Blogging.
Blogging.
Blogging, blogging, bloggingbloggingblogging … blogging, blogging.
Blogging, blogging.
Blogging.
…
Blogging.
Blogging?
Hmmm…
Blogging.
Category: meta
Literary
There's no easy way to say this. I've been neglecting my blog, I've hardly looked at the four social networks I've got accounts with. Heck, I even missed posting in the weekly WednesdayChallenge.
I'm obsessed by something I've never done before, something a number of people have done historically, and experienced the darkest times of their lives.
Yes, I'm writing a book.
Not a book, no. It's a novella. Well ok, I don't know. Novellas are probably longer than 7,500 words, where novels have more than 17,500 words. It depends who's setting the rules.
In this case, me! Right now I've broken off, at 4,710, to compose this blog post.
Science fiction isn't everybody's cup of tea, so I'm not hoping for fame and fortune.
You know how everyone's supposed to have a niche set aside for their fifteen minutes of fame, and everyone has a novel inside them? Well, if anyone were to read mine, I would appreciate it if they ensured mine remained outside my personal comfort zone.
Yeah, I'll post a link when the plot is fleshed out a bit more. For now though, there's this:
https://github.com/bazbt3/the_thorgon_empire/tree/master/words
300 posts
As someone who uses a blog to write to work through issues I must appear to the world to be a seething mess of discontentment, finding Schadenfreude in the news, no solace from the issues confronting our world.
Checking through the nearly-300 posts at the GitHub Pages repository, some of which I've deemed unsuitable to resurrect at 10Centuries (actually uninteresting even to me!), I found a couple where I profess to be not a blogger.
I very rarely check my post view/feed access count page, have never thought of monetising it all (for reasons anyone who's ever read my stuff will know) so why do I write? To get things off my chest in the hopes of achieving a catharsis, inner peace…
Nearly 300 posts, probably a few more if counting the WordPress precursor, predecessor, whatever the word is…
Hmmm…
I should compile a 'best of' list, as ageing rock stars do.
Obsolete
I just finished making dinner for me and the girls and realised something quite profound. My web site has existed in various forms and at various hosts over the 20 years since I arrived online. That's not the important thing, no. 2017 is the first year that events outside my control rendered the vast majority of its content obsolete.
Yes, this is another post about the collateral damage resulting from App.net's demise; though this one will thankfully be brief. Being honest, I don't see much point in writing much about the past now, the future is much more important. It's actually very easy for me to say that; the majority of people who made App.net special are at 10centuries.org or pnut.io right now.
Back to my Wiki-type site. First the volunteer-driven App.net Wiki I helped edit expired, I stepped away from iOS, and then the network the App.net Wiki documented disappeared. Well, at least its infrastructure did. Ahhh…
My focus changed over the last year-and-a-half to blogging about what I'm thinking about, what I'm doing, and what makes me tick. A typical personal blog.
Maybe I should redirect incoming site requests to my 10C blog. or the more complete but less-social GitHub.com version or, heck, the trial self-hosted blog currently unloved and waiting for me to reconnect the Raspberry Pi 2 B mirroring it from the GitHub repo.
Dunno.
Pinboard fail
Well, 3 weeks after paying for a Pinboard.in bookmark tagging and page archiving account, I'm no closer to having the site owner fix the issues I've mentioned.
It's the first time tagging made sense to me, thus disappointing that the failures are increasing in scope, tested across a range of operating systems, browsers and apps.
Archiving hasn't started yet despite multiple promises, full-text search is thus impossible, new tags require multiple refreshes to show up and so bundling is problematic, simple searches fail to find bookmarks visible on the same page! I could go on, but the bottom line is when the site owner repeatedly fails to respond and fails to fix the issues I highlight, I complain about, why should I invest more time in the service?
Pinboard.in thus easily fails to gain Baz's seal of approval.
