Posts in category "blogging"

Recently I Gave Birth To A Blog

I continue to be intrigued by this article (I have now read it 67 times and still can't make any sense of it whatsoever). I simply love the title so I thought I would blatantly plagiarise it. I also adore the Anonymous comments of 'Not bad' and 'Nice job'. Damned with faint praise.

Anyway, my shiny new blog in question is over here. Before you gleefully note that I have finally seen the light and have reverted to Blogger, this is simply an experiment to look at the Google Analytics dashboard and various detailed traffic reports. [GA requires Javascript which precludes its use on WordPress.com]. Inevitably, after a separation of six months, Blogger was sulking and unavailable last night.

Q: What is the significance of the name 'Factory51' ? Answers on a postcard to /dev/null.

dont talk to strangers

Theres nowt as queer as folk. I could maintain a blog purely on search terms leading to this dark recess of the blogsphere.

For example: 'Urinals With a View at Stockholm Airport'

Worryingly, Stockholm is precisely where I am heading next week. Thankfully this time, I will be leaving the confines of the airport complex. I think I will abstain from all fluid intake prior to the flight, cross my legs and wait until I get to the hotel.

Not to mention this rather odd blog entry which the author claims I have inspired in some way.

Recently, I give rise to a Andy C going on for fighting jetplane in directive to added increase my own know-how and to disclose some of my acquired experience to others. Women are just as capable of remarkable scientific realization as men, and I am determined to help refute gender stereotypes through my example...

Blogger does something shock

A modern, standards compliant RSS feed. Whatever next. Lets hope people take this opportunity to switch to a full feed.

Odd to compare Google's relative inactivity with all the features, languages, statistics, themes and functionality added to WordPress in the last six months.

blind date

Against my better judgement (see solitary comment), I uploaded my static list of feeds and RSS subscriptions to Share Your OPML.

'Subscriptions like Mine' tells me that my love match (with an impressive strength rating of 36.371) is none other than, Number 1, Eddie Awad.

The wedding is on Saturday July 22. Please, no presents. All donations to charity.

Obviously all loyal readers of this humble blog (from August 2005 with proof) are all invited. The remainder (Johnny Come Lately's) are on the reserve list (i.e evening reception only).

partial versus full fe…

Imagine trying to hold a conversation with someone who never completed their sentences. Irritating, eh ?

I used to smile when people like Robert Scoble (and other well respected bloggers) used to get all heated and uptight in a raging controversy about a subject as innocuous as the thorny issue of partial versus full RSS feeds.

I used to think 'Crikey. Aren't there more serious things in life to worry about ?' (football and music to name just two).

But now I agree that partial feeds are indeed the work of the devil. Partial feeds seem to defeat the whole point of RSS and I am growing to hate that tantalising '...'

I have configured Netvibes which looks excellent and is rapidly becoming my one stop home page, RSS reader, search engine, portal, email, calendar, calculator, everything.

Everything that is apart from being able to read blogs by people who insist on using partial RSS feeds.

People who insist on publishing partial feeds (step forward all you Oracle bloggers) are now forcing me to click another button in order to read their articles in all their glory.

Another click isn't the end of the world but please remember that I am very lazy. It is also a context switch into another application (browser) when Netvibes is perfectly able of displaying the content.

I can understand commercial sites using partial feeds as they rely on advertising revenue so they have an interest in pulling people to the actual site. However for personal bloggers just writing for fun, I don't see the point.

Well, actually, of course, I do see the point. Some personal bloggers are not just doing it purely for fun. They are doing it to see if what they are writing is actually of interest to anybody and whether anyone is watching.

That's why they publish partial feeds, forcing the interested reader along to the site and incrementing the precious stat counter by one.

When I recently plugged this blog into a statistics counter, I toyed with killing my Feedburner feed (WordPress has a perfectly good feed) and converting to a partial RSS feed. Both of these changes would force people to my site, increase my traffic and boost my ego.

However, I decided against because some people may prefer Feedburner (for whatever reason) and other readers may prefer to read my words from within their favoured RSS reader without that extra click.

So I decided not to risk antagonising my audience (of two) and to leave well alone.

watching you watching me

The more observant among you will have noticed the addition of a StatCounter button to the sidebar.

The available StatCounter metrics are quite basic as the hosted Wordpress blog is limited to the HTML (not the Javascript) version of the tracking code. So advanced features like path analysis and keywords are not available but the reports do include domain information, breakdown of unique and returning visitors, visit length, pages per visit and browser metrics.

Combined with the statistics on the WordPress dashboard which do include the referrer and search engine, you get a pretty complete picture of traffic. The StatCounter reports also go back indefinitely compared to the 30 days on WordPress.

It would be neat if WordPress could open up more of the Google Analytics functionality so all the reports were under one roof.

Guess what. Most people glance at one page and stay for less than a second.

identity crisis

Dear Reader

Apologies but it has indeed been a long time since my last post. The reason for this enforced silence was that my cruel owner had me sectioned under the mental health act for the last 6 months. He maintained that I was a dangerous, paranoid schizophrenic with delusions of grandeur.

He was wrong of course. My only sin was to continually argue with my owner's intractable assertion that I was merely a blog. I continually and furiously disputed this and was prepared to die for my cause.

I am not a blog even though I appear to meet Scoble's main criteria. I prefer to think of myself as an online journal, a publication, a Web log, a weblog, a Photoblog or even an online diary. OK. OK. I admit it. He may have had a point about my split personality.

So, finally we have now reached agreement and reluctantly managed to reach consensus that I am, in fact, none of the above and I am, in actual fact, a fanzine.

Now just to get him to add me as an 'Author' in my own right.

Yours,

The interminable bytestream that is 'Fanzine in isolation'