Showing posts with label blog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blog. Show all posts
Monday, August 06, 2012
* * * New Blog * * *
I'm not giving up on Yappa Ding Ding (which I have been writing for going on seven years) but I have started a work blog, Focus on Readers. It's a work in progress and as with many of my ventures, I have no idea where it will lead...
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Monday, December 21, 2009
Comments
From time to time I threaten to delete comments and sometimes people ask me to delete comments, but it's something I've hardly ever done for editorial reasons.
However recently I've been getting hit by a spammer who embeds links in Chinese characters, or sometimes in a row of dots. I have word verification enabled but they still get through. So if you noticed that comments are coming and going, that's why.
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However recently I've been getting hit by a spammer who embeds links in Chinese characters, or sometimes in a row of dots. I have word verification enabled but they still get through. So if you noticed that comments are coming and going, that's why.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Unpleasantness as a Political Tactic
Many years ago I was on the board of a neighborhood association in downtown Toronto. All the members of the board were residents of the area except the president, who owned a gas station there but lived in the suburbs. At one point the interests of residents diverged from the interests of the gas station, and at the show-down meeting our president pulled an effective trick. He changed the meeting room to a small airless room, and he wore coveralls that reeked of gasoline. (Normally he wore a suit.) Then he insisted on giving a long-winded oration of his arguments, during which the rest of the board visibly wilted. Some even left. At the start of the meeting he was outvoted 7-1, but by the end of the meeting he won his vote.
A few years ago I worked with a guy who was uber passive aggressive. If he was mad at me or disagreed with me or – I can’t say I ever fully understood his motives – he’d stare at me fixedly during a meeting while ostentatiously picking his nose. Or stretch his legs wide apart and thrust up his pelvis while glaring at me.
These sorts of tactics are a bit hard to pin down: you feel quite certain they’re deliberate, but there’s always the possibility that the person is doing it without realizing it.
(People writing comments on blogs and newspaper articles are frequently unpleasant, of course, but I think of comment-writing as a combination of writing a letter to the editor and yelling at the TV: I think you have to expect a higher level of emotion than is usual when we communicate, and adjust your reactions accordingly.)
Nowadays I’m in a group that questions the transit plans of the Region of Waterloo, and we have been targeted by a group, mostly students it seems, who oppose our opposition. This antiopposition group has employed some pretty aggressive tactics, engaging in personal attacks such as calling members of my group liars, saying we are fear-mongerers, and publicly questioning our motives. They have done this on a call-in show on the local Rogers channel, at a public meeting, in an op-ed in the Record, in comments on this blog, and elsewhere.
So I’m wondering... is this just a tactic to dispirit us and keep us down? It doesn’t seem possible that the antioppositioners could really believe that we’re liars and so on: could they really be so partisan and hate us so thoroughly that they really believe any nasty thing about us that pops into their heads? They could just be bullies, but that begs the question of where they got the notion that public discourse is about attempted character assassination.
In any case their nastiness isn't helping their cause, and if anything is galvanizing people against them. I'm more interested in the general question... This issue is a little easier for me to discuss because I'm not the one being attacked this time, but I still don't understand it.
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A few years ago I worked with a guy who was uber passive aggressive. If he was mad at me or disagreed with me or – I can’t say I ever fully understood his motives – he’d stare at me fixedly during a meeting while ostentatiously picking his nose. Or stretch his legs wide apart and thrust up his pelvis while glaring at me.
These sorts of tactics are a bit hard to pin down: you feel quite certain they’re deliberate, but there’s always the possibility that the person is doing it without realizing it.
(People writing comments on blogs and newspaper articles are frequently unpleasant, of course, but I think of comment-writing as a combination of writing a letter to the editor and yelling at the TV: I think you have to expect a higher level of emotion than is usual when we communicate, and adjust your reactions accordingly.)
Nowadays I’m in a group that questions the transit plans of the Region of Waterloo, and we have been targeted by a group, mostly students it seems, who oppose our opposition. This antiopposition group has employed some pretty aggressive tactics, engaging in personal attacks such as calling members of my group liars, saying we are fear-mongerers, and publicly questioning our motives. They have done this on a call-in show on the local Rogers channel, at a public meeting, in an op-ed in the Record, in comments on this blog, and elsewhere.
