After some heavy editing of my novel (the second draft of my novel is now up to chapter 4 of the ebook), I decided on a whim to cull some blogs I follow from the Google Friend Connect list I access from my Blogger dashboard. Now, I started this blog, along with my project blog, back in March '08. In the three years since then, a lot of blogs have been orphaned and/or discontinued. I myself have a music blog I haven't updated in two years.
And so I went to my Blogger dashboard and checked the blogs I follow to see which ones are no longer updated. I found several, of course, some of which haven't been updated in more than a year. I even discovered a site among them that no longer exists. So I removed them from my follow list.
I actually learned a valuable lesson from this. If you want more people to follow your blogs, update them more often. Needless to say, it's a good idea to offer valuable content, even if it's just the personal stuff you think can interest other people. Be interesting, update often, and people won't lose interest in you.
The challenge, of course, is always figuring out what to write about...
Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Friday, November 26, 2010
Blog Maintenance: November 26, 2010
What better way to procrastinate NaNoWriMo than to redo all your blog templates and then edit the posts accordingly? Now this blog, my project blog, my opinion blog, and my Posterous blog now look different than they used to. I'd even say the three Blogger blogs look a hell of a lot better than they did, now that I've updated their templates.
The reason I did it is because my Blogger templates were simply broken. I'd customized them for expandable posts and Twitter, Facebook, and Google Buzz share buttons long before Google gave Blogger its own. As directed, I'd copied the code off the customization blogs and pasted it into my own blog templates. It worked for a while. No longer. Upgrading was necessary.
Sometimes you just have to give up the old ways and join the modern world. I felt that way when upgrading my blogs. The old templates no longer worked. Now I find my Blogger blogs load faster than they did. Now it's the Posterous blog that takes a long time loading — but that may just be because I posted so many videos from YouTube and Archive.org.
One thing I noticed is that I made posts expandable that most people would consider too short. Early on, I was all but infatuated with the expandable post, to the extreme of making even two-paragraph posts expandable. I've grown out of that little neophyte vice. I've edited all the short posts on the Blogger blogs so that they're no longer expandable. I reserve that now strictly for the long posts.
In short, an attempt to fix my project blog quickly turned into a major blog overhaul. I guess I knew a serious change was in order...
The reason I did it is because my Blogger templates were simply broken. I'd customized them for expandable posts and Twitter, Facebook, and Google Buzz share buttons long before Google gave Blogger its own. As directed, I'd copied the code off the customization blogs and pasted it into my own blog templates. It worked for a while. No longer. Upgrading was necessary.
Sometimes you just have to give up the old ways and join the modern world. I felt that way when upgrading my blogs. The old templates no longer worked. Now I find my Blogger blogs load faster than they did. Now it's the Posterous blog that takes a long time loading — but that may just be because I posted so many videos from YouTube and Archive.org.
One thing I noticed is that I made posts expandable that most people would consider too short. Early on, I was all but infatuated with the expandable post, to the extreme of making even two-paragraph posts expandable. I've grown out of that little neophyte vice. I've edited all the short posts on the Blogger blogs so that they're no longer expandable. I reserve that now strictly for the long posts.
In short, an attempt to fix my project blog quickly turned into a major blog overhaul. I guess I knew a serious change was in order...
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
In Which I Break My Media Silence, Post-AugNoWriMo
After I failed to win AugNoWriMo earlier this year, I spent nearly a month almost completely offline. Or at least avoiding my social media accounts except maybe an occasional visit to Twitter, and not blogging at all about anything. And now NaNoWriMo approaches, and I find myself in a sort of non-WriMo Panic Time. So here I am.
I have an explanation for my absence. Occasionally I find something that really obsesses me. This time around, it was something called the TV Tropes Wiki. I was always the kind of kid who got lost in encyclopedias, and I've gotten lost in Wikipedia numerous times. I got lost in TV Tropes for two full months, not writing any actually story words but merely listing (in a now massive Microsoft Word document) all the tropes (read: memes) that fit Spanner. I've got enough of an understanding of both the tropes and TV Tropes that it'll no longer distract me from writing my book.
Which reminds me: I need to update my NaNo profile now...
I have an explanation for my absence. Occasionally I find something that really obsesses me. This time around, it was something called the TV Tropes Wiki. I was always the kind of kid who got lost in encyclopedias, and I've gotten lost in Wikipedia numerous times. I got lost in TV Tropes for two full months, not writing any actually story words but merely listing (in a now massive Microsoft Word document) all the tropes (read: memes) that fit Spanner. I've got enough of an understanding of both the tropes and TV Tropes that it'll no longer distract me from writing my book.
Which reminds me: I need to update my NaNo profile now...
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Now My Blog Posts Are Expandable!
