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Category: Writing

Posts about writing, editing, publishing, and blogging

Blogging from Beyond the Grave

April 26, 2007 • • Leave a comment

When I was but a newbie blogger, I wrote about listening to the audiobook version of Pepys’ Diary, in which Samuel Pepys wrote about his life as a Royal Navy administrator in seventeenth century London.

At the time I was new to blogging and found myself thinking about the old-fashioned diaries that provide historians with glimpses of times past and wondering if these diarists would have done things differently as bloggers. I imagined Old Sam Pepys having a blog and wondering what it would be like.

Today, I learned that Pepys does have a blog (h/t to infobong for the link) complete with RSS feeds so readers can subscribe to his daily entries. From what I remember, I doubt he’d want his wife subscribing, though.

Pepys posts entries from his diary each day. Today, we get to read his entry from April 26, 1664.

Fascinating stuff and an interesting way to experience literature.

Mercy Mercy Meme (The Listology)

April 18, 2007 • • 3 Comments

It’s high time I caught up with this little homework assignment George left me last week. It is the biggest meme I’ve ever seen…

FOODOLOGY

Q. What is your salad dressing of choice?
A. Olive oil and vinegar

Q. What is your favorite fast food restaurant?
A. Thundercloud

Q. What is your favorite sit-down restaurant?
A. Right now? Fonda San Miguel

Q. On average, what size tip do you leave at a restaurant?
A. 20%, 21%, whatever it takes

Q. What food could you eat every day for two weeks and not get sick off of?
A. Bread. I would make a model prisoner since bread and water are two of my favorite things

Q. What is your favorite type of gum?
A. I was required to renounce all gum when I became a teacher

TECHNOLOGY

Q. What is your wallpaper on your computer?
A. At home: this

At work, this view from our hotel last summer:

Q. How many televisions are in your house?
A. Two

BIOLOGY

Q. What’s your best feature?
A. I never directed a feature, only a few shorts.

Q. Have you ever had anything removed from your body?
A. Wisdom teeth and some front teeth when I was a kid

Q. Which of your five senses do you think is keenest?
A. Maybe I have a sixth sense that’s good for something

Q. When was the last time you had a cavity?
A. A few years ago

Q. What is the heaviest item you lifted last?
A. Forty pounds of toxic dog food

Q. Have you ever been knocked unconscious?
A. Yes. I’m told I went skiing in Colorado in 1991. There is, however, no proof of this.

BULLSHITOLOGY

Q. If it were possible, would you want to know the day you were going to die?
A. Only if I could do something about it

Q. Is love for real?
A. Yes. Can I get a witness over here?

Q. If you could change your first name, what would you change it to?
A. Heironymous or Wolfgang, I go back and forth

Q. What color do you think looks best on you?
A. Blue

Q. Have you ever swallowed a non-food item by mistake?
A. By mistake, no. In fact, I swallowed an ibuprofen just this morning

Q. Have you ever saved someone’s life?
A. I’m told I have.

Q. Has someone ever saved yours?
A. I don’t know.

DAREOLOGY

Q. Would you walk naked for a half mile down a public street for $100,000?
A. Perhaps out in the country

Q. Would you kiss a member of the same sex for $100?
A. Prostitution isn’t my thing

Q. Would you allow one of your little fingers to be cut off for $200,000?
A. No

Q. Would you never blog again for $50,000?
A. No, but someday I might never blog again for free

Q. Would you pose nude in a magazine for $250,000?
A. No.

Q. Would you drink an entire bottle of hot sauce for $1,000?
A. Hell, I might do that just for the bottle of hot sauce

Q. Would you, without fear of punishment, take a human life for $1,000,000?
A. Never

Q. Would you give up watching television for a year for $25,000?
A. Can I download episodes of Lost and watch them on an iPod?

Q. Give up MySpace forever for $30,000?
A. Yup

DUMBOLOGY

Q: What is in your left pocket?
A. iPod, memory stick, chapstick, contact lens solution

Q: Is Napoleon Dynamite actually a good movie?
A. I liked it.

