Category: Writing

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So, I think I’ve lost the NaBloPoMo challenge, since I failed to write anything yesterday. I had something planned and everything, but I’ve been blogging in the evenings, and felt sick last night and completely forgot that I even needed to. All I remember is lying on the couch, reading Les Miserables, and reading kids’ books to my son.

Although technically I did write a post for Speed Force on Wednesday, so I suppose I’m still in the clear.

It’s been an interesting process. I’ve found myself stumbling on topics to write about, observations that ordinarily I’d let drop, or in some cases start writing and never come back to again.

It’s also been a problem. Specifically with my Les Miserables commentary. I’m on page 1162 reading, almost at the end, but my posts are only up to page 843. I’d really like to get that going again, but while I had plenty of free time in the evenings on my business trip, now that I’m back to my normal life, I have a lot less free time.

If I’ve got half an hour, and an obligation to blog something, I’m going to use that half hour for something that I can write quickly, not to get started on something that’s ultimately going to take me three hours spread out over several days to finish. And that, IMO, is counterproductive to the goal of blogging more. I’m still of the opinion that in the long run, less frequent high quality content is better than more frequent low quality content.

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  • Geek Merit BadgesFanboy Scouts has launched a series of Merit Badges for Geeks including achievements for Speedster, Mt. Doom, Tie Fighter Pilot, Away Team, and more.
  • Privacy in terms of contextual identity. How you present yourself to your friends is not how you present yourself to your colleagues, and what you’re willing to share in each context is going to be different.
  • XKCD is probably right about the future of “old-timey” speech. “Forsooth, do you grok my jive, me hearties?” We have a hard enough time getting the mid-twentieth century right, and that’s with people around who lived it!
  • Darryl Cunningham debunks the Moon Hoax in comic-strip form.
  • The new Kindle looks nice. They’re starting to get to the price/feature/polish point where I’d be tempted. (Well, except for that pesky DRM…) Also, Amazon launched Kindle for Android recently, but I haven’t tried it out. While it will run on Android 1.6, it’s a bit big for my G1 unless I clear out some other apps.
    Kindle Wireless 3G+WiFi.

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It’s clear that a lot of people don’t actually read web pages before they respond to them. They’ll do things like…

  • Contact someone with a similar name, even when it’s clearly the wrong sort of organization — say, a student writing club and not the bookseller that’s been causing them problems.
  • Ask a blogger for a job application for a company mentioned in the post.
  • Ask unrelated tech support questions on a blog post because they used the wrong search terms for their problem.
  • Ask for help creating Flash animations on a forum dedicated to the Flash super-hero, then get indignant when people have the gall to point out that they’re in the wrong place.

Now, usability guru Jakob Nielsen reports on a study showing just how much people don’t read. In the average visit, users only read 28% of your text if you’re lucky. You have to drop way down — to 111 words — just to count on visitors reading half of it.

Depressing, but it explains so much. And it suggests there’s a benefit to highlighting key phrases. If they’re only going to read ¼ of the text, you may as well make sure it includes the important stuff.

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Organization for Transformative Works – dedicated to protecting the expression of fan fiction, fan art, etc. (via Naomi Novik)

Open Standards, One Web, and Opera – Just why are standards important, anyway? (via Opera Watch)

Speaking of Opera, their EU antitrust complaint against Microsoft has been making waves. Responses at CSS3.info, Web Standards Project, Slashdot (edit: more Slashdot), Asa Dotzler, Opera Watch, plus a Q&A w/ Haarvard. My take: Good luck on unbundling, but if they can force Microsoft to catch up with the rest of the market in terms of standards support, I’m all for it.

Nissan vs. Nissan. On my way to work I saw a bumper sticker on an XTerra that said “In support of our freedom, it’s my last Nissan.” Huh? There was clearly a web address below it, but it was too small to read at that distance. So I looked up the phrase, and apparently there’s been a long-running dispute over the domain name nissan.com, between a small computer business named after its founder, Uzi Nissan, and the Nissan car company. The dispute was eventually resolved (correctly, IMO, since he has a legit reason to use the name) in favor of the little guy. On the other hand, I don’t see why the site makes such a big deal about Nissan’s “French Connection” to Renault.

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Official NaNoWriMo 2007 ParticipantDecided that with everything else that’s going on, I don’t have time for the added stress of Nanowrimo right now. Last night I didn’t even mess with the Flash-related projects that have been looming (way behind on current stuff for my site, and I’m contributing an article to the TwoMorrows Flash Companion book). All I did was catch up on comics & blogs and watch Heroes. It was amazingly relaxing.

Ah, well. I know I can do it, since I finished last year. And I’ll probably write some more on this story, in which case I’ll keep updating my profile. But I’m not going to worry about writing 1,700 words a day, or finishing 50,000 words this month.

I won’t have a new novel at the end of the month, but I’ll be a lot less stressed out dealing with everything else.