Hey, Tim —
Could you do me a favor and point Rick to this webpage?
You might want to give him a drool cup first, though. ;)
(via Phil)
Tech
Tech-focused ramblings. Computers, blogs, and whatever else fits.
Tablet PCs
I just had someone ask me what I thought about TabletPCs. Honestly, I haven’t given a whole lot of thought to them. I have, though, been a fairly regular reader of Robert Scoble‘s for a while now, and he’s big into the TabletPC thing, so I just pointed them to his site. Too bad Radio doesn’t categorize, though — he’s mentioned TabletPCs so many times in so many different contexts, that it’s difficult to narrow down any single post about the various pros and cons of TabletPCs. The first two I came up with were both from last December. I’m sure that Robert himself could come up with better links, but those were a good start.
Pings?
Why is it that when using a desktop blogging client (I’ve noticed this behavior in three so far: Userspace, Kung-Log, and NetNewsWire), pings don’t seem to be sent when a post is published? The URLs to be pinged are saved with the post, but the actual ping doesn’t seem to take place. Is this a limitation of the XML-RPC implementation, or is it possibly a bug within TypePad (cringes, and looks around wildly for the gods of the NDA to strike me dead)?
News to nobody
Something I just discovered, thanks to a comment at Etherfarm. If you’re running Windows XP, on-screen text legibility can be drastically improved by switching on ClearType.
To do so: Start Menu > Control Panel > Display > Appearance tab > Effects… button > Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts option > ClearType menu choice > Apply.
Observe:
Without ClearType
With ClearType
Of course, text under OS X looks like ClearType-enabled text under XP from the getgo, without having to drill down through dialogs and menu choices to find the option, if you even know that it’s there. But, admittedly, at least the option is there, and it does help.
What's going on?
All of a sudden, the right-hand sidebar, rather than displaying on the right side of the page, is being shoved underneath the left-hand sidebar, after all the main content — at least, that’s what’s going on in IE6 on the PC.
Grrrr.
I have no idea why.
Found the offending post, and removed it for the time being. Haven’t figured out what the issue was, though. Hrm.
Tweaking TypePad Templates
Up until now, all the various design tweaks I’ve made on this site have been conducted from within the TypePad interface, without my mucking about with any of the code. That’s starting to change, however, as I start to incorporate some of the conventions I’ve gotten used to with my templates at The Long Letter into the site here. I’m taking things a little slowly to make sure I don’t break anything (permanently), but work has begun.
Some details and thoughts on my changes follow.
(The following notes will be updated as I work my way through the various templates and make my changes.)
All templates
Two minor changes have been made to all the templates.
The first is purely cosmetic, in that I’ve adjusted the indenting of all the HTML code so that it’s easier for me to track through. As a side benefit, it should be a bit easier for other people if they go poking around in my source code.
Secondly, and important for usability, I’ve noticed that in the default templates, none of the hyperlinks have the title attribute set (the text that shows as a tooltip in most browsers, or before the URL in the status bar in Safari). I was somewhat surprised by that, but it’s a fairly simple fix for most of the tags.
Archive Templates (category and monthly)
The default templates for archives display every post in its entirety in reverse chronological order (exactly which posts are displayed depends on the archive type — all posts in a single category for category archives, all posts in a month for monthly archives, etc.). That may work well if you create short posts, or don’t post terribly often, but for me, it’s a nightmare. I tend to babble and create (ridiculously) long posts, and while this site is new, if I do end up adopting TypePad for my permanent home once it’s open for business, then I’m going to want to import all two years plus of my archives. Obviously, with the default templates, this could make for extremely long archive pages.
So, to combat that, I set up my archive templates to create essentially a ‘table of contents’ for each archive page. Each archive page now displays the title of each individual post, linked to the post’s individual entry page. After that comes the post excerpt, then a brief listing of the post’s metadata (post time and whether any comments have been added — were I creating a multi-author weblog, post author would be included also).
