Posted on by mwhybark

MT Blog Census.

Six Log: How are you using the tool?, Mena wants to know. So here’s my census.

Active blogs and authors: four and fourteen (with up to twelve more in the wings), respectively. Inactive blogs and authors: eight blogs and four additional authors. Planned blog-based sites: five. Possible additional authors: fourteen.

That means I need to plan for a total of up to seventeen blog sites and forty-four authors with some non-sustaining revenue potential.

ACTIVE BLOGS:

One blog to debug a problem with another author’s MT plugin. Three authors, including me. Headed for inactivity.

One blog to stash notes on an event that I am covering. Not directly revenue producing but directly related to professional, revnue-producig activity.

A group blog under the rubric of one of the publications I write for, provided as a favor. Nine authors, I think. No revenue, but clearly professional development.

A documentary blog providing discography and ephemera information on a long-defunct band. Intended as a collaborative blog. Two active authors, up to fifteen potential authors, some small possibility of supporting music sales through the site but with revenues projected in the tens of dollars per year. Not what I would consider commercial, but probably revenue producing.

INACTIVE BLOGS:

One for each close family member, totaling three in addition to mine. All are totally inactive.

One blog to support Viv’s jewelry business. A placeholder. Non-revenue producing, but clearly commercial use.

One blog providing a backup for another blogger. Never used. One author.

One stillborn comics review and journalism blog. Eventually, I will migrate all my comics-related writing to this site. Non-revenue producing professional development but specifically intended to qualify for AdWords.

A placeholder for my portfolio, intended to be integrated with my Gallery install. Non-revenue producing professional development.

A placeholder for the blog-ization of my resume. about 70% done, but stalled. Non-revenue producing professional development.

PLANNED BLOGS:

A migration of another defunct band site. Up to five authors.

A migration of a special-interest website. One author.

A migration of a defunct post-nuke based special interest website. Up to seven authors.

A memorial website. Up to four authors.

A migration of an archive website for a defunct punk zine.

Posted on by mwhybark

Image Filters

Visual Filters and Transitions Reference provides the tools needed to do inline image filtering for IE. I’m wondering if there’s a better way to do this, or if it’s worth the effort.

I think in this incarnation of the blog, it would be pretty cool to make any embedded image display in the browser in a manner similar to the rotating headshots up in the masthead, in a high-contrast maroon-and-manila version. I am not very interested in creating a duplicate image base that has that style enforced, although I can see that a one-time duping process might be the best route for the legacy material. I don’t much want to have to do image processing when I post, and that tack would set a need for dual images, one in true color, for when I move to a new design, and one for the pseudo-printed look.

I suppose in theory I could rig up something that would enforce a reprocessed image at display time using Apache and something like ImageMagick on the back end. However, I’d prefer to have the browser do the work; and I’d also like to have it happen on a case-by-case basis (so I can turn it off if I want).

My instinct says that I’m only gonna find this feature in IE, because it’s a fairly obscure need. Anyone out there have a grasp of this?

Posted on by mwhybark

History

I very recently read bryson_everything A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson, and I heartily recommend it. This general-interest survey of the current state of scientific knowledge concerning, well, nearly everything, is lucid and highly entertaining.

Bryson’s interested-observer role is well played; as I read the book, I have to admit I wondered how long it would be until he hosts the inevitable TV series based upon it, on the model of The Shock of the New and Cosmos (which appears to have been a primary inspiration for the book).

(An aside: What is up with the weak sites for Sagan and Shock of the New? I mean, sure, they’re old media material, but geez.)

The most-commonly used technique that Bryson employs to add human interest to what amounts to very informed speculation on events that happened before there were humans is dishing. He dwells with amusing panache on the personal foibles and peculiarities of the individual scholars involved in the development and discovery of this leap of knowledge and that fossil bed.

A clear pattern emerges in these sections too: it seems, in general, that the individuals we recognize as a discoverer or primary source of an idea are generally not the actual source, but instead the individual who most successfully promoted themselves as the source. Monkeys steal food from one another, too, so this should not be terribly surprising.

I saw a headline zap by the other day noting that Bryson’s book had been nominated for some prize or other, but alas, the title of the book creates a very noisy result set chez Google, and thus I was unable to dig up a link.