Andrew Sullivan asserts in the below video interview at the Aspen Ideas Festival that blogging is broadcasting. I think it is both and it depends on the writer/blogger in question. Sullivan's style is that he broadcasts his piece as soon as possible from the time the idea or event happened and he broadcasts in his blog multiple times a day. Other bloggers, such as Geoff Manaugh of BLDBLG, publish a few times a week or once a day, in a longer, edited essay form - I would consider this publishing the blog post or some folks might call the longer, curated/edited essay form an article.

What about the moblogging that I do here? Would it be broadcasting via Sullivan's definition or do I mobile publish because I tend to look for the best image or two of the day and only rarely do I moblog more than one or two images as they happen. The evening, a couple of weeks ago, that I went to dinner with Ernie, Jason, and George at Esperento in the Mission was more broadcasting or documenting as it happens, as I moblogged photos of two of the dishes we ate and two photos of the gentlemen, but most days, I do believe I am publishing.

I do agree with Sullivan that blogging is the most exciting thing to happen for writers, as well as artists and photographers, in many a decade.

Fri 06.12.09 - Will PostOffice for MT post this cron job email now that I have the correct cron job command?

Update: Yes, it did, but not with the cron job command that my server support team said would work, but with the one that Movable Type said would work.

Update at 4:48pm: Sorry, it ran a couple of times too many before I deleted the test email out of the inbox.

For two reasons, email photos to this blog is going to be an imperfect way to moblog:
1) If one does not delete or move the email out of the inbox, after the cron job runs, then the PostOffice plugin will post again the next time the cron job runs - at least when using Gmail.
2) One first has to resize the photo in the phone before emailing, otherwise there will be a large photo - both in pixels and kilobytes - that is posted to the blog.

With the G2 Ion / HTC Magic phone, I downloaded PicSay from the Android Market to do the resizing and emailing all in one go, as the PixelPipe Android app did not send the photo resized.

Given that a super-user/moblog addict like me spent many hours over days to set this up, no wonder why regular folks don't want to blog from their phones to a blog that lives on one's own server but prefer instead if they do moblog to a hosted service. gah.

Oh, Lifeblog, Oh Lifeblog, why did Nokia discontinue you? You were such a lovely and perfect moblogging app for Nokia phones...

Thurs 06.11.09 - Will PostOffice for MT post this cron job email now that I have the correct cron job command?

Update later in the evening: No it did not. The support fellow at my server gave me a new command for the cron job and it did not work, so I just triggered the script via the command line and it did post. Now back to the cron job drawing board.

Fri 05.29.09 - I have set up the Post Office plugin for Movable Type to see if I can blog from email, if so then the sting out of life after Nokia's great but now discontinued moblog software - Lifeblog.

Update: Thurs 06.11.09 - Two weeks later, I finally have the Post Office moblog plugin for Movable Type working with tech support from Dan Wolfgang at Uinnovations. Big thanks to Dan for the 4 lines of tweaks to make this work.

Now I just need to get my server to help me on why the cron job is not working, I was able to get these posted by using SSH to trigger the task. Once I can get an hourly cron job working then Post Office will make my moblogging life easier from any camera phone that can email. w00t!

For as much as I can get ear worms of songs stuck in my head for weeks at a time, I also find that a line or two of poetry can worm into my head, reverberate, expand, and live a full multi-week life, and not exit.

Lately, I have had two lines of poetry on rotation in my head along with will.i.am's* "Chunky" from Madagascar 2, one line from "The Act" by William Carlos Williams and one line from Ursula Le Guin's "The Old Lady".

Tonight I will point you to William's "The Act" as I blogged about it when Vanessa, Edel, and I were turning it into an interactive flash piece in February of 2006:

The Act

There were the roses, in the rain.
Don't cut them, I pleaded.
They won't last, she said.
But they're so beautiful
where they are.
Agh, we were all beautiful once, she said,
and cut them and gave them to me
in my hand.

Tomorrow or the next day I will blog about Le Guin's wonderful new poetry book, Incredible Good Fortune. For now I am off to bed.

* p.s. Am I the only one who thinks that will.i.am and animation team at Dreamworks are having good fun at poking at "My Humps?"

The nice folks at Amazon.com have opened up the ability for bloggers to add their blog to the Kindle-world. If you are a regular blogger and would like to have the various Kindle reader folk out there to able to download and read your blog on their Kindle's, then go register at Kindle Publishing.

The nice folk at Six Apart alerted their Twitter followers about the new Kindle Publishing option for bloggers this afternoon:

Our friends at Amazon just launched Kindle Publishing for Blogs -- list your blog in the Kindle store: http://kindlepublishing.amazon.com

Why is this exciting to me? Given that I am a big fan of reading, mobile devices and blogs, this is a perfectly easy way to make sure that one's blog reaches what possibly may be a new audience or at the very least it makes current readers of one's blog be able to read the blog anywhere on a mobile device at their convenience.

I signed up for Kindle Publishing this afternoon and within 20 minutes I had this blog, Black Phoebe :: Ms. Jen, and The Happy Tastebud signed up as Kindle subscriptions. And in another 20 minutes after that, I had the links to the Kindle subscriptions added to both blog's sidebar Subscribe area right next to the links to Atom and RSS feeds.

It was easy. Amazon did not require anything of me that I had not already had accomplished (description, keywords, screen shot, masthead, etc). I did not have to recode my blog nor did I have to make a device specific app, like many have done for the iPhone, but all I had to do after filling in basic information was to give an RSS or Atom feed to Amazon.

Amazon allows you to see a preview of your content as the Kindle will display it to the reader and it is not optimized for a photoblog or for the design control addicts amongst us, as the photos are very low resolution and in black & white and the typography is serif and fairly large. Also, there is no control over layout. But all of this adds up to an impetuous for me to make sure that my content is compelling regardless of the device or machine that it is viewed on.

Whether anyone actually subscribes to my blog via the Kindle or not really doesn't matter, what does matter is that Amazon is making a wide variety of publications available to their Kindle readership and Amazon is making it easy for bloggers and other content publishers to distribute their work, which is very exciting for the mobile and handheld device ecosystem.

I spent a good chunk of hours today tinkering with and refining the feeds on most of the blogs I author, administrate, and manage.

I had several goals for the altering of the RSS and Atom templates:

1) To make all public facing feeds be excerpted text with a link to continue reading. Why? I really don't have the time to hunt down the evil sploggers who repost rss and atom feeds as their own with lots of ads help augment their copylifting. Thus, if I set everything to excerpt with a link to the post then if the sploggers reblog the text the link goes to the original post.

2) Per the usual, if you are a regular subscriber and you don't want to deal with the excerpted feeds, send me an email (blackphoebe@gmail.com), introduce yourself, give me your blog or twitter URL so I can put you in my feed reader, and I will send you the link to the whole post private RSS feed.

3) Also, if you are a private whole feed subscriber and your feed reader is not rendering the images, let me know via email (blackphoebe@gmail.com) what feed reader you are using and I will try and solve the problem for you.

Once again, thanks for reading this blog and viewing the photos. Y'all rock.

Notice to all readers: This blog is having May 2009 NaBloPoMo FAIL.

Sorry but it is true.

Sweet.

What in the heck am I supposed to write about sweet that isn't sticky and slightly silly? I am not a big dessert eater, so I don't have 31 posts about sugar or honey or agave syrup in me. I can only make so many puns/badbadbadjokes based off the Northeastern US slang "Sweeeeeeet!", I did it for the first couple of days subtly and felt a bit gross for doing so. Then for a few days, I just posted mobile photos from my camera phone, because I am darned happy to be back on my Nokia N95 that has Nokia's great but now discontinued mobile blog software, Lifeblog, on it.

After a very long week with lots of out of town visitors, I now sit before my laptop burnt out. Not sleepy but at the very end of my energy reserves.

Yes, Mother's Day was nice, but yesterday hanging out all day with my Mom, working on my garden, and going to Dog Beach with Mom & Bird & Scruffy & Magnus was better. Tammy is still very pregnant and the baby has not come. I am still overwhelmed with work and will try to get the two big projects wrapped up before departing for Alex & Paige's wedding in Hawaii next Sunday.

((Is even more burnt out thinking about the next 7 days))

I do have one sweet thing to blog about: The Nokia N79, just sent back to the NYC Nokia folk, really is a sweet little machine.

Other than that, I may not be able to make another 21 days of sweet posts. Gah.

[/anti-sweet-rant]

The NaBloPoMo theme for May 2009 is sweet. Interpret the word sweet as one will.

The month of May is quite full right now and so it makes complete sense for me to sign up for NaBloPoMo when I will be overly busy. (not). But the theme this month intrigued me and I decided to sign myself up. I may be naturally bubbly and happy, but how many sweet things can I write about in 31 one days? We shall find out, won't we?

Our lovely friends over at the Online Etymology Dictionary give the word sweet's history as follows:

sweet (adj.)

O.E. swete "pleasing to the senses, mind or feelings," from P.Gmc. *swotijaz (cf. O.S. swoti, Swed. söt, Dan. sød, M.Du. soete, Du. zoet, O.H.G. swuozi, Ger. süß), from PIE base *swad- (Skt. svadus "sweet;" Gk. hedys "sweet, pleasant, agreeable," hedone "pleasure;" L. suavis "sweet," suadere "to advise," prop. "to make something pleasant to"). Sweetbread "pancreas used as food" is from 1565 (the -bread element may be from O.E. bræd "flesh"). To be sweet on someone is first recorded 1694. Sweet-talk (v.) dates from 1936 (in "Gone With the Wind"). Sweet sixteen first recorded 1826. Sweet dreams as a parting to one going to sleep is attested from 1908. Sweet and sour in cooking is from 1723, not originally of oriental food

Thus, I will spend the month attempting to blog about all things "sweet, pleasant, agreeable, and pleasing to the senses". Since I am already blogging either a photo or a text post every day this year (as with last year), for the NaBloPoMo challenge, I will write a text post everyday with a possible photo each day, too. Possibly.

As for the sweet bit about today, I had a fuzzily delightful dream last night/early this morning, just in time for May Day where I was in a forest (a west side of the Sierra Nevada giant sequoia forest) and I had a mobile, handheld map of the forest made of model sized trees. To navigate you turned the tree model upside down and let your hand feel where to go in the forest.

The May Day 2005 post from this blog.
The May Day 2008 post from this blog about a dream I had May Day morning last year.

Last but not least, I hope you had a delightfully sweet day today, whether it was enjoying spring flowers and maypoles or out marching in the name of Labor. Though celebrating Beltane seems a bit more delightful than a march...

Photos taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N79.

Sat. 04.25.09 - Happy sixth birthday to this blog, Black Phoebe :: Ms. Jen! Or happy blog anniversary! Yay!

It has been a big day with Jesse & Krista Wilder's baby shower, grocery shopping, the April Birthday Girls BBQ at my place, then to Salon Pop for Nicole Welke's art show, thus I am - like Scruffy - all tuckered out.

Fri. 03.27.09 - Actually the Tuttle Club LA was not born yesterday, but a month ago today, though the super cheap bagels at the Library in Long Beach apparently were born yesterday.

