explodedlibrary.info

sometimes endings end

I have decided that it's time to re-open the explodedlibrary. I had been blogging for over five years, and have learned that it is not straight forward to just stop it. For one thing, this blog is irrevocably linked with me. Even if I deleted this blog, that would be true. When people search for me, the first thing they find is this blog. With this blog closed, it may appear that I haven't said or done anything or thought about anything since November 2007. Of course that's not true.

My life has changed during the last few months. There were some things going on last year which were making it very difficult to blog. As I wrote in the bunker,

Mergers and acquisitions happen all the time amongst organizations associated with libraries. One's happened to MPOW. Yes, mergers and acquisitions happen all the time, but a merger amongst true equals seems to be extremely rare. There usually is a dominant party and a subordinate party. It has turned out that my place of work is on the losing end of this merger. There is now an integration process underway. Integration after a merger is a strange process. The integration that I'm experiencing means that the subordinate party is completely disintegrated and then parts of it are absorbed into the dominant party and the rest is discarded.

A little over a month after I wrote that, my library had been shut down. I could have had a job in the big university library if I had wanted it, but I decided that it was a good time to move on from that university and looked elsewhere. Fortunately I found something good without too much stress and botheration. It was very painful to go through this merger - the uncertainty and lack of information about the process, the depressing thought that our users would be worse off and there wasn't anything that could be done about it.

A few months later on, I am starting to view this as one of those odd twists which life takes, and as horrible as it was to go through it then, now I can see that it has opened doors which I never would have braved.

So my life has changed. I've had enough of a break from blogging that I feel excited about getting back into it. Not that I'm going to be posting very frequently, probably three posts a month will be a very good month. I'm also working on liberariesinteract.info again, and I expect that my more conventional library posts will be going there.

even blogs have an end

This blog has seen a few changes over the years, and many in this last year. But it's not enough.

The trouble with blogging is that a blog has no natural end point. Other forms of writing all have an end. When one thing is finished, it's easier to begin something else. Yes, blogs can develop and change over time, as this one has. But there are limits to this, and after five years, I think I have reached that limit with this blog. So I've decided to retire this blog. There's another reason as well, but I'd rather not go into that here.

I still haven't got blogging out of my system. I'm not giving it up, I'm just winding down this blog. There are one or two more posts in the pipeline, and once I've published them in the next month or so, I'll be taking an indefinite break from updating this blog.

I'm planning on taking a complete break from blogging. Then I'll probably start a new one. The new one won't be as closely related to my work as a librarian - the place for those kinds of posts is here. To reiterate, I'm not shutting down this blog and I'm not ruling out the possibility that I may bring it out of retirement when some time has passed.

I'd like to finish with some thank yous. Thanks to all the bloggers who encouraged me at the very beginning in 2002, who linked to me and made me feel welcome in what was then such a small community. Thanks also to amazing group of Australian librarian bloggers at librariesinteract.info. It was fun and also a privilege working with you and learning from you. Thanks to everyone who commented on posts. I appreciate your contribution and wish I had been a little more diligent to replying to your comments on the blog. Finally, thanks to the readers who have stuck with me over the years and put up with my irregular posting schedule and the seemingly random choice of posts.

It's not goodbye yet, because there's definitely one more post to come, maybe two.

different blogs, different masks

Sometimes I think that if I were starting blogging today, I would choose to write under a pseudonym. I think that I may have wanted that initially, but the blogging software I was using at the time - Radio userland - had a default of displaying the blogger's name. Before I learned how to turn that off, my name was already out there in links from other bloggers. It's interesting how little seemingly random accidents can have a lasting impact.

But I wasn't too worried that my name was out there. At first it seemed that my blogging life would always be quarantined from the rest of my life. It seemed like a long long time before I met any other bloggers face to face or anyone who had read my blog.

Of course everything's different now. I am aware that every word I write is potentially viewable by my past, present and future employers and co-workers, prospective girlfriends, exes, friends and enemies, all sorts of family members, including my mother. When I get an idea for a post, at some point I need to decide whether this is the sort of post I want to have on my blog, given all of this.

If I blogged under a pseudonym, I wouldn't have to worry about this. I could be more controversial and not worry about alienating the prejudiced and easily offended. There would be other things to worry about - namely protecting my secret identity. When writing about specific work or personal things, I couldn't be too detailed, or I would need to fictionalize some of the details (although that can be fun). I would need to keep other bloggers at arm's length, and would be reluctant to attend blogging meetups or be involved in a group like lint.

I do think that there are advantages and disadvantages to both kinds of authorship.

I don't buy into the "named bloggers are inherently more ethical and accurate" argument either. For me, the potential readership of this blog does make me feel personally accountable for my blogging - to play nice with others and not be sloppy in my research or writing. But just because it's like this for me, I can't assume that it's like this for everyone or that the converse is true - that anonymous/pseudonymous bloggers don't care about playing nice or checking their facts. Recently at MPOW I was put in a very unusual situation - of needing to find a shortlist of blogs in a subject I didn't know a lot about, project management. Although I feel very reticent about rating blogs, I devised a quick & dirty way that I could live with. Whether the blog was written under a pseudonym or by a named author was irrelevant. It's possible that under my criteria, a named blog by somebody who really has made a name for themselves may receive bonus points, but that's as far as it would go. If a blog - be it named or pseudonymous - contained mean-spirited ad hominem attacks, I'd probably rate it low for "quality" and give it negative bonus points.

Before I finish, I should probably mention that this post is my indirect response to the Annoyed Librarian's post on this. I have a lot of time for the Annoyed Librarian. We have a couple of things in common: we are both skeptics about the librarian shortage and we have both made fun of 2.0 stuff. I still think that the Library 2.0 label has done more harm than good. I care deeply about the components, which existed quite happily before anyone made up the lame Library 2.0 term. It still annoys me that these pre-existing technologies and ideas have been co-opted by Library 2.0, when I think they would have been better off left on their own. Mark my words, it won't be long before Library 2.0 sounds as cringe worthy as that mid-1990s gem "information superhighway." Where I differ from the Annoyed Librarian is that I do care about advancing much of what has been labelled Library 2.0. Because of this, I have been willing to jump on the Library 2.0 bandwagon when it's helped me communicate and work with colleagues, and then I jump off again and it's been ok.

