August 20, 2005
Is there a word for ...
1. Posting a link to something that's been posted many times before, but making it sound like you are the first person to discover it (lots of people get accused of on Slashdot, but what do you call it?) (and yes, my last post was a much posted link, although I did admit that it was, at least).
2. Quoting very old information in an online article, without checking to see if it is still correct. (You can do this in print too, but it is worse online not only because you should be easily able to recheck the info, and at least correct something after it is found to be wrong).
3. Blogs that are almost entirely del.icio.us links (as opposed to this blog, which has almost no content of any kind).
Posted by markj at
10:46 PM
February 23, 2005
How many different kinds of spam are there?
I've had comment spam, trackback spam, referer spam. I am really tired of this junk. I think it is starting to take much of the interactive fun out of blogging, if it hasn't already.
I am at least glad to have had, and visited, blogs in the not-so-distant days before this kind of stuff. I was hardly an early adopter of the blog, but I do remember when it seemed more fun.
Posted by markj at
02:55 PM
February 21, 2005
All cleaned up
Well, I finally got Movable Type upgraded to the latest and ALL of the comment and trackback spam purged from this site. I hope that this cuts down on the garbage but at least I'm caught up with it now.
Maybe it will actually be safe to post something now ...
Posted by markj at
08:26 PM
May 16, 2004
TypeKey?
OK, that isn't working yet. But you can leave a moderated comment...
Posted by markj at
11:44 AM
April 17, 2004
Missed it
I didn't make it to the second
bloggerCon. A combo of being too tired to get up early for the morning session, and it being such beautiful day I really couldn't bear to be inside -- even listening to interesting stuff like that.
One nice thing about a blogger meeting is you don't have to worry about catching up on what you missed. So many people have captured it, with so many viewpoints, I'm sure. Also, I haven't been much of a blogger recently -- but I hope to get back into it.
One downside of having a 2-year-old is not getting out much, but it's an upside when you have a fun day with him. We went to see
Drumlin Farm where he liked seeing the pigs best, I think.
(Instead of saying "Oink" for pig talk he makes a sound that's a lot more like what a pig really says. Maybe that's the equivalent of oink in Guatemalan Spanish; we're trying to find out).
And then lots of fun playing with the neighbors' kids. There are so many little kids in this neighborhood. Sometimes we talk about what it will be like when they all are teenagers.
Be afraid, be very afraid.
Posted by markj at
08:13 PM
January 01, 2004
Random note
snazzykat has the best
error page around.
Posted by markj at
09:18 PM
November 30, 2003
Change, not change
I got tired of the colors on this blog, so I changed it. It is a little bit Christmas-like, but I hope not too strong. I also redid the logo. (A couple of days from now I'm sure I'll find something I forgot to fix ...)
A real redesign is badly needed, but I'm not sure I'm up for that right now. Maybe sometime this winter. I've looked at some skins like
snazzykat has, but somehow none are quite what I want.
I want this to be about the content (yeah, like I am really writing here very much!) and don't want a lot of ornamentation. Also, even though I am not a real designer I think that this blog should reflect my design ideas, and not necessarily someone else's.
Much of my life I've been trying to fit into other people's templates in one way or another. At least for this blog, I'd like to do it my own way.
Posted by markj at
08:33 PM
October 05, 2003
BloggerCon musings
I ended up staying only a half-day at BloggerCon. I left mainly for some family time at home, not because it wasn't interesting -- it was very good. In fact, two sessions almost left me in info overload.
The first was led by Susan Mernit, whom I met and worked with in a former life in New Jersey along with another participant, Scott Brodeur.
The session centered on tools for bloggers, and what tools people need that they don't have. While a few people were happy with the tools out there, most of them wanted more -- several teachers in the room noted that students had a lot of trouble with losing posts, for one thing.