I'd heard in recent months that Blogger would be premiering a new built-in expandable post method. Until now, my Blogger blogs used a custom method for expanding posts. I'm not going to bother to link to any pages or blog posts on the old custom method because that method's now obsolete. If I want to make a blog post expandable, all I have to do now is type, while I'm in "Edit HTML" mode:
<!--more-->
And then to read the whole post, click on these words on the main blog page:
Read more »
One thing this new method makes possible is short posts that don't have to expand at all, like the unexpandable posts on my Posterous blog. Expanding posts become an option, not a necessity.
Needless to say, this means that I'll be doing some serious housekeeping on my blogs. I've started editing my blogs' templates to remove the old custom expandable post method, and then editing all the entries so that they expand the new built-in way rather than the old custom way. And, of course, I'll be adding some stuff and getting rid of other stuff, updating my blogrolls, and so on. I've already started with my project blog; I've switched that blog to the new expanding post method and am editing all the posts accordingly. While I'm at it, I'm setting up a few Pages on that blog, mainly lists of links including the tables of contents to my novels and short story collections. And that will send me back to my project site, which I'll update for the first time in — how long was it? A long long time, I'm guessing. I'm writing some short stories, and I'll be posting some of them there.
And all this work comes at the beginning of AugNoWriMo... *sigh*
<!--more-->
And then to read the whole post, click on these words on the main blog page:
Read more »
One thing this new method makes possible is short posts that don't have to expand at all, like the unexpandable posts on my Posterous blog. Expanding posts become an option, not a necessity.
Needless to say, this means that I'll be doing some serious housekeeping on my blogs. I've started editing my blogs' templates to remove the old custom expandable post method, and then editing all the entries so that they expand the new built-in way rather than the old custom way. And, of course, I'll be adding some stuff and getting rid of other stuff, updating my blogrolls, and so on. I've already started with my project blog; I've switched that blog to the new expanding post method and am editing all the posts accordingly. While I'm at it, I'm setting up a few Pages on that blog, mainly lists of links including the tables of contents to my novels and short story collections. And that will send me back to my project site, which I'll update for the first time in — how long was it? A long long time, I'm guessing. I'm writing some short stories, and I'll be posting some of them there.
And all this work comes at the beginning of AugNoWriMo... *sigh*
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Testing A Heavily Extended Chrome Browser
It's official: Google's Chrome Extensions gallery is now officially open! But even before that, the instant I downloaded the latest developer version of Chrome, I went straight to Chrome Extensions, an unofficial extensions gallery, to load up on extensions. I'm posting this using an official Google extension from the official extensions gallery, called Blog This! Now all I need is a few more of my favorite extensions to appear, and bye-bye Firefox.
The problem with Firefox is that it's gotten bloated, memory-heavy, and processor-intensive over the years. When you load up on extensions, it takes forever to start. I'm the type of person who must must must! pack my web browser with extensions and plugins. Firefox has great extensions, but a heavily extended Firefox has performance issues.
Now the official Chrome extension gallery is officially open. Sure enough, I'm loaded up on extensions. Some of my holdover favorites include IE Tab, StumbleUpon, and WOT, and surely more are coming. The great thing is that they don't slow Chrome down. Maybe it loads a bit slower, but nowhere near as slow as Firefox. Soon enough, I won't need Firefox anymore. I don't use IE itself except for Windows Update (and in IE Tab, in both Firefox and Chrome).
Now I'm waiting for Google to add just one more thing, and that's the "purge memory" button, and I'll be happy...
The problem with Firefox is that it's gotten bloated, memory-heavy, and processor-intensive over the years. When you load up on extensions, it takes forever to start. I'm the type of person who must must must! pack my web browser with extensions and plugins. Firefox has great extensions, but a heavily extended Firefox has performance issues.
Now the official Chrome extension gallery is officially open. Sure enough, I'm loaded up on extensions. Some of my holdover favorites include IE Tab, StumbleUpon, and WOT, and surely more are coming. The great thing is that they don't slow Chrome down. Maybe it loads a bit slower, but nowhere near as slow as Firefox. Soon enough, I won't need Firefox anymore. I don't use IE itself except for Windows Update (and in IE Tab, in both Firefox and Chrome).
Now I'm waiting for Google to add just one more thing, and that's the "purge memory" button, and I'll be happy...
Friday, October 16, 2009
I Don't Tweet My Rants, I Blog Them: A Blogger Rants About Ranting
In the past few days I've seen some people on Twitter tweet some long rants. Now, I write long rants too. (This is probably one of my shorter ones, just so you know.) But I don't tweet them. Taking up several tweets just for one rant is simply not my way. But then, I'm a blogger, and they're probably not. Since I'm a blogger, I blog my rants. I want my readers to read each rant in one gulp. Then, about 12 hours apart, I have FriendFeed and TwitterFeed tweet the title and the link. I'd rather do this than risk "Twitter jail".
Consider this something of a "meta-rant".
I like to rant. I try to keep it under control, and I don't think I've truly overstepped any boundaries yet, though I suspect my current obscurity may be the only reason I haven't stepped on anybody's brittle egos yet. I love controversies, and sometimes I throw myself into some.