Q: Do you have hardwood or carpet in your house?
A. No

Q: Do you sit or stand in the shower?
A. Stand

Q: Could you live with roommates?
A. Not anymore

Q: How many pairs of flip-flops do you own?
A. None since I blew out the last pair, stepped on a pop top, and had to cruise on back home…

Q: Last time you had a run-in with the cops?
A. I run into them all the time at work

Q: What do you want to be when you grow up?
A. This

LASTOLOGY

Q: Friend you talked to?
A. One of the other teachers at school

Q: Last person you called?
A. The vet

RANDOMOLOGY

Q: First place you went this morning?
A. The vet

Q: What can you not wait to do?
A. Finish my next novel

Q: What’s the last movie you saw?
A. Clue

Q: Are you a friendly person?
A. I try

Now that this towering meme is finished I tag (with humble apologies masking mischievous glee) my wife, Chris, and Danigirl.

Update: Keeping the meme alive – Danigirl and Chris.

This Thing of Darkness

March 8, 2007 • • Leave a comment

I realize it’s been nearly a year since I posted one of my old short stories. Strangely, “This Thing of Darkness” is one of the first I ever posted, back during an older incarnation of this site. It was originally published on a now-defunct online literary journal called TheSoundOfWhat?

I wrote it in 1997 when I was living in south Austin, and it’s a south Austin kind of tale about bad neighbors, roommates and a giant mushroom.

Like many stories, “This Thing of Darkness” contains elements that are based on my own experiences. In this case, the more fantastic elements are the ones I didn’t make up. Everything about the fungus is true.

You can find “This Thing of Darkness”on the Sories & Poems page or link directly from here.

Geeking Out for Greyhounds (or, My First and Probably Only WordPress Plugin)

February 12, 2007 • • 2 Comments

Each week, when I do Weekend Hound Blogging, I insert the following at the end of the post:

[saveagrey]

This requires me to find an old post, copy and then paste the text into the new post. Surely, thought I, there must be an easier way, which got me thinking about trying to create a plugin to do that for me.

I studied some of the simpler in-post plugins I already use and tried to decipher the PHP.

I read “Writing a Plugin”, studied the “Plugin API” page and “Plugin API/Hooks”on the WordPress site, as well as “How to Write a Simple WordPress Plugin” on Asymptomatic. Then, I started putting together a PHP file, tinkering and playing until I eventually had a plugin that allows me to type:

[ saveagrey ]

(without the spaces) and have this appear:

[saveagrey]

The cool thing is that it can be easily changed so that the text and links go anywhere or say anything, which might make this useful for anyone who occasionally wants some message at the end of certain posts such as vote for so-and-so at the end of all political posts or something to that effect.

This little exercise was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed trying to decipher the PHP since I know nothing about that language. Ultimately it became something of a puzzle that could only be solved through logic. When I figured out the solutions to the problems I encountered, I was rewarded with something that will save me time and possibly be of use to anyone who uses WordPress and wants to help save retired racing greyhounds.

So, there it is. My first plugin: Save a Greyhound (click to go to the download page)

WordPress 2.1 Easter Eggs

February 11, 2007 • • Leave a comment

This is kind of stupid: Very useful features are hidden in WordPress 2.1 as “easter eggs”

Via Weblog Tools Collection and ReviewSaurus, I have learned that hitting ‘alt v’ (shift alt v in Firefox) while in the post editor brings up a variety of useful features such as underlining, changing text color, insert custom characters (©, œ, ü, ∞, ½, etc.) as well as some features forpasting from Word (which is useful for me since I sometimes write my posts in word) or pasting as plain text. You can also create headings and the like.

These are great features and shouldn’t be hidden. I wonder what else we’re missing out on.

Update: The Visualize Advanced Features plugin makes all of this visible.

WordPress 2.1?

February 1, 2007 • • Leave a comment

Blogging about blogging is close to the lowest form of blogging, but blogging about the behind the scenes aspects of a blog is like watching someone else’s cat spit up hairballs on the carpet, so as of this post, that kind of blogging will occur on my other blog, aptly named Coyote Mercury Test Blog, mainly because I’m using it to see if I can actually execute the upgrade to 2.1 and to find out if my theme and plugins will work.

If you’re using WordPress and considering the upgrade, you may find it useful or interesting. If not, you won’t.