I was eager to hear Dan Bricklin (pictured above with Susan), a legend among software developers for creating the first popular spreadsheet (Visicalc). And he lived up to his rep. He spoke about how current blog tools don't make it really easy to add photos, nor do they easily allow collaboration on a single post by author and "editor".
The problem, he said, was the developing really powerful Web interfaces costs a lot of money, and so far the blogging community probably won't pay that much (corporations using blogs might help pay the tab; or open source projects might also fill the gap
For more on this session, see the Betsy Devine's excellent account
The other session I went to covered blogs "inside the firewall" -- in essence, how weblog technology can be used for intra (and inter) business communication. I think I'll leave that session for another post.
Posted by markj at
02:54 PM
At BloggerCon
I'm here:
BloggerCon.
Trying to figure out how to write/take pictures at the same time I am listening to all this interesting stuff. I think I'm going to try to take notes and distill things down a little, not send out transcripts or anything. For that, try
Betsy Devine.
(There would be a pic of Dan Bricklin here but iPhoto is for some reason refusing to import photos. Maybe later).
Posted by markj at
09:56 AM
October 02, 2003
Blogtown
If you are coming to
BloggerCon this weekend I hope to see you there.
This is the first blogging event I've ever been to -- even though I am busy beyond belief, the lineup of interesting people is too good to pass up.
(I'm only coming Sunday; I've got another place to be on Saturday and besides not sure I want to shell out the fee).
If Net access is working I'll try to post from there ...
Posted by markj at
09:41 PM
August 18, 2003
Blogs and journals
I think I'd like to keep the archive of this blog around as a record. I've never kept a diary for more than a day or so, but I think it may be interesting to look back on what I've written here -- all the ups and downs.
If you blog, do you plan to keep your postings "forever" or would you like to trash the whole thing and start afresh (as some people have done)?
Posted by markj at
03:52 PM
May 03, 2003
Must ... write ... document
jen's post directed me to
this which generated (from this here blog) this:
BigCat Fairly boring commentary
from an oversensitive, emotionally demanding
computer nerd with the sleep study
is it by more bars
up in this section // document.
write document.write document.write document.
write ; document.
I especially like the end; since my job is software development and, while I do get to write some code, a lot of time is spent on project documents ...
(Thanks Jen, you gave me a fun link which I was able to turn into yet another mildly amusing post with absolutely no effort on my part -- a big win for all concerned, certainly, except for poor Rob whose server is slowly burning up from the load you generated ... Jen, how could you!)
Posted by markj at
11:26 PM
May 01, 2003
Gotta get away?
Well I don't have naked girlie pix up here or anything (sorry about that...), but if you are supposed to be working instead of browsing you can click the little green button on the top left. I saw this at
Cheyenne's.
Posted by markj at
10:46 PM
April 22, 2003
Mais non!?
You're France!
Most people think you're snobby, but it's really just that
you're better than everyone else. At least you're more loyal to the real
language, the fine arts, and the fine wines than anyone else. You aren't
worth beans in a fight, unless you're really short, but you're so good at other
things that it usually doesn't matter. Some of your finest works were
intended to be short-term projects.
Take the Country Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid
Now, I really wasn't expecting that one ... thanks to Lulu-girl for the link
Posted by markj at
10:16 PM
March 29, 2003
Yeah, I ain't got no ideas to blog about
So I'm pasting in one of those silly things. But I like this one. I saw it at
Lulu Girl's:
Actually, I have been actually rather busy with real-world life things recently, so my self-absorbed self has somewhat been neglected.
Posted by markj at
10:15 PM
March 15, 2003
What's the big deal about pings?
The previous entry mentions a test of a new function of
blogrolling that works with
movable type and other blogging tools to automatically ping blogrolling when I create a new entry?
So who gives a shit?
Well, I think this is a cool example of distributed computing.
Before, blogrolling had to periodically go to
weblogs.com, which is pinged by many bloggers to tell that site the blog is updated. Then blogrolling marked that blog as "new" in all the lists created by different bloggers and displayed on their pages.
