delete this
categories: Agent7 salonika fireweaver knowhow memewatch metablog outspoken radioactive syllabus x-pollen
5:07:46 PM 
say what []
If my upstreaming changes today work correctly, then this may be the final post to Radio Free Blogistan at the http://blogs.salon.com/0001111/ address, in which case, I want to make it very easy for any future readers directed here by old links (sorry, everybody!) to get to the new home page at radiofreeblogistan.com.
If I were really cool, I'd redesign this page so that it contained the moving message and then loaded the new page at http://radiofreeblogistan.com/ automatically, or immediately redirected to that page, or something cool like that. Instead people ending up here will have to follow a link like this one or the one in the title of this entry.
If the move fails, then this message will seem kind of lame and embarassing in retrospect.
For the technically minded, I will continue to use the Salon hosting and address for my salonika category, and possibly for hosting images and other large files within my storage quota.
The blog-related categories (knowhow, metablog, radioactive, syllabus), along with a few knew ones (uh, i don't know... bloggerz, stereomovabletype?) will also be upstreamed to sections of radiofreeblogistan.com.
The others will be squirted off to more appropriate hosts (for completists: fireweaver will show up at Dreamweaver Savvy once I get the templating integrated, memewatch will migrate to memewatch.com, outspoken will fold back into Bite Media, and x-pollen will go to x-pollen.com).
I'm starting another new category today, unrelated to blogs. It's called "Agent7," it's about my clients and colleagues in the worlds of technology and publishing, and especially their instersection, and it will end up at waterside.com once we get the server-side includes inserted into the appropriate page.
Update: The first try failed. I tried to copy the old #upstream.xml file into the subcategories that I didn't want coming over to radiofreeblogistan.com but that somehow resulted in a strange out-of-date rendering of the home page.
To fix that I'm editing this file and reposting after throwing away the bad upstream files and restoring Radio to community upstreaming. If things get back to normal, I'll try the FTP approach, possibly by publishing yet another change to this cross-category entry.
categories: salonika fireweaver knowhow memewatch metablog outspoken radioactive syllabus x-pollen
1:59:17 PM say what []
ShortStrings (no permalinks, but it was posted Tuesday, October 08, 2002), says Andrew Sullivan reports that Christopher Hitchens's new book on Orwell went from 1,074 to 4 on Amazon's best seller list after he chose it for his next book club discussion. (More...)
categories: memewatch metablog x-pollen
12:17:30 PM say what []
I remember in that strange Terry Gilliam film The Fisher King that the two homeless guys eventually get pitched to participate in an upbeat sitcom (or was it reality show? that's what it would be today) about homelessness to be called "Home Free!"
Homeless people have had homepages for a long time now, especially since municipalities such as Santa Monica (which Harry Shearer refers to at the end of each Le Show as "the home of the homeless) started making sure homeless people could get Internet access through public libraries or kiosks. They learned what that consituency wanted most (lockers and showers, if I recall) because they suddenly had a voice apart from their for the most part anxiety-provoking physical shambles.
I first heard about The Homeless Guy's blog on Metafilter, with a Kaycee-scarred angle of worrying whether the guy was for real or a clever hoax. Since then the story of Kevin Barbieux and his blog has been percolating up toward the mainstream. Blogger features his blog in its blogs of note module on the its home page (looks like Die Puny Humans is off the list).
There's something to be said for Blogger's utterly free option (using the ad-sponsored blog*spot service) in that it opens the door wider to online publishing than any other service I can think of. Blogger's always had trouble doing the Eudora thing — turning that onramp into a toll road — but the service being provided in the search for a viable business model is undeniable.
Before anyone starts talking about blogging being the next street-newspaper bootstrap solution for the marginalized, consider that Kevin Barbieux's blog is well written and organized. He provides frequently asked questions and answers right up front, and mixes the blog content with other links and information about himself. This draws me in as much as the provocative title and premise.
categories: memewatch metablog
10:31:41 AM say what []
Hey, my triumvirate of motivations meme is getting legs. I noticed a visitor today referred from a post called [Python-Dev] Missing symbol in sre.py (Python 2.2.2b1) on what I gather is a list for Python developers).
categories: memewatch
10:56:31 AM say what []
The Buffalo Beast names the 50 most loathsome people in America, 2002. Pretty over-the-top (fairly vulgar too), but funny and much of it is hard to argue with.
A sampling:
13. SEAN HANNITY
Misdeeds: Without question one of the most smarmy, vile, hypocritical talking heads on television. Has the uncanny ability to vilify and generalize those who disagree with him, and then state that he's not a partisan person. Exploits his devout Catholicism and patriotism to the point that it makes you think he's selling something—like his book, whose cover features his giant head in front of one of the glossiest, waviest American flags ever. Much of his wrath can probably be traced to his displeasure that Reagan still can't remember his name although he's met him many times.
Aggravating Factor: Since 9/11, pretends to be genuinely convinced that anyone who disagrees with the Bush administration does not want America to be safe.
Aesthetic: Repressed kid from Long Island who got to college, was scared of sex, discovered other repressed white kids in conservative student group, joined them, devoted rest of life to blasting people who didn't.
