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A couple of Oracle bloggers (Laurent and Yas) are experimenting with Disqus on their blogs but Tim Hall has expressed some reservations about committing his blog comments to a hosted service outside of his control.

Jake Mckee is also taken by Disqus but eloquently expresses similar concerns about 'data ownership and presentation'.

I understand (and used to vehemently share) both Tim and Jake's reservations. It does seem perfectly natural to want all your blog content stored in your MySql database on your server. What if Disqus servers are slow and unresponsive or worse, even down ? Your blog would be accessible but your comments wouldn't. What is Disqus isn't around next year ?

How do you unlock your comments from the Disqus repository and migrate them back into your blog ? How do you backup your comments ? There is an export utility but, as Jake points out, currently no easy way to import the data back into the blog.

Having comments hosted on your own blog is entirely logical. Obviously, blog comments belong with the blog content. Without the associated comments, the blog is like a half-written book.

You manage the blog comments. You back them up. You moderate them. The blog comments obviously belong to you. All of them. Yes - even those 1,729 spam comments, you have to scan for the odd 'false positive'.

However, if I leave a comment on a Harry's disqus enabled blog, my comment is displayed on the original blog. The comment text that I typed in is no longer stored in Harry's database table for 'comments'. Worse, my comment is now simultaneously displayed on a Disqus community forum without my prior knowledge or approval.

But who actually owns that comment on Harry's blog. I thought of the words and typed them into the comment box. Do I own the comment ? Or does Harry ? Does it even matter ?

As an aside, having used the service for a week, I no longer view Disqus purely as a comment tracking service. I view Disqus as a 'content output' tracking service.

For example, I am now starting to ask idiotic questions and log issues on the Disqus forums. These posts are not clearly not comments (but original content) but I still want to track them (and, more importantly, responses to them) in my Disqus dashboard alongside my blog comments.

This blog used to run on WordPress but now runs on Habari which is a blogging platform currently being developed by a set of very talented people.

Undoubtedly, the number of developers and users running Habari is far fewer than the massive community using WordPress. Similarly, the number of available themes and plugins available for Habari is relatively small (albeit growing daily) and dwarfed by the vast, almost bewildering wealth of add-ons and the extensive range of themes available for Wordpress.

However, this isn't a bad thing because it forces anyone contemplating a migration to Habari to think carefully about the core plugins that are truly essential to adminster your blog and valuable for your readers.

One such plugin (for me) was an equivalent of the Wordpress sitemaps plugin. Rick Cockrum published a excellent summary of why an automatically generated sitemap is useful.

When I first configured and activated the sitemap plugin for Habari, nothing happened. No sitemap file was generated. Initially, I thought that maybe the sitemap was only generated after a post was published. So I published a new post. Still nothing happened..

I posted a enquiry on the Habari users mailing list. In an effort to 'help' the Habari community, I even opened a ticket (bug request).

Then, I made an amazing discovery when an anonymous author was forced to waste some of his valuable time to close my 'bug report':

The plugin is not intended to generate a file, rather to serve the sitemap xml document when requested.

So, it transpires that the Habari sitemaps plugin doesn't actually generate a file. The sitemap is simply a URL which is dynamically built, on request.

Now I believe this is a much neater solution. No need for the user to specify where the file should be placed. Less work for the plugin to do. Much cleaner. Much simpler. Credit to the author, Andrew da Silva.

The lesson I learned was that just because something has always been done that way doesn't necessarily mean it can only be done that way.

P.S. If you're worried about the performance impact of needlessly rebuilding a sitemap, on the fly for 234,432 entries, don't worry - some clever individual has already implemented a cache for the sitemap data.

