Blogging

Sadly, the world’s first and most prolific blogger, the Reverend Robert Shields has passed away in America aged 89. Shields was the author of the world’s longest diary consisting of a staggering 37 million words. Shields was truly the world’s first blogger with his first recorded entry in April 1927 beating Dave Winer by 3 months. Nor was Robert Shields afraid of including trivia and useless information in his journals. For example, how many blogs (or Tumblelogs for that matter) record blood pressure readings (Shields despised silly mood emoticons), make any effort to fastidiously record every single visit to the lavatory (Shields had dozens of imaginative ways to describe the act of urination) or have the thoughtfulness to detail every single piece of junk mail ever received....

Successfully upgraded WordPress to version 2.3.1 in four clicks using the excellent WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin.

I am bored of tormenting myself, conjuring up full blown blog posts, pouring over non-existent Adsense revenues and analyzing traffic statistics so I have started a Tumblelog. There is something very appealing about Kottke’s definition of a Tumblelog as ‘a quick and dirty stream of consciousness.’ A Tumblelog can be a short, snappy blog and can also aggregate different RSS feeds (Google Shared Stuff and Items, del.icio.us, last.fm, Flickr and even this blog)....

There is currently no utility to migrate existing blog content to django. However, conversion of an existing WordPress blog is pretty straightforward. Firstly, simply export the following tables from the WordPress database using phpMyAdmin wp_posts wp_comments wp_terms wp_term_taxonomy wp_term_relationships Import the tables into the django database. Then run the following SQL statements which migrate posts, comments and categories and assume a WordPress 2.3 schema and a blank django blog. If you have already created content in django, minor changes will be needed....

The problem with installing typo is that, during the research for hints and tips to get the software installed, configured and running on a shared server environment at Bluehost, you Google across like-minded obsessives individuals who have also successfully installed typo in 30 seconds flat. These people are technical types who sneer at PHP and lie awake at night, worrying about Ruby’s scalability. These geeks tend to be obsessive characters who have now tired of typo and have subsequently migrated to a brand new exciting platform called django....

I have upgraded this blog to the recently released WordPress 2.3. However, I have deep rooted concerns that the new tagging functionality will simply overload my tiny brain. The WordPress upgrade went smoothly enough although the editor now reports a missing table (wp_post2cat) which is slightly irritating. Also, I sense increasing disquiet amongst some long standing, intelligent and loyal WordPress users so I took the precaution of installing YABP (Yet Another Blog Platform)....

I’m not normally a sucker for these free, pyramid style, link exchange schemes to drive more traffic to your blog but as simply everyone is not just talking about it but actually doing it, I thought I’d better add BlogRush to this blog. Now, I must hurry into town and join the lengthy queues at Northern Rock to withdraw my 1 million pounds life savings. To be honest, I think this media fuelled panic is a little overblown and as I have a contrarian investing style, I have just purchased £5,000 worth of NRK shares at £3....

I like Robert Scoble. While I don’t always agree with him and I have a love-hate relationship with his laugh, his blog is worth reading and he posts some varied and interesting videos but one thing is obvious. The guy has a real passion for technology and writing. On occasions, he is subjected to vitriolic comments, hurtful criticism and abuse that is completely unjustified but he calmly takes it all in his stride and rarely retaliates....

One of the reasons I decided to put Adsense on this blog was out of sheer curiosity. There are plenty of Google sponsored case studies available from American shoe shops that significantly increased sales and revenues using Adsense. Successful blogger John Chow is totally and refreshingly transparent with all his various revenue streams but I didn’t have a clue what income (if any) a small-time blogger might expect. So, here - drum roll, please - are the revenue figures for this blog for the first 3 months...

‘My name is Norman and I am a blogoholic.’ Two years ago, I started this blog purely as an experiment to see what all the fuss was about. Two years ago, I didn’t even know what blogging was. I certainly didn’t expect that I would still be doing it two years later. I didn’t anticipate that I would subsequently play with themes, plug-ins, spend money on a domain, migrate to my own WordPress blog and eventually add Adsense....