June 06, 2006
The Knowledge
Not everybody has the time to keep track of the world's greatest game before the greatest moments of the greatest game. Like college, you wake up one morning and do the calculations to arrive at the inevitable conclusion: with kickoff Friday, it's cram time. Don't fret, my pet. One time for your mind, I present my official suppliers of soccer knowledge, selectively culled from the best of my OPML file for your education and enjoyment. Fire up your RSS reader and subscribe away.
For the those facing imminent world cup widowhood, my wife and I worked up another cheat sheet just for you.
World Cup background: ESPN & National Geographic
The International Herald Tribune, and in particular the best soccer writer on the planet, Rob Hughes . (feed) (exemplary article)
The Guardian spots up perhaps the best Anglo-centric analysis and opinion. (feed) (exemplary article)
American soccer coverage sucks. It's getting better, but still. Thank goodness for bloggers who run down every single soccer story written or involving Americans. Well, okay, thank just one: du Nord. (feed) (exemplary post)
For your doses of snark and sniping, only one word suffices: Deadspin. (feed) (exemplary post)
Any peanut gallery commentator knows that the bite is best backed with stats. Climbing the Ladder obliges. (feed) (exemplary post)
First rule of telling a story? Keep it personal, like This is American Soccer. (feed) (exemplary post)
Keep track of what I find interesting with my soccer bookmarks.
As a final note, for those of you who hate on the American game, check out this highlight reel of goals from last week's MLS fixtures. Nice. Still think it's a keeper's league and not a scorer's league? Now keep in mind these are scored without the benefit of the baker's dozen or so world-class players competing in the World Cup who normally also contribute to this action.
Posted by Noel at 05:33 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 16, 2006
Lame Excuses
I was going to post a lame excuse for my recent posts, all of which contain less than two sentences and/or a single picture.
Posted by Noel at 05:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 27, 2006
Monday Meditation: Rewrite the Vista
Posted by Noel at 05:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 23, 2006
Fast Action: Rojo, a Web Feed Reader
For the uninitiated: RSS readers let you pull all your favorite blogs and web sites that offer feeds into a single place that is updated when the sites are updated. It's like a webmail account that gets a new message when a site you've subscribed to adds new content.
After my Onfolio beta expired last fall, I was faced with a choice: fork over $25 for a single-platform RSS reader, or jump into the tempting waters of platform-independent, web-based RSS readers. I did a cannonball, transferring ~150 feeds from Onfolio to my first choice, Rojo (thanks to both readers' OPML export and import tools, the transfer was painless).
Once I got my feeds into Rojo, I started tagging them with a vocabulary of ~10 phrases, and they started sorting themselves automatically into the proper buckets. Now I just click on a tag, and all the recent stories from the feeds with that tag appear in a nice newspaper format, with ajaxy-liscious controls and a nice read/unread distinction. If I want to subdivide multiply-tag, explode, or consolidate my tags, it's a simple matter of clicking an icon and typing.
Now I can check my feeds from anything with a internet connection and a browser. World, I will remain on informed and aware of your events, no matter who's OS I use!
Adding new feeds is easy. My home and work browsers have a nice javascriptlet that auto-discovers any RSS feeds for the page that I have pulled up in a tab and adds it to my feed list. Managing/tagging/deleting feeds is easy as well using the manage page to collapse, untag-retag, and delete feeds.
There are little touches all the way through Rojo that keep me happy. The url for your feeds is rojo.com/subject/tagname/recent. The feed auto-discover defaults to Atom feeds if more than one is available. You can't accidentally delete a tagged feed. The Rojo team is continually adding features and refining the interface.
There is one big drawback, a related annoyance, and a smaller nitpick. The big drawback is that I've seen Rojo take up to 8 hours to pick up a new story from a feed. For feed junkies, this is a deal-killer. I like everything else so much that I don't care, but please Rojo, give me my new stories ASAP! 8 hours is like getting an invitation to a party that just ended.
The related annoyance is that Rojo appears to mark things as read/unread based on the timestamp of the feed's story, not on whether it was picked up by the reader when you clicked "Mark As Read". This means that some new stories slip under my feed-radar because they get picked up 8 hours after they are published, and 6 hours after I clicked the Read button, retroactively marking them as read when in fact I haven't even seen them!
