I’m done.
Figured I’d use this special date to call it a career.
Thanks for reading.
Archive for the 'Personal' Category
There are nights I wonder what it would be like, if I drank.
Just got done watching Monk.
Thinking about streams of consciousness.
Reevaluating Twitter.
Working on proper punctuation.
Realizing that most of my best stuff will sit, unread, in the archives, never seen by a human other than me. That really saddens me. I guess that’s why I don’t think about it much.
It could drive me to drink, if I was into that sort of thing.
MySpace will be deleted, soon.
Last.fm is kind of pointless.
Flickr sounded like a good idea at the time.
Six years of stuff, and I’m no closer to being an internet superstar than Adrian Monk is to solving the murder of his wife.
I’ve got election fever. And by that, I mean, “I get this sick feeling every time somebody comes near me with something political.” The United States has had to endure a presidential political cycle like no other, spanning almost from the day George Bush was re–elected. And I’m sick of it.
Know what I really hate? Personal blogs with some candidate’s logo on it. I’m not one to try and stifle anybody’s freedom of expression, but if I want to know who I should vote for, I’ll figure it out myself.
This is a personal gripe, actually. Some people feel comforted that they’re going to a website that sides with them on whatever particular issue. I’m not one of those people.
The whole point of dropping out of politics back in 2006 was because of the utter nonsense. I came to the realization that most bloggers were so naive that they thought candidates responded to them in a real, genuine way. It’s foolish to think this, because of the influence of those same bloggers.
So really, people, save it.
I’ve had some website or other for running on 8 years now. In that time, I’ve seen many a meme come and go, all sorts of bad ideas, and many good ideas. But mostly, it’s all been about the content.
Yes, that sweet, sweet content. Content is such a commodity these days that entire social networks are devoted to little more than getting you to create a profile (e.g. LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook). In the past couple of weeks, I’ve been deleting profiles like that. I’m not a commodity maker.
How that translates to this site is that I strive to produce the best content I can. Link posts are not good content. Link posts are what happens when you’re out of ideas, and you need something to keep loyal followers coming back. It’s what we, in the blogging bidness, call ‘weak sauce.’
Past tense, I’m guilty of copious link posts. A plethora of posts with nothing but sweet, juicy, low–effort link–y goodness. I was part of the problem.
Somehow, I figured I needed some of that blog content if I wanted to keep the peeps coming back. It turned out to be a losing game, and seriously not worth the effort.
For example, I had the ‘feature’ I called [Flagged]. The concept was that I was going to take the most interesting posts from my feed reader and put them on a page. From all my statistical calculations and website data, they were the lowest–performing post I ever wrote.
Plus, you know, people come to this site — and, from what I can gather, your site — to read me (or you). If they wanted to be somewhere else, they’d go there instead. Not everybody’s Glenn Reynolds.
So yes, I’m serious — shoot me. Right in the face.
So yes, I’m serious — shoot me. Right in the face. I don’t want to be part of the problem when the solution is so obvious. There’s almost no reason to chunk out a bunch of links and call it blogworthy. It’s people like that (my former self included) that make it easy to turn off the internet (at least for a little while).
That’s not to say that some people can’t link things up on the internet quite well. Some people gain quite a bit of notoriety for it (e.g. Glenn Reynolds, John Gruber). But they are the exception, not the rule. And — let’s face it — the only reason you’re doing a link post is because you’re out of ideas, isn’t it?
That’s what I thought. So, yeah. Right in the face. Make with the shooting.
Aside on del.icio.us
I heart del.icio.us — but it’s just a service. If I didn’t care so little about the links, I’d serve them off my own page. But the value of the link tends to go down, dramatically, with time. What I found, over the past two years, is that link traffic from trackbacks and Google tends to bring you no useful traffic.
That’s why I decided to go with off–site storage of the links. Disposable links like this don’t have a lot of staying power, honestly. People click them, then they’re gone. No sense wasting a lot of my time rebuilding the wheel, just for the hopes of getting some ad revenue.
In 2006, it seems I started a trend towards using WordPress as a platform for writing and linking. The concepts isn’t unique, it’s just I’ve noticed more and more people moving to WordPress, and shutting the comments off. I’ve always thought that Movable Type is perfect for a blog written that way, yet people are ditching that platform to move to something that’s built for ordinary blogging.
The first page I worked on, when putting this site together in WordPress was a subdomain with its own catchy title: “With a linkness.” While trying to copy the more famous bloggers of the time, I was using tools that were wholly incapable of completing the task. Again, Movable Type was, and is, a better tool more adequately suited linking and logs. It wasn’t until I started looking at the different social networks that I found my solution.
One fateful day, I signed up with a del.icio.us account. Then all my questions were answered, and all my troubles were gone. I’d figured out how to make this happen. And as I ventured out into the web, my off–site link hosting led me to some other avenues of expression.
In 2007, I burned out, and rekindled, then burned out again. Subtle life changes made me care less for the adoring of my internet fans, and more willing to take some risks. In addition to taking risks, I’ve also grown tired of working for my social credits. That means that I’ve actually deleted some accounts, because they don’t fulfill any useful purpose, and they waste my time.
So, now down to three. There’s others out there, but I can’t remember (or delete) them all. But you’ll see these three mentioned more than once on the site, and featured on the Linkness page. Here’s a brief description of the services, and what conned me into using them.
Random outbursts of creativity, 140 characters at a time. Short–form micro–blogging, where brevity will force perspective. Can I tell you that I love this thing? Because I do. I love it.
