Tag: blogging

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Well, I dropped out of the 30-day blogging challenge after 20 days. Ironically, I think part of the problem was that I tried to get ahead. Most days I would write a post in the evening, either just after the kid went to bed or just before I did. On day 20, I posted at lunch. That broke my routine, and I forgot to post the next evening.

So…

I finished a few posts I’ve been working on for a while, so that worked out. There were several things I noticed that turned into what I hope made interesting commentary. That’s two wins. But then there were the days of filler, too. It’s not like I need to keep “I hate the 405” on its own page, after all. (Besides, that’s a given.)

Things I Learned

I really don’t like writing about current events or politics these days. On Friday the 13th, I couldn’t think of anything else to write about, but couldn’t start. I ended up reading Tumblr for some idea to jump off of, and found the Epi-Pen infographic. Then I went a whole week deliberately not writing about Paris, Beirut, or refugees.

If I wanted to keep the volume up without regard to focus, I think up plenty of ideas during the course of a day. I just have to (1) write down the topic so I remember and (2) find the time/inclination/brainpower to do the writing.

I wrote more about my kid than I expected. Probably more than I’ve written publicly in quite a while. This isn’t a parenting blog by a long shot, but in addition to costuming and art, I used several family conversations as jumping off points.

When I obsessively listen to a show for a week, I come up with lots of things I’d like to write about it. I followed Chess with a Les Misérables binge, and now I’ve got about five Les Mis-related topics on my list.

If you can’t think of anything to write about, ask your spouse for a topic.

I’m actually more comfortable sitting on the couch and writing on my tablet than firing up my computer and sitting at my desk. That surprised me, but the Galaxy Tab S2 is sooooo much faster than the Nexus 7 it’s ridiculous. And hey, couch!

Tally

6 Random observations.
4 Amusing photos that fit within one of the site’s long-running categories.
3 Articles I’ve been working on for a while and finally got around to finishing.
3 Follow-ups to older posts or series.
2 Reaction pieces.
1 Interesting photo that I cross-posted from Instagram/Flickr to satisfy the goal.
1 Total filler that I would delete if it weren’t for keeping a record of how far I got in the challenge.

List

  1. Mixed Emotions/Halloween/Comikaze
  2. Fruit Basket Case
  3. So Much for SudaSudafed
  4. I “Liked” Twitter Favorites
  5. Phone vs. Camera
  6. WiFi is the New Color TV
  7. Gloom ahead, blue sky behind
  8. So that’s where Vaporware comes from!
  9. Aaaargh!
  10. Genre TV Update
  11. Chess (Musical)
  12. Les Mis/Chess: Cosette vs. Florence (and Eponine)
  13. Epi-Pen How-To
  14. Symbolic Costuming: Stage vs. Screen
  15. Coin Slot For Your Cell Phone
  16. AAAAAARP!
  17. Panorama Fail: Chalk Edition
  18. Is the ransom note look obsolete?
  19. Too Many Notifications
  20. Oddly Specific Advertising

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For short posts, I’m actually more comfortable sitting on the couch and writing on my tablet than firing up my computer and sitting at my desk. This is something I discovered during NaBloPoMo. My workflow typically went like this:

  1. Write the post in the WordPress App.
  2. Set categories/tags and upload as a draft.
  3. Switch over to the admin interface to finalize and post: customize the URL, description, share options, etc.

What would send me to the computer are the things that are difficult to do on a tablet:

  • Layout and formatting.
  • Linking to other posts & sources.
  • Major editing.
  • Image size and filenames. Even if I use a file manager on my phone to rename the image, the WordPress app is going to change it on upload to something like wpid-123456789

I’m not sure how much of that is the couch and how much of that is the fact that I’ve been putting off upgrading my home computer in favor of the devices I use more often. I finally replaced the ancient Nexus 7 with a Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 a few months ago. (It’s awesome!) It’s FAR more responsive (the Nexus 7 was basically a proof of concept, and doesn’t deal with modern software very well), so I can actually use it for stuff.

Plus it turns out even at 8″, a 4:3 screen has a much better balance of onscreen keyboard and text area than the 8:5 screen did. Being able to see more of your document, even a little, has a surprising impact on how comfortable it is to write it.

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I’ve been making more of an effort to post here this year, though it’s been a long time since the site had many regular readers. I’d like to do more long-form writing, but that’s just not in the cards these days.

Some highlights:

Century Blvd - railroad bridge remainsLos Angeles/California: I’ve been following the demolition of a bridge near LAX to make way for a future Metro station, wrote a series of thoughts on the California drought, and looked at a slowly emptying mall in Anaheim.

Lunar eclipse mosaicScience: I caught two eclipses this year: a total lunar eclipse with the family, and a partial solar eclipse near the office. Katie did her own controlled experiment on wireless signals and seeds following up on some of the questions that should have been asked in that school experiment that went viral back in spring.

Katie as Alice (OUATIW) cosplayEntertainment: I’ve been reviewing Les Miserables adaptations, including two movies, a comic book, a live parody and a children’s book. I also finally saw productions of Ragtime and Into the Woods. (Good ones, fortunately.) Comic-Con (San Diego), WonderCon, and Long Beach Comic Con of course, including Katie’s awesome Alice (Once Upon a Time in Wonderland) cosplay at SDCC. And then there was 5 things to do with a smart watch at Comic-Con (#1 is to wear it with a Dick Tracy costume).