See also

the power and/or vulnerability of named and anonymous bloggers (July 2005)

in flux

People who read this blog in readers won't see it, but I have changed the look of this blog - the first significant change in over 4 years. The change is long overdue. One reason why I kept that design for so long was that I haven't seen many blogs in yellow and white, and those colours almost seemed like a personal trademark, and so I thought that I might as well keep them. I come across way too many books and articles about branding at MPOW and I wonder if I have absorbed some of those ideas. A blog is a brand of sorts, and it pays to have some consistency of message and look. Of course, stagnation is even worse than lack of consistency. This is a very different blog from what it was four years ago, and it's about time that the look reflected that. For one thing, I now have more posts with images and so it makes sense to have a design which enhances and is enhanced by the graphics. I'm glad that I found a design which has a similar look to the old design, so there is still some consistency.

When I first chose the name of this blog, I thought that the name sounded interesting and was an apt metaphor for what was happening with information and libraries. I was not expecting that the ideas behind this metaphor would continue to develop and evolve and sweep me along with it. At first I was thinking about how I might survive and cope as chaos infiltrated my work as a librarian. Now the chaos is no longer quite so new and scary, and I am thinking about how I can use it and thrive in it.

dealing with clutter in the blog reader

I used to stress out about information overload - it was one of the early themes of this blog in 2002 and 2003. Even when I stopped writing about it, it would still bother me when after a break from blog reading, I'd see over 1000 unread blog posts in my reader. I would struggle to read/skim through that huge pile and afterwards would feel totally drained.

I'm sure somebody would tell me that I'm subscribing to too many blogs. That if I removed some of this clutter, this problem wouldn't be so bad. I've tried that and it didn't solve all of my problems. I found it even more draining to go through all the blogs I've subscribed to with a critical eye, evaluating whether this blog was worthy to be on my radar at all. The more I thought about each blog, the more complicated the decision would become. I would end up reducing the number of blogs I subscribed to, but I wonder whether it was worth all of the effort that it took. And then after I did that, of course the number would only increase again as I discovered more interesting blogs and added them to my reader. Some people deal with that problem by setting a number which will be the definite number of blogs they subscribe to - so that if you add a new blog, you have to remove another. That didn't work for me either - it just made me not want to add any new blogs because it was such a hassle to get rid of one, and so my reading list atrophied for a while until I just gave up and started adding without removing. The other problem with that is that not all blogs publish with the same frequency, so that number of blogs subscribed to is not going to determine how many blog posts you'll be reading.

I've found that over the past few months, I've developed a different way of dealing with clutter in the blog reader. It's messy but it works for me. I'm offering this not as a prescription which everyone should follow, but just as an alternative.

Here's the key thing. The number of blogs you subscribe to does not equal the number of blogs that you pay close attention to. There needn't be this dichotomy between subscribe and dump. That dichotomy is an anachronism from print. There can be all sorts of degrees to which you pay attention to a blog. There are some blogs which I read every day, more than every day if they update more frequently. Other ones, every few days, or every week or so, or every month - basically whenever I'm in the mood.

This leads onto another important point. It's not important to know everything that's happening as soon as it happens. That's why it's ok for a blog in your reader to languish unread for a month. It's not as if we're journalists working for rival newspapers who all want the big scoop and that being first to press is so important. I think there's value in unearthing the recent and not so recent past. It's probably true that most blog posts get buried without making much of an impact. This could be for all sorts of reasons - maybe it wasn't a good post or maybe it was a good post, but it was published on a big news day when everybody else was distracted by something else.

Deal with the volume not by unsubscribing, but by promoting and demoting. If I find that a blog has been posting too much, or what it has been posting hasn't been all that interesting, I'll demote it. This means I'll read it less often. But if I take another look at it in a few weeks and it's got some good stuff, I'll promote it back to where it was. I use a tag in the Google Reader called "key blogs", this is the one that I check several times a day. I also have more descriptive tags, e.g. "Australian librarians", if I demote a blog from this group, I tag it "Australian librarians01" and so on, 02, 03 etc. That's how I organize it - the hope is that the good rises to the top and the mediocre sinks into obscurity, but being flexible to cope with constant changes in the blogosphere and my own preferences.

I'm not saying that I never unsubscribe to blogs. If a blog really annoys or offends me, I will unsubscribe to it, that's if I don't give it the idiots or z-list tag.

I don't think it's an accident that I developed this method after switching to the Google reader. There's no reason why these ideas couldn't be adapted to work with other readers. Sometimes I still use NetNewsWire. This method could work there, but I'd have to change its preferences to turn off its feature of showing number of unread posts in its dock icon. I've decided that that is not a helpful number. I used to stress about getting it to zero and think I wasted a lot of time and energy doing that. I'd much rather ignore that number and focus on enjoying what I like reading.

return of the comment spammers

It's been odd - in the last 2 weeks there's been an exponential increase in the number of comment spam attempts on this blog. It's all been unsuccessful because of the comment moderation, but it's still inconvenient if only because I get the email notification of each attempt. Some of these are quite vile. Are any other bloggers experiencing the same thing right now? Legitimate comments are welcome :)

unearthing the bunker

For the last 18 months, I've maintained a companion blog, the explodedlibrary bunker. It's been a place where I've kept the occasional draft, discard, aside and rant which never made it to the here, the main blog. It's been a space for venting and experiments. I'm thinking of taking this blog in a slightly new direction and a part of this would involve making more use of the bunker. Because there's going to be more interplay between these two blogs, I've decided that it's time to announce its existence.

using Google Reader for blogging when I'm not blogging

Like many other bloggers lately, I'm switching to the Google Reader for my day-to-day reading of blogs. I was not unhappy with the NewsGator Online + NetNewsWire combination I had been using, and I expect to use them occasionally. The one feature about the Google Reader which I really liked and could not resist is the ability to share posts so easily. That's what's powering the new "what I'm reading" sidebar item. These links are also available in a feed. It seems like a really easy way of making a linkblog. These days I am not exactly a prolific writer, but I generally do keep up my reading. Being able to publish a linkblog so easily is a way of blogging when I'm not really blogging. It's something I might be able to do on my mobile phone [go to google.com/reader/m and log in], when I'm on the train. I spend a lot of time on the train. Who knows, if I can do some of my blog reading on the train - maybe I'll have more time for writing when I'm at home?

Currently playing in iTunes: Sadder Than You by Angus & Julia Stone

Snap Previews are back in this blog - but only if you want them

I was quite bemused by the backlash which erupted over a month ago about the Snap Previews. As I have described elsewhere, I actually liked the Snap previews, but I felt that I had no choice but to turn them off, such was the vehemence of the reaction against them.