I’m amazed at how I’m now able to record some of the (sometimes) crazy things I think of to write. That I have the chance to share my inanity makes it worth the hassle. I like it so much, you can see the latest update (or tweet, in Twitter parlance) on every page of the site.
The de facto leader image sharing and hosting service. Obviously, this is where the images go, but also the screenshots I take. It’s easy to hit the shift+command+4 and upload the stuff on my desktop. Though I’ve been hesitant to use it like this before, now I’m seeing how capturing images and showcasing them there, that way is the proper way to share.
That, and taking some proper photographs would require me to go outside. Can’t do that, can I?
Where I waste most of my valuable linking prowess. It’s mostly technology–related, but I do get some other geekery in there. It’s always great fun if you’re looking for somewhere to be diverted.
I’ve rolled all three of these services in one, through the miracle of “The Internet”. Now, you too can follow everything I do, say, think, or believe by simply adding this feed to your feed reader/aggregator of choice. And no, I’m not going to explain what a feed reader/aggregator is.
Follow me, join me, yada yada yada.
One of the most infuriating things about the New York Times website is how it gets so stingy with links. If there is a link, it will go either to itself, or another, high–authority website. For example, if the story is about Digg, they may or may not link to Digg, but they will surely link to other coverage from the New York Times in the story. This bugs me.
At first, I figured the reason it caused me consternation was that the editors at the Times were just a bunch of stuck–up sticky–beaks who didn’t want to spread the linky love. Then I came to realize that this very site is an excellent example of the New York Times policy in play. After many revisions (this being version 8), the prior five years of archives just disappeared. Any story linked from the New York Times website would then end up at an error page.
Thus, the reason for my new linking policy. Before I get to the details of it, I’ll need to explain what is meant by ‘deep linking,’ why big authority sites avoid it, and why what they do a good idea.
Deep linking
Years ago, it was common for a website to only link to the home page of any other cited source. A site’s citation wouldn’t link to Yahoo.com/subdomain/source.html — a site would just link to Yahoo.com. As more people without formal training in writing etiquette started creating content on the internet, multiple versions of the rules appeared. The first formality to fall in this new era of citation was the courtesy of deep linking.
To ‘deep link,’ you need to have a target page, such as the above example. Instead of linking to the home page of Yahoo.com, you bypass that to get to the pertinent page. This is the same as going to a virtual back door to people you’ve never met. For some people, this is an intrusion of privacy, while other welcome it as a way to encourage interchanges.
Encouraging or discouraging deep–linking is more of a philosophical exercise than anything else. It is now such a standard practice that people think that discouraging deep–linking is the problem. While that (again) is more of a philosophical argument, the editorial argument is rather clear.
Stingy linkers
Going back to the New York Times, while I’ve a strong, negative opinion of their editorial policy, I can understand the logic. First of all, it is the newspaper of record, and what they print sure better be right or about 5 bajillion other sources will gleefully step up to take their shots. This is what happens when you are the market leader.
Besides the accuracy issue, there’s the stability issue. When nytimes.com sends a link your way, you’ve got to be sure the linked server can take it. It’s just not acceptable to send people somewhere that’s…not there. While I’m pretty sure the home page of Google can take a few links from me, the same could not be said from there to here.
You’ve ensured the accuracy of the link, and the strength of the linked server, are you sure you have the right page? That is the question that goes through the linker’s mind. Not to over–think this, but there’s a good possibility the objects of links may move. There’s no guarantee the linked will redirect your link to the correct place, or even tell you the page moved. Considering the scale of publishing at a national daily paper, they would need a full–time employee (at least) to stave off dead links.
Nuke ‘n Pave
Much like the accuracy, stability, and location, what about when a page just…disappears? Since there’s nothing old to look at, how can you ascertain what the linker was linking to? This is the problem for anyone linking to other sites.
A perfect example of a when a website completely clears its old content and starts anew is this site. It wasn’t a hard decision to clear five years of content, as the only remaining qualm I would have would be that I’d loses the residual search engine traffic. This approach brought in one–time readers, yes. But those one–time readers generally leave after they get the one thing they were looking for — like locust.
There’s many explanations of this phenomena, from the ‘long tail,’ ‘sith traffic,’ to my locust example. Since most of the search engine data will be out–of–date, they will continue to send people to dead links. That’s the same for old archived stories, linking to nothing. If I were an editor from a high–authority source (such as Salon.com, for instance), I would be hesitant to link to something I’m not perfectly sure will exist in a year, or even five–year’s time.
So my linking policy is made up of a few, good ideas. First, the idea is only link to things as general as possible. If it’s to another site, the link goes as high as possible. That means that if I can send you to the home page, I will. If it takes any deeper, I’ll try to keep it as high as possible.
Thus, a link that would go to a page like othersite.com/journal/index.php/page-name/#more would be worded in such a way as to send you to either that other site’s home page, or to as general a page as possible. In this example, since I needed to specify an individual, deep–linked post, I would have use the link to othersite.com/journal/index.php/page-name/. This should be a rare case, however.
I’m aware that people tend to read blogs and websites because they want to know what other people think. That’s why I watch television, why I read blogs, and why I like a good argument. So making the editorial policy here to keep it as much about what I think is really the best way to not have to worry about where I link. Thus, the linking policy would be that I am relatively sure the site I link to will exist, those links will be rare, and most of the content should be about what I think rather than profuse linking to what other people say.
