testing

Been a long time since I posted here. That "fruits of..." link is long broken. Most of the info here is very dated, but is still a decent jumping-off point for those doing blog research. That's why I've left it. There are better sites out there, though, but hopefully this will help people get going in the right direction. I may import some other posts here to flesh this out and modify it.

For my normal blog: chaospirals.blogspot.com

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The fruits of my labors.

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This morning I've been trying to get a DV digital video cassette transferred to VHS format. I got a circular set of responses and call forwards, but ultimately talked to Mr. Means, who is checking on it for me right now.

But in the blogging world...

I posted my abstract last night to the WebBoard for English 529, in the Assignments conference. This morning, I just did a search at Google, typing in just the word "weblog." The results were pretty interesting. There's a wide range of blog stuff in that database, and the results are pretty evenly spread. I think the earlier Google search I did was too restrictive. "Blog" also seems to be more the buzzword than the standard.

Near the bottom of this new search were three links I had already followed, the "motherlode" link from 9/20/2000, WebLogSchmebLog, and Andrea's Weblog. At the bottom of the list was RobotWisdom, a blog highly praised on CamWorld.

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Back from Toledo today. Read through a bunch of the links I found, and especially looked through the Captain Cursor and CamWorld links again. Followed a link in Captain Cursor to Ben Brown's page, found some other interesting blogs in the meantime and through his page, and ended up taking notes for the paper and the abstract. The weirdest part of the whole thing was trying to actually define blogs...and coming up with nothing terribly exciting, really, in that definition. It sounds a lot less interesting than it turns out to be.

The comparison (by Ben) to the zine boom was well put.

I got an acceptance in a lit mag today, too. Art:Mag will publish my poem "repentance" this fall. Woo hoo!

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In one month I will be 29 years old. wow.

Happy equinox.

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Mike Murry's Tirades is a nearly unreadable blog (I changed my monitor settings, but even at 640X480 I couldn't really read the crappy font) which I had to copy and paste into NotePad just to read the text. This article is a bit surfacy and simple, but a good introduction (in content, NOT in execution, though the rest of the interface on his page is pretty nice) for the unitiated. Nothing really new here, and a bit of a whimsical or romantic/pretentious comment on the blog as "living, breathing organism."

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I've made this a separate post because I didn't trust the damn Blogger interface.

I also read through Captain Cursor's discussion of the way in which the blog is a fine example of "the Media is the Massage" (sic), and I believe that he's using the pun deliberately. His basic argument is that the software interfaces for blogging, the tools that make it easy to blog, also affect the content and style of the blog. His response to those who might demand more quality and fewer "lists of lists of lists of links" is a request for better and more innovative software for composing and posting and designing blogs. This ties into the class discussion by bringing up the role of the editor and WYSIWYG in the crafting of content and aesthetic in hypertext.

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So the commentary I started to make before...

Cameron Barrett's page is called CamWorld and this entry discusses Cam's discovery that his daily updated site is, in fact, a weblog. The follow-up from several months later is a more lengthy piece on Cam's decision to make his site less frequently updated, and the ways in which quality can be ensured and enhanced in blogging.

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Pain in the butt number 4 with Blogger: every time I go in to edit my Blog, the "show last __ posts" thing reverts to "5". I want it to show the last 25, because I don't want to lose track, and I'm not sure what will be updated when I hit "publish." Grrrrr...

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Damn! OK, here's problems #2 and #3 with Blogger. I typed so much I filled up the little text box. No scroll bar appeared to let me continue typing. I resized the frame to get more space. The paragraph and links I'd just typed DISAPPEARED. Grrr...

Now, I think that this COULD be a Netscape 4.72 for Macs problem. I'm not overly impressed with this update of Netscape. I could go on a Netscape rant here, but I'll wait...

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I switched the blog to the Blogger server. The blog is now on http://chaospiral.blogspot.com

That's nice, the personalization like that. I dig it.

I'm still baffled by the problem on the English server.

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You know, I've realized that Blogger is a LOT like the WebBoard. WebBoard even does the whole timestamp thing. I could create a thread and update it occasionally, and get the same result. That's a bit sobering on the one hand, but reinforces my idea to use it for English 104. More to ponder...

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I just added all the horizontal rules (hr). I must say, to go back to each individual post and add a single tag, and wait for the browser to reload and repost the data was a pain in the neck. A downfall in the format and environment. Bleah.