Snap has responded to its critics in a few different ways. The most important way is that they have allowed the previews to be opt-in. On that basis, I have brought them back. You only see them if you choose to turn them on. If you do turn them on, you'll see that I've taken a minimalist approach to configuring the previews. The preview bubble only shows if you hover over the little icon. Hovering over just the link is not enough to trigger it. If you like, you can turn on the previews, refresh the page and see how they work, and then turn them off again by clicking in this box and then refreshing the page. Then they're gone, I promise.

Visiting Tasmania for 2 weeks

This is just to let everybody know that I'm having a little holiday in Tasmania for approximately 2 weeks. Posting will be light, although there are a couple of things I've already drafted which may go up. Moderation of comments and trackbacks and responses to any emails will be slightly delayed. Apologies in advance for any inconvenience.

when the internet is down

I'm not usually one to apologize for lack of updates, but I feel that an explanation is in order for the last month. It seems that there is some ongoing issue with my local phone exchange at Springwood, which has been causing intermittent outages in my ADSL connection. At least this is if I believe my ISP, who swear that the problem is caused by the phone lines, not by them.

It's amazing how a thing like this can put a spanner in the works, particularly in my blogging. It's very frustrating to think of a post and not be able to write or post it. It's not the same to draft something offline and then post it later, because often for me, writing and reading and research all go together. If I can't check sources and make links while I'm writing, I don't feel that I'm really writing a blog post - at the most drafting a post offline is like preparation for writing a post.

At least for me, every idea for a post only has a certain window of time to be published, and when that time expires, it is usually time to move on, even if it seemed like a really good idea originally. Things change, and what was interesting a month ago may seem a little stale if it's posted tomorrow.

Anyway, because it's such an almighty pain for me when the internet is down at home and I have no idea when it will return, I have arranged for limited dialup internet access as a backup. It's slow but at least it's reliable.

don't print this post

Walt Crawford has raised the issue of blog printability again. It seems that he is irritated that no improvements have been made since the last time he raised this issue 18 months ago. I think that my position has also changed in the intervening time. Back then I felt slightly apologetic about the problem. Now I just feel defiant.

Here’s what I have to say about printability on this blog.

1. This blog is designed to be read on a screen. If a post looks bad or unreadable in a particular browser or news aggregator, I want to know about it and will try to remedy the problem when feasible. Although people may use the blog in other ways, I do not feel obliged to support these other uses from my end.
2. I never print my own blog and I would prefer that other people did not either. This is an online, not a printed publication, and for environmental reasons, I want it to stay that way. Although I would never forbid printing or actively place measures to make this blog difficult to print, I am not going to lose sleep about TypePad’s printing defect. I respectfully disagree with Walt Crawford's premise that words must be printed on paper to be fully appreciated.
3. This is a self-published blog which I write for my own purposes. Much of the time there seems to be an intersection between what I’m offering here and what readers might be looking for, but when there isn’t such an intersection, that’s ok because that’s not what this blog is about. If you’re a reader and you don’t like this attitude or me or my posts or anything else, it’s your right not to continue reading this blog. But nobody has the right to demand changes or feel entitled to lay down the mores or rules for other bloggers.

link shedding

Today is a day that I’ve been looking forward to. I get to take down my list of Australian librar* blogs.

I am pleased that there are now two places on the web which I can turn to when I want to find Australian blogs.

First is the list on lint. If I ever miss maintaining my list, I can be happy because I can always do so as a contributor at lint.

Second is something I have only recently noticed. The Australian Index has a very worthy list of Australian librar* blogs.

I made that list because there wasn’t anything like that around which was managed by Australians, and I thought there should be. Now that two good Australian-made alternatives have appeared, I can happily drop the responsibility of maintaining my list.

While I’m at it, I’ve decided that it’s time to overhaul all the other external links on this blog. This time I want to try something different. Instead of tinkering with what’s already there, I’m dumping them all and will then gradually rebuild. I'm sure that many of the blogs which used to be there will return. But for the moment I'm enjoying this moment where my sidebar feels light and uncluttered.

[27 September 2006 update: The old links are available here]

blogospheres

Although the term "blogosphere" is used as if it means the entire blogging universe, I think that this is true only in the most exceptional of circumstances. Usually "blogosphere" is a contextual word, as in the political blogosphere, the libr* blogosphere, the legal blogosphere, a.k.a. blawgosphere. Usually when the media talks about a particular meme or scandal sweeping the blogosphere, they are referring to the political blogosphere.

I have travelled through different blogospheres during the four years of my blogging life. I started out in libraries and law. I have also spent some time in the US (left) political blogosphere (via Salon.com), and the Sydney local blogosphere. I have found that although a subject may diminish in importance, it is never truly left behind.

The amazing thing about blogging is that finding a new blogosphere is like travelling to a new country. This week I have started investigating the business school blogosphere - the blogs of business school faculty and MBA students. Maybe I haven't yet found the movers & shakers in this area, but it seems to me that the business school blogosphere is not as developed as say the blawgosphere is.

Proportionally, there don’t seem to be as many academic blogs as in the blawgosphere. Many of the student blogs that exist seem more personal with the MBA experience in the background rather than being about business school. Which is fine - I'm just noting the difference.

And being so new in this subject area, maybe I haven't yet found the best ones. If any of my readers follow any business school blogs worth recommending, please let me know ...

Expect to read my travel notes soon.

back blogging

It's been nice to have a break. It's been a real break - I haven't even been reading  all but a handful of blogs. I'm now looking forward to getting back into my regular blogging habit. The complication is that nothing stays the same, and resuming normal service cannot meant the same thing today that it meant a month ago.

I'm quite excited to see that librariesinteract.info is up and running. I've been curious about being involved in a group blog for some time, and am looking forward to contributing to this one. I've been thinking about how my contributions to  librariesinteract.info will be different from what I do here. I'm pretty sure that the explodedlibrary is a place where I'll discuss (sometimes rant about) things in more detail. I expect that in the group blog, I'll be announcing things more succinctly and with a little more objectivity - or least less bias. This also means that I'll have somewhere to palm off my collection of Australian library-related blogs.

Another difference is that I'm still quite happily experimenting with Vox - sorry, I'm out of invites right now, but I'm sure that will change. It's likely that I'll be doing most of my more personal blogging in there, which includes my photos and books that I've read. This explodedlibrary blog will refocus slightly to be both more practical (refining information that's useful for me in my work) and theoretical (pondering ideas that I'm interested in).

