steve murphy

Blogging and Twitter

2009-04-06T00:00:00+10:00

Note: This post was written shortly after I started a Marley version of this blog. It may have been the only post I wrote specifically for that site – development on Marley basically stopped, and I had some problems with hosting the Sinatra-based site which randomly prevented it from loading. Consequently I migrated to a jekyll version of the site, then to this Octopress version. These moves were made with the same general aims: writing in a text editor, authoring in markdown, versioning in git, using a static site for speed, and avoiding the security/update hell of platforms such as WordPress. Where I refer to renaming the site in this post, it was the renaming of the Marley version as “Steve Murphy: Infrequent Blogger”. Still pretty accurate.

Clearly I’ve been really bad at keeping my blog up-to-date. Even for me that is. The few posts that are published here definitely have large time gaps between them (hence my renaming of the site). In fact, I’m sure I could lay claim to being the world’s worst blogger, based on the fact that I have not just this site, but a number of others that are equally neglected.

The real issue is not publishing, but that my blog output does not match the frequency with which I think of things to blog about. I enjoy writing, I really do want to blog often and I have lots to write about; it’s just that the posts don’t happen.

And it’s not simply about the act of writing. One thing I have learned is that I like to write for an audience (note that I don’t actually expect an audience here – but the act of making my writing public will suffice; see also). So getting things up on to a blog should be an extra incentive on top of my desire to write.

But I don’t do it. Why is this?

Recently I have been thinking that Twitter might be the culprit: I have been twittering for the last couple of years and maybe that has taken up time and allowed me to express myself enough to satisfy my publishing urges. I wouldn’t be alone in that: I’ve seen some others comment on how they blog less now that they twitter. However, what I twitter is almost never the kind of thing I would blog about. My current (expanding) list of topics to blog about has really grown out of the fact that they are not 140 character ideas. And I rarely posted anything in the past that was a tweet-length idea anyway. So, twittering has not replaced my blogging, it is something else again, which is probably the way it should be.

There is another suspect: the ease of blogging. One of the reasons I’ve set up so many different blogs is to experiment with various platforms in the hope of finding the one that makes it really easy. I know other people manage to write lots using WordPress or any of the large variety of perfectly good systems out there. But I like writing with my tools – and writing in a text box on the web, or in an editor/client such as ecto, MarsEdit or blogo (which is actually pretty good) just doesn’t feel right to me. Most of the time I write in a text editor of some kind, using Markdown for styling and structuring my text, before converting to whatever format I need for publishing when it feels finished. That means I can use any platform to write with simple tools that don’t get in the way. For example, this post started in WriteRoom on my iPhone because I had it with me and then ended up in Tinderbox because I happened to have that open when I next felt like working on it. I did the final edit in TextMate from where I committed it to a git repository – providing versioning, backup and an instant publishing mechanism thanks to the Marley blog platform I’m using on this site. Of course, I fully understand why this wouldn’t work for many people and why WordPress would. But how others work is not my problem. Not only does this work for me, it suits me.

In the end, it probably comes down to the fact that Twitter has been okay for me lately because it requires little inertia. Something simple to say, very little time, not much effort. On the other hand, blogging is just a bit harder – but I see how that can be a good thing. I would like to think that the extra time and effort required to blog something allows for a little extra thought and editing, resulting in better quality writing. I’d leave you to be the judge of that but there probably is no “you” out there, so I’ll just be my own critic for now.

Less is More

2008-07-23T00:00:00+10:00

As much as I enjoy playing with puters and stuff, sometimes I just want it to be easy – easy enough that anybody could do whatever. Say, upgrade a website.

There was quite a bit of Twitter chat a few days ago about the pain people were experiencing upgrading Wordpress to version 2.6. Little problems like completely broken and inaccesible sites with no admin access or hope of repairing things. Well, dear non-readers, you know this site is not exactly mission-critical (even if I had a mission nothing about this would be critical)…However, I didn’t want to break it just the same, so held off the upgrade.

But, you see, I have this shiny new iPhone, and somebody said the Wordpress app was cool. Well I tried it, only to discover – you guessed it – it needed Wordpress to be at a later version…Ok, you got me, time to jump in and upgrade. So I head off to my DreamHost admin panel and six clicks later I’m upgraded and running. That’s it.

Next, to the iPhone, enter the site details, write this post. That’s it.

