Earlier today this weblog received its 10,000th visitor. That is cause for a small celebration – OK, only for a minute. This happens at a time when things have been incredibly quiet here. Well, that will change soon. I am in the middle of plans to overhaul this site. At the moment it is a mixture of posts on music, poetry, self-development, technology and many other issues. Plus a few photos. I’m going to develop the site as a series of channels – using blogger’s label feature, so that visitors can choose their channel and explore from there.
Posts Tagged Blogging
10,000 readers
Feb 11
Space Age Accommodation
Sep 7
I’m away at a two-day conference at the University of Hertfordshire. This is the first time I have spent the night in a university hall of residence room since I was a student 25 years ago!
Things have changed. The campus itself is comprised of a cluster of spectacular statements and feats of architecture. The accommodation itself was in a building shaped like a third of a giant ring doughnut with rooms on four floors looking in to a central courtyard.
This university used to be called Hatfield Polytechnic - a poly with a real history. It also hosted a great venue for music in the 70s and 80s.
Two exhausting days later I find myself home again, easing myself through a day, picking up the actions that came out of the event and clearing the eternal backlog of email.
New Blogger Beta
Sep 1
OK, so I’m probably one of a million people (slight exaggeration) to write about the new blogger beta. A lot of changes are promised in this beta phase. I was offered sign up earlier today, so accepted. I haven’t made any changes yet. But you can expect a combination of changes and mistakes over the coming weeks as I try to get to grips with what is on offer….
Watch this space …. as they say in all the good periodicals.
Spaces and Gaps
Jun 18
…two months pass. And then… a short posting.
As if nothing had happened!
And the transmissions begin again, from here.
Listening to Robert Fripp, and wondering whether the deep and mysterious messages which are so elusive in Gurdjieff’s work are the reason that the ‘work’ is so resonant, so meaningful and so prolific.
RSS Feeds
Mar 3
Just a thought in passing really. It’s so easy to assume that everyone knows what an RSS feed is and how to read blogs through a feed aggregator. It sounds mind-boggling. But essentially we are talking about a web-based service which captures updates to a blog and tells you when they are there for you to read. You can then read all of those updates through one browser.
The service I use is www.bloglines.com which is worth looking at. You can ‘subscribe’ to a blog by clicking on an RSS button on the page, or use a button in your browser which you can download, or within bloglines itself. It’s a great way to keep up to date with your online reading!
There is an interesting tension building on the internet between the whole principle that anyone who blogs or podcasts might want to get to the situation where they can monetise what they do (an Americanism for “Make Money out of!”) – and the concept that the web is the means by which to provide vast amounts of content in an Open Source way.
For an example of the monetisation concept, I look to the work being done by Adam Curry in the podcasting world – he is mindful of the free-at-source roots of podcasting but can see the opportunities too, and is looking to monetise this sector. I’m not critical of this. There are loads of podcasters producing content for reasons of passion and obsession rather than for commerical gain. But there are many people who want to generate income. Adam Curry is working ingeniously to deliver business models which make that possible.
Around the issue of Open Source I think the approaches of Tom Peters and Seth Godin are really interesting. Both of them have a growing store of freely downloadable material for people to read. I guess they figure that they make plenty of money and the issue is about getting readership.
Although they presumably also realise that giving away free electronic content does convert into sales in a world where people still prefer the real printed page to browse and stick on their shelf. And it is this translation of free to purchase that leads to something else.
There is actually a 3rd way in all of this – something at the interface between monetisation and open source. I guess in software terms it would be shareware. But that isn’t quite what I mean. I’m talking about the way in which it is possible to build market share (something Amazon did in the early stages of its business where it lost warehouses full of cash selling at ridiculously low prices to get customers), build readership (Godin & Peters) and develop a meme-like interest through the ‘give it away for free’ approach. I guess this idea needs more work, but I am sure that we are on the brink of some new business models, and exciting new ideas.
I have written before about the ‘Creative Commons’ idea – this weblog has a creative commons license. This is another aspect of this wider picture. The challenge which faces web publishers (bloggers?), podcasters and other net-entrepreneurs is to work out how to weave through all of this and get out of the net what we want to, whilst ensuring that we give the reader / surfer what they want too.