Breaking news and being an earlyish adopter of tech toys is not really my thing, but I do have a little of this tonight. I've been mucking around with some of  the widgets I can use with TypePad. One of the more interesting ones is the Rollyo widget which is current near the top of my left sidebar. It allows you to search the Australian library blogosphere. Use the drop down menu to access the custom search, ozliblog search, which searches this blog and most of the other more active Australian library blogs. It still needs a bit of tweaking, I set up the current configuration in less than five minutes. It will be helpful to me if no one else, because it will help me refind old posts when I only have the vauguest idea of what I had written.

I'm also trying the category cloud, which I like so far and will probably keep. There's also the opinmind widget, which shows little quotes from this blog. I wasn't sure if it's more interesting or annoying, so I'm testing it here.

winter pause

Winter has finally come to the Blue Mountains and I'm glad for it. After almost of a week of rain, Sassafras Gully should be closer to the temperate rain forest that it is meant to be. I am looking forward to seeing its waterfalls cascading at more than a sad trickle.

I have a new blog-related project which I'm working on and is consuming most of my creative energy at this point. I've decided to give it the attention that it needs, even if it means putting this blog on a hiatus for a little while. Not that the explodedlibrary will be totally neglected. In the next month or so, I will be playing with aspects of the blog's design.

Currently playing in iTunes: Common People by William Shatner

questions and answers

This post is in an FAQ format, but I hesitate to call them FAQs because they're not Frequently Asked Questions. I don't even know if they're frequently thought questions. But here goes:

Who are you?
Morgan Wilson.

That's kind of androgynous name ...
Not that it's hugely relevant to my blog, but if you don't whether to call me a her or a him - I'm a guy.

How can I contact you?
The best way, initially, would be by email. My email address is morganwilson @ gmail .com (without any spaces). I also like instant messaging, but don't usually turn on the software unless I'm planning on communicating with somebody in particular

Whereabouts do you live?
I'm living in the Blue Mountains near Sydney, Australia right now. I was born in Queensland, grew up in Tasmania, and also have lived in St. Paul, MN, USA between 1997 and 2004.

Are you really a librarian?
Yes. Originally I thought that I wanted to be a lawyer and did a B.A., LL B (my arts major was German). The most important thing that I learned at Law School was that although I enjoyed the intellectual exercise of studying law and legal research, the job of being a lawyer wasn't the thing for me. I decided to go to library school and become a law librarian. I've worked as an academic law librarian, a special librarian doing corporate research and competitive intelligence in financial services, as well as a special librarian in the electricity industry. Most of my positions have involved managing electronic information - be it in Lotus Notes databases, library websites and intranets and library automation software. I'm currently working as a Law Librarian in a large Sydney law firm. With this information, I will add the increasingly standard "the opinions and points of view expressed in my blog are my own and not my employer" disclaimer.

Why should I read your blog?
No particular reason. Sometimes I indulge in shameless self-promotion but I'm not in the mood for it tonight. Read it if you find it at all interesting and have room in your life for a not so frequently updated blog.

What sort of things do you write about?
In the explodedlibrary I write about some library-related issues. The thing is that these days, the issues affecting librarians who are searchers and consumers and managers of information, are relevant to so many more people. I try to write in a way that engages those who are and aren't library people, avoiding the odious jargon, especially words which start with "biblio". I also do some reviews of software, mostly Mac, and occasional posts about law (particularly intellectual property), politics and anything else which takes my fancy. There's more than a few posts about blogging itself. If you hate blogs and contemplate metablogging with revulsion, you may want to stay away.

Do you have any other blogs?
Yes, the explodedlibrary library even has a supplementary blog, where I dump the drafts and outtakes and rants which I'd prefer to share with a smaller, possibly more interested audience. It's neither public nor private. I don't link to it overtly, but I do link to it. I also maintain an pseudonymous blog that has nothing to do with information and libraries and is more personal and creative. I also keep a LiveJournal.

How long have you been blogging?I started my LiveJournal in June 2002 and the very first version of the explodedlibrary in August 2002.

Why do you blog?
Blogging combines three things which I really enjoy: 1. Reading and finding information; 2. Writing; 3. Mucking around with computers. I would continue blogging in some form even if I knew that nobody else ever read it, because I like doing this stuff. Blogging about things has become a way that I make sense of the world.

What is so special about blogging anyway?
The blogosphere is place of words and ideas. There are still moments when it doesn't matter what you look like, how much or little money you earn, how many degrees you have or how accomplished you might be - the only thing differentiating one blogger from another are their actual words. As such, it has given some people a voice who have never had one before. This situation may change, but while it remains, I am grateful for it.

How often do you update this blog?
I can be fairly erratic with how often I update this blog. It's usually once or twice a week, but it varies a lot. I make no apologies for this. If you subscribe to the blog in your feed reader, this shouldn't be a problem.

What is your policy on comments on this blog?I really like receiving comments, all comments except the ones which are spam, nasty or illegal. I can handle comments strongly disagreeing with me on the issues, but if you cross the line into being mean and insulting, I am not so noble that I'll let those ones through. Unlike many bloggers, I don't have an absolute ban on commercial comments - provided they are relevant to the post and add something to the conversation. In addition, once a post has been around for about six months, I close the commenting.

Why do you moderate commenting on the blog?
Look at it this way. It  is better that you wait a few hours for your comment to appear on my blog, than it goes there right away but is lost forever in the sewage of comment spam. Alternatively, better this delay than there be no commenting or no blog at all because the comment spammers were driving me crazy. Seriously, the drudgery of dealing with comment spam nearly caused me to quit blogging. Comment moderation has been an absolute godsend for me.

Hey - I noticed a typo, a missed word or some other error on your blog
If it's a factual error on a recent post, I definitely want to know about it and I'll make a correction once I've verified what's going on. If it's about a broken link on a post on a post that I wrote 3 years ago, I'm probably not interested. Even if it's a really important post, I'd  rather revisit the area now and than correct what I wrote 3 years ago. I tend to avoid post-publication editing -and when I do it, I have set particular rules for myself. After over a year, these still generally apply, with one significant exception. I reserve the right to break the letter of any of these rules if: it makes life easier for me and my readers and commentors and I'm not violating the spirit of the rules (which is basically not being sneaky about post-publication edits)

What tools do you use for blogging? TypePad for the actual hosted blogging service. Right now I'm reading blogs on the Google Reader.

I'm having a hard time printing this blog. This blog is intended to be viewed online, not printed. If you must print it out, I understand that there are better results with Internet Explorer. Read this post for more on my views about blog printability.