So I’m wondering... is this just a tactic to dispirit us and keep us down? It doesn’t seem possible that the antioppositioners could really believe that we’re liars and so on: could they really be so partisan and hate us so thoroughly that they really believe any nasty thing about us that pops into their heads? They could just be bullies, but that begs the question of where they got the notion that public discourse is about attempted character assassination.
In any case their nastiness isn't helping their cause, and if anything is galvanizing people against them. I'm more interested in the general question... This issue is a little easier for me to discuss because I'm not the one being attacked this time, but I still don't understand it.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Damn Blogger
Blogger just published an unfinished post I was working on (which I then deleted). Sorry about that. Blogger seems to have become increasingly flaky over the last year or so. For example, I lost the ability to moderate comments. Then the functionality for notifying me of comments went kablooey - now I only get notified of comments that I myself write on my blog (thanks very much, blogger). Today the word verification functionality went screwy, so that as I'm writing a post (which I have to be logged in to do) I can't save my writing until I type the word verification letters. When I did that just now, damn blogger posted my unfinished writing.
It turns out that blogger has flagged me as a spam blog, which is a blog that is auto-generated to post advertising messages. I have sent a request to blogger to take me off the spam list.
It seems to me that my blogging problems started with Blogger 2.0, but I may just be feeling burned about new versions because I upgraded to Skype 4.0 last week and it is crap compared to v3... I'm having all sorts of problems, and since I have an online phone number with Skype and use it as my home-phone-away-from-home, and since I'm away from home more often than not, it's a real pain to suddenly have it downgraded to alpha-level usability. Skype phone numbers are cheap and have unlimited long distance and free voicemail, but I guess I'm getting what I paid for.... which appears to be the case with my free account on blogger, as well.
Update: Reading the blogger help pages, I see that they say spam blogs "can be recognized by their irrelevant, repetitive, or nonsensical text..." Now that's just mean! ;-)
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It turns out that blogger has flagged me as a spam blog, which is a blog that is auto-generated to post advertising messages. I have sent a request to blogger to take me off the spam list.
It seems to me that my blogging problems started with Blogger 2.0, but I may just be feeling burned about new versions because I upgraded to Skype 4.0 last week and it is crap compared to v3... I'm having all sorts of problems, and since I have an online phone number with Skype and use it as my home-phone-away-from-home, and since I'm away from home more often than not, it's a real pain to suddenly have it downgraded to alpha-level usability. Skype phone numbers are cheap and have unlimited long distance and free voicemail, but I guess I'm getting what I paid for.... which appears to be the case with my free account on blogger, as well.
Update: Reading the blogger help pages, I see that they say spam blogs "can be recognized by their irrelevant, repetitive, or nonsensical text..." Now that's just mean! ;-)
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Comment Moderation Woes Continue
A few weeks ago, blogger stopped sending me notification that I had comments to moderate, resulting in several days where comments didn't appear (until I figured out what was going on). Now I check my blogger dashboard comment moderation page instead of waiting for notification. But as of a few days ago, comments stopped even going to comment moderation... they just disappeared into the ether. I just figured that out and have now turned off comment moderation, so now some comments are getting through - but not all. Damn. Blogger says this is a known bug and they are working on it.
Please know that unless a comment is really offensive, I never reject comments... but I seem to be getting what I paid for with blogger's free software.
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Please know that unless a comment is really offensive, I never reject comments... but I seem to be getting what I paid for with blogger's free software.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Commerical Bloggerism
In my right margin, just below my email address and profile, I have a temporary section of links that I change with the times. Most recently it concerned the Canadian election. Now I'm starting a collection of links to recession-related blogs. To make this collection I've done a lot of trolling around the blogosphere, looking at blogs devoted to lifestyle, savings, poverty, finances, etc. This activity had an unexpected result: I've discovered some interesting things about the business of making money on the web.
I stumbled across blogs that are devoted to how to make money with blogging. One woman claims she made nearly $3K in one month with her blog ads and by posting on eHow, Bukisa, Commission Junction, and similar sites. Commenters on her site don't seem to be doing so well: typical commenters report making under $10 in total, ever, by following her advice (and yet they still seem positive about their future, based on that tantalizing $3,000 claim). It's a bit like those ads you used to see in the back of comic books: "Make money at home! Send $2 to find out how!" and what you get back is a piece of paper telling you to put an ad in a comic book asking people to send you $2.