When Steve and Lobelia Lawson were out in the LA area for the NAMM show, Steve told Geoff Hickman and myself that we should start a Tuttle Club for LA. Well, due to the busy-ness of January, February and March, I was out of the picture on any organization, but Geoff and Francine Kinzner did get on top of things and started LA/LB/OC's own social media club, modeled after London's Tuttle Club, four weeks ago on Feb. 27, 2009.

Today was the 3rd Tuttle LA, but it was my first due to my being in Arizona & Texas for the other two. I enjoyed myself. I knew 3 of the 6 folks (Jeb, Geoff, and Lauren) and got to make friends with the other 3 (Francine, Nguyen, and Mark). It was great to get out of the house and away from the computer to talk about computers, mobile, web, extra and et al, during a Friday mid-day in Long Beach.

Jeb Brilliant and I fleshed out an idea that I have had rolling around in my head for over a year now, Lauren Isaacson thought up a great domain name, and Jeb and I made a plan on how to execute the idea, all over tea and coffee at the Library on Broadway & Redondo in Long Beach. Yay!

The only downside was hanging out too long and returning to my car to find a ticket on it for parking longer than an hour. Next time - Tuttle LA #4 - I will ride my bike the 4 or so miles from Seal Beach to The Library.

Next Tuttle LA (really Tuttle LA/LB/OC):
Fri. April 10, 2009
10:30 am
@ The Library
3418 E Broadway
Long Beach, CA 90803

Craig Duff of Time.com video'd the Bloggies Awards Ceremony on Monday. Go watch it, the video is a great combo of performances and interviews.

The Bloggies were good fun. Great presenters, great performers (George, Jeremy, and Dan!), and tons of great bloggers! Big thanks to everyone.

Yes, it is that time of year again, time for SXSW Interactive and the 2009 Weblog Awards!

The Bloggies are the web's longest-running non-profit, reader voted blog awards. The votes are in and the Weblog Awards ceremony will be held on Monday, March 16th at 12:30pm (Central Time, GMT-5) at the SXSW Trade Show Day Stage.

Come join us in celebrating blogs and bloggers at SXSW Monday at lunch. If you can't make in person to the Bloggies Award Ceremony, join us on IRC, #Bloggies on irc.freenode.net, for live coverage and chat. After the ceremony the winning blogs can be found at 2009.bloggies.com.

The 9th Annual Weblog Awards Ceremony will be brought to you this Monday by Ms. Jen and George Kelly, with big ideas & help from Glenda Sims, as well as all the fabulous presenters and bloggers. Extra big thanks to Nikolai Nolan for all his hard work on the Ninth Annual Weblog Awards web site and managing the whole voting process.

If you are going to SXSWi, please come join us on Monday 3/16 at 12:30pm at the Day Stage for the Bloggies!

If you are like me, you have found your web browsing managed by a feed reader that alerts you when web sites, blogs, and other subscription based web spaces make an update. But not every web site out there in the big wide world of the web has a subscription or a feed available... Shock! Horror! How 1999!

So, I have a few bookmarked that I like to visit but for various reasons they aren't on my feed reader or don't have a feed be it atom or rss or rdf or feedburner.

My favorite non-feed web site that I check every day is the Interactive Global Composite Weather Satellite Images page from NASA. This page allows me to see the most recent set of satellite images from the Pacific and see what weather is coming California's way. It also allows me to see the Pacific Ocean and the nations on its rim as a whole rather than a set of disjointed far away places. Truly fun and lovely.

Best of all, you can animate up to the last 30 satellite images to see how the storms are tracking across the Pacific. The only sad thing is that due to various weather satellite agreements, most of Europe, Asia, and Africa are blacked out. Grrr... Give me the whole globe!

What websites do you go to every day that are not in your feed reader, so you either have them bookmarked or actually type out the URL old school style?

Wed 01.14.09 - Actually, Steve Lawson speaking on social media for musicians at The Olde Ship in Santa Ana.

Late last December, a year ago, I decided to participate in Blog365 and I am here to tell you 367 days (365 days + leap day + today) from the start of the daily blogging for a year that I did it. I blogged every single darned day for the last 367 days, including leap day of which we were allowed to take off but I didn't.

Due to the fact that I allowed myself the leeway of blogging from my computer and / or moblogging from my phone, I was able to complete the challenge and not feel that it was a struggle. Being able to moblog directly from my Nokia phones (N95 & 2 N82s) to this Movable Type powered blog via Nokia's Lifeblog made all the difference in being able to complete the daily blogging schedule on top of daily life, work, friends/family, travel, and the vicissitudes of life.

Then to make life interesting a more than a bit challenging, I decided to participate in NaBloPoMo in July over at the Happy Tastebud and in November here at Black Phoebe.

In the Blog365 challenge, I decided that which/what content I (mo)blogged didn't matter, it could be text or photo, as long as I had one blog post per day. In the November NaBloPoMo challenge, I decided that I had to blog text every day on top of any photo posts. That was hard, but really good.

After November was over, I had more text / opinion posts that I wanted to write but December got too busy and I didn't have a challenge to goad me on to actually write rather than just mo-pho-blog. I am going to continue daily posting here in 2009 be it text or photos, but I resolve to blog more text, at least 3 times a week.

;o)

Sat 12.13.08 - The Derby Dolls just told us, "Don't forget to go home and blog about this tonight!"

Well I'll be able to go to sleep when I get home, because I am moblogging it now.

[/snark]

Do you ever find yourself wanting to refer to a big blog post that you spent a great deal of time thinking out, composing, and rewriting? A blog post that your friends remember reading and quote you on, but later when you go to find it to refer to it you can't find it? That it doesn't exist?

This happened to me this today. I wanted to refer to the blog post that I thought I wrote in early October about my very favorable experience with AT&T's customer service, particularly a blog post about how AT&T's Brenda Rangel went out of her way to help me. A blog post I remember writing and publishing. A blog post that doesn't exist, a blog post that I can't find.

Did I think about writing it to the point of composing it in my head while driving, but never actually wrote it down? Did I talk about writing it to Erika that when I was having problems with AT&T back in September and then this week when the troubles resurfaced she referred to my good experience with Ms. Rangel and suggested that I call her for help, such that I thought I wrote a blog post?

But I can't find the blog post. Not published. Not in draft. Not at all.

This is disturbing.

I truly hate that I can't blog directly from my brain as I think and flesh out ideas as I am driving or falling to sleep or sitting in bed in the morning. Where is my true moblogging interface?

Brain to blog. Until then, I will occasionally experience phantom blog posts.

****

Anywho, since I can't find the post... Brenda Rangel of AT&T's International Data division and Karen Aitken of the Customer Service division both rock hard and should not get laid off. In fact, Brenda should get a raise and a promotion for work ethic, intelligence, and willingness to make a customer's experience better. Karen rocks, too.

Sun 11.30.08 - Today is the first Sunday of Advent, the last day of November, and the last day of the November NaBloPoMo challenge (3rd Annual).

Fare the well, November. Until next year...

When I was very young I was a serious early bird, popping up each day around 5:30am and going to bed by 8pm. My best hours of energy and alertful-ness was between 5:30am and 10am. As I aged into teen-twenties-hood, my body clock flipped where my best hours were in the evening and I struggled to wake up any time before 8am, even for school.

Now as an adult, I find that I like to go to bed around midnight and I wake up, depending on the light & the situation, between 6:30am and 9am. When I wake up, I am usually up and peppy. Sometimes I wake up wanting to sing, and I do.

Over the years, my energy levels have somehow melded between my childhood early bird and my teen-twenties late bird. In the last few years, I have lots of energy and concentration from 7am to noon and then again 5pm to 9/10pm. Even more interesting, to me, is that I do my best writing in the mornings and my best designing/coding in the evenings. Afternoons are a bit of a loss for any task of concentration other than talking and reading.

When I was writing my masters thesis, I did my draft writing in the mornings, my further research/reading in the afternoon, and my rewriting in the evening, with insertions of 15-30 minute procrastination/fun breaks at odd times.

I have a list of things that I want to write "longish", thoughtful blog posts about, but I keep telling myself that I can't blog until I have finished my allotted work for the day/evening. If I let myself blog when I am most "on" for writing, I feel guilty, as if I am cheating a client or myself or some schoolmarm in the sky. If I do like I have done for the last week and wait until after 10pm to blog, I know I have a whole *real* post in me, but I can't concentrate long enough to do anything other than vaguely think of the title of the topic and certainly I have not been able to write about it.

I can write about writing late at night. I can write about funny stuff or what happened that day. But if I want to write about, flesh out, and make a good argument for an idea or larger essay, well that is morning work.

I need to get over my blogging vs. real work guilt complex and start allowing myself two hours every morning or at least four mornings a week to write out all the big ideas in my head. Starting tomorrow. Maybe Sunday...

I am throwing my textual hat into the ring for the November (traditional month) National Blog Post Month.

Yes, I know, I have been blogging (or moblogging) daily to this space for the whole year so far as a part of the Blog 365 challenge for 2008. So how will participating in NaBloPoMo be any different?

My daily blogging for the year has been a combined photo / text effort and for the month of November, on top of my usual mobile photo blogging, I will challenge myself to write a text post of some sort each day.

Here it goes.

Rabbit Rabbit!

Part Two of my improve Nokia's Communication Idea Set.

One of the frustrations in participating in projects / campaigns with WOM World can be the difficulty in communication and getting timely information. This is not news to the folks at WOM World (we had a big conversation last week about this) nor to other folks who work on campaigns/projects with them. Now let me break this down into the problem, the extenuating circumstances, and the proposed solution:

The Problem:
I love participating in projects / campaigns / whatever you want to call it with WOM World & Nokia but I find myself frustrated that much of the information that is needed to complete my side of the project right either comes late or quite a bit into the campaign. Take the example of the lack of Nokia viNe widget for the last month and a half of that campaign and then finding out about a similar widget by some other team at Nokia via another blog.

The Circumstances:
(please note that the following are not unique to WOM World or Nokia, but happen all over the world in a variety of businesses)
1) Nokia is working with at least 3 external agencies / vendors on any one campaign: Interactive ad agency, WOM World/1000 heads for the outward facing blogger interface & social media marketing, a possible pr agency, etc. This is on top of the one or two or more internal Nokia teams that may be involved in the project (the developers who are making the service, the marketing team, etc). This is a lot of cats to herd. And it is a lot of folks to be informing each other of what each member of their teams is up to, as well as what other teams at Nokia may be up to that might help the campaign/project at hand, all while on a tight deadline.

2) Almost every company on the planet has teams that are understaffed and overworked. It is a reality of the business system. 'Nuff said.

3) WOM World's primary mission is to follow social media and bloggers and then let the world know about what those folks have said. WOM World does not create its own content. At the same time as WOM World is blogging about what we are blogging about, they are also sending and receiving mobile devices all over for trials, and participating in / conducting Nokia campaigns with bloggers and social media folk, as well as interacting with Nokia and other agencies to make sure that WOM World's portion is working. See #1 & #2 above and you get the point.

4) Ok, I could now talk about how different cultures view the dissemination of information or lack thereof, company cultures, and transparency v. Finnish mind reading tricks, but I won't muddle up the subject at hand with more details or conjecture.

The Proposed Solution:
Provide a back channel for each of the projects / campaigns as a way of getting information out there and keeping folks informed, and as a way to build community.