Currently playing in iTunes: The Garden's End by Sarah Blasko

about these Australian library links

I have 2 sidebars items which contain links to some products of the Australian library blogosphere. The first item is my list of blogs by Australian library-type people (and no, I'm not going to be more specific about what this means, but I'll err on the side of being inclusive). Note that the emphasis is on librarians as people, not libraries. This means that if I discover that you're a librarian and keep a blog about something completely unrelated to your work, the link to your blog will end up here. Right now this list aims at being a comprehensive list, in that I'll add any and every blog. If the list ends up becoming too big and unmanageable, that may change

From time to time, I'll highlight a blog which might otherwise be buried in this list, as such C.W.'s Ruminations - which I've been really enjoying lately ~ C.W. is the only Western Australian blogger which I've discovered so far, but I hope that there are more out there. Doubtless if I set my mind to it, I could discover a few more blogs right now, but I'd rather rely on serendipity and let them trickle in.

I've just started another list of Australian library blogs, these are the blogs by and for actual libraries and related organizations. I've only just started looking into this area. I plan to actively find more of these, but until that happens (or somebody passes on a few links to me) RMIT's need2know is there on its own.

Next morning edits: Thanks to my first commentor, I've already added three more blogs to the lists, all from WA. Also, although technically a librarian's LiveJournal would meet my definition of a librarian blog, I'm not adding LJs to this list. Most of them, including my own, were created with the understanding that they'd never end up on a list such as this. Call me biased or inconsistent, but what happens in LJ-land stays in LJ-land. One other thing, this is only going to be a temporary project. I'll do this for as long as it seems helpful, but there will be a time when it will get too big and probably won't be needed anyway. Finally, why do I flout the rules of grammar by listing the names of these blogs entirely in lower case? It's very important that the list be an alphabetical list, and I've learned that in TypePad, the presence of upper case can complicate these alphabetical lists, especially when there is non-standard usage of upper & lower case in the blog titles.

Currently playing in iTunes: Drop The Mirror by Missy Higgins

testing MarsEdit and NetNewsWire

Why would anybody want to use (and pay for) a blog editor? It's not like it's impossible to edit a blog without such software. It's quite easy to create and edit posts directly in TypePad from my browser. Sometimes for longer, more considered posts, I'll draft in Word first, for saving drafts and catching the most obvious spelling errors and then paste into the browser. It works OK.

I'm wondering if the main appeal of MarsEdit lies in the fact that it draws these functions together under the one roof and that it works very quickly. I am accustomed to the slight pause that always surrounds opening a new page or anything in TypePad, and so it is quite amazing not to worry about that here. Also that I can switch between different blogs - even blogs created with different software - e.g. LiveJournal or Blogger - very easily.

There's also the integration between NetNewsWire and the editor, allowing the possibility of posting directly from the reader - something I haven't been able to do since I wrote this blog with Radio userland - the only thing about Radio which I've ever missed.

I'll be trying these two applications during the free demo and will see if the subtle improvements they offer make a big difference in my blogging process.

Currently playing in iTunes: Come Into My World (Fisherspooner Mix) by Kylie Minogue

revisiting linking rights

I have discovered a little contradiction within myself. On the one hand, I am a zealous believer in the right to link. Links have been and remain the lifeblood of the web. The anti-linking policies which seemed fashionable a few years ago were invariably flouted and led to the wide-spread ridicule of the things which they were meant to be “protecting.”

That’s only one aspect of the right to link. In 2005, the issue of the linker’s liability for linking to copyright infringing material hosted by third parties has received some judicial attention in Australia. But I would argue that even the Universal Music Australia v. Cooper case doesn’t yet endanger the right to create a bare link to infringing materials, provided there’s no question of “authorizing” copyright infringement.

A bare link does not provide any endorsement, agreement or authorization of the material being linked to. A bare link to a web site is just a statement of a fact - that at a certain place on the web this information exists. While there is any strength left in the ideas and expression of ideas dichotomy, US National Public Radio (a past offender) can't prevent a blogger from linking to them, no more than it can copyright any other fact, such as 2+2=4. For NPR to prevent anybody linking to them is like claiming copyright in their own physical address.

To use a different analogy, anti-linking policies make as much sense as an author claiming that merely being cited in a journal article infringes on her/his copyright.

It might be different if there’s more than a bare link happening. For example, if I linked directly to a certain image on the illegal-art website and wrote, “Check out this hilarious parody of the Starbucks logo!” That might get me into trouble, so I’m not going to do that.

I believe in the right to link and that if somebody chooses to make their website or blog available to the world, anybody has the right to link to it. On the other hand, in my own personal conduct I had decided that I would prefer being courteous over exercising this right. For example, with the list of Australian librarian blogs on my sidebar, I have often requested permission before adding blogs to this list.

Courtesy is very good and nice, but I have now decided that it is too much of a good thing if it gets in the way of adding new blogs to this list. It has even caused me to temporarily lose some of the blogs which I intended to add. I know, losing a blog is a very embarrassing and silly thing to do.

From now on, I’ll just add the blogs as I find them. If anybody has a problem with being added, they are welcome to email me about it and we can talk about it.

signing off for a short break

I’m taking a little break from this blog while I’m away in Hawaii. I'm looking forward to do nothing for a little while and recharging my batteries. I won’t be reading any blogs or do any blog related writing while I’m away. I expect to have internet access – after all I’m going to be based in Waikiki (but hope to spend a lot of time on the Windward coast of Oahu, exploring some of the hiking trails and the quieter beaches), but don’t expect much in the way of replies to emails. Don’t count on prompt comment and trackback moderation happening either, and anything that’s too heavy will go right into my too hard basket to be dealt with upon my return in a little over a week.

decision about comments and trackbacks

I’ve tested the use of moderated comments and trackbacks in this blog for over two months now. As I mentioned at the outset, I had concerns that moderated commenting would reduce the number of legitimate comments I might receive and could impede the dialogue which takes place in comments. Those fears have been realized to a certain extent, and this is a clear negative thing about moderated commenting. On the other hand, it’s been such a relief not to worry at all about comment spammers. That problem is entirely gone now. I no longer have to fear that if I take a little break from the blog, as I’m about to, that when I return, it’s going to be overrun with spam.