The other nitpick: sometimes feeds that I'm not subscribed to show up. Then they leave. At the moment, I somehow am subscribed to Fark. My intelligence and happiness are suffering.
Posted by Noel at 05:31 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
February 14, 2006
My Virtual Community Responds to the Danish Cartoon Debate
One of my great joys is the challenging thoughts and provocations that my friends throw out on their blogs. The Denmark Cartoon riots/ruckus/debate attracted a particularly diverse and deep response. I've collected the best for wider dissemination.
Josiah believes that radical Muslims lack a sense of irony. Mesh calls out the press' indomitable fear in the face of unrest. Elissa parallels the Muslim response to the cartoons with the Christian response to Seurano. Jason thinks that the worldwide, decentralized Muslim response proves that Islam is not a peaceful religion.
With that link-pimping, my street cred should spike nicely.
Posted by Noel at 05:35 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack
January 19, 2006
This is the Grown-Up Version of Those Metal Model Airplanes You Had as a Kid
I speak of none other than Enplaned. This is blogging at its finest. It's like the Wall Street Journal reporter on the airline beat does after-hours blogging after stiff shots of Grey Goose: smart, detailed, and a lucidity that only comes from knowing about a lot of bodies but being so inebriated that propriety no longer restrains.
For a prime example of the nerdy excellence that is Enplaned, try this riveting tail of how Sky West went double-or-nothing on a losing bet and walked away as the largest regional airline in the US. Or how 'bout a veritable composite/steel cage fight between the new Airbus A350 and the new Boeing 787M heavies, replete with an unplanned deviation into the fabled "second-mover advantage".
Posted by Noel at 05:31 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
January 11, 2006
Resigned To Redesigns
Joel, Jakob, and Elissa inspired a small refresh of the blog.
Visually, the search is top left, a quick introduction to the site with greatest hits, followed by category buckets, and then the legalese. Next over is all my tentacles: the last five lovely, brilliant people who have commented on my posts, my flickr, del.icio.us, last.fm, and rojo. Then my blogroll. Everything else is the same. Hope you old friends and you new guests enjoy.
Also, I fixed a silly bug which had IE 6 crashing when trying to run a javascript document.getElementById('container').appendChild(ul) around tags. Welcome back, that 49.15% of my audience that IE6/Win represents, with my apologies.
Posted by Noel at 05:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 02, 2005
Barely The Best: The Best of Barely Legal Substance, 2004-2005
This is first annual Greatest Hits post for Barely Legal Substance. My metrics include the number of comments, the number of hits, the most consistently viewed, and the ones that make me happy. Enjoy with a fine wine.
- Sexy Twin Primes
- My hair
- Can We Please Deport Pat Robertson?
- RE: Completed WO# 7718 - Monitor will not move
- Writing Software As Digital Rhetoric
- Big Red House 2004
- How The NBA Got Its Soul Back
- Seven Lessons Learned From Outlook/Mailsite Migration
- Further Reflections on "Zombies in St. Elmo Redux"
- For the Last Time, Harry Potter != Satanic
- Hellfire
- "Peter Brinkerhoff Is a Sexy Beast": Tall Tales of Digital Reputation
- Why I Hate Comcast, and, By Proxy, The Entire Media/Communications Industry
- Covenant Alumni Open Forum
- What I Won't Pay for Security
Posted by Noel at 05:32 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
November 09, 2005
Comcast, the Dinosaur: "Hello, Mister Meteor. Will You Be My Friend?"
"Sorry, Comcast, the Cluetrain has left the station."
Couldn't have said it better myself.
Posted by Noel at 05:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 30, 2005
While I'm At It, Bravo Mr. Bob Costas...
Consider this my abtruse contribution to the subcurrents debate.
Bravo, Mr. Costas, for not participating in the life-destroying emotional pornography that is cable news coverage. Don't confuse it with the vapid, Romanesque-in-the-decline-and-fall-of-the-empire-sense nightly network news, which posses its own set of evil. There sadly seems to be enough of that to go around.
Reminds me of what I said in the beginning of this blog.
My hope for the future? The internet (eg blogging), might enable our scale and life to return to a more human size. Filtering and editing is an act of a wisdom that we lack at the moment.
Posted by Noel at 05:31 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
July 27, 2005
Code Fu Jams, or, What Gets Me Through These Days & Nights, in Gerund Form...