Twitter is great for getting oneself into the middle of a controversial issue in real time. Take the case of a certain now-infamous British Enron clone called Trafigura, already in trouble for dumping toxic waste in poor African countries, which got into some extra deep doo-doo the other day thanks to its law firm, Carter-Ruck, which managed to slap a total ban, or super injunction, on covering Parliament against the media. Sure enough, it backfired: Twitter went berserk; thanks to something called the Streisand Effect, Trafigura is now as infamous as Enron itself, and the already notorious Carter-Ruck have earned themselves a new level of well-deserved infamy. When I found the terms "Trafigura" and "Carter-Ruck" appearing in my Twitter stream attached to tweets denouncing censorship, and then trending among Twitter's top search terms, I knew at once that I had to get involved. Here's my blog post on the scandal (in my project blog, interestingly), and my 140-character summary.
But for long rants, Twitter just won't cut it. Being the blogger type I am, I prefer you down my whole rant in one gulp. So that's why I don't tweet my rants like the non-blogger tweeps do. I blog them.
End of meta-rant. ;)
Consider this something of a "meta-rant".
I like to rant. I try to keep it under control, and I don't think I've truly overstepped any boundaries yet, though I suspect my current obscurity may be the only reason I haven't stepped on anybody's brittle egos yet. I love controversies, and sometimes I throw myself into some.
Twitter is great for getting oneself into the middle of a controversial issue in real time. Take the case of a certain now-infamous British Enron clone called Trafigura, already in trouble for dumping toxic waste in poor African countries, which got into some extra deep doo-doo the other day thanks to its law firm, Carter-Ruck, which managed to slap a total ban, or super injunction, on covering Parliament against the media. Sure enough, it backfired: Twitter went berserk; thanks to something called the Streisand Effect, Trafigura is now as infamous as Enron itself, and the already notorious Carter-Ruck have earned themselves a new level of well-deserved infamy. When I found the terms "Trafigura" and "Carter-Ruck" appearing in my Twitter stream attached to tweets denouncing censorship, and then trending among Twitter's top search terms, I knew at once that I had to get involved. Here's my blog post on the scandal (in my project blog, interestingly), and my 140-character summary.
But for long rants, Twitter just won't cut it. Being the blogger type I am, I prefer you down my whole rant in one gulp. So that's why I don't tweet my rants like the non-blogger tweeps do. I blog them.
End of meta-rant. ;)
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Retweet This Blog Post!
You've probably noticed something to the right of the text of each entry: a "retweet" button which allows those with Twitter accounts to post the title and link to the entry. And it's on not just this blog, but my project and opinion blogs as well. TweetMeme provides the service.
Most people I know find Twitter useless, but I'm one of those select few who get a lot of use out of it. I myself retweet articles and posts quite often. For those like me, I've provided the button.
Turns out that Blogger does not provide an easy way to put the button in — no Google Gadgets exist for this. I found out about this on Twitter. @cheth posted a link to his tutorial, and in it he links to TweetMeme's instructions. Instead, I Googled up "add retweet button to Blogger" and found the instructions I actually used, on this page in @virtuosoblogger's blog. I followed the instructions and inserted the code into my blogs' templates.
So that's how I managed to add that retweet button you see to the right. Who knows? I might add another such service if I deem it useful enough...
Most people I know find Twitter useless, but I'm one of those select few who get a lot of use out of it. I myself retweet articles and posts quite often. For those like me, I've provided the button.
Turns out that Blogger does not provide an easy way to put the button in — no Google Gadgets exist for this. I found out about this on Twitter. @cheth posted a link to his tutorial, and in it he links to TweetMeme's instructions. Instead, I Googled up "add retweet button to Blogger" and found the instructions I actually used, on this page in @virtuosoblogger's blog. I followed the instructions and inserted the code into my blogs' templates.
So that's how I managed to add that retweet button you see to the right. Who knows? I might add another such service if I deem it useful enough...
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Blog Search 2: Following
Tonight's blog search isn't for the blogroll of this or any other of my blogs. Instead, I decided to use Blogger's "Follow" feature to follow other people's blogs. This puts them on my Blogger dashboard, where they're immediately accessible. This is more convenient than viewing one of my blogs, waiting for it to load, scrolling down, and clicking on the blogroll. Of course, I can always add some of the blogs I follow onto one of my blogrolls if I want people to read them alongside mine.
"Following" is a social-network feature that Google added to its blogging platform. Click "Follow Blog", and then you can follow a blog (at least a Blogger/BlogSpot one, or one that takes part in the "Google Friend Connect" program) just like you follow someone on, say, Twitter. This allows you to easily build up a collection of blogs that you can access from the Blogger dashboard. You won't have to bookmark every blog you come across (just the WordPress, TypePad, etc. ones ;) ), and you won't have to go on wild goose chases all over the Web.
Of course, as with my blogrolls, I'll have to take the time (several days or longer) to build up the number of blogs I follow. I've only started just now.
