Recently in About Blogging Category

Well, that took a while. But, I've now have a shiny new MT upgrade installed on my hosting company's server. It allows for much easier manipulation of the side columns. I can switch different widgets in an out with extreme ease. It was just the initial creation of the widgets that took a bit.

On a more sober note, I lost 2 months worth of posts. Not like my lost achieves that are sitting in a flash drive waiting for repair. These two months are simply gone. Puff! It seems my old installation just didn't have quite the oomph to download every single post. Or, the program I used didn't have enough oomph. Either way, I've lost August's, September's, and the first few days of October of this year.

There really was only one post I regret losing; My popcorn recipe.

Now, I've removed the CAPTCHA widget because I understand it's a pain for some. But, that also means I've resumed requiring registration. There are multiply ways you can register. You can just register with my native Movable Type system. That requires approval from me. Or, there are several other services, OpenID, Vox, TypeKey, and LiveJournal, all of which don't require my approval, but do give me the ability to ban.

Now, I understand some of you already registered once. Unfortunately, I wiped my database clean to eliminate some bugs that were held over from my 3.XX version of Movable Type, so you'll have to register once again. Yes, Brian, I am sorry.

Now, I have a few more images to upload, then my work should be complete.

I am linking to this TPM post simply because it brought up a thought. Through the years, I have never been a newspaper reader. I always heard the news by way of other people talking about what they had read, coupled with what I heard on the radio and TV. So, in a sense, the doom of the print newspaper industry just does not bother me all that much.

Also, it may explain why I took to blogs so easily. Blogs are simply a round table discussion, such as happens in cafes and coffee shops around the nation, only without the necessary step of having to leave the house and go to a cafe or coffee shop.

I couldn't initially remember who coined Blogiversary^(talkleft*), but I should note that 5 years ago today I published my first ever post on blogspot. Since than, I've switched to Movable Type, registered my own domain, and lost my archives on several occasions. That is why you won't find my original post on the blog. I do have it saved in a text file on my computer. But it is corrupted, and I can't get the damn thing to import back onto my blog.

* Of course, I found it by searching skippy.

Ya, it's an open thread. Oh, okay. It is really just a quick post to ping the intertubes. Mud slinging and ad hominem attacks will be allowed, unless directed at me. Oh, alright, even if directed at me.

Star Tribune

SAN FRANCISCO - They work long hours, often to exhaustion. Many are paid by the piece -- not garments, but blog posts. This is the digital-era sweatshop. You may know it by a different name: home.

A growing workforce of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment.

Of course, the bloggers profess a love of the nonstop action. At the same time, some are starting to wonder if something has gone very wrong. In the last few months, two among their ranks have died suddenly.

Once again, it's blame everything except the personal choices made by people. I usually don't speak ill of the dead, but in this case I have to speak out. It is not that a blogger's lifestyle kills, it is that people choose to work the hours they do, and live the life they live.

What is it with people? Something new comes along that makes a major impact on society, and those not benefiting from, or participating in, the new trend, decide it is evil and dangerous.

Cue Shatner; Get a life, people.

Actually, stop being so fraking scared. Your way of life is not going to disappear in a flash of bright light, leaving you destitute and hopeless. So some people lived life as they chose, and possibly burned themselves out to the point of death. It was their choice of lifestyle, not a diabolical new industry, that killed them.

Ancient Blog Shuts Down — Why Now?

After a decade Kenneth Quinnell is shutting down T. Rex’s Guide to Life to concentrate on his group blog, the Florida Progressive Coalition.

Damn, lost another member of The Liberal Coalition.

I guess I should point out that the last post and this one are from my dining room. It appears that a neighbor has an unsecured wireless network within range of my laptop. The GirlFriend™'s computer does not pick up the signal, probably because of it's age; it is four years old.

As to my connection, it's the first time ever that I have picked up on it. I suspect I am getting a momentary bit of luck, which will last only until the end of this evening, or sometime tomorrow. Either way, I am going to take advantage of the connection while it lasts. So, my posts my actually increase for the time being.

Woo Hoo!

Ah yes. It's Friday and Mustang Bobby has taken the time to create his usual Liberal Coalition Blog-a-round. And that means this lazy ass blogger is going to steal his hard work, and post it on this blog.

MWAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

The shear power of evil.

EVIL.

PURE.

EVIL.

MWAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

- A Blog Around The Clock on Facebook and breast-feeding.
- archy: want to buy a country?
- Bark Bark Woof Woof pokes a stick.
- Bloggg: Moi goes to Bug's first parade.
- Collective Sigh: Andante doesn't think much of HillaryCare 2.0.
- Dohiyi Mir: NTodd is not happy with the Senate.
- Echidne Of The Snakes on the MoveOn.org ad.
- Grateful Dread Radio on the Jena 6 rally.
- Happy Furry Puppy Story Time takes a break. Come back soon, Norbizness.
- Iddybud Journal with a picture of an Edwards supporter.
- Left Is Right: Friday fun.
- Lefty Side of the Dial: in light of "Talk Like a Pirate Day," Lefty has some suggestions for some other days.
- Liberty Street is having page-loading issues.
- Make me a Commentator!!! takes on Cal Thomas.
- Musing's musings on meaningless resolutions.
- Pen-Elayne on the Web does a great blogaround.
- Rook's Rant on who the Democrats should go after.
- rubber hose: Hey, Rudy, what does NATO stand for?
- Scrutiny Hooligans likes Sally Field.
- SoonerThought: lost weight now; ask him how.
- Speedkill: oh, the horror.
- Steve Bates welcomes a switch hitter.
- T. Rex's Guide to Life catches up on Florida news.
- WTF Is It Now?? on the threat by Bush to veto health care for children.
- ...You Are A Tree with Pet Peeve #26.

It feels so good to be evil.

Paul Krugman

What I found striking about the whole thing was the contempt the pundit consensus showed for the public - it was, more or less, "Oh, people just can't resist a man in uniform." But it turns out that they can; it's the punditocracy that can't.

Oh, it looks like Paul is going to take to blogging just fine.

It's always cool to be recognized by other bloggers. Thanks for the link Salon.

Nothing. I perused the alert emails I receive every morning, and saw nothing but rehashed news from the rest of the week.

Of course, that doesn't mean it will remain rehashed old news. It is, after all, Friday. That means at some point today, probably later in the afternoon, there will be some press conferences held to dump some embarrassing information about Iraq, or some Republican corruption, or about Dick Cheney's latest shooting victim.

I wait in anticipation.

But, while you all wait, you could peruse the following Liberal Coalition blogs (the following having been stolen from BBWW):

- A Blog Around The Clock: a dose of science for the week.
- archy is over being outraged.
- Bark Bark Woof Woof on the Democrats' ineffectiveness.
- Bloggg: your money's worth.
- Collective Sigh shares good news.
- Dohiyi Mir: NTodd on his Vermont senators.
- Echidne Of The Snakes: a primer on how to interview Laura Ingraham.
- First Draft: let them have it.
- Grateful Dread Radio: tree hugging.
- Happy Furry Puppy Story Time: some good movies to watch.
- Iddybud Journal: John Edwards's response to the president's speech on Iraq.
- Left Is Right on a brave soldier.
- Lefty Side of the Dial: Lefty's guilty pleasure music list (including Neil Diamond...)
- Liberty Street on pushing the veto.
- Make me a Commentator!!! on Cal Thomas's standard of faith.
- Musing's musings on landmarks in Washington and landmark ideas to live by.
- Pen-Elayne on the Web shares the joy of her husband's artistic success.
- Rick's Cafe Americain: an observation on disasters being the new mission.
- Rook's Rant on New York Times ad rates and the free market.
- rubber hose on another rightie blogger who can't read.
- Scrutiny Hooligans: Drama Queen has the lowdown on Patrick McHenry's posse.
- SoonerThought has moved to Blogger. Please update your links.
- Speedkill on the war.
- Steve Bates made it through Hurricane Humberto.
- T. Rex's Guide to Life: get your fill of Florida politics. It's fun in the sun!
- The Fulcrum on the anniversary of September 11, 2001.
- The Invisible Library and the Endless Library.
- WTF Is It Now?? Oops...
- ...You Are A Tree: don't read this!

PSoTD is really, really, scaring me. The first close up of a chin with stubble, I pass off as a quirk. But two close ups of chin stubble signals a decent into madness.