I might have to make my own, though it won't reach the promise of Pinboard's feature set. Here's something I put together some time ago; it's generated from a CSV file, no databases to introduce complexity.
Stop Making Sense
Aw crap, the cat's looking at me in that way again. Not sure where my uncontrollable giggling came from there, but he's right to look askance.
Or am I not sure‽
Ok, ok. Buffalo Trace Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey with a single ice cube in a thistle-shaped glass bought for me by my wife-to-be on March 26th 2005, accompanied very loudly indeed by The Pump Panel remix of New Order's 'Confusion' and then Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense album, they might be something to do with it. The latter songs take me back, what…
Forty.
Years.
To the time I first heard 'em.
1977 seems a bit early though, being honest. 35 years ago is maybe getting there, around the time of the best music documentary film ever. That seems a bit short though, I'm sure I heard 'em first before they became popular in the UK. Maybe. Dunno.
Shut up Barrie.
#beendrinking
Medium
A new place at which I'm posting drivel;
I have a Medium.com account.
Testing; there's no Markdown support in the native Android app. Oddly, it's a deal breaker.
Meta
My grasp of the English language isn't as wide, deep, or rounded as I'd like it to be. I know lots and lots and lots of words but occasionally some have meanings that elude me. Some long, some complex, some ridiculously short but tricky as…
'Meta' was one such word.
The current Wikipedia definition states:
"Meta (μητά-) (from the Greek preposition and prefix meta- meaning "after", or "beyond") is a prefix used in English to indicate a concept which is an abstraction from another concept, used to complete or add to the latter."
It's a small thing in a big thing, which makes reference to the big thing and which makes the big thing complete, but without which it wouldn't be.
This post, for instance; it wouldn't be complete without a reference to…
But no, I'm not going to. For that would be very silly indeed.
Broken
A-aaand, just like that, both my blogging and cold toilet seat streaks (see my other blog) are broken.
It's ok.
Blogging (or not)
Blogging is simultaneously simple and complex. The simple bit is writing something interesting. Or simply writing. The complex bit is, er… a bit complicated, obviously.
I write for myself, my most critical audience. I attempt to let the stream of consciousness flow from my brain to my fingers without much impediment. Choosing the topic helps immensely here; I made the decision years ago not to stray too far into religion, politics, world affairs, security, race, sports, and things I obviously know nothing about.
I have failed, and will fail, at my attempts at self-censorship. 'Contentious' is not my middle name.
Given those apparently insurmountable obstacles to popularity it's a wonder anyone reads my blog. Really.
In the place of writing for wider appeal I write about myself, family, experiences likely to be shared with a not-me reader, and stuff.
I write and post at a time that suits me; catering to my closest readership. I pick titles that serve to remind me of the content behind. Or is it below?
In late November 2015 I started to blog daily, responding to the installation and early use of a daily journal app on my phone. My daily streak lasted a whole and previously unprecedented month; which was nice. After that miss I've done well; another streak is ongoing.
It's not about streaks; it's about enjoyment, a process, a journey. Getting there, wherever there is, is almost incidental.
Focus on the minutiae of blogging for a moment – the technical aspects of the sport – is something I've mastered in the past, a couple of times with WordPress and, more recently, with Jason Irwin's 10Centuries (10C) blogging platform. Ok, so there's not much to fiddle with using Jason's service; so I fiddled with CSS anyway.
Right now, prior to the 4th generation of 10C going live, I'm messing about with Github Pages – it's a surprisingly rewarding process getting things to work.
Blogging and administering via Git (even with help from the Github.com web interface) isn't for everyone, though with suitable Git apps it's really quite easy after a while, especially using a good Markdown editor.
I've refrained from asking Jason to add a Git repo posting method into his already complex mix. The ability to post via an ADN private message, or via the 10C Web interface or using Evernote or, in v4, Microsoft's OneNote, probably gives existing and potential users enough options to gain wider appeal.
(Other services exist, YMMV.)
I am Baz. I am still not a blogger.