So I never explained what I discovered about the blog.html file I've been trying to upload to the English server. It seems that the Blogger FTP process creates a file in my directory called 865446.html. This is my blogger account number. This html file works, has data, and is viewable with no problem. Every time I publish through Blogger, this file is overwritten. What I don't get is why Blogger's FTP then creates another file called blog.html, but leaves it empty of data in my directory. I may have to toy with the settings or something. It may be moot if Eric ixnays the whole FTP via Blogger thing.

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I decided to start each entry with an "hr" tag. That's what makes the lines between each post. I'm now going back to all my previous entries and adding "hr" tags. I also realized that the Blogger program inserts a "br" or linebreak tag every time I hit return within the text, so I don't hit return or put in any spaces after the "hr" tag.

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I changed the settings. I realized when I looked at the settings that it does say "(reverse) chronologically WITHIN DAYS" but that it doesn't give an option for the order of the days themselves. Now I know.

Next up I have to check out how to change the sizes of the timestamps.

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OK, so the damn thing doesn't update the time sequence the way I had hoped it would. That sucks. Thursday is still at the top, but now the messages are listed oldest at the top, newest at the bottom. So it's doubly confusing. I thought it would be Wednesday at the top. I'll have to switch it back for consistency. That's annoying. I don't like that at all.

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I've considered using blogs with my English 104 class in the Spring semester. I am thinking about having the students do a web and print research journal in blog format. That way, I can track their progress, they're learning a new technology, and they have a constantly updated and updating track of their research. With minimal HTML training, I can show them how to embed links to their research sites. I'm still toying with this.

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I honestly wish that the blog itself would show up the way it does for me at the bottom of this page. I may try to do some sort of link like that... I don't know if what I'm saying makes sense. I'll try to include a graphic soon.

Eric's concerns raise an issue about web usage and hypertextuality. The English Department server gives me a free account as part of my assistantship. In fact, it's a tool I need to perform my job properly. But by using this Blogger thing, I'm potentially compromising the security of that server. So I'll have to consider very carefully the value and notion of Blogging again.

I do have options. I can just blog to the Blogger site and then link that site in a frame or hyperlink from my homepage on the English server. I'll have to consider it very carefully. I can get around it, but if I didn't have this level of knowledge about the implications and the ways to get around it, would blogging be a very big deal?

Is blogging just another toy for the already savvy?

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I just changed the settings on Blogger. I switched the HTML output so that it lists things chronologically rather than reverse chronologically. The idea behind the reverse chronological listing is that the most recent news and information is at the top, and the old stuff disappears off the bottom. I switched things around so that people in English 529 can follow the whole blogging process as I did it.

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OK, so I talked to Eric about the Blogger thing, and he became quite concerned. He doesn't think I should transmit my English server account information and password across the web without encryption. I need to look up the security information here on Blogger.

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Still trying to figure out what's up. I'll ask Eric.

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Damn, still nothing on the NIU English server. What the hell?

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Hmmm... I'm having trouble with the posting and publishing of the blog. The file is there, in the FTP server, but it's "empty" and I don't know why. I had to check it out with Fetch (Macintosh FTP client) because nothing happens when I type in the URL of the path I set up for my blog. I'm going to click "post & publish" and see if anything happens.

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Hallelujah! My prayers were answered (maybe) by this single Google hit. Wow. Good ol' Google. Damn.

I hit the motherlode here, a link off the original Google hit.

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This is the only link Google came up with. Hmmm...

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Hmmm... in searching for more info on blogging, I found another article by the guy who did the review before, Biz Stone. This one is on bookmarklets. I think that research via surfing brings up the fact that linking on the web is like thinking in tangents... it just keeps spinning off in new directions. Maybe someone else can do their presentation on bookmarklets.

Still haven't gotten to the search engine like I was going to.

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I've begun "Blogging" in order to better understand the process. I discovered "Blogger" by accident as I was cleaning out my bookmarks. I had bookmarked Amber's page (because it's neat and daring, and surprised me). I didn't remember what the vague link title meant, so I followed the bookmark, and poked around her site some more. I found her "Blog" and followed her link to Blogger.

Further serendipity happened when I accidentally misnamed Blogger.com as Blog.com. I found a lot of interesting game sites and links, and the place was set up in "blog" format.

I followed some more of the links on blogger.com, and found this review of blogging. I sent everything to Michael Day, the professor teaching my English 529 class on computer mediated communication (CMC) at Northern Illinois University.

I started this blog on Tuesday, and I have to have some sort of notion about blogging by Sunday night, so I can abstract something for the WebBoard, and then give a presentation next Tuesday.