If you're a subscriber to Weblogsky via email or RSS, you might've received duplicate posts. This is because I experimented with the Firefox plugin ScribeFire for posting here. It was too good to be true - publishing was easy, but I found that the posts I was creating via Scribefire were somehow not appearing in the entries list at Movable Type - some quirk of publishing via the API. Furthermore, the posts would disappear from the main index, then reappear if I published again via ScribeFire. There's no real support for ScribeFire - the plugin's site has forums, but it's all problem posts, no responses. I could find nothing online about the problem I was having. This morning I reposted all the entries from ScribeFire... back to the old, clunky way of posting. Might be a good time to consider moving to the light, facile Wordpress platform.
Moveable Type upgradeJust upgraded Weblogsky to the latest version of Movable Type, 4.1, which is a significant upgrade from 3.x. The upgrade seemed smooth, but because MT4 doesn't support the Rightfields plugin, I had to delete all the Rightfields tags from my templates. I was using Rightfields to facilitate photo upload and positioning, and removing the fields means that many photos will no longer appear on archive pages, once they're rebuilt. Coincidentally I recently stopped adding photos using Rightfields, favoring the native MT upload utility because it gave me more flexibility. (Note: There'll be a Rightfields plugin eventually for MT4.) The new MT has a slick new interface; still getting used to it.
Jon L. at SXSW InteractiveHere's a few places you'll find me at SXSW Interactive this year:
- Sunday at 11:30am, I'll be moderating a session called "Blogging where speech isn't free."
- I'll also be showing up at sessions I helped coordinate (with Dean McCall and Ed Cavazos) via the Digital Convergence Initiative.
- Sunday, March 11 at 5pm, there's a Worldchanging gathering at Opal Divine's Freehouse.
- Monday, March 12: EFF-Austin's Steampunk Extravaganza, Futures of the Past
- March 14: Creative Commons, an Introduction
For those of you who are monitoring Weblogsky via RSS or email: I'll be offline for a bit. I have to move the site to a different host, and it's not clear how long that will take - I'm insanely busy with other stuff, so it might be after the first of the year. If I have something to blog in the interim, I'll do it at livejournal: http://jonl.livejournal.com/
No commentYou don't see it, because I have a good filter, but Weblogsky gets thousands of comment spam per week. Movable Type doesn't seem to delete it automatically, though I've invoked that setting... it just piles up, and cleaning out the junk is painfully slow (probably because I'm set up with Berkeley DB and not mysql). Realilzing I don't have time to deal with it, I've disabled comments for now. My thought is to migrate to mysql at some point and see if that's better, but until then, no comments.
ChangesAfter five years working on various projects via Polycot Consulting, a partnership I cofounded, I've decided it's time for a change. I think we built a great company, and Polycot will rock on, but I'm going in a different direction from the company. Specifically, I want to devote more of my time to work with nonprofits and advocacy organizations, writing and blogging, future-focused research and thinking, and independent consulting. I expect to blog more at my own site and work more with my WorldChanging colleagues, and I'm forming a web-focused nonprofit with Silona Bonewald called AssistOrg.
I was tempted to follow Jason Kottke's lead and seek patronage so I could focus more on writing. Jason sez "for fun and income, I build web sites and edit kottke.org" – and there's another idea; I could build web sites, something I really enjoy doing, the way some people like to build models or carve wood. If you're a regular reader and want to feed the blogger, there's a "Support Weblogsky" link in the right nav at weblogsky.com, as an experiment.
Onward!
Back from vacation
Marsha and I took a quick Bay area vacation since I was invited to speak at MeshForum on Monday. (I'm gathering my wits for a post about the MeshForum gathering.) We visited friends and ran around San Francisco and points north, cramming a lot of movement into a couple of days... our usual hyper-hoppin' vacation mode...
Yes, we're going to a party party
You say it's your birthday
It's my birthday too – yeah
They say it's your birthday
We're gonna have a good time
I'm glad it's your birthday
Happy birthday to you.
I haven't been blogging as much at Weblogsky, and that's partly because I was distracted by my involvement in a couple of conferences, and partly because I've been posting more at WorldChanging.com and at Polycot's blog. At Polycot I'd been like a shoeless cobbler's child; we were so busy doing actual work that it took us forever to build a web site with our own framework/CMS, and that was finally completed a few weeks ago. We integrated WordPress, and I'm blogging Polycot-relevant posts there (i.e. posts about web technology, user experience, social technology, ecommerce, web site development. etc.). Also hope to blog more at Smart Mobs, a site that's more relevant than ever now that the combined technical and social changes Howard was writing about in his great book.
Sorting out time and projects so that everything's done, and done well, is always a challenge. I just read a quote from the always wise, always eloquent Dalai Lama that's relevant:
Before we do anything, we should always ask ourselves whether we will be able to do it properly and complete it. If the answer is no, we should not start. Leaving tasks uncompleted creates a habit for the future. So once we have begun something, we should be sure not to go back on our decision. Self-confidence is not to be confused with pride. Pride is thinking highly of oneself without good reason. Self-confidence is knowing that one has the ability to do something properly and being determined not to give up. Ordinary beings are prepared to make a good deal of effort for relatively insignificant ends. We have promised to work for the immensely more important goal of liberating all beings, so we should cultivate great self-confidence, thinking, Even if I am the only one to do so, I will benefit all beings. --The Dalai Lama, A Flash of Lightning in the Dark of NightSlow posting
My posting will be spotty for the next few days. I'll be joining my WorldChanging.com colleagues in Seattle for a retreat, and that trip will occupy much of my time through next Monday.
Administrative Gesture... please ignore!No Need to Click Here - I'm just claiming my feed at Feedster
FeedburnerI've added a Feedburner syndication feed for Weblogsky. If you're reading via Atom or RSS and prefer Feedburner, here's the link so you can change your subscription.
In Defense of ...Mitch has posted a long piece about blogging for Marqui, taking on critics like Jason Calcanis and Stowe Boyd. (I did post a comment on Boyd's remarks today, but if I take more time to deal with critics, I'll never get a chance to write my weekly Marqui post!)
A couple of changesComment spam has been so steady and voluminous here that I'm requiring authentication via TypeKey, which means you can post comments here only if you've gone to Typekey and completed their registration. TypeKey is free, and is operated by Six Apart, the company that makes the blog software I'm using, Moveable Type. If you already tried to post and got a screwy response, that appears to be fixed now (long story).
Moveable TypeI've converted my weblog from Blogger to Moveable Type. The good news is that there's some cool features in MT: Trackback, Comments, and Categories. The bad news is that there's not a good way in MT to integrate with an email list. There are still enough advantages, though, that I'm going for it. Onward!