Tag: blogging (Page 3 of 4)

A few blog minor blog updates.

At times (OK, quite often) I like to imagine that I have a huge number of regular readers. Dozens, hundreds perhaps. I like to fantasize that they check in regularly not just to get updates on the wacky things the girls are doing, but to see what else I’m reading and writing about. Thus, I like to believe that any time I make minor tweaks to the blog, lots of people all around the world are noticing and wondering about the meanings behind the changes. So, as usual, I ask you to indulge me in my Internet fantasies as I explain some adjustments I’ve made over the past couple weeks.

First, I’ve added a new section called Hotspots that can be accessed from the top of each page. It is a listing of some of the websites I read on a daily basis, if you want to see firsthand how I waste much of my time.

Second, as you may have noticed, the fonts I’m using have changed. I’m trying out a service called TypeKit that is dedicated to helping websites break out of the small number of fonts that blog templates offer up. As I understand it, most modern browsers will go out and automatically download any fonts they encounter that they have not already cached away. So most of you should have noticed the change, although there may be some Internet Explorer stragglers out there. I’ll probably continue to try different fonts for the next few weeks until I find one I dig the most. As of this writing, I’m using Museo Sans.

Finally, astute readers no doubt picked up on my adjusting how I do footnotes. Traditionally, I had used what I’ll call the Posnanski style of footnotes.*

(That’s what Joe Posnanski does on his site. He throws an asterisk in the body of his post when he wants to add a lengthy, parenthetical thought, and then using a second asterisk and italics, offers up that thought.)

That system generally works well. I like being able to put the parenthetical thought close to the original reference. But, in some ways, it is also cumbersome, forcing you to read through or jump past it to continue with the main body.

I found a cool little way of creating true footnotes that I’ve been using for the past couple weeks. It’s pretty slick. I throw in a standard footnote number, like this.¹ Go ahead, click on it.

See, easy.

I don’t know if that’s better or worse, easier to read or more cumbersome, but it looks more official, so I’ll stick with it for the time being.

Three things that don’t really matter, other than to me and one or two readers, but I thought I would share anyway.

Seems like a good time for one of my occasional State Of The Blog posts. Don’t worry, you aren’t going to have to learn a new address or anything like that.

Overall, I think the move to WordPress and server space I own has been a good one. There haven’t been any downtimes, at least that I’ve noticed. While you haven’t seen major changes, I do like having the freedom to do whatever I want to the blog, free from the limits imposed by hosted services. There have been some minor hiccups, like the e-mail notifications of new comments not working at times. There was a week when there were 4-5 new comments but I had no idea because I rely on the e-mail function to let me know they’re out there.

As you may recall, one of my reasons for moving the blog was so I could eventually completely control the look of it. With that in mind, I was working through a coding for the web book so I could put my own WordPress theme together. Well, that kind of stalled out. It’s been months since I cracked the book open, so whenever I do decide to tackle it again, I’m going to have to start from the beginning. I have a big reading project lined up for the fall, so I would imagine I won’t make another attempt until early 2010.

Fortunately, I really like the theme I’m using now and am comfortable using it for the foreseeable future.

You’ve probably noticed I’ve been linking to a lot more articles lately than in the past. That’s for a couple reasons. First, I’ve revamped my RSS reading habits and sucked in a lot of new feeds that are providing some fun stuff to share. Second, I recently read an article about Peter Merholz, one of the men who is credited with coining the term blog. He said that he is a little disappointed by what the blogosphere has become. He wasn’t looking to create an environment where everyone and their mother dropped 3000 words about the latest American Idol or the kinds of people that piss them off. Rather, he was looking to build a system where people would repost interesting links they found during their web explorations, adding their own brief commentary. A lot of my favorite blogs feature not only top-notch writing, but excellent links to other articles of interest.

So I’ve been trying to share more of the interesting stuff I run across each day. However, one thing does kind of bug me: there’s no quick way for my readers to differentiate the posts that are all (or mostly) my writing from those that are just links. Maybe no one other than me cares, but there should be an easy identifier that separates the original material from the linked items. Again, many of my favorite blogs use some kind of icon to ID either links or original work. For example, the fantastic <a href=”http://daringfireball.net/”>Daring Fireball</a> uses a circled white star, ✪, to flag the author’s work. The symbol is also used at the end of each post.