12. EMINEM
Misdeeds: Expecting people to care about his shitty childhood because he is white. Dissing his mama. Lifting weights after he got famous. Is the official voice of white teenage suburban boys. Has already worn out his shock value to the extent that his next album will have to include slurs against parapalegics and land-mine victims just to raise eyebrows.
Aggravating Factor: For someone who sells millions of records partly due to making fun of other people, has no sense of humor about himself.
Aesthetic: Trailer-trash cracker with just a hint of Down's Syndrome.
(I never said it was PC!)
categories: memewatch x-pollen
2:17:59 PM say what []
Seems like today is all about followups and conversations among blogs. (For example, Mark Byron noticed my unfisking yesterday and wrote about it in his blog. My response to his response to my response to his original post can be found in his comments.)
So I wanted to elevate an interesting thread from my comments. The interesting part is provided by Dylan Tweney, responding to my post about the Shirky article. Tweney suggests another viable precedent for this type of mass-amateurization in the open source movement.
My response to that was, "hmm, not sure i'm swallowing that analogy just yet... there are parallels, but... hmm, tricky stuff. must think on it." A cop out! Perhaps I was distracted by the differences (the whole "tinkering" aspect of open source) instead of noticing the similarities that seem to relate to relieving certain activities of the requirement that they "pay their own way" for the time involved.
I used to call this the power of low thresholds. Because Enterzone never planned to make money, we outlasted many ambitious webzines that failed to make it over the higher thresholds they set for themselves. And yet, anything that does not sustain itself must be subsidized by something else. (For the blogger, this price may simply be paid in terms of less time and attention available to spend on other cherished pursuits.)
Tweney elaborates on the analogy:
Well, think about what Linux has done to the market for enterprise server OSes: It's reduced the price to zero. (Even Sun gives away Solaris for free now.) The beauty of open source is that anyone can contribute; their contributions are accepted only to the extent that the community rolls them up into the next release. Comparably, with blogs, people's posts get swept up into larger conversations or else they get ignored. The ugly side of this is that it can destroy commercial markets, if the free stuff gets good enough.
He also picks up on the music analogy (in my original post, I wrote "I would wonder whether this same form of mass-amateurization will also sweep through the music world?"):
Kazaa, Morpheus, etc. — all have the potential to do the same kind of thing for the music world, because they put artists in direct contact with their fans. Get enough fans, and you might be able to build a market for CDs, concert tickets, special goodies, etc. However, the emergence of this market is being thwarted by the legal attacks on P2P as a whole. The record labels are scared of P2P, and they have good reason to be. It's not just that fans can violate copyright and get free music — it's that P2P networks could change the entire economic system of music production and distribution.
The dynamics are different in the software, writing, and music worlds, but in each case it seems like there's a powerful sort of "mass amateurization" happening.
categories: memewatch
10:28:47 AM say what []
A positive front-page review of Rebecca Blood's Weblog Handbook at Slashdot generates a range of responses, most of which we've seen before from this quarter (weblogs are over, the writing is terrible/self-indulgent, who cares what you think, what's so hard about updating webpages, etc.).
Some choice comments:
Why would I care to read your stupid rantings? Why would I care to get my daily news from someone with as much authority on the 'news' as myself? Are we so in need of entertainment that our ravenous hunger for material has necessitated the development of individual publishing?Suggested riposte: Why should I care about your opinion on Slashdot?
Same commenter:
Don't get me wrong, that individual publishing exist[s] is a beautiful, beautiful thing. However, the blog phenomenon is about as interesting as reading other peoples checkbooks.Make up your mind! Is it beautiful or boring?
Another:
Um, I was under the impression that "blogs" (what a stupid name that is) were trendy and cool four years ago, but are just derivative sources of meaningless drivel these days. Do people actually still read and write these things?No, Virginia, they don't.
This one made me chuckle:
Hey everybody - I'm working on a new book. It's called "The Slashdot Handbook: Practical Advice on posting comments and submitting stories to Slashdot". Please buy it. Thank you.I always appreciate a good instance of the cat meme:
The point is, blogging is simple. Its not more difficult than back in 1995 when we all posted our first kitty-kat pictures using notepad or VI. Writing good content for blogs is the hard part.
But this post I think best exemplifies the viewpoint of a technically savvy person who can't understand why the less technically inclined might benefit from tools, shortcuts, and advice:
I edit my weblog with nano. Granted, I also edit it live, which bothers people as a concept, but I ssh into my data area for my web site, "nano -w weblog.html", and type away. When a month's worth of entries are generated (on the calendar change) I roll the old weblog over to weblog-archive-year-month.html, and start a new weblog with a template for the headers, page formatting, etc, using cp. I then link the new weblog.html to the archive, link the archive to the new weblog.html, and add an entry to the archive list page. It takes ten minutes per month if I'm drunk off my ass and can't type. I know that I'm not necessarily doing it the standard way, but HOW can one write a full sized book on weblogging? Better yet, how can someone justify paying more than $0.50 for said book?
categories: memewatch metablog
8:45:30 AM say what []