These days, spammers aren’t the only problem with comments. It seems that the law is tending towards the view that bloggers are legally responsible for the comments which appear on their blogs. I wrote about one example over the weekend concerning anonymous political comments on Australian blogs. On the same day I heard about a SEO blogger who has been sued over comments appearing on his blog – ironically the blogger is somebody who has previously made critical comments here. If there’s a chance I’m going to be held responsible for other people’s writing on my blog, it’s nice to be able to control what appears on the blog. Of course, most of the time, moderation isn’t absolutely necessary – a bad comment can be deleted before it attracts any adverse consequences. But who knows, I can imagine a situation when the damage could be done in a very short time.

Comment moderation isn’t perfect, but it takes a lot of stress out of my blogging life, and so I’m going to keep it on. I’ve hardly mentioned trackbacks in this discussion, simply because I’ve so few legitimate trackbacks in the last 2 months – although there has been quite a lot of attempted trackback spam, which didn't get anywhere!

The icing on the cake is that comment moderation helps ward away the trolls and meanies. I will allow comments which include disagreement with me over the issues - but once they cross the line into insults and personal attacks, I have no qualms against blocking them.

would you sell the corpse and feed of your blog as ad space?

There was a once Tasmanian blog called dolebludger [view as archived in 2004]. I first started reading it at the end of 2003, as I was preparing to return to Australia. I think I must have discovered it towards the close of its most active period. During 2004 it began a gradual decline, although there was still an occasional brilliant post which more than justified its place in my reading list. I felt quite an affinity with this blog in the first part of 2004, as I was also unemployed in Tasmania. The blog was very quiet in 2005, and then today I got a rude shock.

The entire blog as well as its feed is now an ad!

Most likely, dolebludger has folded up its tent, and its author has literally sold the entire blog and feed as ad space. Maybe there are other possible explanations, involving hacking or death, but I think they’re pretty unlikely. It’s very disappointing because dolebludger’s author seemed so stridently anti-capitalist. How could this happen?

I know, people change over time, as do their blogs. I know as well that there is no consistent relationship between the health of a blog and the well-being of its author. But whatever  the causes, I’m not happy with the outcome. Thank God for the waybackmachine, otherwise this blog would have completely vanished.

This has prompted me to end my experiment with text ads on this blog. I was going to wait until the end of month, but now seems more appropriate, seeing that I’m complaining about an example when ads have degraded a blog.

Here’s my advice to other TypePad users who are considering the ads. It wasn’t the worst thing I could do to try this, because it was very easy to remove them. The payment is based on the click-through rate, not actual clicks. This means that if you have a blog with a small supportive audience who is more likely to click on the ads, you’ll probably do much better than if you have many readers who never click on the ads. It’s strange, but I made the most money on one of the days when the blog was having domain name problems and my readership was way down. But all this talk about readership, support and revenue is making me uncomfortable, and I’m glad my ads are gone.

ranking and motivation in blogging

[7 September 2005 follow-up post]

I have found all the posts commenting on Walt’s list (I’m calling it this for brevity rather than accuracy – I hear Walt’s disclaimer that he never intended it to be a definitive top 60 list, just one possible top 60) to be quite compelling. At first I thought I wouldn’t comment, that I’d wait for this issue to go away, but I think that’s going to take a while and I’ve decided not to hold back.

The best thing about all of this, is that it’s helped me find out about a lot of other blogs that are worth reading. Some of these were in Walt’s list, others have been mentioned by bloggers in response to this list. I think it’s overall a good thing when we start thinking about the great stuff which people are doing in our library blog community.

When I look at the matter from a more personal, less of a big picture point of view, I have very mixed feelings. This is nothing new, I have mixed feelings about most things :)

domain issues resolved

Domain names are weird little things. Once they're working, it's possible to forget about them and take them for granted. They're very low maintenance and mostly very easy. But when there are problems, it's huge. Anway, I just wanted to say that everything's working fine again.

domain issues

Probably nobody is going to be able to read this, but just in case somebody can, I just wanted to let you know that I'm having some issues with my explodedlibrary.info domain hosting and forwarding. It's going to be out of commission until Friday my time. If you're using the original http://explodedlibrary.typepad.com/salonblog/ URL, you can still access the site, although it looks a bit strange - must be the domain mapping aspect. Because of these issues, I'm not going to be updating this blog much until everything's working as it should.

3 years blogging

This blog started as an experiment and a bit of research which took on a life of its own.

I used to want to be a writer somehow, but never felt comfortable with any of the most likely genres – short stories, poetry or non-fiction. I also became increasingly dispirited by what has been going on in the writing business – the consolidation of publishers and book retailers, the weakening of smaller independent voices and gate-keepers. The thing about blogging for which I’m most grateful is that it’s helped me discover that there are different ways of being a writer, and connecting with an audience. The difficult and the exhilarating part is that because all of this is still new, there are no set paths to follow and we each have to find our own way, stumbling with every other step. I still haven’t discovered the sort of things which I really want to be writing yet, but feel I’ve made some progress, especially after I realized that blogging and journaling weren’t competition for my regular writing, blogging is my writing.

IM status

I've just added a new feature on this blog which will allow you to see my IM status in my left sidebar. It's AIM only - I'm a Mac user, and like to use that most elegant IM software, iChat AV. I do have other accounts - ICQ, MSN and Yahoo! (collecting email addresses and screen-names is one of my vices), but if you're trying to IM me, iChat is the one that I'm most likely to have on in the background.

pondering the rant

My DSL service has finally switched on at my new place! I've been wanting to go on a big rant against my ISP which had been bungling the transfer of my DSL service to my new apartment. It's been particularly annoying because I had a few ideas for posts in this month, and being stuck on dialup - on a fairly busy shared phone line - has made this difficult. I'm postponing my goals for July (testing trackbacks, moderated comments and ads) through to the end of August, because I just haven't been able to do enough blogging in July. I guess that off-line blogging (as discussed in my post here) is possible, but it's not the way that I like to blog. It creates a disconnect between reading and writing. Maybe this could lead to more considered posts, but it also diminishes the spontaneity which is one of the possibilities of blogging. Even worse is that it separates the research from the writing - I now realise that I research as I write, or more accurately, that the processes for these two things are so deeply intertwined now that it's difficult when I try to do these things separately.