Most blogs with ads are fairly benign: the blogger is writing things of interest to him or herself, and happens to have ads. But there is another category of blogs that is seriously trying to make money. These blogs seem to have a number of tricks for increasing their ad income. There are the usual ones like using words or phrases that are popular in Google searches (references to porn, health care, etc). But the trick that really got me is the attempt to attract people to the site who are more likely to click ads - gullible, unsophisticated or just plain desperate - by using ridiculous headlines like "How to spend zero dollars on groceries in 2009". There are tons of blogs devoted to this style of writing, plastered with ads.
I am disgusted by these blogs, but then I am not the desired demographic because I don't click on ads. It's like what happened to a TV show a couple of years ago called Commander in Chief, starring Gina Davis. The show was a critical success and had high ratings. But it appealed to women over 25 (like me), and that is not a demographic that advertisers pay top dollar for, so it was bounced around from night to night and finally cancelled after about 16 episodes.
Sites like eHow have a lot of truly awful posts: the goal seems to be to expend as little effort as possible writing a post, or perhaps to divide up a set of information into multiple posts to maximize revenue. The result is generally facile, contentless pages of "information". The problem with this, if there is a problem, is the proliferation of junk that makes it harder and harder to find quality writing. I don't usually run into this problem but my search for blogs of interest during the recession was really bogged down by silly sites, desperately trying to generate some income, that probably aren't. The only people getting rich are at Google.
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I stumbled across blogs that are devoted to how to make money with blogging. One woman claims she made nearly $3K in one month with her blog ads and by posting on eHow, Bukisa, Commission Junction, and similar sites. Commenters on her site don't seem to be doing so well: typical commenters report making under $10 in total, ever, by following her advice (and yet they still seem positive about their future, based on that tantalizing $3,000 claim). It's a bit like those ads you used to see in the back of comic books: "Make money at home! Send $2 to find out how!" and what you get back is a piece of paper telling you to put an ad in a comic book asking people to send you $2.
Most blogs with ads are fairly benign: the blogger is writing things of interest to him or herself, and happens to have ads. But there is another category of blogs that is seriously trying to make money. These blogs seem to have a number of tricks for increasing their ad income. There are the usual ones like using words or phrases that are popular in Google searches (references to porn, health care, etc). But the trick that really got me is the attempt to attract people to the site who are more likely to click ads - gullible, unsophisticated or just plain desperate - by using ridiculous headlines like "How to spend zero dollars on groceries in 2009". There are tons of blogs devoted to this style of writing, plastered with ads.
I am disgusted by these blogs, but then I am not the desired demographic because I don't click on ads. It's like what happened to a TV show a couple of years ago called Commander in Chief, starring Gina Davis. The show was a critical success and had high ratings. But it appealed to women over 25 (like me), and that is not a demographic that advertisers pay top dollar for, so it was bounced around from night to night and finally cancelled after about 16 episodes.
Sites like eHow have a lot of truly awful posts: the goal seems to be to expend as little effort as possible writing a post, or perhaps to divide up a set of information into multiple posts to maximize revenue. The result is generally facile, contentless pages of "information". The problem with this, if there is a problem, is the proliferation of junk that makes it harder and harder to find quality writing. I don't usually run into this problem but my search for blogs of interest during the recession was really bogged down by silly sites, desperately trying to generate some income, that probably aren't. The only people getting rich are at Google.
Monday, July 07, 2008
Best Blog Post of the Year
For like days now I've been trying to think of a clever, witty comment to this brilliant post on Whimsley: My New Book: Explosion!TM but, well, I came up with nuthin. Some of the other commenters are pretty great.
The writing is extremely good, which is typical of Whimsley, but I think what really hit home was the humor laced with just a tad of bitter frustration. And the tiniest dash of manic obsession with his Moriarty, The Long Tail.
(Sadly, I can't even figure out how to make a superscript in blogger.)
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The writing is extremely good, which is typical of Whimsley, but I think what really hit home was the humor laced with just a tad of bitter frustration. And the tiniest dash of manic obsession with his Moriarty, The Long Tail.
(Sadly, I can't even figure out how to make a superscript in blogger.)
Monday, January 21, 2008
The Huffington Post and Irresponsible Alternative Media
We should start taking a hard look at the conduct of alternative media as well as main stream media.
There are some really crappy money-making blogs (MMBs) around. One, I believe, is gawker (I won't even provide the URL). It pays a pittance to its contributors - I have heard it was recently $12/post - and the site makes millions. Gawker strikes me as particularly offensive because it tries to be counter-cultural and edgy, when it's just big business taking advantage of the little guy.