What do I mean by a back channel? Before Nokia Open Lab in Sept. most of the participants had very little information other than initial email invite, as the website for the event was not up yet, so Roland Tanglao set up a wiki to help us communicate and share more info that folks may have gleaned.

By having this wiki, the Open Lab participants were able to share our flight times to meet up at the airport, information about the event, information about Helsinki, and most importantly - after the event - links to our blog posts, photos, tweets, etc that we created about the event.

Instead of talking less in public spaces about the Open Lab because we had our own private place to talk to each other, we talked more in public because we had more information and we felt more empowered.

So, I propose that for each campaign / project that Nokia and WOM World work on (either together or separately) with bloggers and social media folk, that a wiki or Friend Feed or an old school link portal or some other way for us to aggregate all the information we need to share with each other, as well as a listing of all the posts / tweets / etc that we have written about the campaign / project.

Arguments Against:
Since I floated this idea by WOM World's Donna and Siobhan last week, I already have the objections to my idea. Of which the biggest objection is that if a wiki is set up, then the fear would be that the participants would just chat to each other on the wiki / forum / back channel and would not post about the project.

Counter Argument:
In the instance of the Nokia Open Lab 2008, having the wiki did not stop us from blogging and tweeting about it. In fact, we posted more and responded to each other in our blogs because we were sharing information and we had built a community.

WOM World may have posted a few links to our writings during and after the event, but by having a back channel we were able to self-aggregate all of our social media and blog links about the Open Lab and it can be viewed by the public which only increases the Long Tail effect for the event.

When we were talking last week Siobhan suggested that FriendFeed would work within the constraints of WOM World's primary mission, as it could aggregate all the posts for all of the participants of any given project. But, unless FriendFeed has good filters for all of the incoming feeds, we would also see all of the other posts by the same folks.

A wiki or like, either on the WOM World site or external wiki like PBwiki, would also allow us to share links and information that would be helpful during the project, like my finding the Maps + Photography widget last week, it would allow not just the participants but the whole world see a complete or almost complete list of the posts on the project both during and after in one place, as well as build community.

The Conclusion:
Please help those of us without degrees in Finnish Mind Reading out. I would love to know who the other participants in the Nokia viNe project are, I know a few, but it would be great to follow all and not just thier viNe posts but also their blogs and other social media, as well as to share information that will allow all of us to better participate in the project.

Information + Links + Community = a Big Win for Nokia in the long run.

Rather than torture you all with more photos of small white dogs* this evening, I am going to direct you to several great articles:

1) The ever fabulous and bright, Malcolm Gladwell has alerted his blog readers of his new New Yorker article, "Late Bloomers: Why do we equate genius with precocity?".

This is one of the best articles I have read in a while, as Malcolm digs deep into a phenomenon that I have noticed for years: it is not the precocious or prodigies that you want to watch in life, but it is the late-bloomers who are most interesting. Malcolm weaves research into creativity and age v. output with historical references and current anecdotes into the lives of contemporary writers.

Excellent. A must read.

2) The ever fabulous Ariel Stallings Meadows, aka Electrolicious, has the best summary of the Black Mondays & Fridays of the recent Stock Market crash that I have read to date. Her analogy may shock the squeamish amongst us, but it is words to take to heart and live by. Listen to Ariel, Just don't look down there. Really, don't look at your stock portfolio until after the new year.

Just don't look.

****
* Just so y'all know, I already have it worked out with Erika that if I die suddenly by accident that she will post photos of Scruffy & Belle for 365 days after my death. I am compiling a stock of photos for her. So, y'all should darned hope I don't die suddenly, as after a year you will be darned glad I am gone. So here's to the hope that I have the longevity of all my other elderly family members who are currently in their 80s & 90s and doing things like golfing a few times a week (great Aunt Babe, aged 94) or flying to Uruguay for his holiday (what my 86 year old grandpa did on Sunday), etc. Just sayin'.

Is blogging a writing / posting activity that one does with a specific web based content software that allows one to publish to a website chronologically or is it a writing / posting activity that is about keeping a web log of one's life / thoughts irregardless of software running the web site?

If the second, then I have been keeping a weblog (self-publishing) in one form or another since 1996, when I put up my first internet homepage on my exciting 6 megs of space on the Boston University web servers (ACS3, if you must know). From 1997-1998, I had a home page over on the earthlink.net servers. From 1999 - 2003, I hand coded pages of writing and photos at the Barflies.net. And from 2003 to present, I have used Movable Type software at Blackphoebe.com and barflies.net to publish my thoughts and photos.

All this being said, if blogging is a software than my biggest influences were Ben & Mena Trott at SXSWi 2003. If blogging is a community, then Jish is my biggest influence, as he was the first person to be nice to me and invite me into the group at SXSWi 2003 (previous to that, I was an outsider from the Music world).

Previous to attending the first BlogHer in 2005, I had no idea who Dooce was, other than folks I know liked her blog. My first inkling into the web celebrity that is Heather Armstrong is when I was getting out of the car at the parking lot of the Westin Hotel pre-BlogHer 2005, and one of my friends got out of our car and shrieked, "DOOOOOOOOCE!" as loud as humanly possible.

The tall, blonde female person getting out of the car next to us looked horrified. I was mortified and busied myself with unloading the car. While I had not read Dooce's blog up to this point, but I understood in that instant the full power of internet celebrity. One would think it was 1964 and the Beatles had just landed.

During that first one day BlogHer conference in the summer of 2005, I was both excited by being at an event that was for and by women bloggers and more than a bit alienated by the whole thing. All my web related conference attendance up to this point was SXSW Interactive, which does have many bloggers but the focus is quite different. What I did like about the first BlogHer was how homegrown it was and friendly.

The same group of us, plus a few more, traveled up to San Jose late July 2006 for the second BlogHer. This one I spoke at and once again met folks that I would not have otherwise crossed paths with. Yet again, there were aspects to BlogHer that were just plain weird, mostly some of the interpersonal communication and overt familiarity, as well as judgments that folks made about others just based on their blogs genre (mommy bloggers vs. the business bloggers) or by the content on the blog. Odd but true.

The last two BlogHers (2007 & 2008), I did not attend due to other commitments. I did seriously consider going this year, as this would be the only place to meet up with a whole set of great bloggers who don't attend SXSW or other tech events. But in the end, the price of staying in San Francisco, project deadlines in July, and the general weirdness at the other 2 BlogHers I attended kept me away.

Why bring this all up now?

I have spent the last 4 plus days upgrading the Barflies.net from Movable Type 3.36 to Movable Type Open Source 4.2b with a complete update of templates, adding of a few new features (author archives) and a big back end information architecture re-org (only to be seen by contributors). In wanting to update the Barflies.net Movable Type install, I found myself trying to accomplish a few tasks that aren't necessary in a one person blog.

One of the little things I wanted to do was to combine the RSS / Atom feeds from the main blog with the RSS / Atom Feed of the SoCal Calendar to make one feed for folks to subscribe to. When I Google searched this, I could not find any real answers, so I emailed the Six Apart Pronet list had a good simple, elegant answer from LaRosa Johnson within minutes:

"add blog_ids="all" to the MTEntries tag of your Atom Feed and that should do it"

And I did, and it worked.

Now how did I do it? In my case, I didn't want all the blogs on the Barflies.net MT install in the feed, only two. Barflies.net #15 and SoCal Calendar #30, so I set the blog_ids to blog_ids="15,30".

Everywhere in my RSS and Atom Feed templates that there was an instance of the mt:Entries tag, I added blog_ids="15,30", saved & published, and then tested the feeds. Happiness.

Here is an example of one the mt:Entries tag that that I altered in the Atom Feed:

<mt:Entries blog_ids="15, 30" lastn="1">

Thanks, LaRosa!

This week a big brouhaha burst out on the web about BoingBoing's taking down any and all links / posts about Violet Blue the San Francisco sex columnist / blogger.

And the web commenting folks reacted. And reacted. And reacted.

Upon, first reading about this to do, I wondered why such a big brouhaha now - given that the about Violet Blue posts were removed a year ago at BoingBoing - when not a peep has been written about KT's whole section of Blogher Editor posts from the last year or two being removed lock, stock, and barrel over at Blogher.com over the weekend of June 14-15, 2008.

Now, I don't think that BlogHer is as highly ranked as BoingBoing, nor do they have the readership, nor do I think that KT was getting it on with one of the BlogHer management in a way that would feed salacious gossip, as Violet Blue was getting it (supposedly) with BoingBoing's Xeni.

What I do know is that BoingBoing's moderator, Teresa NielsenHayden, did address the issue today and that she is a by far more astute web moderator than just about anyone else out there.

What I also know is that BoingBoing has a better designed site that is easier to navigate both on the website and over time then the BlogHer site, which seems to be redesigned every year before the summer conference and get more unusable than the year before.

Furthermore, what I also know is that BlogHer had a prominent post on the top of the front page to allow readers comment on the new site redesign on Monday, June 16, 2008, but it had no mention of the departure of a good daily editorial BlogHer. And all the comments about the redesign of the site were only gushing, positive comments by other editors of the site. I was the first, and apparently the last, to make a few critiques of the redesign & its usability in the comments. The post announcing the redesign disappeared off the front page within the day.

How do I know that KT's posts disappeared? I have BlogHer on my feed list, and day in and day out 365 days a year for at least the last year if not longer, including holidays, KT's daily astrology post would be on the RSS / Atom feed, as well as on the BlogHer website as the editor post for the Astrology section. KT's posts stopped on Fri. June 13, 2008 and have not reappeared in the feed since.

More telling a few days after the BlogHer redesign was announced and launched on Mon. June 16, 2008, all of KT's posts were deleted from BlogHer.

Now I am not going to make a big to do about the why or wherefores, but what I would appreciate is some editorial / leadership transparency on the part of the BlogHer folks about KT's departure. Whether this is in the style of Anil's metafilter comment about how to deal with a split or TNH's BoingBoing post today it doesn't matter, what does matter to me for BlogHer's credibility is that they acknowledge the departure (good, bad, neutral) of an editor and her daily column.

I don't care if BlogHer chose to take down all of KT's posts or if KT took down all of her own posts, nor do I care about why or the personal politics about the departure, just make an announcement. Say goodbye.

Why should BlogHer say goodbye? Well, BlogHer's whole premise is an all inclusive community of women bloggers that values diversity, transparency, and honesty. Blogher, live up to your explicit and implicit values.

BlogHer, in the meantime, please please please please hire someone to re-architect your website, it is unusable and I am only viewing posts in my feed reader to be able to see if the content is worth while, as my reader sorts everything nicely. I am very sad to see last year's design go, as it was the only one I enjoyed clicking through to and seeing the content on the site in, this year's site is very vanilla corporate.

As a side note to wrap up this post, amusingly enough, I have noticed that Xeni's sex posts have declined over the last few months. I do think Valley Wag may have hit the whole brouhaha on the head.

The other day Eden sent around an email letting those of us on the NaBloPoMo Ning group know that July would be the Food edition. w00t!

Jessica announced she would be taking up the daily food posting challenge at WordRidden & Principia Gastronomica. And Lori announced today that she would be food blogging all month.

