I think it very important to keep a blog narrowly focused.
I'm using the "blogging about blogging" vehicle as a way of collecting pointers that will help me grow another blog or two, but I am starting to be tempted to vector off into different topics, such as why I have trouble connecting with most teacher and educator blogs. Now, this would be a perfectly fine blog topic if it were situated correctly, but it ain't germaine to the "blog about blogs" trope.
Jeff Atwood, in the Coding Horror page cited elsewhere, notes that your readers aren't here to read about you. He says it's okay to "be yourself" but..."like Tabasco sauce and other powerful seasonings, a little YOU goes a long way. A really long way. Write accordingly."
I'm pondering literature, "real writing," in this light. Perhaps this is exactly why literature is so onerous a burden on many readers; a Graham Greene or a Montaigne or a James Joyce or a Henry Miller is a monster of personality. You are immersed in this person for a while.
To be very grand and media-criticky about this, I think he may have zeroed in on one of the characteristics, the essential traits of the blog medium: a certain impersonality, or rather a format that makes "personality" deeply uninteresting.
I deeply love the novel and the personal essay, and the monsters of personality, bristling with quirks, that somehow make their way into publication through these media.
There is a certain isolation in the covers of a book that is absent in the blogosphere. You are necessarily one among many, and your neuroses, vanity, and the psychological drivers that make you write -- are common as dirt, and nobody finds them interesting.
So, this ain't a novel, and it ain't a personal essay. And there is a certain inherent "meta-ness" about a blog, it can't be the thing itself, it is an overview, a collection of pointers into a topic or thing that you are "marketing" or "sharing" or "tossing out there". It is by nature an adjunct to another production or activity, it is a parasite.
So, fine. At this point I'm not sure what my "real" blogs are going to be about, but I know they're going to be about one of the three or four things I know something about, or the three or four other things I know nothing about, but have strong feelings about anyway.
One thing that makes me different from some other bloggers is that not only am I a professional teacher, but I am a compulsive teacher.
For me to understand something means that I can, in turn, present it as something that facilitates somebody else actually creating something.
For this reason perhaps I'm more patient than some people with the shallowness and the "meta-ness" of blogs. This is perhaps a strength; perhaps too it is a trap.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Blog Archive Gadget. What the Heck?
A more correct title for this note would have something to do with information design.
Looking at a simple blog, I would like to see a list of the recent posts, I would like the archive to be filed away. Having a column of months and years filing down the sidebar embarrasses me. Why not one link that says "archives" and have archives on a different page. Seems like this should be very easy. 'Tain't.
I kept taking off and putting back the blogger archive widget, dissatisfied. I wrote an inline style to reduce the font a tad and it offended me less.
Apparently, the "recent post" widget doesn't work until posts have been made after it's installed. We shall see after this is posted. Update: Ghostery shuts something down, maybe "Google Friend Connect" that makes this gadget work. I tweaked my settings and it's okay.
Another issue is how long to let one page sprawl. I don't like them real long, but I've seen ones that were real long that I liked. (The vinyl record collecting one on one of my links pages.)
Looking at a simple blog, I would like to see a list of the recent posts, I would like the archive to be filed away. Having a column of months and years filing down the sidebar embarrasses me. Why not one link that says "archives" and have archives on a different page. Seems like this should be very easy. 'Tain't.
I kept taking off and putting back the blogger archive widget, dissatisfied. I wrote an inline style to reduce the font a tad and it offended me less.
Apparently, the "recent post" widget doesn't work until posts have been made after it's installed. We shall see after this is posted. Update: Ghostery shuts something down, maybe "Google Friend Connect" that makes this gadget work. I tweaked my settings and it's okay.
Another issue is how long to let one page sprawl. I don't like them real long, but I've seen ones that were real long that I liked. (The vinyl record collecting one on one of my links pages.)
Overcoming the Horror of Blog Cliches
I'm trying to think different, or think at all, about blogs, about having a few blogs. Jeff Atwood, whose Coding Horror has been passing through my thought at random times for a very long time has formulated 13 blog cliches. At this point, blog pointers suffers from four or five of them.
One is connectivity. The point of a blog is to enter into a conversation, or so I hear.
Another is an About Me. I felt a certain horror at using my old picture in this. Why shouldn't I customize my About Me for every blog?
As I go through the 13 I can be smug about most of them. But the one that is sharper than a serpents tooth is the caustic entry about meta-blogging, the blogging about blogging.
There is a natural nausea about all forms of meta-chatter. There is the very real concern that this is somehow a substitute for doing something. Being in some ways unfalsifiable, it can shade off into bloviation. I can only console myself a little that this is a bagatelle in the interest of learning the medium, and I'll move on into something else. But in my mind this little guy is taking on a bit of a life of its own...
One is connectivity. The point of a blog is to enter into a conversation, or so I hear.
Another is an About Me. I felt a certain horror at using my old picture in this. Why shouldn't I customize my About Me for every blog?
As I go through the 13 I can be smug about most of them. But the one that is sharper than a serpents tooth is the caustic entry about meta-blogging, the blogging about blogging.
