WARNING: Blog Server Software SNAFU

Looks like the script operating the Salon Recently Updated Blogs page is fouled up. No word at all on whether a repair is in progress, let alone whether Salon or Radio Userland (whomever is responsible) is aware of the problem. Many of the blogs here in Salon have been updating, but you can't tell it from looking at the Recently Updated Blogs page.

Bear with us, readers. Hope it's fixed soon. I suggest in the mean time that you try using the links at the Salon Rankings by Page-Reads page to check for new content at your favorite Salon blog. Thanks!

p.s. Yes, the comments have also been acting up, but comments have always been a bit flaky in the Radio Userland software.  They may have been affected by increased "pushing"  and "pulling" this weekend while bloggers and readers tried to get the Recently Updated Blogs page to cooperate.

8:16:44 PM    comment []

Forums versus Blogging: which does it for you?

For seven years I’ve been using forums (or bulletin boards and threaded conversations), chat, and now blogging on line to communicate with others.

I used to enjoy forums; they allowed for a greater depth of exploration on topics versus chat.  Chat (IM and texting included) was nice for immediacy, for things that only required a cursory or fast-paced discussion.  It served a purpose, but it wasn’t a real medium of discourse.

I used to thoroughly enjoy Table Talk and The Well because of the richness of the postings, but they just don’t cut it for me any longer.  I hate waiting for the right person to comment or waiting days for any comment; blogging doesn’t seem to be that slow.  (Or at least it’s not in the Salon neighborhood!)

Now that I’ve been blogging, I have to say I’m stymied by the dawdling tempo of the forum medium.  It’s too slow and doesn’t permit the depth that blogging supports.  One also has to hope the particular forum type or software will support posts entered at the point desired.  More often than not I find when I want to add something, it ends up in the middle in a long string of postings; the context of my gets out of whack. 

Wonder how long before we’ll have a wireless format for blogging that becomes as ubiquitous as the wired format and yet as simple to use as IM or texting?

3:28:23 PM    comment []

I’m just sick, heartbroken.  I’ve already cried my eyes out.  NBC reporter David Bloom died last night of a pulmonary embolism.  He’d been embedded with troops who were just outside Baghdad.

Bloom was a pleasure to watch because he was so damned earnest and eager about everything.  There aren’t many reporters about whom one could say that.  He had so much ahead of him.

Certainly Bloom could have died at home at any time, given the nature of embolisms.  What is so very saddening is that he left a young wife and three young daughters at home; his wife surely has already been through so much.  All spouses of journalists covering the war must be on pins and needles, hoping their loved ones not only do well but come home safely.  My heart goes out to Melanie Bloom, knowing that her worst fears must have been realized and that she now faces the task of raising her daughters alone.

Just another reporter, what’s the big deal, you might be thinking to yourself.  True, it’s not like I knew David Bloom personally.  But I’ve seen the tragedy of loss like this before; my own brother-in-law, a go-getter like Bloom, died suddenly of a heart attack leaving a young wife and three very young children behind.  David Bloom’s death refreshes all that pain.  It was a difficult experience in our own family, and now to revisit that kind of tragedy again on prime time television is so painful.

UPDATE -- 09-APR-03 3:40 PM EST --

If you are interested in leaving a tribute for David Bloom, please check this link at MSNBC.

If you are interested in other's tributes, making a donation to a trust for the Bloom children or to a charity selected by the Bloom Family, please check this link also at MSNBC.

I'm so very sorry David Bloom couldn't see the events of the day today from Baghdad as the Hussein regime fell.  He would have delivered an exciting report from the field.

12:30:21 PM    comment []