In the future, I’ll probably use it for testing plugins, theme modifications, and any future upgrades. I doubt I’ll post there regularly.

Are Journalists Bloggers?

January 26, 2007 • • 4 Comments

There’s been talk about letting bloggers report from the floor of the Texas lege, an issue that’s coming up in other states as well, which has sparked some interesting posts about whether or not bloggers ought to be considered journalists and granted similar access. I followed the online discussion from Off the Kuff to “Are bloggers real journalists?” on Texas Politics, a mainstream media blog. The post noted that many journalists were taking up blogging and referred to the phenomenon in which old media co-opts new media.

I left a comment under the clever alias of JB (the name my good twin once went by but that’s a post for another time) wondering if journalists should be considered real bloggers. I pondered the wealth of smart ass comments along the lines of mainstream media blogs being nothing but the Green Day of the blogosphere. I thought about how mainstream media bloggers probably get paid to blog, can openly blog at work, still can’t say whatever they want, don’t have to build their readerships from scratch. I wondered if they could post pictures of their pets or throw bling into their sidebars, etc etc.

Seriously (sort of) though, it’s an interesting question. The most exciting thing about blogs, the ones that compete with news organizations anyway, is that they are truly independent voices, beholden to no corporate masters. I’m sure that this is what scares so many people, but I consider that the blogs’ greatest asset.

There seem to be some who think that only journalists have credibility, but the fact is, blogs live and die by their credibility and personal standards in a world that can be far less forgiving than one in which the medium is supported by monthly subscriptions and high dollar ad revenue.

I generally don’t read blogs affiliated with major news organizations. When I want news, I go to newspapers. When I want commentary, analysis, advocacy or humor, I go first to blogs – independent blogs – written by passionate, funny, interesting people who are often working for free (that last is probably the seed that will one day kill off the notion of professional columnists as much as I like my Leonard Pitts and George Will).

The personal and independent voices that are the bulk of online media have a heart-beating-to-that-iron-string quality that seems more honest and also more American (in a Ralph Waldo Emerson sort of way) than corporate blogging. So, to tackle the original question: are bloggers journalists? Yeah, some of them. Are journalists bloggers? Not so much. They strike me as journalists who blog, which is good thing. They should.

Regarding the bigger issue, that of access, this is a no-brainer. The mainstream media under-covers state legislatures. Why not let bloggers fill the void, and why not let those bloggers be people who are willing to bet their personal reputations on the worthiness of what they produce be it commentary, news, analysis, satire or any combination of the above? Blogs represent not just a new technological platform for writing, but a new style that doesn’t necessarily follow the exact traditions of journalism but still informs us about our political process.

With journalists blogging and bloggers journalisting, we all benefit from the increased light shone on our politics.

All of us except perhaps our politicians, but then that’s kind of the point too.

The Baddest Star in the Blogosphere

December 12, 2006 • • Leave a comment

Apparently there are awards for blogs. The blogs that people actually read, anyway. The ones that are closer to the bright center of the blogosphere.

This year, there is an award for best science blog and the Bad Astronomer has summoned his legions and asked them to encourage their own readers to vote for The Bad Astronomy Blog. There is intense rivalry between the astronomer and the biologist who runs Pharyngula who feels he should win.

I’m voting for the Bad Astronomy Blog because it’s one of my daily reads and it keeps me connected with a passion I’ve had all my life. I encourage you to do likewise, but regardless of who wins, I feel lucky to have found out about Pharyngula, which is a very cool science blog and will probably become a daily read as well.

The best thing about this? Everyone may vote more than once. I suspect even the dead are allowed to vote. Of course what should I expect in this outlaw region that is the blogosphere.

My Wife Presses Some Words

November 10, 2006 • • 2 Comments

My wife has moved from Blogger to WordPress. Check out her new cyber home at http://www.losbrushes.com/blog. It looks pretty good. Okay, I admit, I did some of the code modifyin’ myself, and I also took the picture on the header. The fact that I now get to fart around with the code on two blogs makes me happy.

And, yes, we’re playing with our blogs at 9:30 on a Friday night. What can I say? We’re perfect for each other.