harder to keep in touch with each other over the miles. We’re not always able to afford long distance phone calls, not all of us are as good with keeping in touch via e-mail as we should be…all the usual reasons and excuses for not keeping in touch. I’ve thought many times that I wish more of the people I knew in the “real world” also had presences in the “virtual world.” So far, I’ve managed to get my dad and my friend Kirsten to start exploring the world of weblogging, but that’s been it. Still, it’s a start.
But admittedly, there are considerations to be taken when you know that it’s not just a random collection of cyber-strangers reading the words you toss into the void, but people that you’re going to need to see face-to-face. Suddenly posts get second-guessed, certain topics seem a little to dicey to bring up.
…I have a strong suspicion that those people who write weblogs read by spouses, kids, and employers tend to write differently then people like me who are, for all intents and purposes, obscured from view because we’ve kept the two worlds far apart.
I’ve got a very small regular readership of my site (at least, that I know of), and primary among those that I know read my ramblings are my parents. I feel lucky that we’ve managed over the years to build a good enough relationship that I generally don’t have to censor my ramblings. While I’m not one for great amounts of profanity, I know they’re not going to look down their noses at me if I choose to toss the occasional expletive in; they know that I’ve experimented with drugs in the past, so I don’t have to worry about mentioning that; and I’m fairly positive that they’re not laboring under the illusion that I’ve made it to the tender age of 30 a virgin.
Of course, if they were, I’ve just blown that right out of the water, haven’t I? ;)
In any case, the point is that, at least for me, it’s rare that I hesitate on posting something because of anyone who might read my site. Not unknown — no matter how good my relationship with my parents, or anyone else, may be, some things I’m just not quite willing to tie to my public website — but rare.
Six Log pointed out a desktop MT posting application called Zempt that I’m checking out right now. Currently it’s Windows-only, but according to their roadmap, Mac support is planned for two or so revisions down the line.
Looks like Userspace might have some competition down the line! As it stands right now, Zempt looks good for the Windows side of things, and Userspace has my vote for the Mac side of the equation.
I haven’t been following the story too closely, but there’s been a small amount of ruckus lately because the CEO of Userland Software, John Robb, abruptly left the company, and when he did, his entire weblog disappeared from the web.
Nobody seems to be too sure just why his entire archive of posts disappeared. Did John take them down? Did Dave Winer (founder of Userland)? Were they just deleted because they lived on Userland’s server, and as an ex-employee, John wasn’t allowed to use Userland’s hosting anymore? Lots of questions, as as yet, few answers.
Rick Klau is concerned about the situation (rightly so), and ends his post with the following advice:
Final lesson from this situation: never, ever blog at a domain that’s not owned by you. Don’t blog on your employer’s site, don’t blog on your blogging application’s site — make sure your blog lives (and stays!) on your own domain.
This comes at an interesting time for me. Part of my motivation for applying for the TypePad beta program was that, after running my website off of my own server under my desk for years, I’m considering finally relinquishing that amount of control and moving to a hosted solution. Should I do so, I’d be doing exactly what Rick advises against, and, admittedly, there is a small amount of risk in that. Should Six Apart (creators of MovableType and TypePad) fold, my site and all of it’s pages could go up in smoke (for what it’s worth, I don’t think there’s a very high probability of that).
However, it seems to me there’s a very simple solution to this, that, for me, outweighs any risk of my web-based life disappearing into the great bit bucket in the sky, and that’s simply this: back up your files. I know that MovableType has an export feature that allows you to save a local copy of every post on your weblog, and I would assume (though I don’t know) that the other blogging systems have a similar feature. It’s useful both as an importing mechanism when changing sites or weblogs, but it also makes a great backup mechanism. Ever since I suffered the loss of my last webserver, I’ve been making sure to export my site on a regular basis. If anything goes all aflooey (a technical term, to be sure), I’m covered.
It may very well be that John has done just this, and, once he’s settled in at wherever he’s going, his entire website will reappear on the web at a new address. From the number of posts I’ve seen about his ‘disappearance’, I’d say that there are a fair amount of people hoping for that to be the case. Hopefully it’s not too long before we find out.
In the end, then, I’d worry less about relinquishing control of your archives to an employer or to your blogging host company, than I would about making sure you have a current backup so that, should disaster strike, recovery is just a few clicks away.
(via Erik)
Shelley noticed TypePad weblogs starting to pop up out of the woodwork today, and points out a few that she’s found.
As was mentioned in one of the comments to her post, it’s definitely interesting being in a beta test period with weblogs that are public, and yet being bound by a (limited) NDA that prevents me from saying much of anything about the service itself. This isn’t a complaint at all, mind you — it just means I can’t flood my weblog with “Oooh! Look at that!” and “This is so cool!” and “Check out what I can do!” posts.
In other words, it’s a good thing. ;)
Obviously enough, some of the new toys are going to be fairly obvious, if you know where to look. All I feel entirely safe saying is that everything on this site is created and managed through TypePad — and that’s also a good thing.
And now, I’m off to play some more…
NOTICE: This weblog (The Long Letter) will be going on hold for a bit. I’m not disappearing, though — I’m just going to be using Eclecticism as my primary weblog for the duration of the TypePad beta testing project.
As I’m already signed up for the 26 Things and Blogathon projects on this website, though, those posts will be appearing here when they’re ready to go. Just about everything else, however, will most likely be showing up on Eclecticism.
Once the beta test period is over, one of two things will happen: either I will close down Eclecticism and import all of its entries into The Long Letter, or I will move The Long Letter (and djwudi.com) onto TypePad. When the time comes, I’ll be sure to make a note of that.
In the meantime, though — see you over at Eclecticism!
Britney Spears admitted today that she isn’t a virgin.
In other news, the Pope is still Polish.
(via MeFi)
Looks like Apple’s iTunes Music Store is catching on (or, at the very least, getting enough interest to warrant an interesting experiment): in the US market, the soundtrack for the movie The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen will only be available through the iTMS — no CD’s will be pressed.
I’ve got mixed feelings on this, personally. One of the things that has kept me from jumping full-bore into the iTMS for my music is the paucity of full ID3 tags in the purchased files. As I’ve been importing my CD collection, I’ve been working on being very thorough with the metadata included with each song: Artist, Title, Album, Year of release, and Composer are all information that I want available in my collection. Unfortunately, with the tracks I’ve purchased from the iTMS so far, Artist, Title, and Album seem to be all you get.
With a soundtrack release that (at least in the US market) has no physical media, how easy is it going to be for me to track down the rest of the metadata that I want included for search and organizational purposes? Not very, would be my guess, which concerns me. I like the idea, concept, and execution of the iTMS a lot, and I do support this experiment — just gimme my metadata!
(via MacRumors)