One MMB/alternative news site that I read and like is the Huffington Post. There are lots of good contributors and a variety of viewpoints. But there's something very unsettling about HuffPost: The comments are mostly utterly vitriolic, hate-filled rants by Democrats (or people posing as Democrats) against other Democrats. If you thought HuffPost was representative of America, you'd think that the Democratic party was tearing itself to bits.
Now, lots of blogs and news sites have angry, rude commenters. The thing that bothers me about HuffPost is the concentration of intraparty hatred. There is really no need for the Obama camp and Hillary camp to be so angry and nasty. And from my experience, HuffPost commenters don't represent average people who support those two candidates.
So I took a harder look at HuffPost content, and I conclude that HuffPost uses inflammatory articles and headlines to up their readership (and ultimately their profits from ads). HuffPost is creating scandal and dissension, or at least exacerbating it.
On Saturday, January 19, I made a note of every headline on the HuffPost front page that mentioned Hillary, Barack, or both. (This required checking every couple of hours over the day.) There were 25. Of those, I judge 15 to be inflammatory in some way: dealing with scandal or dissension rather than policy or fact. I provide links below.
I believe that HuffPost is being worse than MSM in stirring up controversy in the Democratic race. HuffPost should take a good, hard look at their editorial policy. They should be focusing more on policy and fact, and scale down the dissension and scandal. Fifteen inflammatory posts in one day is at least 14 too many.
AlterNet has taken a more sober, responsible approach to what it posts (compared to how it covered the last presidential election). HuffPost might learn from them.
Here are the inflammatory posts. The headlines are what appeared on the HuffPost front page:
* Racist Obama joke leaves banquet crowd gasping
* No More Mr. Nice Guy: Obama Mocks Hillary In Standup Routine
* The curious math of Hillary’s "35 years of experience"
* Judge rejects Clinton gambit to block casino workers from voting
* Clinton's Anti-Union Allies
* Anna Lambasts Hillary for Rejecting Vogue
* Nevada Union in battle mode for Obama
* Roy Sekoff with Dan Abrams, Joe Klein and Kate Obenshain on Hillary, Obama and Fearmongering
* Southern Blacks Split Over Obama Vs Clinton
* Chris Matthews apologises for harsh coverage of Hillary
* Chris Matthews Doesn't Rewrite History About the Clintons, He Just Makes It Up
* Anna Wintour Takes Hillary Clinton To Task
* Barack Hearts Ronnie: An Old, New Song
* Chris Matthews Had the Guts to Apologize for Hillary Loathe, Don't Bet the Others Will do the Same
* Hillary Opens Up to Tyra About Adultery
The rest of Saturday's posts on HuffPost are relatively neutral:
* Debate Shocker: Iraq Returns to the Campaign Spotlight...and Hillary Puts it There
* Open Letter to Senator Obama: What Exactly in the Clinton-Era Nineties Did You Not Like?
* Michigan Results Reveal Some Dangerous Trends For Clinton
* Progressive Leader Feingold Split Over Clinton, Obama
* Reagan Advisors: Obama a Bit Like the Gipper
* Obama Could Be Our Tony Blair!
* Senator Leahy Endorses Obama
* Hillary Clinton Delivers Most Watched Meet the Press in Almost Three Years
* Obama Volunteers Transform San Fran Bong Shop To New HQ
* Obama's Wife Gets Vegas Night Out
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There are some really crappy money-making blogs (MMBs) around. One, I believe, is gawker (I won't even provide the URL). It pays a pittance to its contributors - I have heard it was recently $12/post - and the site makes millions. Gawker strikes me as particularly offensive because it tries to be counter-cultural and edgy, when it's just big business taking advantage of the little guy.
One MMB/alternative news site that I read and like is the Huffington Post. There are lots of good contributors and a variety of viewpoints. But there's something very unsettling about HuffPost: The comments are mostly utterly vitriolic, hate-filled rants by Democrats (or people posing as Democrats) against other Democrats. If you thought HuffPost was representative of America, you'd think that the Democratic party was tearing itself to bits.
Now, lots of blogs and news sites have angry, rude commenters. The thing that bothers me about HuffPost is the concentration of intraparty hatred. There is really no need for the Obama camp and Hillary camp to be so angry and nasty. And from my experience, HuffPost commenters don't represent average people who support those two candidates.