There is a lot of talk at the moment about Web 2.0 which will take us into the next era of the web, beyond the market place which it has become of late. Exciting times are ahead – more thought is needed about the collision of monetisation, open source and creative commons to create new ways of doing things.
Blogger suggestions
Sep 22
Another day, another dollar. Blogging with Microsoft Word does make this whole process easier. The new facility, here, is a really good development. But what about Categories for Blogger? When are we going to see that development appear?
Blogger did a user survey recently – when are we going to get feedback, and what are they doing with the suggestions that were made in the survey?
Another thing that Blogger could provide, would be the facility to post a number of drafts and then have them automatically post to the site so that there is always a post from the backlog when there is nothing new. Other blogging tools can do this – why not Blogger? Is it just me, or do Google seem to be resting the whole development of Blogger since they bought it?
OK, whinge over!
I’m very blog-light at the moment as I rush about with the day job, and try to realign my life after a stack of changes. Things should pick up soon – promises, promises…
Life in the maelstrom
Aug 9
Sometimes life just gets in the sights, and the time for communicating beyond the face to face shrinks away so that there is nothing left. No blogging for a couple of weeks now. I read in many places that bloggers shouldn’t apologise for not blogging. It’s like starting a speech with “unaccustomed as I am to public speaking”!
But then all rules are set to be broken! And it is worth an apology for the low frequency of posts. It is unlikely to change until September now.
I am reading “In Search of the Miraculous” by P D Ouspensky and feeling bewildered by a lot of it. He puts across the theories of Gurdjieff really clearly – it is the theories themselves that are so baffling. The man-machine idea is fascinating. Does this have anything to do with where Kraftwerk got the name from? Man sleepwalking through life. More on this book in a later post…
I stumbled across this weblog host, based in Ireland. The system is based on WordPress technology. I use blogger at the moment and have done for over 2 years now. I like what blogger does. There is just one key thing which blogger can’t do. It doesn’t have the facility to sort posts into categories so that readers can select all posts in a certain category and browse through them. I think this is really important. I emailed blogger about it some months ago and got a bland response saying they were working on it. Well, I emailed them again earlier today to ask when they are planning to introduce it. If it isn’t soon, I may consider switching to Blogsome. It has categories!
The day job tyranny
Jul 11
A change in job circumstances is having an impact on my usual habits and patterns. Regular posting will resume once I have some rhythms and timings sorted out.
A blog is only as good as its frequency of posts. I have not been very active over recent weeks – so the hit rate has fallen on this site. It’s a case of the rest of my life filling the spaces.
I’ve been reading some interesting articles on Steve Pavlina’s weblog about self-discipline which are really inspiring. I’m going to try some of the techniques and see whether I can get the flow moving again here.
Watch this space…
There’s a natural law at work here. If a few days pass without an entry to the blog, it gets harder and harder to break the pause. It’s like trying to resume anything after taking a break. The longer the break the more effort is needed to break through the barrier.
I find this with physical exercise too. If I miss a couple of sessions of exercise, getting back to it gets harder and harder.
Once I break through the hiatus and get moving again – whether posting to the blog or running a few miles – it feels easier than I thought it would. And the flow begins again.
Helpful points to remember:
- the barrier is never as enormous as it feels
- it is OK to have a break and get back to it, the flow soon returns
So … I’m back.
Google’s AdSense
Apr 12
I set up AdSense a few days ago. The change that regular readers will notice, is that adverts appear at the top of the page. I’d appreciate feedback on this. I’m not sure that I have tweaked the template for the page correctly. Does this affect your ability to read the posts on the weblog? Let me know. If it needs adjusting – and you know how to do it – please let me know.
AdSense looks like a good scheme. Apparently readers who click adverts generate revenue for the blogger. An interesting idea. I’m intrigued to see how this develops.
This is a bit of a silly post, I know. Blogs posts about blogging are a bit too introspective usually. But I have been complaining a lot lately about the fact that my host, Blogger, frequently crashes. This usually happens just as I am trying to post something which I have just written and not saved anywhere else. It is really infuriating.
Well, today Blogger announced that it has a “Recover post” feature to deal with this problem. It is supposed to save the post as you type it, to your computer, so that you can recover what you typed if the browser crashes. Sounds great. Just need to get Blogger to crash now so that I can try it out!