...becoming eclectic...
...flowing with ll337 skill...
...Laughing/Grinning/Appreciating/Unsettling...
...Going back to the Chicken Shack...
...Just a few of my favorite things.
Posted by Noel at 05:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 22, 2005
My wife is now blogging. This could get weird.
My wife is now blogging. To quote Zapp Brannigan, "This is turning into one very sexy struggle for the future of the human race."
Posted by Noel at 05:39 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 01, 2005
Friends in Places Low and High
I've become intrigued by the possibilities of blogs for expatriate friends that combine cross-cultural thoughts and personal interests. I've already come to value bloggers from other nations, and it seems logical that I would find the same value in friends blogging whilst carrying around the old blue passports.
My good friend Ryan Starr is blogging this summer from South Africa, and it's fascinating stuff. He's a second-year divinity student at Duke, and he's working with the Methodist church doing some pastoral work among the amazingly diverse people outside of Cape Town. So far he's blogged about gangs, coaching cross-country running, AIDS, pillow fights, and racial reconciliation.
Also, I would be remiss to not mention that I'm eagerly anticipating the resumption of Matt Allison's podcasts, blogging from the high mountains of Uganda.
If I could only get old Pete Brinkerhoff to start blogging. I'll see what I can do...
This brings me to a related idea: Josiah, how 'bout a special missionaryblogs.com serving those overseas? Just a though.
Posted by Noel at 09:08 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 06, 2005
TFP Garners a Cult Blog Following?
Chattavegas' own Times Free Press seems to benefit from the big fish in small pond syndrome. In a ranking of blogs-to-incoming-hyperlinks, it ranks in the top five newspapers in the country. With only six blogs, and 27 inbound links, it gets a stellar 4.5 links-per-blog. Of course, the New York times, for comparison, has 43,246 blogs giving 105,694 inbound linkys (with a 2ish links-per-blog). Still, this is the internet: passionate regional concerns can have disproportionate impact on the world.
For more, check the summary post of where these numbers came from.
Posted by Noel at 05:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 03, 2005
Darth Vader's Blog
While my wife cut the fat off a 30 lb hunk of ham for Sunday brunch, I read her entries from Darth Vader's blog in my best James Earl Jones voice. It's fun, try yourself. May I suggest you start here, my apprentice.
Posted by Noel at 05:46 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
April 26, 2005
Legal Eagles Fly High
Ever wondered what actual lawyers think about all this Creative Commons stuff? Grudgingly appreciative, I would surmise.
Further, you want to know why CC is important? It is making law via code.
Finally, I know you want to write all kinds of little graffiti on court cases. Open Source law is the idea. Now is your chance with the Legal Wiki Project. Try Grokster v. RIAA!
Bonus: is there any work on a wiki using OneNote-ish scribbling? I'm not talking about adding graffiti to existing sites, but about wiki software which explicitly enables that sort of thing. I sign into a wiki, and I can scribble on the pages. Call it the Child's Playroom wiki.
Posted by Noel at 05:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 22, 2005
Map My Life
Where I grew up (a small house in a sadly infamous suburb, by the side of the Sleeping Beauty, in the country with a pool and cows, at the head of a fjord, downtown, 'burbs, and finally the back 20.)
Where I went to high school.
Where I went to college.
Where I was married.
Where I live now.
Where I work.
Idea from Dave and Divine Angst.
Cool because Josiah just did one, and Wired News mentioned it. Next up, I'll annotate some of these for a memory map.
Posted by Noel at 05:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 15, 2005
Updated: Barely Legal Blogroll
Rolling my own since last November...
Updated last month with some deserving daily reads. Here's the skinny.
Adam Bosworth, Google blogger.
Adam Smith, Esq., The bottom line for the business of law.
Anonymous Lawyer, Will make you think all lawyers are...
Bag and Baggage, Key blawger.
Cobb, Database maven, blogs while black. Reading is like being taken to school on the b-ball court by an ex-NBA player.
Dino Esposito, .NET, Italian-style.
Dennis Kennedy.blogThe pre-eminient blawger.
Don Box's Sproutlet, Dude's smart, architect of .NET (good), also of COM (bad).
Ernie the Attorney, ya blawger.
Free Iraq, I started reading for the middle-class Iraqi perspective, I now read for the amazing socio-political analysis and history. The Iraqi Freidman.
gapingvoid, How to be in the creative business.