So I took a harder look at HuffPost content, and I conclude that HuffPost uses inflammatory articles and headlines to up their readership (and ultimately their profits from ads). HuffPost is creating scandal and dissension, or at least exacerbating it.
On Saturday, January 19, I made a note of every headline on the HuffPost front page that mentioned Hillary, Barack, or both. (This required checking every couple of hours over the day.) There were 25. Of those, I judge 15 to be inflammatory in some way: dealing with scandal or dissension rather than policy or fact. I provide links below.
I believe that HuffPost is being worse than MSM in stirring up controversy in the Democratic race. HuffPost should take a good, hard look at their editorial policy. They should be focusing more on policy and fact, and scale down the dissension and scandal. Fifteen inflammatory posts in one day is at least 14 too many.
AlterNet has taken a more sober, responsible approach to what it posts (compared to how it covered the last presidential election). HuffPost might learn from them.
Here are the inflammatory posts. The headlines are what appeared on the HuffPost front page:
* Racist Obama joke leaves banquet crowd gasping
* No More Mr. Nice Guy: Obama Mocks Hillary In Standup Routine
* The curious math of Hillary’s "35 years of experience"
* Judge rejects Clinton gambit to block casino workers from voting
* Clinton's Anti-Union Allies
* Anna Lambasts Hillary for Rejecting Vogue
* Nevada Union in battle mode for Obama
* Roy Sekoff with Dan Abrams, Joe Klein and Kate Obenshain on Hillary, Obama and Fearmongering
* Southern Blacks Split Over Obama Vs Clinton
* Chris Matthews apologises for harsh coverage of Hillary
* Chris Matthews Doesn't Rewrite History About the Clintons, He Just Makes It Up
* Anna Wintour Takes Hillary Clinton To Task
* Barack Hearts Ronnie: An Old, New Song
* Chris Matthews Had the Guts to Apologize for Hillary Loathe, Don't Bet the Others Will do the Same
* Hillary Opens Up to Tyra About Adultery
The rest of Saturday's posts on HuffPost are relatively neutral:
* Debate Shocker: Iraq Returns to the Campaign Spotlight...and Hillary Puts it There
* Open Letter to Senator Obama: What Exactly in the Clinton-Era Nineties Did You Not Like?
* Michigan Results Reveal Some Dangerous Trends For Clinton
* Progressive Leader Feingold Split Over Clinton, Obama
* Reagan Advisors: Obama a Bit Like the Gipper
* Obama Could Be Our Tony Blair!
* Senator Leahy Endorses Obama
* Hillary Clinton Delivers Most Watched Meet the Press in Almost Three Years
* Obama Volunteers Transform San Fran Bong Shop To New HQ
* Obama's Wife Gets Vegas Night Out
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Google Blog Search Bites
Google Blog Search is Google's search tool for blogs. The idea is that regular Google is good for info from the main stream media, encyclopedias or commercial sites, but for blogs, we can use Google Blog Search.
However, Google Blog Search doesn't work as you'd expect. If a topic is in the MSM, Google Blog Search often finds the MSM sites first. If a topic is only in amateur blogs, regular Google is a better way to find where it's being discussed.
One reason for the problems with Google Blog Search may be that there are ways to improve your indexing in it, and web site professionals are more likely to use them than regular bloggers. For example, see the Google Blog Search Pinging API and the simpler Ping-o-Matic. This gives an edge to the commercial sites. Commercial sites are also probably more savvy about how to take advantage of Google Blog Search's search rules.
A little poking around makes me think that Google Blog Search is junk and should be avoided.
Here's my research...
First, I opened Google Blog Search and searched for "Conrad Black" ( a topic that is currently both in blogs and MSM). Of the first two pages of links (10 per page), none of the links were to amateur blogs. All of them were commercial operations with editors and staff. Some links were to "blogs" on big media outlets like the Wall Street Journal. Some were just to MSM sites with (in this case) no blog content, like Macleans and Canoe. There was also a really creepy online betting site.
I decided to try a topic that is in amateur blogs but not in the MSM, so searched on that great obsession of Canadian bloggers, Jason Cherniak. In this case, Google Blog Search seemed to work fine, and provided 270 links out of a total of 1,368 reported pages. But then I searched on "Jason Cherniak" in regular Google. This returned 200 links of a reported 62,900 pages... and I didn't find a single hit that wasn't a blog. Regular Google was more effective at finding blogs than Google Blog Search.