Since I have a food blog, I will be food blogging daily during the month of July over at The Happy Tastebud, as well as continuing the 365 daily posting challenge here at Black Phoebe :: Ms. Jen (going strong! Thanks mobile blogging!).

Today's post over at The Happy Tastebud is "Whole Foods v. Pavilions". Yes, people, I *actually* comparison shopped today. NO, I did not use coupons, I have my principles.

;oD

Tue 06.03.08 - Here is a photo from this morning's walk on the greenbelt of my favorite local tree in dappled light. It is a fairly young sycamore (plane tree, for the Brits), probably less than 20 to 40 years old, but already trifurcated and growing in bendy, lovely directions. It will be a glorious tree in 80 - 120 years from now, much like the Wedding Lawn Sycamores at my Uncle John's house or the Sycamores that line Santiago Creek at Irvine Regional Park.

I wanted to spend the time to blog about the Food 2.0 Nom Nom Nom food photo / blogging contest and voting that is going on right now, but I had a long day working on deadline and a very frustrating evening. So, click on the link to Food 2.0 above to vote on the best of the photos & blogging and I will make the blog post tomorrow when I am in a better mood.

Sun 05.18.08 - Ribot, Guinevieve, and James at the Food 2.0 Nom Nom Nom dinner.

Hanging out with the lovely folks who participated in the cookery contest and the Trusted Places after party was the most fun I have had in a very long time!

Twitter is currently out, and not out getting a Flickr style message, but appears to be on a tweaking binge and is not to be found, when found Twitter just might be manically vacuuming your house at 3am.

Yes, Twitter is down and out, so I have not place to post short, 140 character witticisms. Thus, I will actually write a textual blog post.

Several quick thoughts:

1) Am quite tired / jet lagged.

2) Am sad that my flight & budget require me to go home on Tuesday. Can I please stay in London for least another 3 days?

3) As it stands today and Friday are my only two days to pitter putter / bip bop around London, every other day is fully booked. Can I have another 3 days?

4) Bah. Budget. Bah.

5) You know that Ruby on Rails application that I have been working on? After watching Twitter struggle, I am defecting to Django. Ever heard of a Django app having such troubles and outages?

6) Today I had a lovely dim sum lunch with @SteveMarshall at the Jade Garden. Drinks at Villanders with the Carsonified folk & the folk who attended Andy Clarke's CSS workshop. Plus a big walk in between.

7) I really wish that Clark's in the US would carry good and cute shoes rather than icky hippy crap. I have had to buy my last 3 pairs of favorite cute walking flats in either the London or Dublin Clark's stores in the last 3 years due to the fact the US branch of the shoe giant has been beaten with an ugly stick. Good thing that the Clark's store on Regents street had my fave pair of black flats on sale for a significant discount today.

8) Did I mention that I was tired and not thinking well? If the above makes no sense, well then...

This week Sandra and I are working on an iteration or somewhat-redesign of her Debutante Clothing blog. The other night I went over to her house and used a photo of Justin's sister to make a big bold splash of a banner header.

But by the time I got home and all through yesterday day, I felt it was too bold for the rest of Sandra's blog and overwhelmed the content. This afternoon, I plugged my Wacom tablet in, turned on Fireworks, opened up the photo of the roses outside of Sandra's front door that I took on Tuesday evening and started to draw over the photo with colors from her blog.

I wasn't sure if Sandra would like the drawing for her masthead or if she liked our big bold statement, or if I should take the the drawn over roses and weave them into the new masthead I created on Tuesday evening.

Tuesday Evening's Masthead:

This Afternoon's Rose additions to the Bold Banner:

Now looking at the two ideas above, I thought of a subtler iteration:

What do you think?

Thurs 05.01.08 - Happy May Day or Beltane! May your spring be overflowing.

I woke up early this morning from an involved dream fresh in my memory that included a river flowing under my house / apartment, and the back room opening up into a wide staircase that went down into a grotto with a Virgin Mary on the riverside.

The river was clear, fast flowing, and deep. The statute of the Virgin Mary was in a light blue robe with a white robe underneath. The grotto was well lit, of which people freely came and went. The house / apartment was a mash-up of my last few favorite historical places I have lived in: shaped two rooms in a row like the 1860s brownstone apt. I lived in in Boston, hardwood floors (Misty's side of the duplex) and the back room of the Victorian in Orange, and the plaster & lathe walls of my current 1930s/1940s flat.

It was a peaceful dream and even in it, I yearned to live all the time in this 2 roomed apartment with its subterranean river of life and stairway of people come and going. This is the first ever dream I have had with Mary in it. I did not grow up Catholic and tend to find the veneration of the Virgin to be a bit bizarre. Upon research today, see links above, I found out that May is considered the Virgin Mary's month.

Photo by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N82 on Feb. 25, 2008, in London.

Good news, folks! I wrote about it briefly back in March but it is now official and the Nokia Conversations will be launching within a few hours!

When I met up with Charlie Schick in late February at Paddington Station in London when we were both in transit, Charlie told me that he had left the Ovi group to start the official Nokia blog. I was and am darned excited about it.

Charlie and his team will be writing on Nokia, the Mobile / social space, and the like. Most importantly, they will be the continuing to make Nokia more open and transparent to the public. This can only be a good thing.

Charlie alludes to it in this post on his blog. Darla Mack blogs about Nokia invites us to the neighborhood. So does Mobile Jones...

Hello New York Times... Uh... the Urbanista Diaries campaign started in mid-January and ended in early March and your article came out on April 7th. Why wait to run the article a full month after the "live" portion is over?

If you are reporting on how Nokia is marketing with a new strategy of "hiring" bloggers and/or the marketing brilliance of the Urbanista Diaries, the why did you not interview one of the four of us?

I was not hired to go on the Urbanista Diaries trip, I was given a really cool opportunity to travel to India with a great camera phone, the N82, and do what I do every day - take lots of mobile photos and moblog them to a website with geo-data.

On the hiring bit? We were not paid, nor were any of the four of us given a phone. In fact quite a few of the phones were 'lifted' by DHL employees or Her Majesty's Customs on the way back to the UK after the Urbanista trip was over*. WOM World (1000 Heads) bought the plane tickets and reimbursed our hotel, food, and local transport. Nokia reimbursed / paid 1000 Heads.

WOM World (1000 Heads) has a policy, that not only do the bloggers get to be honest, but we also return the phones after the trial period. That is a loan, not a hire or a buy.

Yes, Nokia is above the curve on internet marketing, more importantly they are including the mobile community, which in turn creates brand loyalty. Apple or LG or Sony-Ericsson have never offered me to trial a device nor have they asked my opinion on its use or software. Nokia has. This is good.

But, NYT, please do a wee bit more research. kthnxbai.

*****

* Yes, for the record, I am angry about this - crooked business makes me indignant. Given that the phones were to go back to the UK, I would have preferred them to arrived in Oxfordshire in one piece, not the box arriving but missing the phones out of the middle. If I ever meet up with the DHL dude who giggled upon receiving the last N82 for shipment... To the Moon! Fed Ex & USPS have my business from here on out.

Sorry folks, due to general busy-ness and completing tasks on my To Do list today, I did not take any photos to moblog here. I did see lovely things whilst out walking Scruffy this morning but didn't photograph them. An unintentional day off from photography.

I did check a bunch of things off my weekly to do list. Best of all, I am *finally* back in the proper time zone and caught up on my sleep.

Note to self: Correct about page, add contact info, and sort out portfolio site before week's end.

Since Charlie asked, I will reply...

Here is the how to steps that I took to be able to post / moblog (mobile blog) from my Nokia N-Series phone (in this case an N95) with Nokia Share Online 3.0 2.0 to this Movable Type 4.1 blog (MTOS 4.1):

1) First off, you will need to have your login user name and the associated Atom / Web Services password for that user name*. How to find this? When you are logged into your MT blog, look up in the top right corner for Hi "username", click on this link, it will take you to your "Edit Profile" screen. Scroll to the bottom under "Preferences", look for the last form box entitled "Web Services Password", click on Reveal. Copy this password.

2) Second off, you will need to know the URL to your MT install's atom script, it usually will be: http://www.yourdomainname.com/pathtomt/mt-atom.cgi/weblog/

Example: http://www.happyexampleweblog.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-atom.cgi/weblog/

3) Have your Nseries Nokia phone/mobile in hand, now is time to configure the Nokia Share Online on the phone. Click on the Main Menu button. Go to Applications folder and click on "Share Online". Click on Options. Click on "Add New Provider".

4) Provider Name: (whatever is best for you to remember) - I used "bpc" for blackphoebe.com
Protocol: Atom (if using MT or Word Press or Blogger, then Atom is your protocol)
Web Address: This is where you put in the URL for your Atom script.
http://www.yourdomainname.com/pathtomt/mt-atom.cgi/weblog/
Once all of this is filled in, click on "back", and it will take you to the next screen. If it doesn't, then click on new account & choose the provider you just set up.

4) Here is the fun bit, start filling in the details:
Service Provider: Click on the name of the Provider you just set up. Then click on OK, it will take you to the next screen:
Account Name: I used the same name as as the Service Provider I just set up or you can say MT
User Name: your MT username from step #1
Password: your MT Web Services Password / Atom Password Reveal from step #1
Image Posting Size: The fun really begins here... If you pick Original size it will be the size that your NSeries phone takes the photos at, if 5 megapixel then YIKES~. Pick small or medium if your blog readers are coming at screen resolutions of less than 2600 x 1800 (which is about 99.99% of the internet). Think of your readers' experience, not everyone has a big screen nor do they have really fast broadband. Also, if you are not on an unlimited data plan then you will most likely want to choose medium (1024x768 in the N95's case, still too big) or small (640x480 in the N95's case, just the right size for this blog), unless you like really expensive mobile bills. I used the Edit function in the onboard Gallery app to resize my images to 640x480 for posting the most recent photo.

5) Save the above. Nokia Share Online will most likely try to activate. If you are me, it will not activate and get cranky. If it doesn't and activates right away, then you rock. If not, log out, turn off the phone/mobile. Reboot/turn it back on. Go back to the Main Menu, click on Applications, click on "Share Online", move the select over the MT account you just set up, and click on "Options", in Options click on "Update from Server". At this point or maybe if you are me, then within 18 hours, Nokia Share Online will decide to make friends with your Movable Type blog and post photos & text to it. If it can't activate or update server, check back tomorrow and it should have pulled its little head out of its crevices and will be working.

6) Now post away... If you try to moblog a photo from the "Share Online" world icon in the camera app of your Nokia Nseries phone/mobile, you will find that you can't edit the Title or add a description and only the photo with the date set will be posted to your blog. But if you take the photo and then go to the Main Menu -> Applications folder -> Share Online -> click on the service provider you want to post to (in my case "BPC", my MT blog) and then click on Options -> click on "New Post", then you will be able to add your own Title, Description, and then insert whatever Audio, Image, or Video you wish to post. After finishing all the bits, click on -> Options -> Post to Web.

Now time to experiment. Have fun.

****
Notes:

* I have two username accounts for my blogging, "Black Phoebe :: Ms. Jen" is me posting from the web browser interface / admin of my Movable Type install and "Ms. Jen Moblogs" is only posts that I send from my Nokia camera phone to this blog directly. I do this to indicate to the reader what is a regular blog post and what is a moblogged post (posted from my mobile).