The easy thing would be to bite DF’s style and go with the same symbol. I think it’s kind of awesome; I bought a DF shirt I like it so much. But, on the off chance one of my dozens of readers actually reads DF, I’d hate to be seen as a thief. After much consideration of the various symbols available that appear to be unicode – and thus platform/browser agnostic – I’ve decided that all my original material will include a ❖ , also known as a black diamond minus white x,* in the subject line. In addition, all posts will end with the symbol. Unless I forget.

(Duh.)

There’s no great meaning behind the symbol, at least that I’m aware of. It’s just easily identifiable and fairly classy. I like classy things. If I had more design experience, I suppose I create my own little logo. But who am I kidding? If I can’t get through an HTML book, I’m not going to dig out my InDesign notes from grad school.

Of course there’s also the dilemma about exactly what makes a post a link post vs. something that is my own. For example, I have a draft that I’m debating whether to post or not that is built around a link to an interesting web site. But, because it relates to a controversial issue, I have a 500 work intro stating my views on the subject. I don’t know that there’s a definitive threshold, but a paragraph or two feels right. Since I’m pretty sure very few of you care about such distinctions, I trust none of you will call me on it if I don’t rigidly adhere to that standard.

Just for fun, here are some of the other symbols I considered:

⚈☉☄❖☯☸♨☕

This is also a fine time to thank my dozens of loyal readers for sticking with me and indulging all my silly obsessions for the occasional post that actually resonates with you. Your readership means a lot to me.

❖

It was 80 here today. Yet we still have a pile of month-old snow out in front of our house.

Well, all good things must come to an end. Or so the cliche tells us. This blog is going to die a quick, unsympathetic death in about a month. Don’t worry, I’ll still be blogging and filling your free time with the genius that is me, just not here.

I’ve been frustrated by many aspects of Typepad over the last six months or so. Some trouble posting perfectly legitimate files. A couple downtimes. An apparent focus on business blogging needs rather than those of us who are just dorks writing in our pajamas. Seriously, if I get one more e-mail telling me how to improve my business through Typepad… So, with my account coming up for renewal next month, it seems like a good time to shut this down and depart for greener pastures. Or at least a different pasture.

I picked Typepad two years ago because Blogger sucked, I wanted some freedom to make my blog look pretty, and I wanted more reliability. I didn’t mind paying for a blogging service when I was posting at least once a day, if not more. But now that I’ve scaled back my writing a bit, I can’t justify the expense.

Blogger has improved, thanks to Google finally sinking some money into it. But it still kind of sucks. They offer the same generic themes they’ve always had, and I’m too lazy to learn any HTML to create my own. I investigated three other free services, including the free service offered by Typepad. It is verrrrry sexy. Nice to look at, easy to navigate, and probably more reliable than the other platforms. But, it has two fundamental problems: 1) it doesn’t support Safari, my browser of choice, for posting and B) in order to comment, you must be a member. It’s “free and easy” to join, but I didn’t want all of my loyal readers to have to sign up for an account just to add your comments. Especially since that means you would get e-mails from the hosting company each month.

I thought about rolling the dice and learning how to code myself, either using Moveable Type or WordPress. But that would mean dropping money on a hosting plan, and the whole idea is to get away from that. And did I mention I’m lazy?

In the end, I picked WordPress’ free service. I’ve been playing around with it for about a month, and it seems like it will work. I’m still stuck with their skins, but they have more to offer than Blogger so I can hopefully vary them from time-to-time. There are a few limitations that are annoying, but I can live with them. Best of all, I can import all my posts from this blog into the new one, so we won’t lose any history. I’m not sure if the comments will come with, but hey, you know what you said. Perhaps I’ll read back and repost some of the greatest comments hits from the past two plus years.

Next, came the struggle of what to name the new blog. I wanted it to be something kind of clever, easy to remember, yet semi-anonymous. I thought I had a really cool name, but I decided it wasn’t terribly clever after all, and it was confusing to type in correctly. So I picked one that all of you should be able to recall quickly but gives me some anonymity. Oh, and it lends itself to a few catchy little acronyms. MMMM, acronyms!

I’ve been double-posting for about a week, just to test skins and whatnot, so you’re welcome to go check it out at anytime. I’ll probably blog here through Good Friday, then export all the historical files across and shut this down. So go take a look: