I noticed something had broken the design of my site and quickly discovered that the culprit was the code for the blogchalking symbol both in the main area of the page and in the navigation area.
This made me realize two things:
- The code for the symbol did not include height and width tags. Very bad practice! Makes the renderer wait for the images before finishing the page and in this case ended up allowing the very long alt text to determine the size of the image placeholder.
- The image was being called off the blogchalking.tk server each time. Also bad practice. Much better to copy the image to my own site and embed it from there. The image is already a link back to blogchalking. I will fix this once the site is back up and I can nab the image. (I may make it balder too or add facial hair.)
categories: metablog
12:36:28 PM 
say what []
categories: metablog
12:14:02 PM say what []
David Watson reports that a Houston Chronicle reporter has been asked to stop publishing his weblog.
Something like this was probably inevitable as the trend of journalists-with-weblogs has continued, branching into edited, sanctioned weblogs at publication sites and independent weblogs of working journalists. If you blog for your employer there may be guidelines to follow but at least the boss won't consider it moonlighting or a diversion of your energy away from your work.
In the case of Steve Olafson, the Houston Chronicle reporter, he did the blog on his own time but he used a pseudonym and commented on the subjects of his daytime beat:
Steve Olafson, who covers Brazoria County, Texas, has been asked to stop publishing his weblog (written on his own time), in which he comments on county politics and personalities while hiding under the cover of the pseudonym "Banjo Jones." It seems that someone whom he skewered in his spicy political weblog "outed" him to The Facts newspaper in Brazoria County — and when Chronicle editors found out they told him to kill the blog. Apparently, he still has a job, but he's lost some credibility with his sources, no doubt.
categories: memewatch metablog
11:47:30 AM say what []
If Metafilter, Slashdot, or Blogroots don't satisfy your need for collaborative blogging, check out LinkMachineGo. plasticbag.org, my Virgil for this morning, says the site needs more commentary.
categories: metablog
10:15:34 AM say what []
Also from plasticbag.org, a twist on the anti-webtool attitudes you sometimes see from hardcore or longstanding hand-coders. Tom Coates makes the point that the tools used to make work easier or to enable shortcuts are not responsible for the lousy design that may result. At worst, shortcuts facilitate laziness and open the doors to more "untrained" people, but this is not the fault of the tools themselves.
This idea will continue to come up. Just because a publishing revolution permits a lot more crap to be published doesn't make it a bad thing. Or, as plasticbag.org puts it:
Dreamweaver and Blogger don't bore people. People bore people.
categories: fireweaver memewatch metablog
10:11:17 AM say what []
You'll come for the blogging insight; you'll stay for the Buffy rumors. The beautifully designed plasticbag.org site includes an interesting discussion in its weblog of this new trend of publications hosting blogspaces:
It doesn't take a genius to gather what is happening in corporate world at the moment - weblogs are 'in' - they've finally stopped being fashionable, and so are suddenly now becoming acceptable to the mainstream. Your executive at BigPublisher.com suddenly thinks that weblogging is the heart of the internet - the web finally fulfilling its promise. And of course they're right... But does understanding the importance of weblogs and weblogging correspond to understanding how an information publisher should relate to weblogs and weblogging? I would say no....
[via Blogpopuli]
metacomment: I have to make sure I don't just turn this site into a crib of blogroots! I'll do my best to send them some info they don't have when possible.
categories: salonika memewatch metablog
10:03:28 AM say what []
BlogHog appears to be another site aggregating (and thus intermediating itself between readers and) blogs sites. I had to register to add a blog, and then it was unable to see the RSS headline feed here. Not sure what the problem is.
categories: metablog
9:45:49 AM say what []
Thanks to dws's RadioFAQs system I now know how to delete a category. (I know, I should have RTFM, but I'm lazy!) I need to prune my proliferation. One thing is I'm going to kill the separate Junk Mail category as redundant. I have the junk mail blog at Mediajunkie, I have the x-pollen category here for pointers to my other blogs, and I have my new outspoken category for any opinion work I want to publish. That's plenty. I think I'll also delete the other generic categories (My Friends, My Hobbies, My Organization, My Profession).
This means I may have to reassign categories to some of the past posts. A blogger's work is never done.
categories: metablog
8:40:37 AM say what []