I love it when puters actually do what they are supposed to – make things easier. All by getting out of the way, working, and being simple.

200 grunts

2007-10-16T00:00:00+10:00

I arrive at the dentist. The receptionist looks up, “can I help you, sir?”

“I’m here for my appointment with Dr Gordon”.

“Thanks, just take a seat”.

Thirty minutes later, I come back to the same receptionist, and she looks at me with the same “can I help you?” face.

“Mm usss inish ish octa awden….oo i nee oo oo emythim?”

She replies, “Did he ask you to make another appointment?”

“Mm, ee mm mmm ay emy bow tha, o mm, u mo. U ee i se mm mmy eed awe un ata.”

“Oh, okay, well that would need an hour-long appointment, and so that probably won’t be until February”

“Mmmay, ll i us mee oo ch…ow owt mmti mm arch?”

“Sure, the 15th?”

“Mm, err, oo, mmay, ood e fi”

“See you then.”

“Oo oo”

Supposedly we only need about 200 words in any language to carry on a conversation – what are the 200 basic grunts required at the dentist’s reception desk?

The Real Me

2007-06-23T00:00:00+10:00

I’ve noticed that a lot of my jaiku and twitter presence posts are about coffee, wine and beer – and that could be misleading. My “presence” is not who I am, rather it only reflects a small part of me and my life.

You see, it’s all about when I post presence updates. Usually, it’s when I take a break and I’m waiting on the barista or the coffee pot. Or, it’s when I get a moment to sit down and relax at night. So my presence posts often come from those moments. But as more and more of me gets scattered across the internet, it would be easy to assume that a more complete picture of me is developing for all to see. Certainly, small things about me are revealed – but do not take them to be all there is to me.

Truth is, much of the real me – what I do, what I achieve, what I think about – is not “present” on the internet at all. That’s because the real me is what I do between “presence” posts.

Self-Healing Internet

2007-06-23T00:00:00+10:00

I love the fact that the best source of answers to internet-related problems is the internet itself. If that seems like an obvious statement, just think about it a bit longer…can other things tell you how to fix themselves? Does you car or your microwave or your lawnmower or your dog allow you to find a solution internally and then apply that solution to effect a repair?

After setting up my new MacBook I was having a small problem with the blogging bundle for TextMate – for some reason I couldn’t fetch posts from or add new posts to this blog, which uses WordPress. I was getting this error: “XML-RPC server accepts POST requests only”. I couldn’t find the answer on the TextMate blogging bundle page, but there were a few comments there from others with the same problem.

Next stop, Google. Put in “wordpress XML-RPC server accepts POST requests only” and I’m led (no surprises here) to this page: Wordpress “XML-RPC server accepts POST requests only”. Someone else with the same problem and the same webhost – and a solution: add the following line to the top of the xmlrpc.php file (in the wordpress directory):

$HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA = file_get_contents('php://input');

(Turns out, the problem is related to the version of PHP used on the webserver.)

So, that’s done now.

What makes all this work is that people keep a record on the internet about what they do with the internet. Search the internet and I have a solution to my problem, which was about getting my stuff onto the internet.

Using the internet has fixed my problem and allowed me to use the internet. It’s self-healing.

Windows is 21 - and MS-DOS is alive!

2006-11-23T00:00:00+11:00

I’ve just started reading doggdot (which I really like), and I read yesterday the news that Microsoft Windows has just turned 21 (20 Nov 2006).

Kind of scary, because it reminded me I was using Windows 1.0 in 1986 – almost from its birth. And I’m still using it now (mostly not by choice, though).

But, just now, using Windows XP, I was trying to copy a largish file (about 700MB), and I got an error which said “Invalid MS-DOS function”.

Huh? MS-DOS? I thought Microsoft said they had left all that behind in NT (New Technology, after all) and XP and all that…

(Fortunately my Mac had no problem copying the file – nice to know that *nix, even older than MS-DOS, is still going strong!)

Performancing

2006-04-08T00:00:00+10:00

One of the reasons I keep this blog is to keep up with – and try out – blogging technology. My earlier post about Flock is an example. This post is a test of a Firefox extension from Performancing, which allows you to blog directly from within Firefox. Very simple, works well, and great for those times when you are surfing and something worth blogging comes to mind.

Performancing also offer a blog site statistics tool, which is free and worth checking out.