This meant there was a delay between me updating and you seeing that I've updated on, for instance,
jen's weblog.
Now, I update and it appears almost immediately there.
This is a good example of how systems can work faster, and often better, when functions are distributed.
Now blogrolling users don't technically need weblogs.com to keep track of each other.
Now most folks are not exceptionally fascinated by immediately knowing that I've updated.
But lots of other computer systems need that speed more.
Weblogs guy Dave Winer
wonders how big the blog universe can get before weblogs can't handle it anymore.
This kind of distributed updating might be one answer.
Of course, blogrolling.com will have the same problem. But you can have more than one blogrolling. Maybe many. This doesn't mean that weblogs.com would go away, but it might change its role.
This would mean that the universe would no longer be completely "connected" in terms of updates (at least at the current speed), but it might be faster for each "galaxy". These kinds of tradeoffs are just part of life.
I also have the feeling that the blog world is getting out ahead of a lot of the rest of the high-tech world in developments. Stay tuned.
Posted by markj at
12:59 PM
March 14, 2003
Ping, ping
My blog is now supposed to update
blogrolling with an automatic ping. Let's see if it works.
Posted by markj at
10:02 PM
March 09, 2003
Blogging ups and downs
I see some people sometimes post notes that they are taking some time off from their blog to deal with life.
I don't blog every day, and there have been stretches of a few days when I did not blog, either because I was depressed or just very busy.
But I don't want to take time off from this to work on life's problems -- in many ways, this
is my way of working on problems. I think I need to stay here -- some of my better friends are "here", for one thing.
Another thing: Hidden posts, posts left in draft state forever, because they need to stay private. I was thinking of doing that, but I guess I just don't trust the system that much. I always say you should never commit anything to writing you would be terribly upset about seeing made public.
In some ways there are some thoughts I wish I could make public, but I know that's not the
write right thing to do.
Posted by markj at
11:19 AM
February 28, 2003
Got curious
I am the Natural Number
e
I go with the flow
_ |
this quiz by orsa
Sorta seems right ...
Posted by markj at
06:05 PM
February 26, 2003
Headlines
New York Times headlines are now on the right, you might have noticed.
Right now this is done with JavaScript -- I'd actually like to pull the XML feed, but I need to do a little more work there. I have a PHP aggregator I use myself (
Rippy the Aggregator) so I should be able to do this, just need some time.
Posted by markj at
10:52 PM
February 23, 2003
Being and do-ingness
A good
post on this by Jeff Walsh was pointed out by
Dave Winer.
I was a reporter for a few years, and a copy editor for longer. Jeff's comment about wanting to
do instead of just
report recalls when I left the business. There were a lot of reasons why I left, but one of them was feeling the need to somehow participate in the great Internet boom.
In my own very small way, I did. Whatever else I do and whether any of it made sense, am glad I was there, in Silicon Alley, in a time we'll never see again.
Posted by markj at
09:12 PM
February 22, 2003
Comment Smilies
Just added them, thanks to this "tutorial":http://unixgal.techieswithcats.com/archives/002156.php
I
think it works ...
Posted by markj at
11:24 PM
February 15, 2003
Rearranging the furniture
I've shuffled around the looks of things here a little. I got tired of the very long column on the right side, so I split that stuff up, putting the blogrolls on the left, and everything else on the right.
And I added a lion. Not sure if he will stay.
If you were trying to read this page today you might have noticed all sorts of bizarre things -- I tried some things out before I put them up, but I ended up doing a lot of experimenting on the live page.
The work done by
Lucy, aided by
Pixelsphinx, helped inspire this, but I did all the coding so don't blame them (but do tell me, please!) if it crashes your browser.
I have not changed the colors yet -- if I do that I probably want to also implement skins, but that will have to wait till another day.
Posted by markj at
02:56 PM