Troubleshooting is what brings people in the most. Finding the missing Windows 8.1 update was the most popular post of the year, though it’s 15th on the list behind older posts, most of which are also tech tips. It seems wireless networking on Linux is still more challenging than it ought to be.

22 Egress 1/2 MileMostly I’ve been trying to continue the occasional series that have been here for so long: funny signs, interesting/odd photos & observations, comic conventions (though less of that these days). Admittedly that means there’s a lot of overlap with my Instagram and Flickr streams (even more now that my phone is good enough to be my most often-used camera), but I try to add description and context when I post here. On that note, an old photo of a long-gone freeway “Egress” sign got some surprise attention from Reddit at one point.

Rainbow over El Segundo Giant's Chess Set Restroom for ME 9 Cent Only Stores Exploring the Creek Sunset Palm Tree Female Magneto at WonderCon Use Vertical Transportation

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SDCC Crowd with TVs

Social media has drastically changed the online aspect of Comic-Con. So much is up instantly that you can follow the event live without setting foot in San Diego. But for those of us who are on-site, there’s a trade-off between being part of the conversation and part of the convention.

Because we can post in real time, people want to follow in real time too, and lose interest quickly afterward. No matter how interesting I think my follow-up articles might be, none of them are read anywhere near as much as the half-assed pieces that go up during or right after the con. Even interest in photos drops off steeply as soon as the event is done:

Flickr SDCC traffic graph

But it takes time to write and edit, to curate, crop and adjust, and (dare I say it) to promote — and if it’s not your job, it comes at the expense of other things you could do at the con.

There’s Far Too Much To Take In Here

I’ve been posting my con experiences and photos for over a decade now. At first I’d just post when I had time. Once I had a smartphone, Twitter, and a second blog at Speed Force, I was live-tweeting and live-blogging everything.

Then in 2011, my wife and I left our then-infant son with relatives and spent a single day immersed in the pop culture madness. It gave us a new perspective:

  • Comic-Con is gigantic.
  • Your time at Comic-Con is limited.
  • Make the most of it!

I changed the way I approached the convention. No more liveblogging; other people are doing that for their job. No presentations that will just be online by the end of the day anyway. No three-hour lines. I wanted the experience I could only get by being there.

I also cut my social media activity to a minimum:

  • Instagram when I had a minute or two of downtime, set to auto-share pictures out to Facebook, Tumblr, etc.
  • Twitter rarely, again when I had a little downtime. No more stopping in the hall to post a comment. This year I didn’t even check for conversations (which, it turns out, I should have).

Sure, I’m a little disappointed that my SDCC 2014 writeup hasn’t been read by very many people, but it’s partly to help me remember this year’s con when I look back at it later. Our photo album at least got some attention. But you know what? If I’d taken the time to write about it during the con, whether live or nightly, I wouldn’t have had as much to write about, and I wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much. I think that’s a good trade-off.

P.S. Apologies for the clickbait headline. It seemed appropriate for the subject matter.

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Before the quick-status type social networks like Twitter and Facebook took off, it seemed like everyone was starting a blog. And every company seemed to want to get in on it: it wasn’t enough to have a forum, you had to have your own community, including — you guessed it — a blog.

Things change, of course. People move on to new interests. Businesses fold and are replaced with others. Online social activity has largely gravitated toward a small number of hubs. Hubs like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram. Old blogs are left unmaintained, and die. And those island communities like My Opera, or the Newsarama forums, or Comic Bloc, have also dried up, activity moving to the hot spots. Why go to the trouble of building your own social network when you can create a page on Facebook and be part of that one for free? That’s where your users/customers/fans are anyway!

So those special-purpose sites are going away too.

In addition to K-Squared Ramblings, I had a blog on LiveJournal (still there, but I haven’t updated it in years), and a blog on WordPress.com (also still there, but I changed its focus). I also had blogs at Spread Firefox, My Opera, and ComicSpace. I wrote for Opera Watch. I could swear I had something hosted by Flock even though I hardly ever used it.

I’ve been slowly migrating a lot of that material from those blogs to this one.

  • I had two convention reports on LiveJournal, and a zillion of them here. I copied over the two posts and cross-linked them.
  • After SpreadFirefox and Opera Watch shut down, I pulled what I could from archive.org and posted the more useful/interesting bits here.
  • When I finally figured out I wanted to make Parallel Lines a photo blog, I went through the earliest posts and brought over one or two posts that were worth keeping.

The latest is My Opera shutting down. It was announced back in October, which gives you an idea of how often I go there these days. Fortunately, they announced the closure early and provided tools to download your blog posts (with comments) and files.

Looking through 27 posts, a lot more of them than I thought turned out to be cross-posts or otherwise duplicate content. I found just seven with unique content that might be worth importing (one of those was only unique because my corresponding Spread Firefox post was already gone!), either for current or historical interest, and three duplicates with their own comment threads that might be worth merging. I particularly wanted to save On Broken HTML, and was amused to find this rant against combined stop and reload buttons, a fight that’s been completely lost.

Some content has gone the other way, though: After I launched Speed Force back in 2008, I started putting most of my comics-related thoughts there, or cross-posting them. And just last year, I started my Re-reading Les Misérables project in the pages of this blog, before breaking it off as its own subsite. The difference is that those are both self-hosted sites under my control. As long as I have access to web hosting and domain registration, and as long as I have backups, I’m set.