Irresponsible Journalism, True to its name, in glorious fashion. Also an unexpected source of local community.
Jon's Radio, Premier geek journalist & advocate.
Koranteng's Toli, Societal critique and software insights, plus sweet music tastes, from an IBMer by way of Ghana.
Leave It Behind, And you thought your local megachurch was big...this guy heads up an entire church IT dept.
Schneier on Security, Security, straight from the guru.
Scoble, I love Scoble, sometimes I hate Scoble, I always read Scoble.
Sriram, Whip-smart .NET blogging, from India.
Subcurrents, voice of a new generation of Coastal Christianity
Wired Mesh, Snappy journalist, lovely writer, friend.
Finally, check out my linkblog for daily reads. Appears above the blogroll on the right.
Posted by Noel at 05:29 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
April 06, 2005
Die Spam Die
After spending twenty minutes deleting 65 comment spams upchucked by louts who are catering to a particularly loathsome form of cretin, I'm hopping mad and ready to fight. Here's my beef and my idea.
I'm not mad because these are offensive comments per se. Moderating the conversations that occur on this blog is part of the game, and I enjoy or at least tolerate that admin duty.
What I am angry about is that certain parties are attempting to use my work, this blog, and my name for their own profit, without my permission, and further that their actions affect my reputation and cause me emotional, mental, finanical, etc., harm.
These spammers are hijacking my digital identity, swipping my google juice, and impinging my good name. See, I have spent a lot of time and effort constructing the reputation and character of this site, and by extension my person. These comment spammers are defaming me and libeling me by manipulating search engines to suggest that I am either involved in or engaged in uncommonly vile activities. My good name is violated by this.
If, as I believe, blogs are a way of participating in a conversations, and one of the conversations that this blog is a leader in is my name, and if comment spam can be demonstrated to be defaming, libelious, or something else bad, then don't I have a civil case to make in court?
Can I sue comment spammers?
How does the copyright issue of blog comments affect me?
Are there other legal strategies that work towards the same goal?
Is this a matter that the Bloggers Legal Defense Fund would like to assist in? Seems up their alley. Blawggers, IANAL, but you are. Thoughts? Help?
Posted by Noel at 08:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 30, 2005
Meet My Mind, Metcalf
Interesting paper on why the value of networks is only n log n, instead of n^2 (Metcalf) or 2^n.
Their point is taken, but the example given is that n log n applies to the union of two networks of equal size n. It seems in that case that lots of new connections may be formed, more so than if each network grew on its own. I can agree to n log n in that case, but a large union seems to create more opportunities, but only in cases where there are chances at intercommunication.
In their Thoreau example, Maine may not have anything to say to Texas. But a large union of two networks makes this example brittle. It's as if Maine was suddenly moved next door to Texas. Then Maine has a lot more interest in what's going on in Texas, and vice-versa. Not only that, they find out that there's more in common between this Red state and Blue state than they thought. And then they form the MTFTA (Main-Texas Free Trade Agreement), and suddenly there's even more connections, more so than if Maine had never left the cold Northeast.
Of course, a network of earthworms, no matter how large (well, within reason here...), will probably not have much to say to Texas, regardless. Merge those two networks, and not much happens. So I believe, on average, that networks do grow n log n, but there seems to be edge cases where growth is greater. Early internet, blogs, usenet, etc. Not just merging two networks, but moving networks closer to each other.
That's hand-wavy discourse. To tighten things up a bit, I will say that networks grow faster if they share similar properties and the exposed/addressable surface area is increasing. Which explains my previously-stated cases of usenet, bbs, blogs, etc. New technology increased surface area of network that users/computers could address. Boom, n^2 growth for the network.
Sounds like arguments for open-ness and transparency too, then, huh?
Posted by Noel at 08:18 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 29, 2005
Calling People Bad Names Is Still OK
Apropos of recent goings-on in the chattablogs arena, this recent Cali ruling ought to bring things to a lower simmer. Or encourage further juvenilities.
Posted by Noel at 05:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 28, 2005
Web Host Wanted
Jumpdomain, who hosts my personal domain, finally struck out. I’m not picky, but if I do have a problem, I like to have it acknowledged and fixed, either in a timely manner or at all. Unfortunately, there's not another hosting company at-bat, so I'm scouting for a big stick to add to the roster.