** If you are not a Movable Type peep, but prefer Word Press or Blogger or... and still want to moblog with Lifeblog*** or Nokia Share Online, this wikipedia article gives all of the atom URLs for various blogging services so you can configure your phone to moblog. If the Lifeblog on your Nokia Nseries phone is still working, then the above Atom username & web services password & atom script URL will work to set up to post from your phone's Lifeblog to your blog.

*** Michele Neylon has a great tutorial on how to post from your Nokia Nseries mobile's Lifeblog to your Movable Type 4 blog.

******

The March Madness 2008 Moblogging Saga (i.e. Lifeblog vs. Nokia Share Online):

1. The Big Switch Over, or Back to My Nokia N95
2. 03/22/2008
3. Dear Nokia, Time for some real UX testing...
4. How to Post to a Movable Type 4 Blog from Nokia Share Online 3.0
5. Scruffy's Clover Crown
6. Belle Running>

******

Two problems with Nokia's Share Online 3.0, one can't edit the title nor can one add a description before posting the photo to the web service / blog.

I was able to edit, resize, and rename the full sized photo of my great aunt Babe's bougainvillea bush from the Gallery on my Nokia N95, but once I opened Share Online it just sent the photo with the date that I sent it as the title, not the renamed photo name as the title. And then there is no description...

Ok, Nokia, no offense, but what the F*(k were you thinking to discontinue and disable Lifeblog when it was a fairly full featured mobile blogging app and replace it with a badly featured and thought out "share" app? Hello, maybe you should have put both out there and asked your customers which they preferred to use...

Hello... Helloo.... heeellllloooooo.... Are y'all awake up there in Espoo? Did you do any User Experience research with actual customers and power users rather than in house testers? Did you contact any real live mobile bloggers during the testing phase to see how we need an mobile blogging app to work with our photo / blogging flow? Heeeeeeeelllllllllooooooo.....

****

p.s. I added the text and renamed the title of this post from the web browser interface, not from the phone.

p.p.s. Listening to Motley Crue while I write cranky blog posts.

p.p.s.s. I plan on cracking open the box that I packed the N82 back up in to see if I can get the N82's working Lifeblog mobile app off of it and transfer the working Lifeblog sis to my N95 before shipping the N82 back to WOM World.

p.p.p.s.s. Next time I talk about updating one of my Nseries phones, stop me. Remind me that the Nokia Updater bricked my N80 and now has made my beloved Lifeblog inoperable. Huh... not trusting the transmissions from the mothership... huh...

******

The March Madness 2008 Moblogging Saga (i.e. Lifeblog vs. Nokia Share Online):

1. The Big Switch Over, or Back to My Nokia N95
2. 03/22/2008
3. Dear Nokia, Time for some real UX testing...
4. How to Post to a Movable Type 4 Blog from Nokia Share Online 3.0
5. Scruffy's Clover Crown
6. Belle Running>

******

Photo by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95, of which the Lifeblog is borked so this photo was uploaded via MT rather than moblogged.

If you want the private complete text & photo feed, email me - blackphoebe at gmail dot com.

Otherwise, it is excerpt time for the rest of my feeds. Must make it harder for the uncreative plagiarists out there. Thanks for understanding.

I worked on refining the design of this website and have started making a Mobile version of the site.

Yep, a .mobi - view on your mobile / cell phone, version of the website. It is almost there, when I have it ready all the way, I will ask for help in testing it on various cell / mobile phone browsers.

I also added the Nokia Urbanista Diaries widget to the sidebar on the blog and as a center piece on the entrance page to the website. If you would like to follow along by adding the widget on your blog or website, here is the widget code to copy and paste onto your site:

<div id="flashcontent"><strong>In order to view the Nokia N82: 
The urbanista diaries you need JavaScript and Flash Player 8+ support</strong></div>
<script src="http://www.nseries.com/nseries/v3/js/swfobject.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">var so = new SWFObject('http://www.nseries.com/nseries/v3/media/campaigns/n82/widget.swf', 
'Nokia N82: The urbanista diaries', '300', '250', '8', '#ffffff');so.addParam('wmode', 'transparent');
so.addParam('flashVars', 'bloggerID=4&copy=http://www.nseries.com/nseries/v3/media/campaigns/n82/data/en-R0/widget.xml');
so.write('flashcontent');</script>

Or you can download the widget from the Nokia Nseries site yourself.

Hello to all of my lovely regular readers who read this blog on a feed reader,

I have listened to your concerns and have weighed them with mine. Compliments of a dream at 3 something a.m. this morning, I have a win-win solution!

The Fix for my Faithful & Regular Readers who want a Full Feed with text & photos that is formatted nicely:

1) I have made a private full feed for you to subscribe to.

2) Please email me at blackphoebe at gmail dot com and I will send you the URL for the private feed. Also, let me know your blog URL, so I can subscribe to you as well!

3) You get to consume the feed how it best pleases you and my blood pressure does not rise terribly when I look at Technorati. Everyone is happy.

4) If you email me, get the new feed URL, and you don't see the photos, please email me again with the name of the feed reader you are using so I can troubleshoot what the problem is. Right now the private full feed is working in Google Reader, Sage, Flock, and NetNewsWire, but the photos are not showing up in BlogLines of which I am going to get a fix for.

As of this Thursday, I will be setting all the public feeds on this website to excerpt only to discourage content scraping by a pack of unscrupulous jackass travel blogs. Given that I will spend most of the next two months on the road and I want to happily blog along the way, it behooves me to make a fix now.

Thanks for giving me your input and I look forward to hearing from you!

;o)

Update: The full private feed is now working with images in Bloglines.

Bloglines subscribers: When you input this feed, please set it to private, thanks!

I know that at least 1/2 if not 2/3rds of my regular readers here use a feed reader to view this blog. Or so says my log files.

Hello folks who read this blog via an RSS, RDF, or Atom feed! Please read the following, click through to the actual post and comment. I have enabled anonymous comments so that I can have your input.

I love you. Thanks for being faithful. I have been trying through the upgrade to Movable Type 4.0 to make sure that y'all have everything you need to read the posts on this blog. Now I would like a vote...

I appreciate how a feed reader makes life easier, but I would like to change my feeds to excerpts only with a link to the full post. Why?

1) Gesault: I love the merging of image / design / text / code of the internet. Black Phoebe :: Ms. Jen is conceived as a loving attempt to combine text, my mobile photography, with my web design. When viewed through a feed reader, unless the css is fully rendered, you are only getting a small portion of the whole.

I look forward to see how folks have combined imagery and design with there content. I generally use a feed reader to let me know when an update has happened then I connect to the actual post so I can see it in its native environment rather than the white and grey of my feed reader.

Do you really like your blog reading in the sterile environment of a feed reader or do you like to see what the blogger has for the whole visual / textual package? Or are many of the blogs on your reading list so poorly designed that the feed reader is a sight for traumatized eyes?

2) Parasites: I have been having a problem lately with unscrupulous humans or bots scraping my full feeds and using my content in their blogs without any proper credit or citation.

I would like to nip this in the bud by only providing an excerpt rather than a full feed. But first I would like to elicit the opinion of my regular readers...

3) Due to image stealing I have put further restrictions on how my images can be used in my feeds via anti-hotlinking .htaccess scripts. I am sorry to my readers who view this in Google Reader, as the images are not coming through at all. On those posts, please click through to see the image.

Vote with your comments and let me know... Do you want a full feed or an excerpt that you click through to is ok?

I would like to weigh your votes with my own desire to have this blog viewed in its native format as well as discourage lazy shits who steal. Let me know... ;o)

Thanks!

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95 while on a walk today with the dogs.

The true glories of winter in SoCal is the mild weather, which roses and gardenias love. As I was walking the dogs this afternoon, I spotted this rose next to the sidewalk on 10th St. in Seal Beach. It was similar to a Double Delight rose, but with an apricot yellow rather than cream colored interior. Gorgeous. I was so taken by its beauty that I forgot to sniff to see if it smelled like a Double Delight. Must walk back tomorrow.

The New Year's Resolution Part of the Blog Post:

I received an email from Mrs. Kennedy the other day letting NaBloPoMo 2007 participants know that various folks decided to take NaBloMoPo even farther and start Blog365. When I read the rules, I signed up.

Rules:

- Blog everyday for 365 days.

- Feb.29th is a Free Day and will be the Blog365 day of rest!
(Thanks Leap Year)

- You do not HAVE to post to the same blog as long as you post everyday.

- No internet? Write your post locally and post it once you are back on the grid.

- Computer Broken? Grab some paper and do some old school blogging.

- A post is a post, not everything has to be in writing. Photos, YouTube videos, and the like are all considered content.

- Have fun, because that's the whole point!

So, I signed up. This I can do, as I do post either photos or text to some spot on the 'net everyday anywhoo and if I don't I do write in one of my two notebook / sketchpads. What I will set as a goal for myself is to post to this blog everyday in 2008, be it a photo or text or both. Wish me luck.

Happy New Year!

I just reviewed my archives for November 2007 and I didn't do as badly at NaBloPoMo 2007 as I thought I had. I only missed one day.

My goal was to moblog one photo and write one text post each day. Most days of November I accomplished both. Many of the days (Nov. 16 - 26th) that I was on the road, I was only able to send a moblogged photo with a bit of text. But on Nov. 25th, I failed entirely. It was the only day that I did not post a photo or text all day for the whole day. Oops.

All in all, I had hoped to get more writing done. Moblogging, or sending photos and/or text from my phone directly to this blog via Lifeblog and my data plan, is relatively easy. I just need to pick a photo that I like, open Lifeblog, type some text (non-qwerty mobile phone keyboard), and then push the send button and off it goes to my blog. Given I was in Ireland and England this month, my mobile bill will be painful when it arrives, but it was worth it.

I had grand plans about catching up on writing up all the big topics I have been wanting to blog about (mobile creativity, Whole Foods, PHP vs. Ruby on Rails, etc.), but writing up big topics and traveling don't mix, esp. when one's hotel / B&B does not have an internet connection.

There is always December.

Eden sent an email to NaBloPoMo 2007 participants today encouraging us to keep blogging strong to the finish line at the end of the week. I appreciate the encouragement, but I have utterly failed to post daily here at Black Phoebe :: Ms. Jen, due to traveling and a lack of wifi and/or mobile connection. I wanted to, the spirit was willing but the connections and flesh were weak.

Yes, I could have used my US sim chip to blog short notes to this space every night from my phone's Lifeblog (my UK sim chip does not have the needed email/ISP data plan that Lifeblog requires), but either tiredness or cheapness got the better of me most nights.

My biggest problem with blogging is that I always compose whole posts in my head when I am miles away from my computer and then when I get back and have the time to write it all out, edit, rewrite, and then publish the post, I am too tired or have lost the train of thought or...

Having a Nokia mobile camera phone with internet connection the last three years has greatly helped me to keep my computer from being the black hole of digital photos, as now I can post my photos to this blog or flickr when I take them, but my brain is still a black hole of writing / text / opinion posts. Either I need voice recognition software that will translate recorded ideas into text that then can be posted or I need a direct brain to blog link.

I even have a folder on my desktop with posts that are started but not finished, idea rough drafts, and whole written pieces that need revision before posting. I had hopped to use the November NaBloPoMo challenge to move those posts and ideas out of the folder and on to this space. Sigh.

Well, there is always December and I still owe y'all a bunch of photos from the last 11 days of traveling around Ireland and England. Yeah, that is what I will do on the 10 hour plane ride on Wednesday back to LA, I will edit photos and write posts, if I can wrangle a seat with a power port...

Conclusion from Day 18 of NaBloPoMo 2007 and Ms. Jen's blog : daily text posting whilst traveling is not necessarily compatible without spending too much on international data on one's mobile and/or trying to find wifi and the time to blog whilst visiting and exploring. Right now, we here at Black Phoebe are in a bit of a fail mode.

The photos are relatively easy but the text blogging, not so much. This whole thing is causing me more stress than necessary. The worst part is that I have quite a few blog posts I would like to write, but by the time I get to my computer late at night the last thing I want to do is write on mobile, or development, or life, or the world, or even possibly the universe, or the political / philosophical implications thereof. Or the recent daily impassioned post I have building in my head about my hate / hate relationship with PHP, PEAR, and the Flickr API. Or even what I did that day in travel-land.

Bah. So, rather than continue my blogging self-flagellation party here, I am now going to turn off the computer to research what we are going to do in the next few days in Ireland, where we should go, and possibly where we should stay. Otherwise, Mom and I will be driving around the M-50 in circles.

Here are a few tidbits from a late Thursday evening in London on the eve of going to Dublin for graduation:

1) Why I love National Blog Posting Month #2... Quite a few of my very favorite bloggers who usually blog very irregularly are participating this month. I have been looking forward to my RSS reader queue for the daily tidbits from the following:
Fussy
Heather Powazek Champ : Words
Ugly Green Chair
Wordridden

Maybe when NaBloPoMo is over Mrs. Kennedy, Heather, Whitney, and Jessica will post more frequently. Now if we could have only convinced The Adnostic and Hadashi to do NaBloPoMo this month!

2) I am too tired to post my photos from today here. I will blog them later. My Mom arrived in London from LA today and very early tomorrow morning we depart for Dublin. Tomorrow is graduation for moi at Trinity.

3) After Ireland, Mom and I were planning to go to Spain, but I canceled the tickets to Spain tonight. We went to dinner with Donna from WOM World this evening and I was gushing about my favorite medieval English architecture to my Mom and Donna, when Mom suggested that we ditch Spain for a tour of Southern England next week.

Donna departed after dinner, Mom and I talked about it some more and I canceled our tickets to Malaga and hired a car for England instead. Avebury, Salisbury, and Wales, here we come...

4) This evening I gave away the last of the seven Peek-a-Poohs that I brought with me. Donna's Nokia N95 is now the proud wearer of a purple Libra Peek-a-Pooh.

Ok, so I am not doing so well on the daily blog post business... I had vowed I would give y'all text and photos in separate posts each day. Late last night I got the photos up and was too tired to write words about my great, fun day in Oxfordshire. Here I am today feeling repentant...

Oh well. Y'all forgive me, right? ;o)

Today I had loose plans that due to various travel schedules have not resolved themselves, now I have a free day in London. What to do? What to do?

My plans for the next few days until the Future of Mobile on Wed. and my Mom arriving on Thurs., is to visit with friends and see London during the day, and then work on various bits in the evenings. With the on set of darkness around 4:30 or 5pm, I need to hop to it and not be sitting in bed at 11:37am on a Sunday morning....

Hopping to it!

mt_20071108_230114218.txt

I have spent all day today digging away in the Flash and PHP Salt Mines. I am very tired but am hours away from being done. I am now drinking tea in a attempt to revive myself, so I can keep going.

I had lots of thoughts earlier today for NaBloPoMo posts but now they have all escaped my head. Hopefully tomorrow will be more fruitful.

Now back to the the salt mines...

No. I keep trying, but no, I can't.

Why? I can only get as far as the above title before Movable Type's AJAX conspires against my Nokia N95's browser. I have tried to use the file uploader, which I was able to use from my phone's browser with MT 3.4, but in MT 4 the file uploader uses Lightbox and I can't toggle around in it enough to press "upload" on my phone. And for whatever reason, in the mobile browser, I am unable to fill any text into the "body" of the post. Frustrating. I could do all of this from my Nokia N80 and the N95 with MT 3.4, but not with Movable Type 4.0.

Bah. Desktop/Laptop-centric blogging software. Bah.

What ever happened to Progressive Enhancement and Unobtrusive AJAX? Have Steve, Jeremy, and other standardistas been preaching to the wind? I should hope not. Web based software and applications should be device agnostic and the site should work whether the device has javascript or not.

Why try and why care? In less than 5 days, I get on a plane for Europe for the great "Ditch Thanksgiving 2007 Tour" or the "Let's cash in frequent flyer miles go to London, Ireland, and Spain for 3 weeks Tour". Whilst I am gone, I don't want to pay AT&T my arm and Scruffy's leg for international data fees to post photos and text to this blog, so I will be using my UK Vodafone sim chip with Pay As You Go that I have overly topped up. Only problem is that sometime in the last year, since I was last last ( previous to the last time) in the UK, Vodafone changed their PAYG plan and it is really really hard to mobile blog with the non-contract PAYG.

When I was in the UK for various events in 2006, I was able to to use about £20 per week on PAYG to send my photos as MMS's to my Flickr account, Flickr would then send them on to my blog. At the beginning of Ocober, when I was in London for FOWA 2007, I found that it appeared that I sent photos to Flickr via MMS, my N95 confirmed the photo was sent, and later when I would check there would be no photo on Flickr. Vodafone UK's MMS was not interacting with Flickr.

When I attempted to use Lifeblog, it was a no go as Lifeblog uses email/ISP data to send and with a PAYG account one does not get email/ISP data. I then tried to use Flickr's mobile uploader, but that did not work as it wanted to go through the MMS to send the photo. ShoZu was not working for me at all while in London and upon reading ShoZu's forum's it is not enough to change your Access Point, you have to reactivate for each APN.

The best part is that Vodafone PAYG's data plans, both 3G & WAP, have Flickr blocked as adult / unappropriate content. The whole week I was in the UK this Oct, I tried to get Vodafone to unblock it to no avail.

Vodafone, you may have the best 3G connections in the UK and Ireland, but you live in the dark ages. Flickr should not be blocked, nor should my MMS. If I pay you for a sim chip and top up, let me use the PAYG £s however I want. Don't trottle me. Give me 3G unblocked, give me MMS, give me email/ISP. I will pay for it, give it to me.

I want to be able to use my Nokia to blog as I go, not wait until I get back to my computer to bluetooth the photos to my MacBook Pro and then load them up to Movable Type 4, if I have a wifi connection (the UK yes, Ireland & Spain most likely no). Thus, my experiments this week with trying to post directly from my phone's browser to my MT4 installation. If it works here, it should work in the UK, Ireland, and Spain. Except it isn't working here due to the MT4 obtrusive, non-progressive javascript.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Get your engines started, here we go, National Blog Posting Month!!!!!

For the next 30 days, I will be posting not just mobile blogged photos everyday, but also text / writing posts everyday. I have tons of things that I have been meaning to write for you all in a folder on my desktop, but I never seem to allow myself to actually blog it due to time restrictions and the distractions of life. Well, time restrictions and deadlines will have to line up 2nd to blogging this month.

From Nov. 16th to the 28th, it may be a challenge for me to get something here everyday on time, as I will be traveling in Ireland and Spain with spotty to no internet connection, so with the help of my trusty Nokia N95 on those days I will be blogging from my mobile.

Been having trouble posting to your blog with any regularity? Well, join us. Even if you can only post a photo a day or a few sentences, giving 10 - 30 minutes a day to blogging will make it easier to blog, you a better writer or photographer or podcaster or video-ist or artist or.... Do it!

Thanks to Mrs. Kennedy for organizing NaBloPoMo!

Once again Michele Neylon comes to the rescue by blogging about another feature of Movable Type 4 that I have been too busy to read the posts on Pronet about: Better File Uploader 2.2 for Movable Type 4 by Dan Wolfgang.

Better File Uploader really is better, instead of uploading 1 image at a time, I was able to upload all of these images from the last couple of weeks in one screen. Even better, I was able to set attributes, preview the image, and have the plugin do all the work to make Lightbox work in the same UI screen. Thank you, Dan for saving 15 minutes or more out of my life. You rock.

Using Movable Type 3.x for photo blogs and moblogging was difficult at best. Now with MT4's kickass atom connection with Nokia's Lifeblog on my N95 and Dan's Better File Uploader, Movable Type is once again my friend. Yeah.

Hi...

I upgraded from Movable Type 3.4 to 4.0 on Saturday night so that I could take advantage of the kickass new moblogging (Lifeblog) functionality and have been having database / CMS meltdowns every since.

Sunday was spent recreating the database from the backup for multiple hours.

Yesterday, I was showing Ruth around SoCal. And hoping all was working.

Today, all the individual entries have disappeared, but the Main Index page is still showing entries. The MovableType.org instructions on how to Upgrade your 3.x templates to 4.0 are not working.

I was hoping to hold off on upgrading to the MT 4 new templating structure to when I had more time and was not on a deadline for client work. Alas and a lack, this is not the case. So, I am about to refresh all the templates just to get a working website and will have to bring back all the CSS and side bar links later in the week.

Please excuse the construction Dust... We will resume our normal visual presentation later...

And to all the Master's of Creative Writing candidates on the release of their short story collection, "Incorrigibly Plural".

Mena is in Cnn.com...

After many years of bulletin boards and mailing list and a few years of organized social networking like Friendster and MySpace, I have come to the conclusion that I hate Friendster & MySpace but I love Flickr.

On the old school boards and lists, there was, by and large, an equality of posters. If you posted and were a part of the conversation, you were rewarded with a community that you may not have in meatspace or tormented by trolls depending on the circumstance. On most of the current popular social networking spaces, like MySpace, it is too closed in concept & action, and too much like a high school meat/meet market.

Flickr is refreshing in comparison. Everyone who participates is a creator, not a lurker, not a troll, but an active participant who adds to the pool of photos. If you wish to make friends, you add folks who you like their photos to your contact list. And then you comment on their photos and they can comment back.

Community develops from Creativity. Lovely.

First off the Road Trip with Erika & Lauren to BlogHer 2005 rocked. So did the conference.

Next off, words or phrases from the weekend:

1) Mommy Bloggers : Somewhat maligned in some circles, but in Ms. Jen's world the Mommy Bloggers were AMAZING! Fun, enthusiastic, intelligent and they all partied like rock stars.

In the 1950s, Madeline L'Engle was a Mommy Writer in a small Connecticut town, she wrote for at least 30 minutes a night after her kids went to bed and was rejected by publishers for years until FS&G showed some love to "The Wrinkle in Time", and then the book won the Newbury Award in 1963.

Mommy Bloggers - be encouraged, write, love your fellows and your kidlets, continue to write, and you will be a blessing.

2) Technorati 100 : Really, folks, does it matter? There are millions of bloggers and we can't all be in the top 100. Who cares if they are all men, except Dooce and Xeni of Boing Boing?