But back to the ranting, I was tempted to castigate this company. From time to time, I've had a mind to vent my spleen at a few other companies, banks, retailers etc., but generally I've decided not to. For one thing, there are legal issues. I am concerned about the impact of defamation on freedom of speech, particularly now that I'm living in Australia again. I don't agree with our defamation laws and think that truth alone should always be a defence and that breaches of privacy should be dealt with separately, but that's what the law is right now in NSW - and the law should generally be respected and obeyed even when it is being an Ass.* [I'm resisting the urge to digress into jurisprudence and discuss the limits, if there should be any, of our obedience to unjust and immoral laws]

But matters of law aside, I just don't want to be wasting my energy on these negative issues any more than I need to. If bloggers gradually accumulate positive credibility, I think that every negative post about a company or person has a chance of backfiring, and damaging the blogger as much as her/his target. Maybe it's possible to get away with a few attacks, but after a while, people might start to think, "He's just another ranter/hater/troll" - and the credibility plummets. (Unless of course, one's credibility is based on negativity, in which case the opposite would apply.) This all sounds terribly amoral - of course there are moral arguments that are relevant, but that's opening another can of worms.

Of course I'll still be negative sometimes, especially towards ideas and generalities which I disagree with. I just hope that on this blog at least, I'll make myself pause and take a deep breath before ranting at specific targets.

off-line, worries

Is it possible to blog off-line? Well I'll find out this weekend when I move and I'm temporarily without internet access. (btw, right now I don't blog from work and I don't blog about work, except in very general terms. This isn't an ideal situation, but it seems like the right approach at this moment in time)

There are a few things I've been mulling over that I will hopefully be able to draft during some off-line moments. I can store them on a CD or USB drive and upload them in one of Sydney's countless internet cafes.

Now that I've got the mundane stuff out of my system, let me get to the other point of this post. I'm quite worried about a cousin and other relatives that I have in London. In such a big city, what would be the odds? But until I hear that she's ok, it's hard not to worry. I can't even begin to say anything about what an evil, despicable crime this is.

Update: Today I learned that my cousin is OK. That's a relief, but I've also learned more about what happened - so I feel horrified.

the National Library of Australia's PANDORA archive

For reasons that should become apparent, I plan that this will be my first and only post about the National Library of Australia's PANDORA archive.

I received an email from the National Library of Australia (NLA), requesting permission to archive the exploded library in its PANDORA archive of Australian online publications. I agreed, and so now the archived version is available here. I thought that people should know, if only because comments and trackbacks will also be preserved.

Look at these links for some basic information about the PANDORA archive: Editing our future, Sydney Morning Herald (4 May 2005) [requires free registration to view]; Margaret E. Phillips, Selective Archiving of Web Resources: A Study of Acquisition Costs at the National Library of Australia, 9 (3) RLG DigiNews (15 June 2005); FAQs from the NLA about PANDORA.

Yes, there are some in the library and media establishments who might think that blogs are worthless ephemera*, but I’m glad that the National Library of Australia takes a different view.

I’m no historian, but I gather that it’s quite common for writing from outside the establishment to be of interest to people trying to understand what’s been going on at a particular time period.

I doubt that there would be very many bloggers out there who would take offence to have their blog selected as an online publication of “national significance” and being preserved in (presumed) perpetuity. Just this week I was wondering how long this blog would stay around on the web if I happened to get hit by a bus during my perilous crossings of McEvoy St.

I still can’t believe this blog has had that sort of recognition. I wonder if it helps that the people making these selections are librarians and I have one of the more prominent Australian library blogs.

One of the weird things is that I’m going to need to resist the urge to be more self-conscious, now that I know that my words here will be preserved in this manner. I feel kind of inspired to keep this blog going and may end up trying to improve the quality and quantity of my posts, which is a good thing … I guess ;) That's the reason why I don't plan on writing any other posts about this. In fact, the less that I think about it, the better.

I think it’s unfortunate that because of a flaw in Australian copyright law the NLA has to ask permission to archive online publications in this manner. Blogs are different from books in that they are never really finished or fixed (in the copyright sense of the word). A book can only be collected and archived after it has been completed and published. I think it would be better if the NLA were just able to do what they needed to according to legal deposit laws, because that would reduce the extent to which the act of observation (or in this case, archiving) influences the behaviour of the thing being observed. 

In the short-term nothing will change. Before this I was aware of the Google cache and the fact that the practice of googling exists. This is just another level of preservation.

Like many Australians, I don’t have much time for patriotism. I love the land and most of its people, but I am frequently embarrassed by the nation and its leaders. So it’s odd and feels kind of nice, to know that in this area, Australia is leading the way, and that I’m involved in it.

* I’m sure critics of blogs would appreciate the irony of blogs being collected in the PANDORA archive, seeing that in the myth, Pandora’s Box contained “the sorrows and evils of mankind within it.” But PANDORA contains many other Australian online publications, not just blogs.

testing a few changes on this blog

For the month of July, I’ll be trying out a some different things with this blog.

First, trackback is returning to this blog, at least for all new and recent posts. I’m doing this because trackbacks can now moderated by me, so I don’t have to be quite so worried about trackback spam. It was because of a very bad outbreak of trackback spam that I turned off this feature last year.

The downside to this is that this means that comments will also be moderated. Ideally on this blog, I would just moderate trackback and leave comments alone. There is a legitimate concern that slow moderation could impede the flow of conversation in comments, and I have really appreciated some of the conversations which have happened this year. So I’ll try to be quick with approving comments, but there will be impediments caused by time zone differences if nothing else.

I’ll be evaluating these changes in a month. So if it turns out I don’t get any trackbacks and my comments drop down, I’ll probably dump this change.

The other change is that I’ll be trying out some advertising – the feature which I mentioned here with some skepticism. I’ve since looked into it some more, and feel sufficiently reassured to at least give this a test on a temporary basis. Those of you who read this solely by the rss feed won’t be affected at all. For people who do look at the actual blog, you will have an important say in whether ads stay or go. If enough of you hate the idea of blogs with advertising and never click on one of the ad links, the ads will most likely go. I won’t keep them unless they’re worth my while. On the other hand, some of you might choose to click on an ad link once in a while, kind of like a tip jar.

I may also think about changing the look of this blog, now that I have a few more options at my disposal. By the way, the larger fonts on my sidebars aren't my changes, probably a bug associated with the changes to TypePad which have just happened.

At the beginning of August, to coincide with the third anniversary of this blog, I’ll decide what will be staying for the next year.

am I tempted?

TypePad has a new feature which will allow me to defray my TypePad subscription fees against revenue generated from text-based advertising on my blog.

I guess I'm not ruling this out in principle. It would be nice if this blog could at least break even, so that it's no longer a monthly drain on my finances. That said, I'm not going to be an early adopter with this. I want more information about how intrusive and annoying (or interesting and clever) the ads will be, what sort of  products will be advertised and what sort of click through rates (and hence revenue) I could expect. For me, allowing ads is a significant sacrifice, and so I wouldn't allow this unless it really paid off. It's a no brainer that I would much prefer to pay for 100% of my blog charges and remain ad free than pay for 80% and have ads. But if I knew that half or more of my expenses could be recovered, who knows ...

