Saturday, February 13, 2010
Blogs <=> Coffeehouses
posted at 3:19 PM | Permalink | 6 comment(s)
Blog friend Ligneus commented, at a post at blog friend Alan Sullivan's, that
Isn’t it amazing how personal it gets and how close you can feel via the net and blogs to people who are otherwise strangers?
I’ve seen the internet compared to the eighteenth century coffee houses where people would meet to discuss the events and ideas of the time. So we miss the coffee, ambiance and physical presence of our companions, but we have a vastly increased number of people and exchange of ideas, on balance we win I think.
I agree, for one thing, but also am heartened to have an explanation that makes it seem acceptable to enjoy reading and contributing to blogs that are not simply rants and raves. I love the analogy to olden day coffeehouses especially since even modern day coffeehouses are some of my favorite places in the world, particularly if there are people willing to ponder, aloud. It's a relief to have a socially and intellectually acceptable reason for liking blogs!!

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Friday, January 8, 2010
Normblog profiles
posted at 9:26 AM | Permalink | 0 comment(s)
Many of the profiles Norm presents are interesting (except for the 318th, needless to say) but today's, on David Bernstein of The Volokh Conspiracy, a group blog run by several law professors, is among my top five.

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Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Browser display
posted at 3:15 PM | Permalink | 0 comment(s)
I've said this before and I'll say it again. It's weird how differently browsers pages on different computers, let alone how differently different browsers display (that sentence sure is hard to pace properly). Right now I'm on an Asus Eee PC and using IE8. I use IE8 on both my home desktop and at work and *they* pretty much look the same - but here the posts' text is was in Arial Black and a smaller font. Not pretty and not especially readable, either. Well, I'll fix I fixed it here and we'll see what happens on the other PCs as a result. Adventures in browser displays, right?! I guess this is why web developers and designers make the great big bucks....

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Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Remembering things
posted at 8:58 AM | Permalink | 2 comment(s)
I'm sure I'm not the only one who can't remember things without -er- remembering to remember them. I swear I'm going to bring back dance cards strapped to wrists, except I'll call them something more 21st century, of course. I have figured out how to remember when there are things I want to remember to do (I switch rings to uncomfortable fingers and it usually works pretty well). But I have not figured out how to remember what they are. Thus the idea of a list attached to my wrist. (There you go: "wrist list"!) I had a list of things to post about, for example, but I didn't write them down anywhere. Oh, I know: I could write a title and/or subject and then set the schedule for several days hence. That might work. Oh, this has been a good session. Thank you.

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Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Word Press - what?
posted at 8:50 AM | Permalink | 8 comment(s)
I was casually considering moving to Word Press for a slew of fairly unimportant reasons so I started meandering through their front page info. It all looked kind of nice and clean. Almost had me hooked. Until three things. One, you have to download their software which means you can only modify the design - if you are so inclined to poke around their code which I gather isn't all that easy anyway - from your home PC and where's the fun in that. Also, you have to pay nearly $30 a year in order to be allowed to poke around in the code. Seems kind of weird. That almost sent me packing. Then I read that sometimes they may insert ads on your blog, not asking first or anything, just doing it. EXCUSE ME??? Here's the exact text: "Advertising: To support the service we may occasionally show Google text ads on your blog, however we do this very rarely." And, guess effing what? If you don't like that, you can PAY for the privilege of NOT having any ads ever "for a low yearly fee" of another thirty-ish dollars. Reminds me of how you have to pay for manual gear shifts instead of automatic - even though cars are inherently standard and it takes more work to make them automatic. Who decides what "should be" so much the norm that the other choice should be charged for? Anyway, what the heck is up with that? Charging fees for NOT having ads and NOT locking down the code?

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Friday, August 7, 2009
Did you feel naked yesterday?
posted at 9:13 AM | Permalink | 6 comment(s)
If you did, it might be because Twitter and Facebook were both down for part of the day, quelle horreur - read about it here. Apparently both social networking sites were the targets of some kind of hacking but whatever it was, it certainly caused consternation.

BTW, recently I've been seeing and hearing Twittering described as a kind of personal "mini-blogging" which is an interesting phrase but I'm not sure if it's accurate. There are many kinds of blogging, some political, some professional, some anecdotal, some personal, etc., etc. Are there as many kinds of Twittering? I wonder? And I wonder what regular-size (heh) bloggers think about equating "tweeting" and "mini-blogging"?

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