You might notice that I've started posting a series of cyberpunk short stories related to my proposed webmanga Spanner to my project blog. I just realized: this blog here would be the perfect place for me to post short stories unrelated to Spanner, or anything else science-fictional. I could also post poems once I start writing them again. I should also post weekly updates for Project 365 and 50 Songs in 90 Days.
And now, back to writing 2,000 words for JulNoWriMo while waiting for my apartment to cool off from the day's extreme heat...
"Following" is a social-network feature that Google added to its blogging platform. Click "Follow Blog", and then you can follow a blog (at least a Blogger/BlogSpot one, or one that takes part in the "Google Friend Connect" program) just like you follow someone on, say, Twitter. This allows you to easily build up a collection of blogs that you can access from the Blogger dashboard. You won't have to bookmark every blog you come across (just the WordPress, TypePad, etc. ones ;) ), and you won't have to go on wild goose chases all over the Web.
Of course, as with my blogrolls, I'll have to take the time (several days or longer) to build up the number of blogs I follow. I've only started just now.
You might notice that I've started posting a series of cyberpunk short stories related to my proposed webmanga Spanner to my project blog. I just realized: this blog here would be the perfect place for me to post short stories unrelated to Spanner, or anything else science-fictional. I could also post poems once I start writing them again. I should also post weekly updates for Project 365 and 50 Songs in 90 Days.
And now, back to writing 2,000 words for JulNoWriMo while waiting for my apartment to cool off from the day's extreme heat...
Friday, July 24, 2009
A WebKit Glitch in My Blogs
[Note: The issue I was dealing with has been obsolete since expandable posts became an integral part of Blogger. For more information, read this post.]
Here's an annoying bug. On the main page of my project blog, one of the entries (one of my wilder short stories) does not collapse when you view it in Chrome or Safari (or presumably Konqueror). Instead, you see the full entry, right there on the main page. You don't see that happen in either IE8 (which has its own special problems, but that's not one of 'em) or Mozilla/Gecko. When I saw it happen in Safari, I knew the problem was a glitch in WebKit.
So I made a Google search of WebKit Blogger bug. Turns out WebKit still has many bugs specifically connected to Blogger (and WordPress as well). As the bug affects both Chrome and Safari, I know neither Google nor Apple is to blame. The fault lies strictly at the WebKit project's proverbial feet. Let's home the WebKit people can squash this bug soon. I don't like having a single entry dominating the blog's entire main page.
Update 7/28/09: I checked the main page of this blog and found the same WebKit glitch doing the same thing to this post.
Here's an annoying bug. On the main page of my project blog, one of the entries (one of my wilder short stories) does not collapse when you view it in Chrome or Safari (or presumably Konqueror). Instead, you see the full entry, right there on the main page. You don't see that happen in either IE8 (which has its own special problems, but that's not one of 'em) or Mozilla/Gecko. When I saw it happen in Safari, I knew the problem was a glitch in WebKit.
So I made a Google search of WebKit Blogger bug. Turns out WebKit still has many bugs specifically connected to Blogger (and WordPress as well). As the bug affects both Chrome and Safari, I know neither Google nor Apple is to blame. The fault lies strictly at the WebKit project's proverbial feet. Let's home the WebKit people can squash this bug soon. I don't like having a single entry dominating the blog's entire main page.
Update 7/28/09: I checked the main page of this blog and found the same WebKit glitch doing the same thing to this post.
Friday, July 17, 2009
The Blog Search Finally Begins
#Bloggers
At last I have begun the long-delayed search for other people's blogs, or at least the ones I think are appropriate for my project blog. I knew it would be a long search, so I put it off for several days, which became weeks and then months, and threatened to turn into years. Then the random thought came to me that now would be the time to start it. And so I did.
It did not go perfectly, of course. Somewhere in the middle of my initial search, Windows gave me a Blue Screen Of Death and crashed randomly on one of its many bugs. (Good thing I don't use Vista!) But I rebooted and resumed the search until I found enough blogs for one day.
It isn't the end of this, of course. I still have many more blogs to find and put in the blogrolls of all my blogs. I still haven't found enough cyberpunks and cartoonists to fill my growing Spanner's World blogroll, I haven't gotten to my other blogs yet. But it's finally begun...
Back to The Space Helmet Show...
At last I have begun the long-delayed search for other people's blogs, or at least the ones I think are appropriate for my project blog. I knew it would be a long search, so I put it off for several days, which became weeks and then months, and threatened to turn into years. Then the random thought came to me that now would be the time to start it. And so I did.
It did not go perfectly, of course. Somewhere in the middle of my initial search, Windows gave me a Blue Screen Of Death and crashed randomly on one of its many bugs. (Good thing I don't use Vista!) But I rebooted and resumed the search until I found enough blogs for one day.
It isn't the end of this, of course. I still have many more blogs to find and put in the blogrolls of all my blogs. I still haven't found enough cyberpunks and cartoonists to fill my growing Spanner's World blogroll, I haven't gotten to my other blogs yet. But it's finally begun...