I'm currently looking for a different place to live right now. I've had some very interesting dealings with real estate agents in Sydney during the past week. With the housing search, and then the packing, moving and unpacking, it's quite possible that I'll be in for a prolonged light blogging stretch. Then again, sometimes I've blogged more in these busy periods, such as in January 2004, just before I left the US. It must be when the blogger and the procrastinator inside me decide to become friends and help each other out.

blogroll updates

I've just updated one of my blogrolls. My blogrolls tend to contain links to a few essential A list blogs as well as links to interesting blogs which aren't as well known or read. My blogroll has a long way to go before it reaches a good balance between established and new voices, but one day I'll get there - and just then, everything will change again :) If I've learnt anything from this exercise, it's that I should update the blogrolls more frequently.

I prefer shorter and selective blogrolls. I subscribe to way more blogs than this, but don't think there's much value in posting a fairly meaningless longer list. Because I prefer shorter lists, it is a given that many quality blogs won't be included. I make no claims that the blogs on my blogroll are the best, just that they're worth looking at if you haven't seen them already. I have no patience for pettiness concerning blogrolls and think it's sad that this has deterred some people having a blogroll at all. That said, none of this discussion is prescriptive to other bloggers in any shape or form. I'm just doing my own thing here.

If you add me to your blogroll, I thank you, but hope that you realize that I feel under no obligation to add you back. The only benefit is that I'll definitely take a look at your blog, and if I like what I see (and you have a feed), I'll subscribe to it. If I'm really enjoying your blog at the time I review my blogroll, I may add it.

Conversely, if you choose to remove me from your blogroll for whatever reason, you may do this without any fear that I'll get upset about it.

light blogging, my temporal wish list

Today I have half a day at work, before leaving on a mini-vacation in Tasmania to catch up with family & friends. Needless to say that I won't have much time for blogging or reading blogs until I get back on Tuesday.

Things I would like to write about today if I had the time: comparing Yahoo! 360 (I've recently received an invite to its beta) and msn spaces and LiveJournal; musings about the intersection of blogs and wikis; the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie (did this actually open in Australia before it opened in the US? I saw it last night).

overload and memories

It's interesting, for somebody who doesn't even believe in information overload, Steven Cohen's Library Stuff has been providing some excellent coverage on this topic lately.

I definitely agree with the conclusion that one of the answers to information overload is to trust that other people will read things which I won't, and that I'll find things through them or through the people who read them.

I think it's also important to be open to the possibility that some things will  inevitably slip through the cracks from time to time. This would happen even if you spent every waking hour, as well as the hours when you should be sleeping, trying to not to miss anything.  This isn't a tragedy. I think it is an old-fashioned and almost arrogant mindset which causes people to think that they can stay on top of everything which happens in every important topic. The reassurance which these people crave will only guarantee further stress and anxiety.

Information overload used to be one of my pet topics. I've noticed this since I've been looking for posts to add to my new memories section.

This is the list on my sidebar which includes some of my memorable entries. I've biased my selection towards older entries, especially from this blog's Radio Userland days. I can find more recent posts using TypePad's search blog feature, which obviously doesn't apply to the Userland posts. That's what this list is really about - making it easier for me to feel connected to the previous incarnations of this blog. I sometimes like to re-read my older posts and ask myself, do I still think that now? Would I write that now?

At the moment, this memories list has the prominent real estate in the top right corner, but after a few weeks I'll move  it towards the bottom of that sidebar.

do I have issues with the printed word?

This blog has just been given a failing grade by Walt Crawford on its printability [see pages 4-6 of this pdf file]. *sighs* Well at least I'm in some good company. The snarky side of me is tempted to say this: Cites & Insights is not exactly screen-friendly. The two column layout demands much scrolling back and forth, which is kind of awkward. I'm not stating this to find fault with Cites & Insights, it's just stating the fact that it was designed to look best when printed on paper, which I am reluctant to do.

Still, Walt could rightly argue that Cites & Insights functions better on the screen than this blog looks when printed on paper.

It's interesting because it's never occurred to me that anyone would want to print out this blog. I certainly haven't, and I probably care more about this blog than anyone else. Aside from the whole dead tree thing, I have issues with managing paper documents. Once I start accumulating papers, they clump together and multiply in messy piles. Before I know it, they've invaded my entire desk and I'm drowning in paper. So if I printed out this blog, I would just be feeding this monster which ruins my feng sui and saps me of so much energy.

But Walt makes some valid points about why printability is important, especially for a blog like the exploded library, which has fairly lengthy posts which (on my good days) are like mini-essays. I decided to contact TypePad's support about this issue. This is what's currently available: using a print stylesheet, such as the one mentioned here at A List Apart. I'm sorry, but it sounds too bothersome for me. Here's the thing, although I dabble with technology in my day job,  I am also lazy and I don't want to be spending too much time on techy things in my free time as well. I only have so much time and energy for blogging (and lately even that has been less than my usual preference), and the more time that I spend on design and formatting, the less I have for the actual content, which is the part that I enjoy the most. That's why I like TypePad, because it's easy and reliable enough that the technology doesn't get in the way of the creativity, and it has sufficient customization options to satisfy my occasional urge to tinker. I do wish that it offered an easy print-friendly solution, and hope that this is eventually implemented in an updated version.

this blog has no follow tags - will it reduce or increase the comment spam?

I’ve been thinking a fair bit about comment spam lately. I haven't been particularly afflicted with it lately *touches wood* but  I've had some interesting comments in a recent post in this blog from somebody defending the practice of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) (a post about this is forthcoming). Then of course there's the news about adapting no follow tags to combat comment spam on blogs.

Because this blog is a TypePad blog, no follow tags have already been implemented. If you don’t believe me, look at some comments, view the source code and do a Find search on “nofollow.” Unlike MovableType bloggers, I haven’t needed to do a thing to implement this. What this means is that any URL that’s posted in a comment won’t get any PageRank benefit from Google – and equivalents with Yahoo and MSN Search, although I don't have any details concerning them. This means that you can link to sites that you hate and not worry that they’ll get any PageRank benefit from your link - not that I'm planning on taking advantage of this.

ambiguity is important

I’ve just been through some soul-searching about how blogging fits into my wider aspirations of creative writing. I had been concerned that all the time and energy that I had for writing had been going onto this non-fiction exploded library blog,