I tried searching "agblosticism", a term my friend Tom made up that has appeared in only three sites, all blogs. On Google Blog Search, only two sites were found. On Google, all three were returned. (The third site, Quick Study, is clearly a blog but apparently doesn't appear as one to Google Blog Search.)
Finally, I searched for my blog - first its name and then its URL. Again, Google Blog Search was a great disappointment compared to Google. It was even worse when I searched for a topic I have blogged on. For example, I have written a lot of stories about the environment, so I tried searching for "yappa ding ding" environment. Google returned over 500 hits; Google Blog Search returned one old post.
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However, Google Blog Search doesn't work as you'd expect. If a topic is in the MSM, Google Blog Search often finds the MSM sites first. If a topic is only in amateur blogs, regular Google is a better way to find where it's being discussed.
One reason for the problems with Google Blog Search may be that there are ways to improve your indexing in it, and web site professionals are more likely to use them than regular bloggers. For example, see the Google Blog Search Pinging API and the simpler Ping-o-Matic. This gives an edge to the commercial sites. Commercial sites are also probably more savvy about how to take advantage of Google Blog Search's search rules.
A little poking around makes me think that Google Blog Search is junk and should be avoided.
Here's my research...
First, I opened Google Blog Search and searched for "Conrad Black" ( a topic that is currently both in blogs and MSM). Of the first two pages of links (10 per page), none of the links were to amateur blogs. All of them were commercial operations with editors and staff. Some links were to "blogs" on big media outlets like the Wall Street Journal. Some were just to MSM sites with (in this case) no blog content, like Macleans and Canoe. There was also a really creepy online betting site.
I decided to try a topic that is in amateur blogs but not in the MSM, so searched on that great obsession of Canadian bloggers, Jason Cherniak. In this case, Google Blog Search seemed to work fine, and provided 270 links out of a total of 1,368 reported pages. But then I searched on "Jason Cherniak" in regular Google. This returned 200 links of a reported 62,900 pages... and I didn't find a single hit that wasn't a blog. Regular Google was more effective at finding blogs than Google Blog Search.
I tried searching "agblosticism", a term my friend Tom made up that has appeared in only three sites, all blogs. On Google Blog Search, only two sites were found. On Google, all three were returned. (The third site, Quick Study, is clearly a blog but apparently doesn't appear as one to Google Blog Search.)
Finally, I searched for my blog - first its name and then its URL. Again, Google Blog Search was a great disappointment compared to Google. It was even worse when I searched for a topic I have blogged on. For example, I have written a lot of stories about the environment, so I tried searching for "yappa ding ding" environment. Google returned over 500 hits; Google Blog Search returned one old post.
Saturday, March 03, 2007
Flame on Agblosticism
Whimsley coins the term agblosticism to describe his skepticism about the worthiness of blogging: "To gain an audience you have to pick up on what other bloggers are writing about and respond within hours. So really, blogging just isn't my thing. The arguments go nowhere, no one changes their mind, and the signal/noise ratio is very low. The blogging world is a world built for quick-typing extroverts who don't go in too much for second thoughts."
Rubbish, Whimsley, rubbish! I have to give you some points for coming up with an el coolo new word, but other than that, well, geeze... I think you're being a curmudgeon.
You don't have to jump on stories to get an audience. You just have to join some blogrolls and write some good posts (which, I should add, Whimsley does). Many of my favorite bloggers (like James Laxer and Baghdad Burning) don't write regularly. I don't.
Being a blogger is a glorious activity. You get to be the editor of the New York Times. You never have to worry about having a piece accepted for publication or writing in a particular style. You write exactly what you want and presto - it's in print! And people read it.
I don't claim to be widely read, but I get enough comments to feel that I have some sort of readership. In addition, a quick google search shows that this blog has been quoted in Mother Jones; the Huffington Post; the Ken Dryden Liberal leadership site; a Judy Rebick-Elizabeth May dispute in Blue Wave Canada; a Canadian Armed Forces in Afghanistan web site; and numerous blogs.
Over the year and a bit that I've been blogging, I've had lots of good results:
- I'm writing better and faster.
- I'm getting better at finding ways to get through to readers. Sometimes I write a well-researched, ponderous post and find noone comments, so I rephrase it in a briefer, breezier style, and get a much better response.
- I'm less thin-skinned about comments that are critical of my posts. I find myself enjoying dissenting comments, even when they're inarticulate or nasty, and empathising with the writer.
