Category: meta

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meta

No Working Title

Following the wise lead of Laura I am changing the title here to be more reflective of my focus. I have been at this long enough to recognize the kinds of things that I write about here. For some time I have felt that “Recovering Technophile” was not a very good fit. I tend to write about political and social issues more than technology, or even anti-technology. The only problem is that I haven’t thought of an acceptable title yet. Suggestions are more than welcome for both the Title and the Subtitle.

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meta technology

The Way Things Work

I spent a great deal of time working on a post that I thought might become a classic on my blog. The day after I posted it I got comments (real comments, not spam) on another post that was not even on my front page anymore. The comments quickly built to the point that it was obvious that the older post was a classic. I found myself wondering why the old post had suddenly been discovered. Then I noticed that the old post was listed as a related post to the one I had just posted. Obviously people were reading the post and got interested enough to look at the related posts. Apparently this helped some readers discover the post that would become the classic.

This just goes to validate the effort that I went to in adding plugins to show related posts. Hopefully the classic-posts plugin will help to assure that those posts which are of interest to my readers will never be lost in the archives. This all just goes to prove that Joshua Porter was right in his lessons for would-be bloggers about the value of linking to other posts and displaying your best work even after it is off the front page.

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meta technology

Classic Posts

I have been wanting to implement a “greatest hits” section in my sidebar ever since I read the lessons for would-be bloggers. Yesterday I discovered the classic posts plugin from Chris vs Chris which displays posts which you have designated as “classic.” That sounded like the kind of thing I wanted, except that I was looking for a sidebar list. I added a function to their plugin which returns a list of posts rather than the posts themselves. I also discovered that their plugin does not successfully handle selecting and deselecting posts as being “classic” if you are on anything except the default list of posts – in other words it only works on the last 15 posts. (I went into the database so that I cold manually select some older posts)

I have no particular desire to own this plugin so if Chris and Chris want to adopt my modification into their official plugin they are welcome to it. If they do I will link to their version of the file, but until then here is my version: Classic Posts plugin with List Option.

UPDATE: I found the error on the plugin (I had to add two characters to the code) and I have the working version up now (same link as before).

UPDATE 2: Chris has added my modification and the bug fix so I will include a link to the official version.

Categories
meta technology

Post by Email

I finally have the Post-by-Email working in WordPress. There is one catch – the body of the post only shows up if the message is sent in plain text. No “rich formatting” or other high-and-mighty “My email client is better than what was available 15 years ago” shenanigans.

Add this to the fact that I have to go edit the post later if I want it anywhere but the default category, or if I want to add tags or anything else besides text, and you can be sure that I will only use email as a place to compose posts that are still in the formative stages. I will also be looking at other plugins with more versatility in this department.

Enough griping, it’s still a new feature for me so this may be a small step, but it’s a forward step.

Update: There is another catch – extra line breaks show up when posting this way – definitely not for regular use.

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meta

Site Feeds

I learned a new thing about the feeds on my site today. I thought it was worth sharing. If anyone is interested in only reading the posts from a specific category they can subscribe to that category. The URL for the feed would be http://www.davidjmiller.org/category/categoryname/feed/

This or something like it should get you category-specific feeds from any WordPress blog (depending on the settings of the blog).

Categories
life meta

Seeking Feedback

As I have been reorganizing my site and evaluating my purposes I have come to realize that one of the goals I have for this endeavor is to get feedback – to bounce my ideas off other people to see what they think and get some perspective on the topics I am thinking about.  For my part, I could do better at writing consistently.

Writing consistently is not just a matter of how frequently I post, but also a matter of posting my real thoughts on things that interest me. Sometimes I have failed by not posting. Other times I have failed by posting hollow and trivial things. I think I have started to do better lately on both counts. I am hopeful that I will continue to do better as a result of this mental spring-cleaning I have been doing.

Outside of myself, the bouncing ideas off of people does not work without responses. I am not looking to become the next Daily Kos with scores of comments on every post or anything like that but I would like to have feedback like I had two years ago when I was blogging in my PhD program. I figure that if I had even five readers who would leave comments or trackbacks on a semi-regular basis then I would probably have some feedback on the majority of my ideas and would be able to glean the insights that come from a conversation. So consider this to be an invitation to comment, even small comments to help my thinking grow outside my own brain. You may also consider it an invitation to share my posts with anyone else who might be interested in what I am talking about.

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meta

Cleaning House

I love finding new resources from the people I read. Today that led me to Twenty Usability Tips for Your Blog. The result is that I am rethinking what I am doing here. My focus has been fairly vague and I have felt it in my writing. Also, between this post and the Lessons for Would-Be Bloggers I have a couple of changes I would like to make to the presentation of my site.

I am rethinking my categories and hoping that I can clean things up so that there is less clutter and more clarity. Wish me luck.

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life meta

Lunar Day

I enjoyed watching the full moon set this morning as I was out running. I watched as the last wisp of the moon fell behind the mountains in the west. This evening I was driving to the store with my kids and we all watched the moon rise in the east from the first tiny slice of the moon until it was fully risen. How’s that for bookends on the day.

As I came here to post on that and share with my hordes of readers that we got a new tree and many of our flowers in for this year I discovered that the spam bots had discovered my site today.

Thanks to Akismet, nobody had to suffer through anything – not the porn, the dubious pharmaceutical products, nor the offers to lose real money in virtual casinos. What surprised me was that before today only about 10 spam comments had been caught by Akismet (and none missed) and none of them were of the variety mentioned above. Tonight there were over 60 comments that had been caught by Akismet and all of them, unless my skimming missed an anomaly, were of the types listed above. This is much easier to maintain than the blacklists etc. that I was relying on two years ago.

Categories
life meta

Speaking of Lessons

Recently I was introduced to Bokardo, a blog about social web design. I have enjoyed what I have found there. Two recent posts combine to give 18 Lessons for Would-Be Bloggers. I consider myself more than a “would be” blogger but I am looking at learning from some of those lessons. After reading those posts I have decided to share two lessons I have learned over my years of blogging. One lesson is for aspiring bloggers and the other is for blogging advocates such as Joshua at Bokardo.

To the aspiring bloggers, one great lesson I have learned is to write consistently. For me that means that I strive to write daily. Sometimes I do better than others, but that is my target because that rhythm seems to fit me. Find your own rhythm, but don’t write on a completely random basis. Some would argue that this regularity will help to keep readers interested. I’m sure that’s true, but I stress this lesson for another reason. Write regularly because it keeps your mind active in noticing and generating ideas for writing.

To blogging advocates, one vital lesson that I have learned is that blogging does not suit everybody. I think that most people, if not all, should try blogging on to see if it fits them but I have learned from the experience of many people I have known that it will not always fit. There are many reasons why this is but we should accept that some people, even people who want to blog, find that it does not fit them. The best part of that lesson for me has been that it’s okay. Blogging fits me, but I don’t have to second guess myself or my friends if they discover that blogging does not fit them.

Categories
life meta politics

Reach Upward

I have been wanting to post some thoughts on Scott Hinrichs post Gross Incompetence? As I have come back to it, I realize that I could quote much of the same material he is quoting or I could thoroughly botch an attempt to add something to what he said. Instead I have decided to share this as an example of the thoughtful posts that I have come to enjoy from Scott. He comes up with some good sources and always leaves you thinking.

I agree with him about 95% of the time. The other 5% I consider that I have not yet formed an opinion on the subject. Never can I reject his arguments outright, and never do I finish reading a post from Scott and feel I’ve wasted my time.