As of 7/31/05, my Technorati rank is: 81,765 (29 links from 24 sites)... aka... I suck. Really, who cares? The best part about Technorati is not their Top 100 Bloggers List, but they employ hot men (TC... NK... DP...). ;o)

And last but not least...

3) Tastefully Tye Dyed Polyamorous Elves.... (this phrase is brought to you by a very long drive south down the 5).

Need I say More?

Ok, I will a bit... since Contentious came out as Polyamorous in the Naked Panel, and Dooce came out as Monogamous, I will officially come out right here on this blog as ... Celibate-until-the-right-lovely-intelligent-strong-backboned-man-is-located-then-I-will-be-monogamous-with-him... or I-am-a-bore... or I-am-a-liberal-libertarian-who-loves-Jesus... or...

That's All Folks...

p.s. A big hello to / glad to meet you /chat with you this weekend to: Anina, Jelly, Ginevra, Debi, Jenn, Jenny, Meghan, Matt, Mena, Nichelle, Liza, Whitney, Barb, Niall, Danah, and all the other BlogHer attendees & organizers rock hard!

p.p.s. A certain Mr. George Kelly appears on the BlogHer blog roll, but I did not see him anywhere all weekend. MIA George?

p.p.s.s. A big thank you to the organizers of BlogHer!

Sat 07.30.05 - BlogHer - Jen, Lauren, & Niall looking at Niall's photos of BlogHer on Flickr. Meta-BlogHer.

Sat 07.30.05 - BlogHer - At the RSS Session.

Road trip to Santa Clara in late July? SoCal needs to be represented!

Let's Go!

I just registered. Come with me. It will be fun! ;o)

Michael asked that folks describe their website's orgin.

Here it goes...

For my first two years of publishing on the 'net (1995-1997), I used my staff 6 meg allowance on the BU ACS servers. For the next two years, I published to my 10 megs on Earthlink.

In Jan. of 1999, Alex West and I reserved Barflies.net and started publishing all things related to music, life, the world and the universe, as well as a contentious message board & mailing list.

In late 1999 or 2000, I decided to reserve a personal domain whose name derived from the name of my favorite Western bird - the Black Phoebe. During that time, a black phoebe nested in my brother's backyard and we all discovered that not only was it a beautiful bird, but highly fierce belying its small size and cuteness factor. I decided that it was my totem bird.

When I reserved Blackphoebe.com, I tried to convince Barflies.net contributors that it would be a great place for us to publish personal and memorior style writings / art that would not fit Barflies.net's music and culture focus, to no avail. I had not yet heard of Blogs.

In Nov. of 2001, I finally posted a front page (a flash version of a Malevich piece) and some manifesto about what I wanted to do here. In 2001-2002, I used this space to publish websites for college art / art history classes I was teaching at the time.

March 2003, SXSWi... I caught Blog Fever, I came home and decided to set up Movable Type on my underused blackphoebe.com. One year and eleven months later, this is my primary web publishing space. I love it.

And on other notes, Mahmood has completed an elegant re-design of his site that features his photo(s) more prominently. I first found Mahmood's Den through the Photo Friday viewer when he posted a great photo of girls sliding down a sand dune and have stayed a faithful reader for his insights and antics in Bahrain.

Due to an overflow of comment spam that I have to delete daily, I have now switched over to Typekey registration to authenticate that commenters are real folk and are not spammers.

Sorry to have to do this and inhibit community, but please do keep commenting. I plan on installing the MT-Blacklist plugin to also help in this department.

Thank God for the lovely folk at Movable Type / Sixapart... in the midst of SoCal summer heat and blues they have given a small cadre of us Barflies.net folk (Sandra, Tink, and I) a wonderful excuse for a spontaneous road trip to San Francisco on Thurs. Aug. 12!

Movable Type will be hosting a Sneak Peek party for MT 3.1 at Varnish Fine Art Gallery to roll out and show off the capabilities of MT 3.1.

I am excited to see the new features in 3.1 and the attendant plug-ins. As a recipient of too much comment spam here at Black Phoebe and at Barflies.net's News and Tidbits, I am excited about Jay Allen's upcoming MT Blacklist 2.0 for MT versions 3.x.

Most of all, I would like to meet up with other bloggers and geek out. Last Thursday, I took a few friends to see Virginia Postrel speak at the Art Center. Hugh Forrest sat two rows behind us. Hugh and I chatted briefly before Viriginia's presentation and ever since I have yearned for the seven months until SXSW Interactive 2005 to go by quickly.

As a person whose professional life is immersed 2/3's in the rock'n'roll world and 1/3 in the non-profit/higher education world, it is good and inspiring to talk to other computer folk and hear what is up and what people are currently into and excited about. Also, I love a good road trip, as well as having a huge stack of CDs to listen to all the way up and down the 5 freeway and then to review them.

SF, here we come!

(p.s. Alex West, come meet up with us in the City on Thursday night!)

(p.p.s. If we feel really adventurous, we will give Jimbo a call...)

heee heee heee... I am not at home. I am working the door taking $ from folks wanting to enter Alex's Bar. The regular door/$ guy, Johnny, is on vacation, and I am standing in or sitting in his place.

Here's the best part, after much talking about it, we have a wi-fi router. Alex has been vacilitating between making it a marketing point or just letting friends know about the Wi-Fi. I am voting that we give out the authenification code with a drink to get students and other folk in here rather than going to Portfolio. ;op

Here is my response to Mena's "How are you using the tool?" post to the Six Apart Log:

I am currently using two installations of Movable Type and here is the breakdown, all blogs and installations are on my hosting account:

Installation #1: 2 blogs and 2 authors, both personal.
a) Black Phoebe :: Ms. Jen - one personal blog for my interests in life, art/music/culture, nature, and the humor behind it all. One author: Ms. Jen.
b) Howdylicious! - DJ Wanda's blog for her playlists for her volunteer college radio program at KUCI and other bits of personal miscellany. 2 authors: DJ Wanda & Ms. Jen.

Installation #2: 3 blogs, 13 authors (possibly 2 more soon), for one all volunteer, non-profit ezine - Barflies.net, whose google ad revenues go to partially pay for hosting fees. The 3 blogs on this website are used for the frequently updated parts so that authors don't have to wait for me to find time to format and upload their pieces to the website. This installation participated in the MT 3.0beta testing.
a) Barflies.net News & Tidbits : The barflies.net blog for news and other bits that the authors find interesting. 13 authors, although only about 5 of the authors are active in any given month. The 13 authors includes Ms. Jen and DJ Wanda from above.
b) Barflies.net Magazine & Special Features - This blog was set up during the MT 3.0 beta testing period to test how 3.0 would work as a magazine, I liked it so much I launched it. Authors: Ms. Jen, DJ Wanda, and 2 of the folk from the News & Tidbits. In the long run, I intend that all barflies.net authors will post their own articles, thus the 13 - 15 authors will be using this blog.
c) Design Team Blog - This is a private blog for the barflies.net design team, a sub-set 5 of the 13 authors, as we attempt to re-design the website. This may remain after the redesign is completed as a way to keep in contact with the barflies.net writers and photographers.
d) Although we haven't done it yet, once we purchase the 3.0 License, I plan to set up a photo blog. The photo blog will have a sub-set of the above authors.

Summary: 5 blogs (soon to be 6), 13 authors (plus 2 more in the future), 3 domains, 2 installations, and one hosting account. I plan, when I round up the $$, on purchasing the Movable Type 3.0 Personal Edition Volume License II plus purchasing 2 more authors.

On the Barflies.net Message Board, the Matt's Script old school board, we used to get lots of trolls, until we took down the CGI message board and instituted a PHP log-in message board. Now that folks must use a real email adddress to authenticate their login, the trolls have wandered off to easier targets.

What is a troll? A troll is a bored, sad sub-human who has nothing better to do with his/her life than to bait, insult, argue with, be mean to, and otherwise screw with others on the internet. Somehow getting behind a keyboard and a monitor gives them the feeling of power that a jacked up PEV truck and a case of viagra would not otherwise give them.

Right now Black Phoeobe has its own personal Troll. This Troll's IP address is 162.83.205.214, they live or work or have a friend/relative in Brooklyn, and have Verizon as an internet provider. This troll likes to use my contact form to mock me and tell me that I am a bad/terrible web designer, even with all of my "experience." Actually, the troll is quite a bit less articulate about the whole thing.

So, I suck. Who cares. Mr./Ms. Troll, you don't like my work? Well then, don't look at it. Or is it, that you can't stand that you used Google to seach for p0rn and somehow ended up here... angry. Well, search Google again and go feel better about your life.

Mr./Ms. Troll, would you like to really feel better about your life? Then go make beautiful, amazing, usable websites that make people happy and don't even worry your lovely self about some gal in California who makes sucky websites because you will be too busy, too fulfilled, and too lauded to worry about little 'ole me.

Smoochies, darling, Smoochies....

In the last few days, several of the A-list bloggers have posted articles, presentations, or definitions of webblogging on their sites or conference sites. Both Julie and I have discovered, for all the hoopla, that most folks out there still have not heard of blogs or don't understand what they are.

Most of my experience of baffled folk has been in my UCLA extension creative writing classes and Julie's has been in her class of college freshman who are not in the know. We have been surprised at this given what a great venue / medium blogging is for writers how many of them are opposed to writing online and given the perception that every 18 year old has a confession-spew blog how many young tech savvy folk don't know what a blog is.

If you are new to blogging or tripped on this site via google or would like to enter into the dialogue / conversation, go and visit
Xeni Jardin's, Gothamist's, and Megnut's for a few working definitions.

There are many different companies and online services offering weblogging to people for a low charge or for free. Of the charge services, I have heard great things about Typepad and good things about Upsaid. Of the free programs or services, I use Movable Type (MT requires your own domain, server space, and patience to install) and have used Blogger (hosted for free by Pyra Labs/Google).

I know several bloggers who use the free online service of Xanga. I un-heart Xanga. My biggest complaint as a reader of Xanga blogs is that Xanga will not allow the reader to comment without being a registered user. Lame. This is not apart of the wonderful open source spirit of MT or others, but a proprietary grab for a database of all readers of the system. Nor does this foster the dialogue and community that a well-built comment structure can for a blog.

Lucky's, April's, and Cezman's - I have comments for you, some now long forgotten, but I refuse to allow Xanga to suck me into their database and become a "user" before I can comment. I am not dissing y'all for using Xanga, but am just frustrated that I can't participate in your blog without being in the Xanga database. It will not allow me to put in my name, email, and URL before I make the comment, as with most other blogging software, but instead it insists that I sign up for the service and database. Vrrrr....

Lucky - You rock. Always.
April - Keep it up, girl.
Cezman - Good luck in February. Persevere.

As always, feel free to comment here - use your real email address if you want me to have a way to email you, or don't if you don't want a spam bot to find you. I don't keep a database and I can always return your comment with a comment.

Much to my horror last night, I discovered that Movable Type will automatically send a track back ping to a blog post that I linked in one of my posts. Yes, my post-election rant and rave that included insults, swear words, and bad logic that was therapeutic for me but got track backed to JD's New Media Musings post about the election when I linked his post to a part of mine. I apologized in JD's comment section, cleaned up my original post, and spent most of this morning searching on the MT support forum on how to not have automatic track backs.