Back to The Space Helmet Show...
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
After a Busy Week...
#JulNo #5090 #songwriting #writers #Bloggers The second week of July '09 was surprisingly busy for me. At the end of it, though, I got my most important Internet-related business out of the way (getting rid of that archaic and extremely slow dialup connection and joining the modern world), so I can now get back to the proper business of writing. (As for those hash terms I'm now putting at the beginning of my posts: those are Twitter search terms for my Twibes. The Twibes in question are the JulNoWriMo, 50 Songs in 90 Days, Songwriting, Writers, and Bloggers Twibes respectively. That's because TwitterFeed tweets my blog posts.)
Most of my business had nothing to do with writing (novels, songs, blogs). However, I did get one short story written, added to my JulNoWriMo word count, and posted to my project blog (warning: some people may not be able to handle it, hence the many disclaimers). Now that I've finally upgraded my internet connection and immediately upgraded all the software that needed upgrading, I'll be able to return to my 50 Songs in 90 Days songs and my JulNo novel writing.
I'll be a lot more productive in the next week. First, though, I need to get some good rest. Waiting for that dialup connection kept me up at nights...
Back to The Space Helmet Show...
Most of my business had nothing to do with writing (novels, songs, blogs). However, I did get one short story written, added to my JulNoWriMo word count, and posted to my project blog (warning: some people may not be able to handle it, hence the many disclaimers). Now that I've finally upgraded my internet connection and immediately upgraded all the software that needed upgrading, I'll be able to return to my 50 Songs in 90 Days songs and my JulNo novel writing.
I'll be a lot more productive in the next week. First, though, I need to get some good rest. Waiting for that dialup connection kept me up at nights...
Back to The Space Helmet Show...
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Increasing My Online Presence, Part 2
Thanks to the death of Yahoo! 360 (which is why I'm no longer providing a link to it), my art blog is gone! So I'm looking for a new place to put it. I'm considering using the still unused blog I got with a My Opera account (profile still more or less empty, so no link there yet either) for that purpose. If I do, I'll let you all know.
Meanwhile, something got me out of the 50 Songs in 90 Days forums. In one word: Twitter.
I had been waiting to set up a Twitter account until I got a broadband Internet connection, as my dialup link is, as you'd expect, way too slow. But then I was reading the Twitter thread on the 50/90 forums, and I started getting that familiar feeling of being left out. So I fired up my Flock browser, activated its Twitter function, and set up my account. Then, in the Twitter help, I discovered how to put my most recent tweets into the sidebar of my blogs. (If you want to actually follow me on Twitter, click "Follow Me On Twitter" in the sidebar.) That had an Unintended Consequence...
I decided to actually post new blog entries. This is the first. I'll also post to the project blog and update my music projects blog for 50/90.
Anyway, this entry and my first tweets are really about the online presence itself: tweeting about Twitter and blogging about...well, just look at this entry's title. No profound, important, or even very social or personal stuff, really.
So I made a big step toward increasing my online presence by signing up for Twitter, and I'm also reactivating my existing presence in the form of my blogs. Maybe I should get my Flickr, Picasa, and Photoblog accounts going again as well...
Meanwhile, something got me out of the 50 Songs in 90 Days forums. In one word: Twitter.
I had been waiting to set up a Twitter account until I got a broadband Internet connection, as my dialup link is, as you'd expect, way too slow. But then I was reading the Twitter thread on the 50/90 forums, and I started getting that familiar feeling of being left out. So I fired up my Flock browser, activated its Twitter function, and set up my account. Then, in the Twitter help, I discovered how to put my most recent tweets into the sidebar of my blogs. (If you want to actually follow me on Twitter, click "Follow Me On Twitter" in the sidebar.) That had an Unintended Consequence...
I decided to actually post new blog entries. This is the first. I'll also post to the project blog and update my music projects blog for 50/90.
Anyway, this entry and my first tweets are really about the online presence itself: tweeting about Twitter and blogging about...well, just look at this entry's title. No profound, important, or even very social or personal stuff, really.
So I made a big step toward increasing my online presence by signing up for Twitter, and I'm also reactivating my existing presence in the form of my blogs. Maybe I should get my Flickr, Picasa, and Photoblog accounts going again as well...
Friday, January 16, 2009
Increasing My Online Presence, Even Despite Myself
Sometimes you can increase your presence on the Internet even despite yourself, just doing a little thing that leads to another. In this case, I found myself with a new blog I had to figure out what to do with. Except that the figuring was already done for me, by a previous plan. So I stole from my own plan. The plan? It was for an art blog. Not one on my own Spanner-related stuff (like my existing project blog), but on art in general, and not just mine. And so here — this "Dennis Jernberg's _______" naming thing is starting to get a bit tedious — is my new art blog. [Note: there was a link to my Yahoo 360 blog, but Y!360 is now dead, alas...]
So what kind of stuff will I be writing about there? Any of my non-Spanner-related art, of course. (There's hardly any of it right now, but one can always hope.) Also, there's commentary on art news, and my hometown art scene. And I'll write about any art, period, as long as it interests me.