With this setup, while each archive page will still grow over time, it will be substantially smaller than it would be if it were displaying the entirety of each post. By including the post’s excerpt, it allows for a little more contextual indication of what each post is about, so it should still be relatively easy to find individual posts.
Currently (as of 8:20pm, July 13th) I’ve only altered the category templates to reflect this scheme, but monthly archives should be updated shortly.
7/13 8:54pm: Monthly archive pages have also been updated.
Archive templates (individual)
Not too terribly many changes here, aside from the aforementioned HTML re-formatting and adding title attributes to the hyperlinks. I did tweak the post metadata line so that the permalink is attached to the timestamp on the post rather than a single word that just says ‘Permalink’, and then added permalinks to individual comments with the same style. Other than that, it’s primarily the same.
I would eventually like to see if the live comment preview I have working on my individual pages on The Long Letter will work in this layout, but I’ll probably save that for another night, just in case it turns into more of a battle than I think it will.
Main index template
Again, like the individual archives, not too many changes — primarily just the formatting of the metadata line, with permalinks moved to the post time. Not that exciting, overall.
Main archives template
The default main archive template is functional, but nothing more than that. A simple list of links to the monthly archives, with links to category archives (if you’re using categories) below that. Not bad, of course, but I wanted to do better.
The monthly archive links I’ve kept more or less the same, with the exception that rather than listing out one on top of the other (and using up a large amount of vertical space for very little information), they list out horizontally. Of course, you can’t really tell that now, but when we roll around to August it’ll be more obvious.
For the category archives, I’ve included the post titles to the last ten posts in each category beneath the category title. The title itself links to the full category archive page, while the post titles link to their respective individual pages. It’s not much more information that what was available before, but it does give a little bit more, and can make searching for a recent post a little quicker than digging through each archive page if you don’t quite remember what category it got tossed into.
[N]echo aggregators
There’s been something of a ruckus in the geek/tech side of the blogosphere for a few weeks now that I’ve been loosely following, but not involving myself in (primarily because much of the tech bits go far beyond what my lil’ brain can handle).
To give a very loose summary:
- RSS (what the acronym stands for varies depending on who you ask) is a machine-readable text format that allows (among other things) websites to syndicate other websites content, and allows special programs called news aggregators to display many sites content in a single simple interface (I use NetNewsWire).
- RSS was created by, among other people, Dave Winer.
- Many people were not entirely happy with the functionality the RSS specification(s) offered.
- Many of these same people, rightly or wrongly, for various reasons, do not get along with Dave.
- Much drama regarding the RSS specification ensued.
- A group of people decided that it was in everyone’s best interest to create a new syndication format.
- Dave, rightly or wrongly, was less than thrilled.
- Much more drama ensued.
And that, more or less, brings us up to where we are now. If you’re curious about any of the details (and haven’t already been either watching from the sidelines or caught in the crossfire), a few Google, Feedster, or Technorati searches for various combinations of ‘dave’, ‘winer’, ‘rss’, ‘pie’, ‘echo’ and/or ‘necho’ should give you far more information than you would probably want in the first place.
Anyway. The Necho (as I believe it’s currently called) project is coming along steadily, and while it’s still being hammered together, Necho feeds are currently starting to pop up around the ‘net. I even have one here.
What surprised me while going through my newsfeeds tonight is that Dave, while he may come across as an ass at times, is certainly not one to sit on his ass while some new technological goodie comes across his screen (even if it’s one he’s not entirely thrilled with). He announced today the ~~first~~ second aggregator that supports Necho feeds (Fredik Lundh beat him to being the first). I have to say, I’m impressed.
The ~~war~~ ~~drama~~ disagreements may very well continue for a while, but Necho does seem to be picking up steam, and whether or not Dave approves, at least he’s lending his support. Even if it’s just “for bragging rights”, the support is there, and in the end, that’s a good thing.
Oh, by the way…
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.
Are friends electric?
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.
Playing with Zempt
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.