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Monday, September 29, 2008

From Dave Winer: 

Friday, September 26, 2008

I listened to Bon Iver on NPR’s World Cafe and I immediately bought their album For Emma, Forever Ago on iTunes. This is good. Really, really good.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Sometimes I feel weird when ‘blogging’ is talked about in public. I feel silly writing about this, but I think it’s a decent analogy of how something can grow and change when given to the masses.

When I was younger, musical genres ‘emo’ and ‘indie rock’ were cool and not mainstream, and I partially loved it for its counter-pop culture quality. (I’ve since outgrown such exclusive awkwardness, really!) Now that those once-‘underground sounds’ have become mainstream, though, they have changed considerably. People understand them differently and have given them new definitions. My wife’s middle-school students tell us so.

We see evidence of this when we shop at places like Target and see t-shirts with old company logos and cool band graphics on them. Who’da thought we’d one day be able to shop at Target for all our cool clothing needs?

In a reverse sorta way, it’s similar to how one might feel if their mom wanted to be their friend on MySpace or Facebook. (I’ve mostly committed to closing my Facebook account the day my mom wants to be my Internet friend. I still love her, though! Naturally.)

Of course, not everyone feels this way about their parents. I remember going to a certain show (a.k.a. …

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

So, I removed the script from my site that allows Google to keep an eye on traffic. I offered my reasoning for doing this as ‘one less thing to distract from writing and thinking and working.’ This is true. I had a direct link to the data for this site, which I checked often enough. I realized, though, that no matter how many visitors I get, no matter how many traffic spikes I receive (however big or small), none of it adds up to much if what I am writing and publishing doesn’t stir discourse. If no one emails me in response, if no one posts a response on their own blog, what is it worth?

Which brings me to comments. Or, the lack thereof on this here journal. Just a few entries back I expressed possible interest in allowing folks to comment on entries. But I have since been reading more ideas on the value of comments. I like the idea of publishing ideas and engaging industry conversation, but there is one form of ‘comments’ that I have long admired, which was inspired by the way John Gruber writes his …

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Somehow, per the natural line-wrapping of whatever application I am in, so often the same word will begin a sequence of lines. Is there a word or phrase that describes this phenomenon?

Monday, September 15, 2008

Killing the analytics code. One less thing to distract from writing and thinking and working.

Friday, September 12, 2008

For some reason Twitter will not allow me to update my account any longer. But this is okay, and timely, because this week I have been on a bit of a Twitter ‘fast’ and have decided to extend it indefinitely. I certainly enjoy Twitter and there are two things I will miss most: Zeldman’s always clever tweets, and keeping up with other Twitterers in Louisville. I’m stepping away from Twitter mostly because it’s super duper distracting and I have enough RSS feeds doing that already. I’m stepping away from Twitter because, for me, it lends itself to superficial writing, and I want to develop within myself the ability to write and think beyond 140 characters.

Goodbye little bird in my menu bar. For now.