Flock

2006-03-30T00:00:00+11:00

Well, it’s not much of a name, and it is still pretty much alpha stage, but the new Flock browser looks very promising.

Based on mozilla, it seems to be trying to build itself around webservices, which means a more interactive way of using the web. I’m writing this post in the Flock editor now, and there is built-in support of services such as flickr and del.icio.us. Not that all that isn’t possible from, say, Firefox with a few extensions. It’s just a new, integrated approach which may make some web-based applications more immediately useable for a range of people.

One thing – writing and posting this was pretty quick and easy.

It will be interesting to watch.

How to Get Great Sleep

2006-01-22T00:00:00+11:00

I have read a number of articles on sleep (and getting more), which perhaps is an indication of how much I love to sleep! This article provides good information on our sleep mechanisms, as well as common sleep disorders – and the link between lack of sleep and depression. In terms of beating insomnia, the article suggests doing nothing, allowing the body’s natural rhythms to right themselves.

read the article | read the digg story

Australian Business Needs To Take On More Recycling Responsibility

2006-01-18T00:00:00+11:00

As electronic goods and appliances get cheaper, they also seem to fail faster. And while they might be cheaper to buy, there is a hidden cost: repairs are often not cost effective (because component-level repairs aren’t done anymore), and so we end up buying whole new items every two or three years.

More than the hit to the hip-pocket, what disturbs me is the environmental cost. Looking at the DVD player that no longer works and which is not worth repairing, I can’t help but see the manufacturing effort that went into making this unit, as well as the heavy metals and plastics that will most likely end up in landfill.

I know that in some parts of the world it is now possible to recycle such items, but searching for a similar facility in Australia proved fruitless.

In February 2005 Collex announced that it would be starting an electronics recycling facility in Australia http://www.collex.com.au/about_us/collex_news/collex_news_1.cfm. Encouraged by this news, I called them. After being transferred around a few desks in response to my enquiry, I reached someone who gave me the number of the nearest facility who would accept my goods. I rang them, and they said: “No, we don’t recycle. We just crush the equipment and it goes into landfill”.

Beyond Collex, I could only find a couple of firms, who, for a charge, would remove IT equipment from businesses, and recycle the components in a secure and environmentally friendly way.

Consumers need an easy way to recycle environmentally costly and damaging items such as electronic goods and batteries, and business and government need to do more to provide these services. While our school children receive education on the environment and sustainability, those who can actually do something about the problem seem not to have learned any lessons yet.

Recycling is not just about newspapers and bottles anymore.

What makes a 'geek'?

2006-01-17T00:00:00+11:00

In thinking about learning and technology, I’ve been wondering why it is that some people are more attracted to using and discovering technology than others. This leads me to think about that group of people often called ‘geeks’. There’s an extensive entry on geeks at Wikipedia, suggesting it has at least as much to do with obsession as technology.

Howard Becker opens his useful book, Tricks of the Trade : How to Think about Your Research While You're Doing It, with an anecdote from his student days about a discussion of what makes an ‘ethnic group’. The key point is that one cannot study an ethnic group in isolation: such a group only exists because another group has identified them as separate or different from them in some way.

So, in considering geeks we also need to examine those who aren’t geeks, and what it is the various groups think of each other.

Popular images of geeks often have them identifying as such, sometimes proudly, sometimes self-consciously. Certain stereotypical characteristics make them identifiable to others, and in this way they appear as a separate cultural group. Thus, it is an issue of culture as much as technology.

So, apart from recognising that there may be ‘cultural’ issues, how useful might this be in determining how individuals learn about technology?

UTS Mob - Let's keep in contact!

2004-11-10T00:00:00+11:00

My old UTS Grad Dip fellow travellers, let’s all stay in contact…

I’ve finally set up an email group for everyone, so email me with your email address, and I’ll send you the details.

See you at graduation.

Have a good life!

Online Professional Presentation

2004-11-08T00:00:00+11:00

Looking for my presentation of 3 November 2004?

For those who are looking for the link for my presentation of 3 November 2004, you should go here.

Blogs, Wikis and Webquests

2004-11-08T00:00:00+11:00

What’s a webquest?

This article at WebQuests.org summarises some of the pedagogical uses of blogs and wikis, including how they might be used in webquests. What’s a webquest? Look around the WebQuests site to find out…