What I discovered is that in the "Weblog Config" section of the MT interface has a section on Track Backs, and that in that configuration section is a box that I can check to allow for "Auto-Discovery" to be on. What this means, as I found out today, is that if the box is checked (which it was), MT will take any link you put in your blog and ping the site to see if it will recognize you. All MT and TypePad Blogs that are Track Back enabled will put an exerpt of your post on the other blog automatically without you (me) realizing that has happened until it is too late to change it. That is what happened to me last night. "Heil Arh-nold. Fucker." And all.

I must admit to being confused about Track Backing for some time. I have several times now followed the directions on how to do a Track Back to let folks at other blogs know when I have referred to their posts. But to find out that MT automatically put a track back on JD's blog when I linked his post distressed me, mostly because I respect JD's writing and I used the "f" and "c" words about our new Esteemed F-ing Guv'ner* in my original post.

I turned Auto-Discovery off tonight. I would rather take the 3 or so steps to manually Track Back a post rather than make an automatic ass out of my self. JD Lasica is a true gentleman and a great thinker on media old and new.

* All due respects to Skippy...

I have been mulling around the idea of a series of stories that would all be centered around things I have seen and heard at Alex's Bar and other music related adventures with the names and some details changed to protect the innocent or guilty, whichever the case may be.

I would like to periodically write down in this blog incidents that have occurred as "story starters". If they end up in a story, then I will let you all know. Otherwise enjoy the the fragments as vignettes. I will change the names of people who I have not specifically asked their permission to use their name. Both LuLu and Alex told me to go right on ahead, but I have changed the name of the main character in the following due to the fact that I have not asked his permission yet. When I told the following incident to Steve, Barbie, and Shawn last Friday night after the "spatula" incident at Throwrag , they all thought the person in question would not care, but would welcome it.

*****

Last Thursday, before I drove up to LA to meet Erika and Thomas at the Culver City Hall for the free Hot Club of Cowtown concert, I dropped by Alex's to buy my Throwrag tickets. As Lulu was taking my $ and writing all the pertinent info down on the "pre-sale" list, bar regular and veteran punk "Ford" asked for the staple gun and went outside. I went out to call Wanda to ask a few questions about the tickets I was buying for her when Lulu joined me outside. After I got off the phone, Lulu pointed out the flyers for the Sunday Search and Destroy Ride that were stapled up on the wall and told me the backstory on the 20 bar bike ride.

"Ford" then drew our attention to him and just when we thought he was stapling up flyers, he took the staple gun, put it up right on his chest/sternum and shot. Yep, he stapled his t-shirt to his chest. Lulu grossed out and we both went back inside. The Search and Destroy bike ride guy was laughing.

As Lulu and I concluded the pre-sale ticket business, "Ford" came back in, came behind the bar and started rooting around. He asked LuLu if there was a flat screwdriver. There was not, only a philips-head screwdriver. Lulu was turning green, leaned across the bar, averted her eyes from "Ford" and asked me to tell her something to distract her. We started talking about cute boys.

"Ford" walked down the bar, picked up a big, long knife by the sink. He wriggled the knife under the staple, leveraged one hand on the business end of the knife, one hand on the tang and pulled the staple out. He replaced the knife and brought the bloody staple to LuLu to see. Both of us grossed out.

I stayed a bit more, but had to leave by 6pm to get to Culver City by 7pm. As I was leaving, "Ford" was sitting out with LuLu and her boy just outside the door. He said goodbye, very sweetly gave me a compliment and a hug.

"Ford's" dropping trow on Friday after Throwrag got off stage to show us his "spatula" brands on both butt cheeks is another story for another day...

Tonight is the second to last class of Fiction I at UCLA. I have enjoyed the class immensely and have had fun with the weekly excercises and the final draft short story I turned in last week.

Many of my other stories/writing I have posted here, but I have not with the short story for this class. There are several reasons: length (the story is 5,000 words), protecting the innocent (there are a few real people in the story, I have their permission to use them, but I don't want to abuse that trust), and I might want to try and submit it to a magazine and *if* it is accepted I don't know if putting it up on one's blog counts as previously published. If you would like to read it, email me and I may email you the word doc.

Tonight's Strangeness/Humor homework assignment was to write a "How to..." in the manner of Lorrie Moore's story, "How to Become a Writer." Here is my attempt:

Today, Wed. July 2nd, as I was taking my bike ride to the Orange Plaza Post Office to see if I had any good mail and then to Rod's for my daily LA Times, I watched a few of the Resident Drunks (hard core regulars) outside of Paul's Cocktails (kitty corner to Rod's and the Ex-Mormons for Jesus), screaming at some folks who had gotten into a car accident.

Up to this point, I had been experiencing some big time writer's block on my 3 page story due in my Fiction I class this evening. Thanks to the drunks outside of Paul's for providing me some fodder. I suppose that I ought to go buy them a drink...

William the Conqueror
for Jessica Heather Martin

Fly Purple Martin Fly

The only thing purple in the
chapel, besides the tint of your
Grandma Martin’s hair,
were the flowers in the funeral bouquets
fore and aft of your open coffin.

Fly Purple Martin Fly

Some said, after, that your wings
were first broken at twelve,
others said you had a broken picker.
Last time we saw you alive,
you told how you were leaving
him, how you were moving
back to your mom’s in Yorba Linda.

Excited to fly again,
you and I made plans to visit
the Getty or the Norton Simon.

Fly, Purple Martin, Fly high
your healed wings soaring

No art museum, open casket,
so unreal.
At the wake, in your mom’s small dining room,
your brother whispered,
Don’t let my grandmas hear, not
today, it will upset them worse,
but she was murdered.

Fly high, Purple Martin, Fly high

On May 23, 2003
one year later, the LA Times’ sub paper
The Daily Pilot reported that he was found
guilty. 3 felony accounts.
Assault, spousal abuse, and
attempt to persuade a witness not to testify.
It came out in your trial
that twice before he had sent
women to the hospital by his own hand.

Fly, dip on the wing, soar
little Martin, Fly free

You got life. He gets
11 years.
They couldn’t prove murder
because none of the neighbors heard you cry out
as he slammed your head on the floor.

Didn’t they know that little Martins with scarred wings
can’t sing anymore?

-- by Jenifer Hanen

File under the category of "Ooops"....

In class last night, I learned that I got the rhyme scheme in the villanelle wrong. Oops.

The teacher diagrammed a Villanelle for us like this:

A1
b
A2

a
b
A1

etc.

Now I, being a poetry newbie, interpreted the "A1" and "A2" as the refrains that had NO relation to the "a" of the rhyming scheme in the non-refrain lines. In my brain, the capital As with numbers where separate entities unto themselves.

Bad brain, bad brain on too much computer work....

It dawned on me slowly last night, while we were work shopping another classmate's villanelle that the capital "A1" and "A2" of the refrain were to rhyme with the little "a"s of the main part of the poem. Oops.

The dawning of the realization that I had missed out on 50% of the villanelle's form was rather like the time I was talking to my brother and he was telling me a long story about his friend "Jane" who was a dancer. Given that the story was mostly about her teenage kids, everytime my brother mentioned her dance career I envisioned that she ran a ballet studio for children. Over the course of the conversation, the realization that she was a dancer of another sort, the type who takes her clothes off in the course of dancing, came slowing over my consciousness rather like the sun creeping over the horizon slowing and then all the sudden SUN everywhere.

Last night was just like the conversation with my brother, after I realized that Jane was a stripper and that the Villanelle had a LOT more "a" rhyme than I put in it, I felt slow, naive, and rather embarrassed. At break I rushed over to the instructor, quickly explained my plight, and she appeared to have a moment herself. She didn't realize that I, the student, did not already know that the captial A of the refrain and the minor a of the rhyme were not related.

My only defense of myself is that my education focused more on math classes where big As and little a's had no numerical relational but were symbols for different ideas, and that sleeping through most of the required english classes as a teenager and college student has resulted in minor adult embarrassment. Oops.

Maybe not embarassment, but feeling silly in the midst of a paradigm shift that I assumed to be one way and folks who know poetry assume to be another way.

Ok, tonight is poetry class, my efforts are.... small grumbling noises.
This week is the Villanelle and a spontaneous poem ala Frank O'Hara.

Here is the villanelle:

Dreams of London

As spring warms to summer, I dream of London
As Los Angeles heats, I melt and yearn.
Cool rain dripping off London plane tree leaves.

At times, walking in Westwood, a flash of
Sensation, diesel fumes, bustling people adjourn.
As spring warms to summer, I dream of London.

Garden Court Hotel, green canopy above
Kensington Gardens Square, Bayswater return.
Cool rain dripping off London plane tree leaves.

Month of May, afternoons in LA heat up over
Eighty-five, smog hugging the foothills burns.
As spring warms to summer, I dream of London.

Fantasy ruined, global warming shoves
London temps in April to record heat, U-Turn.
Cool rain dripping off London plan tree leaves.

Nomadic, itchy feet, I desire to rove
Imagine a new hometown, escape left arm sunburn.
As spring warms to summer, I dream of London
Cool rain dripping off London plan tree leaves.

I am taking a Creative Writing class in Poetry at UCLA on tuesday nights. This week and last week we had to write one sestina (evil!) and one villanelle (appears less evil, but really is more). I decided that I would write the sestina about my blog.

Don’t Wanna Sleep (after Laura Litter)
by Jenifer Hanen
May 12, 2003

Many nights I fight to stay awake,
I don’t wanna sleep, to sleep like a log,
The fear courses deep that I have not earned enough money.
Billable hours, hours billable, were there
a sufficient number of them on this day?
Cubicle land leads to numbness, I don’t want that program.

Can an artist learn to program
a computer? For the sake of pure cussedness, I stay awake.
Each year I gift myself a challenge on my birthday,
Two weeks ago, I downloaded, installed a weblog.
Not only a technical stretch waiting for me there,
But a daily stretch to write, capture ideas, try to be funny.

A computer scientist asks, “Sure you can do this honey?”
Do you have to have a CS degree to program?
I learned Italian, I can learn Perl and C++ despite all their
objections. Freelance writer and artist, I stay awake,
to push my technical and creative worlds, I blog.
The first iris of May,

That black gamecock from my garden on the 7th of May,
linking to articles, stories, and funny
ideas, posting fleeting fancies, a catalog
of events. Designers, artists, writers, thinkers, a futuristic telegram.
Hello world. Here I am, an archive of now, I am awake.
No need to slumber in that bed, in front of the computer I am there.

Don’t wanna sleep there,
in that bed, desire is strong to stretch the day,
into the night. My family may hold a wake,
thinking I have passed on, no sight of me when it is sunny.
To announce my departing from social life, mom might send a telegram
to Grandpa out on the high seas. Me, I would blog

it. Hello world. I have ceased to sleep like a log,
Now I can be found exclusively there,
online. I would live my life in the future program.
Friends and relatives could check each day
my site for my thoughts, doings, and photos. But does she make any money?
Probably not. But I am very awake.

Happy little blog, my gift to me on my birthday,
despite all objections about a waste of time and a lack of money,
I program now, I am awake.