So there. I have yet another blog now. If this keeps up, I may end up needing something on the order of Blog-Zilla just to keep up with them all...
So what kind of stuff will I be writing about there? Any of my non-Spanner-related art, of course. (There's hardly any of it right now, but one can always hope.) Also, there's commentary on art news, and my hometown art scene. And I'll write about any art, period, as long as it interests me.
So there. I have yet another blog now. If this keeps up, I may end up needing something on the order of Blog-Zilla just to keep up with them all...
Saturday, January 3, 2009
More Maintenance, and a New Photo Blog for Project 365
Tonight, my muse took her sweet time to give me new story ideas for my novel Bad Company, so I went back to the Net, sent my brother some photos, and proceeded to set up a Flickr account and a photo blog, both for Project 365 — and so I'm retiring the photo thread in this blog, just one day after I started it.
Why Flickr when I already have an account with Picasa Web Albums? Because Flickr has a Project 365 group, which I proceeded to join once I uploaded my first photos. This, of course, is the perfect excuse for me to actually use my camera...
Meanwhile, there's some kind of glitch in the template for my opinion blog that I'll have to take care of soon.
I've had an ambitious plan for increasing my Web presence for some time now. But all of a sudden, I find myself carrying it out almost without effort. In a single day, I set up my Flickr account and Photoblog blog. Then tonight I did some more maintenance work on my blogs, replacing the "Links to My Sites" section with a new, improved one. It looks like I'll be setting up my project webpage, and maybe even a LiveJournal account, by the time I post the next entry here. Who knows what else I might end up doing this month...
Why Flickr when I already have an account with Picasa Web Albums? Because Flickr has a Project 365 group, which I proceeded to join once I uploaded my first photos. This, of course, is the perfect excuse for me to actually use my camera...
Meanwhile, there's some kind of glitch in the template for my opinion blog that I'll have to take care of soon.
I've had an ambitious plan for increasing my Web presence for some time now. But all of a sudden, I find myself carrying it out almost without effort. In a single day, I set up my Flickr account and Photoblog blog. Then tonight I did some more maintenance work on my blogs, replacing the "Links to My Sites" section with a new, improved one. It looks like I'll be setting up my project webpage, and maybe even a LiveJournal account, by the time I post the next entry here. Who knows what else I might end up doing this month...
Friday, January 2, 2009
Blog Maintenance: January 2009
Finally, after, say, about 6 months and the creation of an entirely new blog, I decided to do some work maintaining the blogs themselves. I added various "Gadget" features to the sidebars. I also finished the task of switching the links and blogroll from this blog to my opinion blog. That was just the beginning.
To my project blog, notice that I've added a slideshow of the Spanner album at Picasa Web Albums, Google's counterpart to Flickr. Meanwhile, I've entered Project 365, in which you take a photograph a day for a year; the thread on this blog is here. While posting a comment to the NaNoWriMo forums, I realized that I can do the same thing with drawings, posting them to my project blog just like I'm posting my Project 365 photos to this blog.
Now comes the hard part. That means the long tedious task of searching for sites to add to my link lists and blogrolls. For one thing, I need to find the right webpages and blogs for each of my blogs to link to. Furthermore, there's a very annoying bug in the template of my opinion blog that makes some of the posts almost unreadable; I need to fix that bug soon.
With my websites and a few other sites in the future, I have my work cut out for me...
To my project blog, notice that I've added a slideshow of the Spanner album at Picasa Web Albums, Google's counterpart to Flickr. Meanwhile, I've entered Project 365, in which you take a photograph a day for a year; the thread on this blog is here. While posting a comment to the NaNoWriMo forums, I realized that I can do the same thing with drawings, posting them to my project blog just like I'm posting my Project 365 photos to this blog.
Now comes the hard part. That means the long tedious task of searching for sites to add to my link lists and blogrolls. For one thing, I need to find the right webpages and blogs for each of my blogs to link to. Furthermore, there's a very annoying bug in the template of my opinion blog that makes some of the posts almost unreadable; I need to fix that bug soon.
With my websites and a few other sites in the future, I have my work cut out for me...
Thursday, January 1, 2009
My Agenda for the First Week of January 2009
I have something of an ambitious agenda for the first week of 2009. First of all, I intend to write a whole lot. More information on that in the project blog (right here, to be exact). Once the first 30,000 words are out of the way, I intend to retool all three of my blogs, set up at least one new account (where, I'll say later), and start the initial work on my new homepage and project website.
What do I plan to do this New Year's weekend? Besides writing Bad Company, I want to get my blogs reorganized and properly customized. The political links that are still on this blog, I'll move to my opinion blog (which I also want to find the best name for), and I'll find other links I think better complement this particular blog. I'll make major changes in the blogrolls for each blog. I'll do the rest of the customization that got left behind when I abandoned my blogs back when I burned out on writing in August. I'll probably even change my template for this blog, and maybe even the project blog as well.
