weblogs

I’ve been blogging since around November 2000 (arguably, earlier than that, that’s just when I started using software on the backend); this is for posts generally about blogging.

Pings?

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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)?

Are friends electric?

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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

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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.

Information overload

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The big problem (for me, at least) of having a multitude of subscribed RSS feeds in your newsreader is that after not checking in for a couple days, there’s so much to wade through that you end up overloading, and not posting about any of it (sigh). I know I went past a few interesting posts, but they just got lost in the noise.

I’m sure there’s a lot of nifty stuff out there on the ‘net right now. Guess y’all will just have to go find it yourselves. Sorry!

Greetings, Earthlings

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Just something cool: a weblog from space, written by NASA Science Officer Ed Lu from on board the International Space Station.

At night, the dominant thing you see when you look down is thunderstorms. Lightning lights up the clouds in sometimes spectacular displays. At any given time at night, especially over the tropics, you can see one or more lightning storms going on. The lightning flashes illuminate the clouds from within, and ripple through the storm systems. I enjoy turning off all the lights in the docking compartment, and watching thunderstorm systems at night through its sideward facing windows. The southern Indian Ocean is a great place to watch thunderstorms.

As we near Australia, if you look towards the horizon southward you can see the aurora. The aurora look like glowing green curtains which move upwards from the top of the atmosphere. The curtains intersect the atmosphere in a curved line, which appears as a bright green line south of Australia. There are times when we actually fly through the aurora, and you can look downwards and see the green glow below you. Sometimes there are traces of red along with the predominant green. We’ve taken some time-lapse movies looking towards the horizon as we fly past the aurora.

(via Craig Suchland)

TypePad beta testing!

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I got a surprisingly cool e-mail when I got home today — I’m a TypePad beta tester!

I can’t really say much more than that, as is to be expected with something such as this, but one thing I can do is point you to my TypePad weblog: Eclecticism! There’s not a whole lot there yet, I’m still more or less randomly poking around and getting the hang of the new digs, but more will appear before too terribly long.

Now I just need to figure out how I’m going to manage keeping two weblogs current and up to date, without letting either one languish too much. Should be interesting. We’ll see how I do. ;)

They Might Be Monitors

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Help raise money for Amnesty International and sponsor me for Blogathon 2003! Looks like TMBM is going to be keeping an eye out on all the various Blogathon participants, compiling a live-as-we-go “best of” list. Should be interesting to see what pops up as things progress!

They’ve already found a few ‘concept’ projects: one site will be focusing on Harry Potter, and another will be posting in haiku. I’m thinking about focusing on some of the music I listen to that isn’t overly well known, especially now that I can let people listen in, but I’m not entirely sure yet. Still have a couple weeks to plan!

Blogathon 2003

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After being prompted by D, I’ve signed up for Blogathon 2003. 24 hours of weblogging, raising money for charity (in my case, Amnesty International)! Of course, I won’t raise any money if I’m not sponsored…so won’t you be so kind as to sponsor me?

So what exactly is a “blogathon”?

First some terminology: “blog” is a shortened version of “weblog” which is a frequently updated personal website. Most blogs have date stamps on the entries, and consist of links and commentary.

Now, remember when you were in school and you would bowl for charity? And for every pin you knocked down you got, say, ten cents? Or run for a dollar a mile? During the Blogathon, people update their websites every 30 minutes for 24 hours straight. For this, they collect sponsorships. Pledges can be a flat donation, or a certain amount for every hour the blogger manages to stay awake.

So how exactly does this work?

Easy: you sign up to sponsor a blogger. On July 26th, watch your blogger go for 24 hours straight. When the event is over, you’ll receive an email asking you to donate directly to the charity for which your participant was blogging.

Now, to see if I can pull an all-nighter — I haven’t done that in years…

UserSpace early beta

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Phil was kind enough to include me as part of his beta testing team for UserSpace, his followup blog client to EspressoBlog, so I’ve been posting most of my posts tonight from UserSpace.

First impressions: quite good! For one reason or another, all of the prior standalone applications I’ve used to post to my weblog have had just enough quirks or annoyances to keep me using the standard MT interface most of the time. Phil actually came closest to what I was looking for with EspressoBlog, and it was the prior reigning champion…but UserSpace has it beat hands down.

UserSpace is fast, organizes the various elements and options available for weblog posts well, and handles all the various little goodies that I like to have available (multiple weblog support, primary and extended entry, excerpt, and even keyword fields, multiple category selection, menus for text formatting and comments — any goodie that you have available within the standard MT interface is in UserSpace). I can even set upload directories individually for any uploaded files. Nicely done!

That said, of course, I’ve stumbled across a couple small bugs (though that’s why they call these ‘betas’, right?). None of them deal-breakers, but worth mentioning.

There’s no indication that UserSpace is doing anything when posting an entry or uploading a file. Some small progress bar or spinning flower (or whatever the OS X dingbat for “I’m thinking, leave me alone” is) would be handy, just so we know that something is going on.

For some reason, I can’t upload files (though this may well be something odd on my end, and not within UserSpace). When I try, I get the following error:

XML-RPC Fault

Fault code: 0
Fault message: Application failed during request deserialization: Can’t locate MIME/Base64.pm in [\@INC]{.citation cites=”INC”} ([\@INC]{.citation cites=”INC”} contains: /Library/WebServer/CGI-Executables/mt/extlib /Library/WebServer/CGI-Executables/mt/lib /System/Library/Perl/darwin /System/Library/Perl /Library/Perl/darwin /Library/Perl /Library/Perl /Network/Library/Perl/darwin /Network/Library/Perl /Network/Library/Perl .) at /Library/WebServer/CGI-Executables/mt/extlib/XMLRPC/Lite.pm line 278.

I ran into some wierdness with categories that seemed to fix itself. I had a couple posts that originally showed up on my main page without categories assigned, but when I put the next post up, the categories mysteriously appeared.

The last thing I ran into actually amused me. After posting the ‘Dean calls for Bush accountability‘ post, I realized that I’d mucked up the link. Easy to fix, as UserSpace has the ability to edit past posts. I jumped in, fixed the goof, and saved the edited post.

Imagine my surprise when after saving the post, it showed up with the ‘Hunting Wabbits’ text formatting option — suddenly Elmer Fudd had posessed my weblog! ;) Apparently, if you don’t specifically choose a text formatting plugin, UserSpace defaults to the standard ‘Convert Line Breaks’ plugin when first submitting a post. Upon editing a post, however, as there is no text formatting option specifically chosen, it defaults to the first item in the menu — which in my case, let Elmer Fudd run rampant. Again, it was an easy fix (just choose the correct text formatting option, and re-save), but it gave me a good laugh when I saw what had happened.

All in all, though, I’m quite happy with where UserSpace is, even in its ‘early beta’ stage.