- My opinions are becoming better informed (because, believe it or not, I actually do research my posts).
- Laying out my opinions in public has made me question a lot of things I took for granted and made my convictions stronger on other things.
- I have an unending flood of things I want to write about, and am held back only by time and energy constraints.
- I feel I'm part of the public discourse in a way I never was before.
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Rubbish, Whimsley, rubbish! I have to give you some points for coming up with an el coolo new word, but other than that, well, geeze... I think you're being a curmudgeon.
You don't have to jump on stories to get an audience. You just have to join some blogrolls and write some good posts (which, I should add, Whimsley does). Many of my favorite bloggers (like James Laxer and Baghdad Burning) don't write regularly. I don't.
Being a blogger is a glorious activity. You get to be the editor of the New York Times. You never have to worry about having a piece accepted for publication or writing in a particular style. You write exactly what you want and presto - it's in print! And people read it.
I don't claim to be widely read, but I get enough comments to feel that I have some sort of readership. In addition, a quick google search shows that this blog has been quoted in Mother Jones; the Huffington Post; the Ken Dryden Liberal leadership site; a Judy Rebick-Elizabeth May dispute in Blue Wave Canada; a Canadian Armed Forces in Afghanistan web site; and numerous blogs.
Over the year and a bit that I've been blogging, I've had lots of good results:
- I'm writing better and faster.
- I'm getting better at finding ways to get through to readers. Sometimes I write a well-researched, ponderous post and find noone comments, so I rephrase it in a briefer, breezier style, and get a much better response.
- I'm less thin-skinned about comments that are critical of my posts. I find myself enjoying dissenting comments, even when they're inarticulate or nasty, and empathising with the writer.
- My opinions are becoming better informed (because, believe it or not, I actually do research my posts).
- Laying out my opinions in public has made me question a lot of things I took for granted and made my convictions stronger on other things.
- I have an unending flood of things I want to write about, and am held back only by time and energy constraints.
- I feel I'm part of the public discourse in a way I never was before.
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Meme games
Sparky Duck has tagged me for a meme, and as this is my first tagging I'll give it a go. Since his tagging contained no instructions (his exact words were, "Oh and I have tagged you for a meme, totally random like"), I'll take the opportunity to talk about meme tagging. The concept has been around for years, but I never paid much attention till now.
Originally, the word meme meant something like, "The cultural counterpart of a gene, a meme is a self-propagating unit of cultural evolution (an idea or value or pattern of behavior) that is passed from one generation to another by nongenetic means (as by imitation)." Meme rhymes with dream.
Now the word seems to be used more to mean "an idea transmitted from person to person like a virus." You might say it's a fancy word for "fad".
Meme games are a variation on the old chain letter, except they take advantage of the linking capabilities in blogs, so you only need to link to the person who tagged you for the meme. Sparky tags me, I tag someone else, and on and on. The key element is that when you are tagged you must provide a link to your tagger in your blog.
Meme games are a good way to increase your Technorati ranking and get some more traffic to your blog, but they serve a more important purpose, which is to create new connections between bloggers. Say I tag you with a book meme (for example, provide your five favorite books); you comply, and tag some of your friends to do the same. They look at your post and link to my list and perhaps we have something in common.
I'm not at all sure how to apply meme games to blogs like mine that aren't personal diaries. I can't see myself choosing someone from the Liblogs blogroll and tagging them with a meme. It could have cool consequences - illuminate our shared ideas, increase the bond between bloggers, increase traffic to our sites - but it seems to be a game for another realm. Or maybe we just need to find a way to further evolve the meme to our realm.
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Originally, the word meme meant something like, "The cultural counterpart of a gene, a meme is a self-propagating unit of cultural evolution (an idea or value or pattern of behavior) that is passed from one generation to another by nongenetic means (as by imitation)." Meme rhymes with dream.
Now the word seems to be used more to mean "an idea transmitted from person to person like a virus." You might say it's a fancy word for "fad".
Meme games are a variation on the old chain letter, except they take advantage of the linking capabilities in blogs, so you only need to link to the person who tagged you for the meme. Sparky tags me, I tag someone else, and on and on. The key element is that when you are tagged you must provide a link to your tagger in your blog.
Meme games are a good way to increase your Technorati ranking and get some more traffic to your blog, but they serve a more important purpose, which is to create new connections between bloggers. Say I tag you with a book meme (for example, provide your five favorite books); you comply, and tag some of your friends to do the same. They look at your post and link to my list and perhaps we have something in common.