After feeling a bit fed up with Blogger for a while now, since there have been no new features in so long. And particularly because they don’t seem to be addressing the problem of categories for blog posts. Who knows – maybe that will be the next fix! That would be excellent.
P.S. Guess what – I just tried to post this and the browser crashed. I tried the new feature, and it worked! That’s weird. now Blogger need to reduce the number of crashes…
Sleep Wanted
Mar 17
Sometimes sleep deprivation just creeps up and whacks you on the back of the head. Today is one of those days. Wow!
Blogger Crashes!
Mar 16
OK, it’s a defined law of computing that things go really well for a while, so you stop backing up your posts before sending them to the weblog. Then, just as you put the finishing touches to a great post, and hit the publish button, blogger decides to crash and lose your post. I have posted an entry called “Soundtrack for an imaginary day” earlier today, then it completely disappeared. I have re-written it and posted it again, but it has disappeared again. The second version is saved so I should be able to post it once Blogger recovers. Meanwhile this is a short post that will probably disappear too!
Been away
Feb 23
Well, I am back after a break of a week. I went to Austria skiing. This was the second time I had been skiing and it is now all starting to make some sense. I can now go at fair speed without falling over (too much!)
The service is now back in action. There will be posts over the next few days, on music, poetry etc.
I received an email from Norm Geras this morning. He wrote to let me know that my blogroll of links had disappeared off the site. After an exhange of emails, it seems that this is a problem in certain browsers, and not in others. How strange! If you are unable to see my “Weblogs I watch” list then please let me know, so that I can see if I can do something about it.
Whilst I was away, there was also a reference on Anny Ballardini’s site to the posting I made recently about the Creative Commons initiative. Thanks for that, Anny. This was the second time I had had feedback to the idea of inserting a Creative Commons license to the site. Greg Perry also emailed me about it. It’s interesting which posts attract attention.
Anyway, over the next few days I’ll post reactions to some of the music I have been listening to recently including David Sylvian’s “The Only Daughter”.
I’ll also be commenting on Podcasting and offering some links to podcasters. Watch this space!
Creative Commons
Feb 10
After the last post, I looked through the Creative Commons website and within five minutes I had figured out how to set up a Creative Commons license on the weblog. Over in the sidebar there is a Creative Commons license with a link to show what the terms are. So easy!
Blogger and Categories
Feb 1
Well, my reply from Blogger came through quite quickly (mentioned in an earlier post). There is no category facility in Blogger. That was it!
Today, I have been hunting online for more information about this. It has become more of an issue since I set up another weblog called “Evaluation in Healthcare“. This is a site I am using to post tips, ideas and resources for healthcare evaluation which is the day job (no, the posts here are not endorsed or supported by my day job, let’s make that clear). I need to be able to define categories so that visitors can find their way around the posts in a useful way.
I wanted to use a similar facility for this site so that I can have categories of reviews, music, poems, views etc etc
Well, after an extensive search using google, it looks like Blogger have no immediate plans for categories. Rumours are that this went on the back-burner when Blogger became part of Google. Is it just me, or does Blogger seem to have wound down since becoming part of Google. Posts to the news section are drying up.
I had an idea earlier this afternoon involving posting a page for each category which would comprise links to posts as they are made. The links page has to be updated each time a new post is made for that category. Each link page can be connected to through a permanent link on the sidebar. It’s a clumsy work-around but it would work.
Several people have come up with solutions involving setting up sub-blogs for each category and using email forwarding to link them together which seems incredibly complicated. I’m going to experiment with the links page approach and see how that works. I’ve also set up a Google alert to let me know if Blogger comes up with a category solution. Looking at the amount of traffic about this subject, it looks long overdue. Blogger must be losing customers to competitors who do provide this facility.
Yesterday evening I put together a booklet of the first 100 entries to this weblog. It is available as a download in pdf format. You will need the free Adobe Acrobat Reader to open it – but then you knew that already!
Click here to download it. Left click to open it in the browser, or right click and choose “Save Target as…” to save the file to your own computer.
I’ve turned the whole thing around so that it is chronological, rather than the reverse order that posts appear in on blogger.
I’ve also put a permananent link to it in the column on the right.
This online publication is the third publication by bluewater books. Enjoy.