* * * * *
The time, where did she go?
My blog became too much like work.
And since a) this is supposed to be fun, and b) I'm not getting paid for
this, I just kind of stopped updating this for … hmm … looks to be yet
another month.
This year I've been rather sporadic with the updates here.
Obligatory Complaints about Editing Entries
* Hypertext editing and the Semantic Web [1]
* Hypertext Editing [2]
* Hypertext editing, Part III [3]
* Some more ramblings on editing HTML [4]
The problem—basically, I'm lazy. The significant entries take forever to edit
so I'm inclined to do the quick and dirty entries that consist of nothing
more than a link to a page but that feels like such a cop-out that in the
end, I just didn't do anything.
That, coupled with the disruption in workflow for the blog. Prior to
switching DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) providers to The Monopolistic Phone
Company [5], I would email my posts (I ran my own email server at Casa New
Jersey). It was easy—just send the post to XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX and that was
that. After the switch (because The Monopolistic Phone Company blocks
outgoing email connections), I would have to copy the entry (as a file) to
the webserver, log into the webserver, and run a command to add the entry,
then delete the file afterwards (since it was no longer needed). Four steps
instead of one, which was just enough friction to stop the posts (Perceptible
interface + laziness threshold = weblog silence) [6].
Sure, I could have used the web interface, but a) I hate editing text in a
web browser and b) the web interface doesn't work anyway ( (I'm not sure if
it's a bug in Apache [7] or not, but it does have to do with how mod_blog [8]
is configured in Apache).
But really, it comes down to laziness, and especially laziness in not looking
at the email problem futher. Above, I said that The Monopolistic Phone
Company blocks outgoing email. Well, yes, but not entirely; you can still
initiate an outgoing SMTP (Simple Mail Transport Protocol) connection but
only to The Monopolistic Phone Company email server. The email server at Casa
New Jersey wasn't configured to do that. Nor did I think to configure my
email server to send mail via The Monopolistic Phone Company email server.
Sigh.
And that has removed just enough of the friction to get the posts flowing
again.
Oh, that, and several readers asking if I was dead.
[1]
gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2003/11/19.2
[2]
gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2003/11/20.1
[3]
gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2006/08/17.1
[4]
gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2006/09/24.1
[5]
gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2008/02/01.1
[6]
http://decafbad.com/blog/2002/03/26/oooofa
[7]
http://httpd.apache.org/
[8]
https://boston.conman.org/about/
Email author at
[email protected]