I'm not at all sure how to apply meme games to blogs like mine that aren't personal diaries. I can't see myself choosing someone from the Liblogs blogroll and tagging them with a meme. It could have cool consequences - illuminate our shared ideas, increase the bond between bloggers, increase traffic to our sites - but it seems to be a game for another realm. Or maybe we just need to find a way to further evolve the meme to our realm.
Monday, September 11, 2006
Me, Osama and the Blogosphere
My birthday's coming up, so I have been reflecting on my advancing years. I feel as young as ever, but in fact I'm the same age as Osama bin Laden. How did it come to this? The same age as a wrinkled old white-haired fella with a long white beard living in a cave with his dialysis machine plotting the destruction of western civilization. Whodathunkit.
The reason I mention my age is that I have to disagree with the many who think that the internet is for young people. I am a blogger, and as you can see, I ain't young. In this YouTube interview with Bob Rae and film-maker Robin Benger, interviewer Jesse asks what role the internet will play in the next federal election... Benger in particular seems to think that the internet is mostly the realm of youth and so does not have much relevance for serious politics.
That's a common comment, and yet it's not supported by the facts. Serious politics has a huge presence on the internet, in mainstream media, countercultural media, and blogs. Of course, gaming and other youth-driven things are even bigger presences, but then, the entire internet is apparently financed by pornography, so the rest of us are just riding the tail. (Pun intended.)
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The reason I mention my age is that I have to disagree with the many who think that the internet is for young people. I am a blogger, and as you can see, I ain't young. In this YouTube interview with Bob Rae and film-maker Robin Benger, interviewer Jesse asks what role the internet will play in the next federal election... Benger in particular seems to think that the internet is mostly the realm of youth and so does not have much relevance for serious politics.
That's a common comment, and yet it's not supported by the facts. Serious politics has a huge presence on the internet, in mainstream media, countercultural media, and blogs. Of course, gaming and other youth-driven things are even bigger presences, but then, the entire internet is apparently financed by pornography, so the rest of us are just riding the tail. (Pun intended.)
Friday, July 28, 2006
Privacy on the Internet
We all like to rant in our blogs about privacy infringements by the US government, phone companies, our ISPs, and the rafts of snooping ne'er-do-wells who are looking to commit fraud or just cause some mischief.
Yet on these very same outraged blogs, many of us are collecting a suspicious amount of info about our visitors. I don't really want bloggers to know that I visited their site and what I looked at, even if they can only see my domain (and so, in many cases, guess it's me). I think that's creepy. I protest.
I have a site meter on this blog, but it collects no individual data, just statistics about average visits. Rest assured, your privacy is protected on Yappa Ding Ding!
Update: After discovering (thanks Tom) that my site meter does collect individual data, and even makes it available to anyone looking at my site, I removed it.
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Yet on these very same outraged blogs, many of us are collecting a suspicious amount of info about our visitors. I don't really want bloggers to know that I visited their site and what I looked at, even if they can only see my domain (and so, in many cases, guess it's me). I think that's creepy. I protest.
I have a site meter on this blog, but it collects no individual data, just statistics about average visits. Rest assured, your privacy is protected on Yappa Ding Ding!
Update: After discovering (thanks Tom) that my site meter does collect individual data, and even makes it available to anyone looking at my site, I removed it.
Friday, March 03, 2006
About YappaDingding
A yaba dingding is a pre-Columbian wall sconce. I once saw some beautiful yaba dingdings on Roatan, a Honduran island populated by the Garifuna tribe. The term "yappa ding ding" is a Garifuna expression meaning "something worth less than nothing". How these terms are related is a mystery (at least to me), but it's a good guess that the Garifuna, who have a fascinating culture stemming from the intermingling of escaped slaves and persecuted Carib indians, do not place a lot of importance on wall sconces.
I chose the name for no particular reason except that I always liked the name yaba dingding, but Yabbadingding is the name of a song and I didn't want to get confused with that. Plus I thought the meaning of yappa ding ding, if true, is sort of funny, and I like the handle Yappa.
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I chose the name for no particular reason except that I always liked the name yaba dingding, but Yabbadingding is the name of a song and I didn't want to get confused with that. Plus I thought the meaning of yappa ding ding, if true, is sort of funny, and I like the handle Yappa.
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