- Requirements aren't much:
- *nix-based
- shell/ftp accounts
- web-based control panel for everything possible
- nice OSS things pre-installed (eg wordpress and phpnuke)
- blog-enabled
- unimpeachable uptime and support
- IMAP & POP mail w/ large numbers in front; mailing lists
- Bonuses for big disk and big bandwidth
- Whatever other crap they throw in for everybody else
If you want to share the name of a star in your stable, leave a comment below or fire me a pitch.
I have my eye on Dreamhost.
Posted by Noel at 05:37 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
March 23, 2005
Code is Law, Version Two
In an event that either indicated my impeccable timing or my penchant for procrastination that hurls projects towards irrelevancy in this time-span, , author of the book noted on the right that I have been perennially finishing, has announced that he is revising and publishing a version Two late this year.
The trick this time is that the revision will undergo a revision a la Wikipedia; yours truly and others much more fully will revise, argue, battle, and agree their way to a wild working copy that Prof. Lessig will swoop down, snatch up in his legal talons, scrape away the obfuscations, and publish. Strange and neat, eh? Author, editor: meet your new maker: the Mobb.
Posted by Noel at 08:41 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 04, 2005
Coming Out
So, the old barelylegalprogrammer personna is starting to feel a bit constrictive; words stick in my craw and the suit itches when I hit too close to home. This blog was never supposed to be anonymous, merely pseudonymous, while I experiment and learn how to write a blog. I thought it best to do so without much impact on my real life.
However, the rewards of linking this blog with my real life keep growing, and I feel like I understand the risks in doing so.
The final question for me, then, is methodological. How do I inform my boss(es)? Near I can figure, the options are:
- Link the blog to my name and let them figure things out on there own.
- Inform them that I've been experimenting with blogging and am now going public; ask for guidance etc
- Say "hey, check out my blog" on my way out the door tonight.
- Create a post that hijacks the name of the managing partner in a twisted rumor that involves a hibiscus seed, an old steel bumper from an '88 F150, and SpongeBob. Wait for the pink slip to slide into the inbox.
For the record, I have chosen the second option. Note the new copyright attribution & disclaimer on the far bottom left, and the link back to my personal site. Hey, well on my way to full compliance with Dennis Kennedy's advice to new bloggers.
Posted by Noel at 05:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 03, 2005
About Noel Weichbrodt, the Barely Legal Programmer
Noel Weichbrodt
[email] noel weichbrodt org (you may supply the @ and .)
[phone] as soon as I get one
[web] weichbrodt.org
The cringe-inducing one-liner:
I write code for a law firm in Chattanooga, TN.
Born in Colorado, grown in Oklahoma, proud ex-Texan, and sometimes-proud alumni of Covenant College (B.A. Philosophy, B.A. Information & Computer Science; 2004). Lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee and works as an Application Developer for a AMLaw 500 firm. Prone to puns and philosophizing about where he lives. Does not normally write in third person, but does try to use the blog as an outlet for experimentation of that and other natures.
Currently lives in .NET (VB.NET, C#, ASP.NET, Javascript, T-SQL, XHTML, XML, etc). Educated in Java & C. Uses & endorses Apple products at home, but only for important stuff. What I write in code isn't that exciting, but the problems are real and tangled.
Accomplishments schma schma schma...
Read, think, write, think, read, revise, think, rinse, repeat.
Posted by Noel at 05:33 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
February 21, 2005
The Difficult Internet, Part 2: Eason Jordan Was Hung By the Mobb
For those that have dipped into Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, you are familiar with the character of the Mobb. Amorphous, unprincipled, uncivil, capricious, shifty, and wholly volatile, they collectively have quite an effect on how history is made. The Mobb riots, hangs, sets fires, rescues criminals, and in general wreaks havoc with the organizing forces and principles of the great men of the age: Newton, Leibniz, Queen Elizabeth and King Louis, et al. The gatekeepers, tastemakers, builders, and enforcers of society know that their work may be well and good (or ill and bad), but they are still subject to the caprices of the Mobb.
On the grand scale, the Mobb acts rarely, but when it does, no amount of words and only enormous amounts of action change its course. The Mobb is incited by an unholy brew of troublemakers, rumor-mongers, newspapers, common sense, popular belief, and human desire. The Mobb is part of what made life cheap and Locke fearful in pre-modern Europe.