There is a natural nausea about all forms of meta-chatter. There is the very real concern that this is somehow a substitute for doing something. Being in some ways unfalsifiable, it can shade off into bloviation. I can only console myself a little that this is a bagatelle in the interest of learning the medium, and I'll move on into something else. But in my mind this little guy is taking on a bit of a life of its own...
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Links: Plain Layout, Fabulous Content
Dang it's hard to find "simple blog about something cool that is well written". There's not, you know, a search for that. I will, however, persevere and grow this list. The topics are somewhat various but approximate my usual obsessions...
Collectors and creators
Collectors and creators
- Sleazy Listening
- Collecting Vinyl Records
- Collection a day -- photographs of little collections
- Dust and grooves -- el mondo de vinyl
- Polymer Clay Chameleon
- A English prof (not my own Mrs. Huff!): huffenglish
- Teacher sharing tech resources. (Note use of list-o-lists and the relative inutility of the blog archive widget once it's big)
- A technology coordinator of some sort. Terrific information design. Give tagging another think!!
- A teacher whose TED-ish video went viral. Did you Know?
Different Flavors Of Bloggish Purpose
I'm looking at some ways of doing a blog, and how these serve different requirements. They fall into three or four families.
Blogger and the like are lightweight solutions. I'll explore their limits either right here or in another post later.
I've been using Blogger for a site relating to a book I wrote and self-published for a few years. I just wanted a lightweight solution for explaining what I was doing and communicating with a group of potential readers.
I didn't contemplate it becoming a piece of IP worth selling. It was just an adjunct of the book. If you are making your blog a sort of publication that you might conceivably pass along to someone else, then free hosting has some ownership issues. You don't own the domain, for example. Here is a list of reasons to host your own blog.
So, many bloggers want a more robust, flexible solution. One popular implementation is to use Wordpress and host it on their own website. If you already have a web presence then the additional bandwidth may cost you essentially nothing, and there would be other advantages, such as styling the blog to look just like the rest of your web presence, and more control over your stuff. Wordpress.org is where you go to look at the hosting software.
Another solution if you are less technical but want more flexibility and control is something like Typepad, which might be good if you really don't want to manage any other web presence.
If you just want a tidy private diary or journal about something, you can also run Wordpress in local mode on your desktop. If you "think in web pages" having links into your junk on your disk might make this a really entertaining and useful solution for helping organize and find your own junk. Here is a lifehacker article about this interesting notion.
This blog is hosted on Blogger basically because I already had the account, and I wanted to start myself along this learning curve. My hopes for it are evolving; mostly I hope it helps me learn about the medium.
If I have any axe to grind, its the feeling that there should be a lot of blogs that are basically tidy collections of annotated link pages. Maybe I'll put my money, or at least my time, where my mouth is.
Shading off into another direction from quasi-diaristic or expressive blogging, is providing some robust content. Now I'm realizing that what I have in mind as "blogging"-- at least for some projects-- is more like a content managment system such as Drupal or Joomla!
Also, these need to be compared to a more explicitly courseware related tool such as Moodle.
All of these look like they're worth further investigation...
Blogger and the like are lightweight solutions. I'll explore their limits either right here or in another post later.
I've been using Blogger for a site relating to a book I wrote and self-published for a few years. I just wanted a lightweight solution for explaining what I was doing and communicating with a group of potential readers.
I didn't contemplate it becoming a piece of IP worth selling. It was just an adjunct of the book. If you are making your blog a sort of publication that you might conceivably pass along to someone else, then free hosting has some ownership issues. You don't own the domain, for example. Here is a list of reasons to host your own blog.
So, many bloggers want a more robust, flexible solution. One popular implementation is to use Wordpress and host it on their own website. If you already have a web presence then the additional bandwidth may cost you essentially nothing, and there would be other advantages, such as styling the blog to look just like the rest of your web presence, and more control over your stuff. Wordpress.org is where you go to look at the hosting software.
Another solution if you are less technical but want more flexibility and control is something like Typepad, which might be good if you really don't want to manage any other web presence.
If you just want a tidy private diary or journal about something, you can also run Wordpress in local mode on your desktop. If you "think in web pages" having links into your junk on your disk might make this a really entertaining and useful solution for helping organize and find your own junk. Here is a lifehacker article about this interesting notion.
This blog is hosted on Blogger basically because I already had the account, and I wanted to start myself along this learning curve. My hopes for it are evolving; mostly I hope it helps me learn about the medium.
If I have any axe to grind, its the feeling that there should be a lot of blogs that are basically tidy collections of annotated link pages. Maybe I'll put my money, or at least my time, where my mouth is.
Shading off into another direction from quasi-diaristic or expressive blogging, is providing some robust content. Now I'm realizing that what I have in mind as "blogging"-- at least for some projects-- is more like a content managment system such as Drupal or Joomla!
Also, these need to be compared to a more explicitly courseware related tool such as Moodle.
All of these look like they're worth further investigation...
List: Free Blogging Platforms
A list of free blogging platforms, and a few other lists of such lists. Please let me know about ones you especially like or dislike.
Ones I've at least heard of, or have some vague reason to think are okay:
Ones I've at least heard of, or have some vague reason to think are okay:
- Blogger. This one. It used to be called Blogspot, and Google bought it.
- Wordpress
- Live Journal
Link Page: Very Pretty Blogs
I'm starting a list of blogs I think are pretty to look at. I tend to like extreme simplicity but my mind is open. Make suggestions, amaze me.
- Pretty Skateboards. Simple but carefully done. Nuff sed.
- A young tuba picker in Slovenia. Other people seem to like it too.
- http://magnetgirl.wordpress.com/
Blogs are shallow and hard to find
What I've learned this afternoon is that a blog is a shallow, vapid medium. It's for people trained-up to have electronically-induced attention deficit; it is the textual equivalent of a bunch of sound bites. (I don't think the medium worthless, for all that; let me think this out.)
We are used to thinking of the written media as by their nature dissuading flat-out lying, ad hominem attacks, ideological handwaving, and bloviation of all sorts. My sense is that blogs really reward these shenanigans. That is to say, their essential nature rewards crazy discourse. But how so? I don't totally get it yet.
Well, for one simple thing, because it is a short text indexed in a computer, filling your little text full of hot words is rewarded with eyeballs of some sort. For another, it moves so fast that some sort of chain of accountability is hard to keep. People tend to trust their "smell test", but that is simply often no good, even if one is a pretty sensitive reader; a crooked blogger may be gifted with a very good ear. There's no little dance of validation such as in Wikipedia or Slashdot. (I am a huge fan of both of these.)
A medium that rewards crazy discourse is intrinsically an artistic medium; or: any communication medium can be an artistic medium. So there should be a very few truly elegant and beautiful blogs. But how do we find such things?
Which brings us to the un-search-for-ability issue. Some of that is a plank in my eye; you can't do a keyword search for "a rewarding blog to read" that takes into account your world view and so on. Further, you are likely to have a hidden requirements list, that may be hidden from you as well.
The other matter is how the blog exposes search terms. I know there's an exact answer to this, but how do I set meta tags, or do I at all? Is this part of the hit I take for using free hosting? I'm still bumfuzzled by these matters.
We are used to thinking of the written media as by their nature dissuading flat-out lying, ad hominem attacks, ideological handwaving, and bloviation of all sorts. My sense is that blogs really reward these shenanigans. That is to say, their essential nature rewards crazy discourse. But how so? I don't totally get it yet.
Well, for one simple thing, because it is a short text indexed in a computer, filling your little text full of hot words is rewarded with eyeballs of some sort. For another, it moves so fast that some sort of chain of accountability is hard to keep. People tend to trust their "smell test", but that is simply often no good, even if one is a pretty sensitive reader; a crooked blogger may be gifted with a very good ear. There's no little dance of validation such as in Wikipedia or Slashdot. (I am a huge fan of both of these.)
A medium that rewards crazy discourse is intrinsically an artistic medium; or: any communication medium can be an artistic medium. So there should be a very few truly elegant and beautiful blogs. But how do we find such things?
Which brings us to the un-search-for-ability issue. Some of that is a plank in my eye; you can't do a keyword search for "a rewarding blog to read" that takes into account your world view and so on. Further, you are likely to have a hidden requirements list, that may be hidden from you as well.
The other matter is how the blog exposes search terms. I know there's an exact answer to this, but how do I set meta tags, or do I at all? Is this part of the hit I take for using free hosting? I'm still bumfuzzled by these matters.
Link Page: Blogging In General
These are some items that seem like good starting points.
Situating blogs in work or society
Situating blogs in work or society
- The Wikipedia Article, of course. Where else would you go first?
- ProBlogger: Tips and Links for Beginners
- Legal Risks of Blogging. Something to be mindful of, even if you aren't crazy.
- A real essayist on blogging. Must be a mini-classic; it keeps coming up.
- An anthropologist picks some essays on blogging.
- Another beginning blog. Blogging Basics 101. Man, I don't propose to reinvent the wheel, here.
- I sort of dislike this one. It's the "marketing" vibe. Blog Basics. Yet it's quite professional and tight looking.
- This one puzzles me. It's like partly populated, and completely anonymous. Big blog tool. Might be worth monitoring, or maybe it's going to go brain dead.
I don't get it about blogging
I like the idea of blogs a great deal more than I like reading them. It is absolutely not because bloggish writing is often amateurish, disorganized, self-centered or just crazy (though it is). It's because blogs seem to be un-search-for-able; I can't seem to easily find blogs relating to a certain topic. And in turn, the blogs themselves, though often bristling with links and pointers, seem to be organized in a way that makes absolutely no damn sense to me, and I feel fatigued and stressed dealing with them.
In the spirit of John Cage, who was never stressed by interruptions to his work because he "made a study of them," I propose to use this to make a study of how blogs work, and how they might work.
Bear with me as I thrash around with this, and I will try to make it skimmable or surveyable.
In the spirit of John Cage, who was never stressed by interruptions to his work because he "made a study of them," I propose to use this to make a study of how blogs work, and how they might work.
Bear with me as I thrash around with this, and I will try to make it skimmable or surveyable.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
