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The Light Dawneth

It took me a while, but I think I may understand what happened to the feeds. Can’t believe it didn’t occur before. Two days ago was when the upgrade to 2.02 happened, from 1.5 (WordPress). So yeah, that’s a pretty viable reason.

In other awesome news, this Wired article showed me a new development tool .. Playsh.

It’s a pretty cool concept. The environment is a text adventure / MUD. You traverse through the code structure (routines I would think, procedures, etc) by normal text travel. North, South, …

From the Sourceforge page, here’s their Summary :

playsh is a narrative-driven "object navigation" client, operating primarily on the semantic level, casting your hacking environment as a high-level, shell-based, social prototyping laboratory, a playground for recombinant network toys.

Not sure what increases in productivity it would give. But there’s definately an old-school coolness about it.

The Wired article gives some better background. There is a definate goal behind the development of playsh. And it was created to solve another problem, which is a fine way for a tool to be birthed. There’s nothing better than creating a tool to achieve that goal and realising that the tool is far more important than the original goal.

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The FeedInator

So I get in a little late to work this morning (rugby injury slowing me down), and my Feedburner scripty pic tells me my feeds are now … 4.

Yesterday, when I left, the figure was somewhere in the low thirties. So you can imagine my surprise.

Either I’ve been hoaxed that whole time by bot feedreaders (I don’t even know if they exist, just thought that it might be possible), or quite a few people got really annoyed and bailed from my feed.

So if you’ve recently done the Mr Holt from Dev Dawn, drop me a line and tell me why. I’d like to increase the Feed Figure if possible, so let me know what the bizo is. Perhaps my content? Or the funny jokes? Maybe it was the acrid stench?

If you’ve been struck by any/all of the above, please, let me know.

Cheers and All That,

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The Trouble With Toil

So I’ve got a few inklings as to why my recent activities didn’t raise any kind of excitement at all. Not even a comment. But that’s cool …

  • The idea is still not fully-formed. I don’t have a name for what i’m doing yet.
  • There was no single idea for people to immediately grasp and say, hey, I like what he’s on about.
  • There were about 5 posts in the span of a couple of hours, too hodge-podge.

So I have to resolve the idea behind Sibisy, and all the other projects I will hopefully be doing. Get a name, create some guidelines, have a set format, make a mission statement … stuff like that. I’ll also put up a subdomain of DevDawn to give it a better singlular purpose.

‘Nuff said for the moment.

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2. Engine

There are quite a few blogging engines available today. It’s important to choose the one that will give you the best shot at doing what we are about … Blogging. Writing your own, or getting into a very complicated blogging tool, is all well and good, but when the purpose is blogging, being able to post without trouble, then it’s very important to look at what you are going to use.

I began my blogging by writing my own engine. At the time, I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t know the word "blog", and didn’t realise what a "content management system" was.

But now I’ve progressed. This blog was the first on the road to enlightenment.

WordPress. It’s the engine of choice for many people. Myself included. It’s got the power I need with the simplicity I need. It’s moddable. This is a big selling point. In fact, it’s a point all in itself.

  • Modability.

Modability is vital because … a single mind comes up with a good idea … but a community, coming up with one idea each, gives a massive increase in functionality. This is the reason why I continue to use WordPress. There are a wealth of mods (plugins/themes) available. Plugins and Themes. There’s even Themes that are more mods than plugins.

To clarify, a Theme changes the way your blog looks, and a Plugin adds/changes the functionality of your blog.

But then there’s K2 which is a Theme that’s so much more than a theme. Dev Dawn uses the K2 theme, along with Paul’s Style for that Theme. Confused yet … my mind is whirring with excitement :).

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The Blordan, or The Garlog

A Blog is like a Garden.

This analogy was realised to me in the shower tonight. It’s very very apt.

  1. You get what you put in.It’s hard work, especially at the beginning, but always. You have to plant the seeds, water and nourish them, weed, watch for scavengers, and then there’s the competitions.
  2. Some Gardens look nicer than others.This can be for many reasons. Your content might have been just the web needed at the time. You might have hit the goldmine, finding a nook that everyone actually wants. And like a garden, you might just have the magic touch.
  3. There isn’t a single right method.Methodology is important, but there are so many different paths to take. Writing style of blog, content, look’n’feel.
  4. Single Vegetables and Everything.Some blogs, like Dev Dawn only grow tomatoes. Now tomatoes are fine for us, that’s the purpose of this blog … but others grow everything, and they do it well.
  5. However, some don’t … do it that well. Just like gardening, it’s a mix. Some people don’t have to put much to reap a massive harvest. They might have already put years of work into the blog, or they might have just stumbled across something special. Others put a lot of work into their blog, for not much return. I guess to we have to quantify "Return". Some people don’t blog for the adulation of the masses.

Deep down, most of us would be chuffed to break through in terms of readership. To know that people are reading and taking in what we are saying. That our opinions are important.

But more than that, I want to have a garden that looks good, and that actually holds substance. Even though it might only be tomatoes, they’re gonna be the best tomatoes around.

‘Nuff said for the moment.