The other Web-related project I have in the works this weekend is my new project website. It will have the same name as my project blog — Spanner's World — and the project blog will be the associated blog. Eventually, I may even set up a "Spanner's World" forum for my projects, opening them up to public comment. The project page will be for my projects, of course, within the fictional universe that centers on my manga project Spanner and such side projects as Bad Company and its sequel Black Science.
So that's my plan for the first week of 2009. Now all I have to do is to keep myself to it...
What do I plan to do this New Year's weekend? Besides writing Bad Company, I want to get my blogs reorganized and properly customized. The political links that are still on this blog, I'll move to my opinion blog (which I also want to find the best name for), and I'll find other links I think better complement this particular blog. I'll make major changes in the blogrolls for each blog. I'll do the rest of the customization that got left behind when I abandoned my blogs back when I burned out on writing in August. I'll probably even change my template for this blog, and maybe even the project blog as well.
The other Web-related project I have in the works this weekend is my new project website. It will have the same name as my project blog — Spanner's World — and the project blog will be the associated blog. Eventually, I may even set up a "Spanner's World" forum for my projects, opening them up to public comment. The project page will be for my projects, of course, within the fictional universe that centers on my manga project Spanner and such side projects as Bad Company and its sequel Black Science.
So that's my plan for the first week of 2009. Now all I have to do is to keep myself to it...
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Introducing the new Space Helmet Show blog
I haven't posted to this blog since June. Right now I'm transferring all my political opinion posts to a new blog called Dennis Jernberg's Opinions, which I'm reserving only for my politically incorrect opinions. I've dropped the name "The Outside View", which I wanted to pick back in 2001, back when blogging was new and I merely wanted to blog. I'm more myself now than I was then, and I'm a far more public person. And so I've renamed this blog after its URL: The Space Helmet Show, and I've given it a new purpose. It's now the blog I'll use for my most miscellaneous stuff.
I made the decision to start a blog of my own back in 2001. But I didn't actually set up my first two blogs (this and my project blog) till last March. Until my burnout last August, I kept more or less up on my project blog. However, I eventually all but abandoned my opinion blog (this one in its original incarnation), and even before then I was posting the miscellaneous items that I'll now focus on here.
Behind the handle "Space Helmet": I was the weird kid in school. I had already been diagnosed as autistic — one of the first ever to receive that diagnosis — and in retrospect I was a classic Asperger's syndrome case. (For some reason, I seem to have outgrown this; I'm far more normal today, and far more high-functioning, than I was then.) In high school, the jocks took to calling me "Space Helmet" because I was so weird. Recently, I decided to take it as a handle, just because it amused me. (It's not the only one, of course.) So when I tried to set up my opinion blog with the title "The Outside View" but couldn't put the name into my URL because all permutations of it had already been taken — it probably became so common so early that it long ago became one of the hoariest blog-name clichés — I resurrected the old nickname the high-school jocks had thrown at me and put it into this blog's URL. When I created my new opinion blog and moved the old opinion posts there, I decided I might as well take the URL I picked and use it as the name of this blog.
If I want to refer to my politically incorrect opinions, I'll now do it through links to my new opinion blog.
Now I need to go back to my blogs and change a whole lot of settings...
I made the decision to start a blog of my own back in 2001. But I didn't actually set up my first two blogs (this and my project blog) till last March. Until my burnout last August, I kept more or less up on my project blog. However, I eventually all but abandoned my opinion blog (this one in its original incarnation), and even before then I was posting the miscellaneous items that I'll now focus on here.
Behind the handle "Space Helmet": I was the weird kid in school. I had already been diagnosed as autistic — one of the first ever to receive that diagnosis — and in retrospect I was a classic Asperger's syndrome case. (For some reason, I seem to have outgrown this; I'm far more normal today, and far more high-functioning, than I was then.) In high school, the jocks took to calling me "Space Helmet" because I was so weird. Recently, I decided to take it as a handle, just because it amused me. (It's not the only one, of course.) So when I tried to set up my opinion blog with the title "The Outside View" but couldn't put the name into my URL because all permutations of it had already been taken — it probably became so common so early that it long ago became one of the hoariest blog-name clichés — I resurrected the old nickname the high-school jocks had thrown at me and put it into this blog's URL. When I created my new opinion blog and moved the old opinion posts there, I decided I might as well take the URL I picked and use it as the name of this blog.
If I want to refer to my politically incorrect opinions, I'll now do it through links to my new opinion blog.
Now I need to go back to my blogs and change a whole lot of settings...
Sunday, June 1, 2008
My Internet-Related Goals for June 2008
Last entry, I made the decision that just as I set my project-related goals for this month, I should set some blog- and website-related goals too. So these are:
I'm a public person now, even if I don't yet have much of a public. I have an Internet presence, and this month's goals are intended to enhance it. The Outside View is supposed to be my soapbox, though it isn't yet. And, even after almost a decade, I don't have my website designed or online yet. I'm getting back to doing all this, starting this month. In addition to my writing and drawing, I need to maintain and improve my public presence on the Internet. Ultimately, I intend to post the first issue of Spanner online on September 9 — which, not coincidentally, is main character Shira's 9th birthday (she is 14 when the story begins).
