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.

French Headmaster Dooced

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The headmaster of a technical school in Lozere, France, has been dismissed after discovery of his anonymously-written weblog, which was deemed obscene and pornographic (link to Babelfish translation). Apparently he was discovered when he posted his photo in a recent entry.

Can remarks published on a blog perso justify a dismissal? Yes according to the national Education which judged that this civil servant held a blog “obscene and pornographic”. It there posted its homosexuality and criticized its administration.

The fact is without precedent in France. Located on Internet via its blog Garfieldd.com, the headmaster of the technical school of Mende, in Lozere (48), at the beginning of January by national Education was revoked. The institution reproaches him for having published contents in “pornographic” matter on its blog, however held under pseudo (Garfieldd). But of the notes on its professional life frays with others intimate and on its states of hearts its function and identifiable place of work returned.

Besides in his last version(filedpartly), the chief of establishment posted his face in banner page. What could convince the professors of another college of the area to alert their hierarchy. “To denounce” others will say.

In an interview on line on the site of RTL, the headmaster reacts highly: “I challenge the pornographic term, that was never the case on my blog (…) in which I spoke about my life (and thus also) of my professional life. Objectively my blog was anonymous.” Like any civil servant, this headmaster was held with the duty of reserve, of which the blogs are not free.

I, unsurprisingly, discovered this when I noticed traffic getting a bit of a boost thanks to a link midway through the article.

This business rests the question of the freedom of the blogs compared to professional space. Abroad precedents exist: a Web designer American laid off in 2002, to have scoffed the life at its company (without quoting of names) on its blog Dooce.com; an employee of Microsoft in 2003, for an impertinent post published on its blog perso; an employee of bookshop in Edinburgh (Scotland) to have disparaged its employers; an air-hostess of Delta Air Lines to have photographed itself in uniform on an aircraft of its company in a sexy installation.

Heh. “Impertinent.” I like that.

I’m also starting to get hits from the ZDNet France article that the Yahoo! page was syndicated from. Two and a quarter years after ‘the incident’, and while things are slower, my 15 minutes of fame is still making itself known from time to time. Yikes.

The Future is Not What It Used to Be

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A funny short-short story by Paul Di Filippo set in the near future after the collapse of the Internet:

I HAD TO run a few errands downtown, but I hesitated to go.

What if I ran into bloggers?

Ever since the total, irretrievable collapse of the Internet in a chaos of viruses, worms, spam, terrorism and busts by the FBI anti-porn squad, that archaic species of human had become a bigger street menace than mimes, Jehovah’s Witnesses, or panhandlers ever were.

[…] I had almost gained the security of the lobby of my bank when my luck ran out, and I was accosted with no easy means of escape by a wild-eyed figure.

Backed into an embrasure by the advancing apparition who had been cleverly lying in wait for prey, I was startled to recognize — beneath the grime, elf-locked hair, tattered clothing, and unkempt beard — a man I had known from his earlier life.

[…] The recognition was plainly one way. Doctorow’s crazed eyes betrayed no familiarity with my face. I was only another potential flesh-and-blood “hit” for his “site.”

Doctorow carried a mud-splattered messenger’s satchel over one shoulder. From this bag he now removed an old-fashioned wirebound spiral notebook and pen. He made a tick mark on paper, recording my “visit.” Then he launched into his spiel.

“Welcome to a directory of wonderful things, my friend! Get ready to be amazed, thrilled and astounded! I’m going to show you stuff you never believed existed, stuff that will brighten your life, enhance your senses and enlighten your consciousness! For instance — ”

(via — no, no irony here — Boing Boing)

iTunes “Future is Not What it Used to Be, The” by Parallax1 from the album Parallax1 (1996, 5:46).

Seattle’s Seasons in Software

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The news that yesterday’s rumors are true and that NewsGator has acquired NetNewsWire is flying all over the ‘net right now. NewsGator posted a quick Q&A about the acquisition, which produced this little gem from NetNewsWire’s Brent Simmons:

Q: Is Brent moving to Denver? Or Tennessee?

Greg: Yes!

Brent: No, I’ll be staying in Seattle.

Greg: Darn it, I’m 0 for 2. Denver’s not such a bad place, you know. We have 4 seasons and everything!

Brent: As a Macintosh user interface designer I like to simplify whenever possible. Four seasons is two too many. Seattle has two seasons, rainy and dry — anything more is too complex for new users. ;)

LJ-style links for Ecto

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This is actually fairly simple, but you never know.

For ecto users who want to post LiveJournal-style links to LJ user accounts (such as [djwudi's info]djwudi) into a weblog entry on a non-LJ system:

  1. Open Window > HTML Tags.
  2. Click the + button to create a new tag set.
  3. Paste the following code into the ‘opening tag’ box (as a single line): 
    <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=%*">
<img src="http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif" alt="[%*'s info]" width="17" height="17" /></a>
<a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/%*/"><b>
  4. Paste the following code into the ‘closing tag’ box: 
    </b></a>
  5. Assign a command key sequence (optional, of course — I used option-command-J).

Viola! You’re done. Now, just type someone’s LJ username into a weblog post, select it, and choose the new tag set (or type the command key sequence you set), and the LJ-style link is created.

Basic HTML tag cheatsheet

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After a friend asked me a few questions about the basic HTML tags while trying to clear up some confusion, I went Googling for some sort of cheat sheet listing just the most basic tags. I couldn’t find one — just came up with a lot of full-blown tutorials or cheat sheets listing every tag in the book — so I tossed this together. Hopefully it helps.

I’m only looking at the tags most likely to be used in your standard, basic weblog post, so there won’t be much in the way of structural stuff here, just presentational.

Read more

Playing with MT 3.2 Beta

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I’m spending a little bit of time playing with the just-released public beta version of Movable Type 3.2 on a separate weblog. While I was tempted to just jump straight into upgrading this weblog straight away, I figured that it would be best to wait for a bit when I saw the list of already known bugs that still need to be squashed.

Still, I’m quite impressed with what I’ve seen so far, and it’s nice to have something of a ‘test bed’ to play with while work progresses towards the final version. Feel free to stop by and say hi if you’re curious.

iTunes “Dream Induction” by Emergency Broadcast Network from the album Telecommunication Breakdown (1995, 3:20).