a. fish

Drive by thought dump

Stuff on the mind:

• urban environmentalism: sneak green into nooks and crannies wherever possible; peaceful coexistance of industry (need better word?) and nature; to earn a "C" as an environmentalist you must simply enjoy nature and express (writing, art) why you enjoyed it; triangulating environmentalism - can backpacking fight youth crime?
• journalists vs. journalers: shocking there's no bar exam or series seven license for journalists; news orgs with more fact checkers per writer should advertise that fact; hand a pad and pen to someone in underrepresented district (bayview?) or demographic (who?) and put more editors on that beat; if keeping a private journal is journaling, doesn't that mean blogging is journaling, not journalism?; is fiction a subset of journalism, or of journaling?
• school, my writing class: three sessions to go and I've had a good time, but my writing has not improved at all - illusion or sad accuracy? the study-more-upfront curve vs. the cram-for-final-exam curve, crisped at three weeks to go, can barely pick up book or get excited for class; Billy Collins poem on students beating the meaning out of a poem with old brooms;  what a good teacher is (hint: he or she is not perfect, but it some way excellent, ok that's one version there are many); a B is satisfying when...first class ever where I gave it my all, attended every class (wow) did not approach it with dread.
• W: first 100days. (365 x 4) - 100 = 1360 remain of accidental-boy-king's reign. Not outrageous anymore. Just tiring; find humor in this, surely it's in there somewhere & you're just tired;
  
• how to travel, how to camp, plan a trip: need to write this if not yet written, else read it; weekend in May; pick one.

Typepad vs. Radio Userland

(UPDATE 4/17/2005: The comments bring good news. Details at bottom.)

It's weird, maybe because there are more bloggers now, I have very few people linking directly to this blog. I abandoned my Radio Userland blog over a year ago, but it still gets more direct link hits (vs. bad google search "bait+tackle" hits,) than this Typepad blog. I remember tweaking with the Radio templates to make sure the blog post titles were permalinks to that post. That may be the problem. <--Fixed. See "Update" below.

While Typepad has some really nice drag-and-drop template design widgets, it is very confusing to create and use template sets. You have to duplicate one of their standard template sets, that's easy enough. Then you have to go a separate step to make sure your blog uses your special set. That works fine. But then - when you go through the control panel to change the font, it seems to start from scratch with a standard typepad template set that uses the font you just selected.

Typepad: Technorati Tags Included

ToDo:
Read the Technorati documentation on tags, implement tags in weblog DONE! Cross that one off ze list!

This is already done for you if you use Typepad:

• If your blog software supports categories and RSS/Atom (like Movable Type, WordPress, TypePad, Blogware, Radio), just use the included category system and make sure you're publishing RSS/Atom and we'll automatically include your posts! Your categories will be read as tags.
• If your blog software does not support those things, don't worry, you can still play.

Can you still blog to find out what you're thinking?

I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.

- Joan Didion

The five finalists for The National Book Award were on Charlie Rose the other night, one of them mentioned the Joan Didion quote when Rose asked them day-in-the-life, what's it like to be a Book Award author questions.

Joan Didion writes to find out what she's thinking. This year I went to BloggerCon to find out why I'm blogging. I started blogging to decant and organize thoughts, and make room for more thinking. If people leave comments once in a blue moon, you can blog to find out is anybody thinking what I'm thinking blogging? Before the election, many blogged not to detect thought, but to push it. They were not explicit of course ("you must start thinking what I'm blogging!")

2004 is the year that blogs became a little more formal. More blogs have a specific purpose, are more polished, have commercial-ish mission statements. More people read blogs, and google for yours. The non-A-list blogger once had the freedom of I-can-write-what-I'm-thinking sandbox like attitude, "I'll never meet the few people who read me". Like it or not b-list and c-list bloggers, somebody will read your blog as your resume. How do we adjust the sandbox attitude for 2005? Where can you safely blog just to find out what you're thinking?

Gawker's L.A. Offspring: Defamer

Nick Denton's latest creation, Defamer is now out. The design looks like it was done by Patrick Nagel's ghost.

Washington's Other W Twins

Washington's Other W Twins

Has it occured to anyone that Ana Maria Cox knew Washingtonienne all along, and they cooperated for this masterful publicity stunt?

I ask because good friends often look a bit like each other. They both have high cheekbones and sport some sassy 'tude...and create opportunity before it knocks...

Winer on the Why of Blogging

Coffee notes for later:

As good a time as any:

Ted Leung is a thoughtful and not flamboyant blogger. He uses his weblog well to think out loud, and by seeing the map of his thought processes, I learn more than just about his conclusions, I also learn how he got there. This was a point that Larry Lessig made on Saturday in the great free-wheeling discussion we had at the end of the iLaw conference. He said even if no one reads your blog, you get something out of writing publicly that you can't get otherwise. Writing makes you smarter, I said, when other people expressed disbelief. But I read Ted, every time he updates, because he's a smart guy who get smarter, and helps me do that too. He makes me say Bing a lot. And then Bing Bing. And even occasionally a Bing Bing Bing.