Update: Damn it, this was suppose to be published on Friday. I didn't pay attention, and it sat all weekend unpublished. Well, I've published it now.

Richard Blair over at ASZ has come up with a term that really makes sense to me. While Kos and company have settled on "Traditional Media" (Fox is traditional?) Richard has coined a term that just seems to fit the bill. Legacy Media.

Deprecating legacy systems as new technology became available. In the information systems world, the word "legacy" implies outdated and inefficient hardware and processes to deliver data. And that's the place where I think the U.S. media resides.

In describing the media, I don't think that anyone wants to imply that the information points they provide us (the data, if you will) is, by default, incorrect or faulty. Taking in news in the information age that we're in is like drinking from a fire hose. There's just so much information, and too little time for reporters and editors to properly distill and analyze the raw information (for the most part). By the time that a true commentator or analyst has actually looked at the data points and drawn some supportable conclusions, everyone else in the world has moved on, because information continues to flow in a torrent.

So, if I use the term "legacy media", it's not really a derogatory or dismissive term. It's describing a media that, by it's own admission and financial results, is losing ground rapidly to our own ability to distill and interpret raw information (such as we do daily, here on Kos and other internet venues). But "legacy" also implies that there was (and is) value in both the methodologies and processes that bring us the information.

Honestly, it just fits.

I had intended on writing a post this morning before work, but could not connect to my server. I also discovered that Omnis was down. So, no post before work. Of course, work itself was busy, so no time to post then. Now I am back at the motel, and I am about to go out the door to get groceries. Then I am going to settle in and watch a few more episodes off of my season 2 DVD series of Battlestar Galactica.

Then, if I feel up to it, I might blog some posts. Or not. I really don't know at this point. I am feeling rather lazy, to be truthful.

Boing Boing

We're also happy to be reintroducing comments to Boing Boing, a feature we reluctantly dropped a couple of years ago. At that time, we lacked the resources to manage the comments, and felt that a lousy comment system was worse than no system at all, so we pulled the plug. We've never felt good about it, though, because our readers' comments added a great deal of value to the blog. To correct this, we hired a terrific community manager to oversee the conversations: Teresa Nielsen Hayden. At her own blog, Making Light, Teresa has proven herself to be a wonderfully wise and talented tender of online conversations. Teresa worked closely with our designers to develop a commenting system that supports the Boing Boing community while preventing noise from drowning out the signal. "We want this new community system to make Boing Boing even more fun and informative," says Teresa. Under her supervision, we're sure it will be.

Most awesome news bloggers! Boing Boing has returned to commenting. Like here, it requires registering. But it's native, and in today's spam clogged intertube reality, necessary.

MNPublius

Last week Al Franken was endorsed by the netroots group Blue Majority, an organization made up of the chief-high-muckity-mucks and the members of DailyKos, MyDD, OpenLeft, and the Swing State Project.

Sean is right to state this is nothing more than an endorsement along the lines of...... well, let his words speak for him:

I think that like many other groups, this should be viewed as an endorsement and nothing more. Just like the Sierra Club, Stonewall, NARAL, and EMILYs List Al Franken received an endorsement. It doesn’t carry as much weight or money as the Sierra Club, or Unions, (or likewise before Republicans think they can get all high and mighty you guys have the NRA, religious organizations, CoC’s etc) but it’s an endorsement none the less, and one he should receive kudos for.

So, here's kudos to you Al Franken.

That's right. I'm back. I finally figured out that my first download of Movable Type 4 was corrupted. After downloading MT4 for a second time, it installed with no problems. However, I failed to save a back up of my blog before I wiped out the old files. Well, I did save a database backup, but I can't get the damn thing to import back into MySQL. So, it would have been a good idea to back up by way of the MT interface.

Yes, I know, it's a rookie mistake.

Name's Rook.

So, like, DUH!

Anyway, welcome to the New, Improved, and Starting Over From Scratch, Rook's Rant.

However, I still don't want any damn cream and sugar with my coffee. There has to be a line drawn somewhere.

Seriously, coffee is just so frigg'n sacred. How could anyone desecrate it with lactose and carbohydrates? You gotta have some major damage to your taste buds. I blame your mother. Probably heated your milk too hot when she was bottle feeding you. Which is how you should be drinking your coffee if you've been adding cream and sugar.