Eason, Rather, and all other kings of the age: meet the Blogg.
Watch your back, because you might be next, or might be between the Blogg and what's next.
Posted by Noel at 05:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 17, 2005
Castle in the Clouds
Just added a new category, “Castle in the Clouds”. It's about Covenant College, my alma mater. There's a lot of stuff going on up there on Lookout Mountain, and my feelings tender strength such that I should address publicly. So this category won't be too related to my normal geeky posting. Not quite politics, not quite religion, not quite geek. But quite barely legal substance. Ignore it if you wish.
Disclaimer aside, here's my proposal. We need to get a collective conversation going about Covenant. Crossman & Raymond resigning, Core changing, Residence Life & handbook changes, &c. You all know where I stand on most stuff from my student days. Justin, Ellis, Mesh, and Josiah have already posted regarding these things.
Tipping point? We should start putting some pressure the school from the blogsphere. Aggregate our posts into a group blog, perhaps. Get a conversation going, initiated by the recent alumni tip. There's no conversation happening now, and so we're left speculating and growing discontent. Between Wired Mesh, Irresponsible Journalism, and Subcurrents, we could get some attention, methinks. Goodness knows the comments on Josiah’s recent post were an indication enough. Anybody else want to join in?
Let's get NBN blogging, Anderson blogging, etc. Get guys like Derek into the mixtape. Two-way conversations are good things, and Covenant’s problem for two years has been a lack thereof. The power of blogs is that they effect changes in that nature.
Just a proposal. What say you, bloggers?
Posted by Noel at 09:46 PM | Comments (11) | TrackBack
February 11, 2005
Ends of Blogging, Part 2
I learn every day from blogging. One of my main purposes that drive this blog is to find the telos of blogging, to throw out a snotty but sharp ancient philosophical term. What am I pointing toward by blogging? Useful question. There's several answers that I've generated on my own, and it seems that I occasionally find other ends that I didn't think of. Vanity was never an end, but a "relationship accelerator" seems like a good one.
I started blogging because it seemed like good professional practice. This blog is my live resume, what I think about and work on. Here's what I'm passionate about. If my reputation is tied to my digital identity in the future, then my life depends on blogging.
There's a few other ends. It would be good for me to write about them--but later.
[Update: hmm, that gapingvoid link is dead. Don't know where it went; seems that Hugh removed that entry or some such.]
[Bonus: Yes, I know that this post doesn't have an individual/permalink page. Sorry. Working on it.]
Posted by Noel at 09:04 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 09, 2005
The End and Ends of Blogging
At least one blogger has come off the high and is off to go find the Kool-Aid Man somewhere else. Great line about "It's great for being part of a 'tell-em' world, blast it out, maybe you will get noticed, maybe ignored." And it seems like the main point is this: "So blogs are blasted out into the blogosphere and if you are lucky you are swamped with links and trackbacks. Then posts age and they are forgotten." What Stuart et al want is to be never gone, and only forgotten if useless or irrelevant.
Blogs emphasize the present, and deprecate the past. Consider this blog: you can look at the most recent post at the top. To see anything earlier chronologically entails work: a scroll. And to find anything from the barely-departed 2004, you used to have to click on the appropriate month & year. But you don't care about the month, but instead what I wrote about, regardless of month. Sure timeliness is important--that's why I write every day. But the idea is, if you are looking at an archive, you don't care about the timeliness. Instead, you care about the content.
It seems like the chief criticism of Unbound Spiral & commentators nails what I've been trying to hit at for a while: we need personal km portals. Combine wikis, blogs, social bookmarks, flatspace, tags, and RSS into one hive of electronic brain-ness that is yours to own and populate, but also others to populate for you.
That's why I've shifted the way my archives are presented. I've been tagging each post with one or more labels. Now you may browse the archives of this blog by the tag, and not by the month. This is less a deprecation of the past than the old month-based archiving, and a small step towards a knowledge portal.
Posted by Noel at 04:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 12, 2005
Feel My Pain
Upon my 1,000th hit from an anonymous googler looking for "barely legal *", it's good to know that Preaching to the Perverted feels my pain. Ambiguously-titled blogs unite!
And to those comment spammers with 200 comments on my blog right now? You're just jealous. Right, Josiah?
Posted by Noel at 03:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack