I am about to embark on migrating this blog from WordPress to Django-Mingus because I simply can’t stand the WordPress ‘Compose Post’ interface (if you can call it that). This exciting move comes less than two weeks after I spontaneously decided to ditch Habari after the lack of a functional ‘Auto-Save’ plugin caused me to lose 17 minutes work. You may say ‘I’m reading this in my preferred RSS reader so please don’t bother me with such minutiae’....
One of the reasons for the reduced blogging frequency, Kenneth, is that I spend every waking hour devoting time to the thorny problem of monetizing this humble blog. Previously, I experimented with Adsense but sadly the revenue stream was insufficient to enable me to retire. I am now pleased to announce the results of my research and contemplations. Do nothing. Absolutely nothing. Be patient. Wait. Don’t get frustrated. Just wait....
Rich Manalang is taking a back seat and suspending some but not all of his online activities which is an interesting exercise I will follow as it unfolds. Or, rather I won’t, because he won’t be blogging about it. I suppose I could always email him at work. I suspect Google Buzz was the final nail in his Web coffin. It certainly was for me. The privacy issues, the multiple, loud and prolonged orgasms from the Technorati, the same old avatars gradually showing up in my ‘Friends’ list quickly followed by the immediate same sense of ‘Emperors New Clothes’ and the inevitable post coital cigarette: ‘How was it for you, darling ?...
Some of the varied and bizarre keyword searches leading visitors to this site merely confirm this blog is the ramblings of a confused madman. Here is a selection from the start of the year ‘dyslexic blog’ - curiously spelled correctly. ‘crucifixion blog’ - listen United are in debt and suffering a dip in form but don’t do anything hasty now. ‘why linux will never’ - come on, you simply can’t leave me dangling like that....
That was the year that was. Statistics for 2009 with the comparative numbers for 2008 in brackets. Summary 29,901 visits (43,732) 39,545 page views (63,095) 1.32 pages per visit (1.44) Average time on site - 48 seconds (54 secs) 91.2% new visits (90.6%) Search Engines Google - 22,627 (32,830) Yahoo - 381 (704) Bing - 168 (N/A) AOL - 128 (229) Ask - 115 (195) Referrers identi.ca - 575 (229) avc....
This conversation didn’t actually take place but it could have. Last week, friends and I were discussing µblogging in the pub. Well not µblogging exactly but two ladies had recently discovered Facebook and were talking about the pros and cons of this wonderful social network. One lady said: ‘Oh and another thing - I really don’t like the ‘Jenny is…’ status update. I just don’t get it.' The other lady replied ‘Yeah - that bit is stupid....
I have experimented at various times with both Tumblr and Posterous which are hosted blog services. I tend to view them as useful services for a scrapbook style blog, a linkblog, a lifestream or even a fully fledged blog. If I was starting a blog today, I would probably use one or the other. Posterous, in particular, has been getting a lot of coverage recently and I like the ease of use, the ‘Post by Email’ facility and continue to follow developments with interest....
‘Anyone suffering from the desire to communicate what they are doing or thinking every minute of the day in fewer than 140 characters is best described as a twat.’ Janet Street Porter calling me a ’twat’. Possibly my proudest moment. I prefer to define µblogging as ‘an infinite byte stream of inane drivel’ but I also enjoyed Stephen Fry’s post on the same subject: ‘40% of Twitter is “pointless babble”, which means of course that a full 60% of Twitter discourse is NOT pointless babble, which is disappointing....
Early Jurassic - Mum takes you to playgroup, kicking and screaming and your friends are forced upon you. Free milk at 11 am. Cretaceous - Primary school. You go round to Robert’s for tea and Robert comes round to your house for tea. Painfully shy in female company. Middle Monolithic - Secondary school - you hang out with the kids who play football and avoid those who threaten you with knives at the bus stop....
17 August 2005 - Started life on Blogger. 12 October 2005 - Moved to self-hosted Blogger 13 November 2005 - Moved to hosted WordPress.com. 30 September 2006 - Purchased domain name and moved to self-hosted WordPress.org 01 July 2007 - Adsense appears. 29 August 2007 - One of many crises of confidence where I nearly shut down the blog and deleted all content. 19 January 2008 - Adsense disappears. 15 February 2008 - Moved from WordPress to Habari....