I've got my work cut out for me. Now all I have to do is do it.
- To build up the links and blogroll section of my project blog, Spanner's World, so that it's adequate for my purposes.
- To find out how to put subject indexes and tag clouds in my blogs.
- To learn how to promote my blogs on the Web and blog search engines and using other Internet promotion tools.
- To resume learning HTML so I can start designing my website.
I'm a public person now, even if I don't yet have much of a public. I have an Internet presence, and this month's goals are intended to enhance it. The Outside View is supposed to be my soapbox, though it isn't yet. And, even after almost a decade, I don't have my website designed or online yet. I'm getting back to doing all this, starting this month. In addition to my writing and drawing, I need to maintain and improve my public presence on the Internet. Ultimately, I intend to post the first issue of Spanner online on September 9 — which, not coincidentally, is main character Shira's 9th birthday (she is 14 when the story begins).
I've got my work cut out for me. Now all I have to do is do it.
Tending to My Blogs: June 2008
I've neglected my blogs for a while now: Spanner's World for two weeks, and The Outside View for a whole month and a half. I've started posting on Spanner's World again, so I figured I might as well post here too. But just posting is not enough. I realized that I need to give Spanner's World a lot more links. So I'll put more links and bigger blogrolls there. It'll take some time and effort, but I want my project blog to be as embedded in its proper context as Spanner itself.
As for The Outside View, [Note: now called Take Nothing On Faith] I need to find some subjects to write about besides blogging. I already have some entries that could kick up some controversy if anybody read them. Once I've built up the links and blogroll sections of Spanner's World a lot and The Outside View a little more than I already have, my next challenge will be to promote both my blogs, and the comics and novels associated with them. That will be the subject of my next "Learning to Blog" entry(/ies). I'll learn how to use such blog promotion tools as Technorati and others. I'll go back to the books on how to blog, and web tutorials on blogging, so I can find out. Also, I'm going to learn how to put subject indexes and tag clouds in my blogs' sidebar.
These are what I intend to do this month. But I'll also want to get back to learning HTML so that I can start designing my website. I'll be doing that this month too. I know: my next entry here will be my blog- and website-related goals for this month.
As for The Outside View, [Note: now called Take Nothing On Faith] I need to find some subjects to write about besides blogging. I already have some entries that could kick up some controversy if anybody read them. Once I've built up the links and blogroll sections of Spanner's World a lot and The Outside View a little more than I already have, my next challenge will be to promote both my blogs, and the comics and novels associated with them. That will be the subject of my next "Learning to Blog" entry(/ies). I'll learn how to use such blog promotion tools as Technorati and others. I'll go back to the books on how to blog, and web tutorials on blogging, so I can find out. Also, I'm going to learn how to put subject indexes and tag clouds in my blogs' sidebar.
These are what I intend to do this month. But I'll also want to get back to learning HTML so that I can start designing my website. I'll be doing that this month too. I know: my next entry here will be my blog- and website-related goals for this month.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Learning to Blog 5: Blogrolls, Part 2
As it turned out, adding blogs to my blogroll happens to be no more difficult than adding links to my link lists (and no less tedious, I might add). So I searched for a few blogs and added them. I even found a few blogs to add when looking to add links. No problem, really.
The first few blogs I added were ones I'd had in my web browsers' bookmark lists, or that were associated with some sites I'd had bookmarked, sometimes for years. Not all of them, but most. Others I pretty much never heard of and just found out about on my search. I'll do more of both in the near future as I build up my blogroll. I'll then do the same for my project blog, and repeat the process on any other blogs I set up anywhere else.
My first lesson in blogrolling was simply how to add one to my blogs. This turned out to be less trouble than I thought, especially once Google added a blogroll option directly to Blogger (or, more accurately, "Blogger in draft"). This takes care of the second lesson. Later, I'll need to learn how to use a blogroll managing service such as BlogRoll.com.
Of course, I still have a lot more to learn. I haven't reached the top of the learning curve yet...
The first few blogs I added were ones I'd had in my web browsers' bookmark lists, or that were associated with some sites I'd had bookmarked, sometimes for years. Not all of them, but most. Others I pretty much never heard of and just found out about on my search. I'll do more of both in the near future as I build up my blogroll. I'll then do the same for my project blog, and repeat the process on any other blogs I set up anywhere else.
My first lesson in blogrolling was simply how to add one to my blogs. This turned out to be less trouble than I thought, especially once Google added a blogroll option directly to Blogger (or, more accurately, "Blogger in draft"). This takes care of the second lesson. Later, I'll need to learn how to use a blogroll managing service such as BlogRoll.com.
Of course, I still have a lot more to learn. I haven't reached the top of the learning curve yet...
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