sjh - mountain biking running linux vegan geek spice

[comp/blogging] Being sensible in public to avoid Doocing

Thu, 25 May 2006 15:36:00

I am probably just writing this to push Michael, Michael and Stewart's heads further down the page so I will not see them every time I view this site in my browser. Anyway looking back to February last year, there was a fair bit of stuff on the bloggynet at the time about people being Dooced. Anil Dash posited his theory that no one has ever been fired for blogging (with some good comments) and he further commented on this theory (more in depth) later.

Danah Boyd further fleshed out the idea pointing out that people need to pay attention to how much they are in the public sphere when blogging. Unless you have one of those closed off, friends only sort of blogs (such as can be common on Live Journal and assuming you have a reader ship of unknown size (due to google and other search engines this can almost be guaranteed) you have to be careful how you present yourself, and remember the context in which you are writing.

I recall Alli was a little put out with being linked onto Planet Linux Australia early last year as she thought she had to be more careful than previously about what she wrote in her diary. I did not see a problem as Alli is smart and aware of how the the Internet and search engines and such function to the extent that she did not write stuff for public consumption that could be too negatively interpreted.

On the whole I think anyone who realises what they say either in email to mailing lists or on their blogs is fodder for search engines and for anyone to read at some point can be smart enough to keep that context in their writing. Of course with some of the blogs being so pleased at various people seemingly being fired for blogging around February last year Giblets at Fafblog has good insight on the issue.

[comp/blogging] Some of the better batgirls

Mon, 16 Jan 2006 18:05:00

Although I have yet to foist my artistic ineptitude on everyone and participate in the draw batgirl meme I mentioned on Saturday, in order to find the pictures I like again I may as well link to some of the pictures I liked the most.

Gorgeous headshot, Babs, this is my favourite I have seen yet. Probably painted, but brilliant none the less
Different, Ra's sort of style, Babs (maybe), There is nothing in this drawing that obviously says i is batgirl, however it does look like Babs could in a Ra's Al Ghul centric elseworlds
Shiny, Babs, I like the simplicity and the shinyness of this
Sad Cass, Cass, In reality it looks as she appears in the comic anyway, a good shot though
Snowing elseworlds, Elseworlds, A mangaish looking batgirl in snow, very effective image
Green elseworlds, Elseworlds, smooth lines and an interesting interpretation, a bit shiny
Grey uniform striking head, Babs (maybe), Interesting uniform, with all the grey the head comes out really bright.
Babs day off, Babs, Drawings like this make me wish I could draw, great perspective.
Black and White inspiring, Elseworlds, I love the first of these images, this is an inspiring interpretation of Batgirl I think, this is the sort of picture that makes me wish they could get the artist to do an elseworlds entire book in black and white with someone like Neil Gaiman as the author.
Simple, Cute Babs, Babs, Simple lines and colours, a painted look, damn Babs looks good in this one, the artist did another one claiming they did not like this attempt, I disagree completely and do not like their second picture
Good, slightly futuristic manga style, Babs, more clean lines, good interpretation of the costume

There are a heap more, those are just the images I liked in the first 200 or so when I looked on Saturday afternoon.

[comp/blogging] Must draw Batgirl meme

Sat, 14 Jan 2006 23:27:00

I saw a link to this Batgirl Drawing meme on BoingBoing today. Livejournal has been accruing hundreds of hand drawn variations of Batgirl. Damn I love the Internet, this almost makes me want to attempt to join in a meme I would be pretty hopeless at (I am a fairly hopeless artist). I guess part of the appeal to me is, being such a comics geek, it is cool to see something like this become so popular so fast, there are around 400 drawings linked from there already, with more appearing regularly. Sure I am a huge fan of babs, however the few Cassandra pictures people have done seem to be some of the best. Of course the elseworlds style pictures are often pretty good too.

[comp/blogging] Ooohh look a coincidence, maybe

Tue, 01 Nov 2005 00:00:00

I just happened to glance at my posts per month thing in the left hand column here and look at what I saw. September 2004, 27 posts. September 2005, 27 posts. October 2004, 15 Posts. October 2005, 15 posts. Almost kinda spooky maybe sorta.

[comp/blogging] They noticed we went quiet.

Thu, 20 Oct 2005 10:53:00

Mikal just added to the blog entropy with his post about a work mate noticing how quiet some of us have been. I have to admit I was a little surprised when I saw there was only one post over night on ploa, I suppose this is, in part due to the fact Mikal has not been posting anywhere between 100 and 2^32 posts a day as he tends to when he is no sick and resigned and moving overseas and all that. I guess I have been a little busy this month also and have not really been making many posts.

I was however reading a rather interesting book last night that could be the source of many posts, however the book is at home so it will not be the source of posts until at least tonight.

[comp/blogging] Anonymous blogging

Wed, 31 Aug 2005 22:39:00

I do not really need to point out that this is not an anonymous diary, heck even without reading the about page it is fairly easy to work out who I am.

At the recent blogher conference (women in blogging conference) one of the sessions was titled How To Get Naked (There is Audio available of that session now, the panel consisted of Heather (dooce) Armstrong and a few other well known public bloggers). The session topic was that of blogging where everyone knows your real identity. This of course brings into focus the other way to blog, doing so anonymously.

One rather brilliant (in my opinion) example of a good anonymous blog is Fafblog, I have no idea who these people are, but damn are they funny, insightful, clever, biting, esoteric, etc. The EFF recently released a guide on How to Blog Safely, or anonymous blogging.

If one were to start an anonymous blog, they would avoid linking to it elsewhere, would avoid telling people they know or who read anything they write elsewhere about it as them linking to it or telling others about it could also be suspicious. Should one just go about writing what they hope is good content and blog like no one's watching? (because lets face it, it is pretty much a sure bet that no one is) Consider the recent statistics from technorati in their latest State of the blogsphere. The number of blogs is doubling every 5 months currently, a new blog is created almost every second. Even ignoring the spam blogs that appear on blogspot and other services, this is a huge number of blogs. As pointed out in the article I linked to about cats the other day, most of the blogs out there are rubbish, and far too many of them seem to contain endless photos of pet cats.

So if you write a bunch of stuff and do not use your existing reputation or google juice to pump it into any sort of readership how does it get noticed? I think the only way really is two fold a) have a lot of good content on it. and b) use tagging services and other techniques so posts from it will start to appear in the appropriate places when being searched for. It is fortunate that good content matters more than almost anything else, otherwise spam blogs would be far more successful than they are currently. Also a good anonymous blog is obviously done for the art, for the sake of the blog, to improve ones writing or thinking on some given subject, it has no bearing on any real world social status or status of the author on the Internet, a form of art for the sake of the art.