1. Disqus lets you easily track all comments you have left scattered over the blogosphere.
2. Disqus allows you to administer comments on multiple blogs from a single dashboard.
3. Disqus has built-in effective protection against comment spam.
4. Disqus provides tight integration with Blogger, WordPress, Typepad, MT and Tumblr.
5. Disqus provides Javascript code for every other CMS.
6. Disqus supports threaded comments.
7. Disqus allows you to fix that embarrassing typo by editing comments.
8. Disqus ‘eat their own dog food’.
9. Disqus is free to use. 10.Disqus is used on over 4,000 blogs.
10. Disqus lets you subscribe to individual comment threads.
11. Disqus supports gravatars.
12. Disqus lets you rate comments you like (and dislike).
13. Disqus provides an RSS feed for all your comments.
14. Disqus styles comments in keeping with your blog.
15. Disqus is configurable and extensible.
16. Disqus is written in Django.
17. Disqus treats an email reply to an comment thread as as additional comment.
18. Disqus is under active development.
19. Disqus listen to user feedback.
20. Disqus offers an API so you can write your own applications.
21. Disqus allows you to use your OpenId credentials.
22. Disqus offer unbelievably helpful and prompt support.
23. Disqus provide excellent widgets.
24. Disqus supports multiple moderators and a range of moderation options.

Met up with some friends last night in a very busy Freemasons Arms in Covent Garden.

Les Battersby (some bloke from Coronation Street apparently) was drinking in there. Les kindly and repeatedly passed our rounds of '6 Spitfire and 2 Guinness' into our little alcove as we enjoyed Liverpool versus Arsenal.

'So, you're in Coronation Street then ?'
'Yeah'
'Red or blue ?'
'Blue.'
'Oh.'

There is a memorial plaque on the northbound M40 motorway in Oxfordshire.

Out of morbid curiosity, I pulled over this morning to pay my respects and read the inscription:

Do not stand at my grave and weep
Bring a picnic here instead
Just be careful opening the driver's door
Because that's what I did and now I'm dead

British Airways, shocked at missing out last years trophy, have launched a superlative campaign for 2008.

Agency: Itchy & Scraatchi. Cost: £25,000 found in a digger after the completion of T5. Gate 3 - Newcastle airport.

Together we can work wonders

Off to a gentle modest start.

Together we can get people talking about T5

That is certainly true.

Together we can make T5 world famous

Some wag has added a prefix of 'in'.

Together we can keep people smiling

Most people smile, dumped in Vancouver 17 hours late with no clean shirts and underpants, don't they ?

Together we can keep things moving

Well most things with the exception of the baggage carousels.

...and the final, closing, crowning glory.

Together we can get off to a flying start

Honestly, if you made it up, people wouldn't believe you.

Five months ago, I experimented with Disqus powered comments when this blog was running on WordPress. The trial was rather short-lived because I was disappointed that Disqus wasn't able to fully integrate with all the existing blog comments. Importing comments still isn't possible but Disqus says this feature is being worked on.

However, I have decided to reinstate Disqus for the following reasons:

• Disqus recently added integration with FriendFeed so any contributions I make on Disqus powered blogs will also be visible in my FriendFeed stream.
• I am encountering an ever increasing number of blogs using Disqus.
• I am hoping Disqus will help to trigger more comments, interest and interaction on the blog.
• Disqus provide a nice combination widget providing 'Popular', 'Recent Comments' and 'People'.
• The most recent release of Disqus included a raft of changes including support for Open ID.
• Disqus is being actively developed and, more importantly, listen to their users.

I still have some reservations that the couple of articles with decent comment threads included replies to earlier comments (which are no longer visible) so we are literally starting from zero. However, hopefully some comments will appear soon and the tabs will actually display something !

Aside: Unfortunately, adopting Disqus means I will no longer be using Matt Read's recently released Defensio plugin which is excellent and highly recommended for any Habari bloggers wading through a torrent of comment spam.

Its no good. I simply can't go on. I can no longer summon up the enthusiasm for blogging.

All the warnings from the blogging 101 courses over the years have proven to be very true.

I foolishly dipped my toe into Twitter and then FriendFeed but it's no good I simply can't go on with this any longer.

I can't bear to miss my children growing up just because 'Facebook is so last year, Dad.'

I can't bear to talk to my wife and be abrupt and terse simply because I am now limited to 140 characters.

The time has finally come for me to declare complete 100%, unadulterated blogging and Web 2.0 bankruptcy.

Thank you all from the pit of my burning, nauseous stomach for your comments during the past years.

Tomorrow I will resign from Oracle Corporation and will devote the rest of my life to my one true love.

Learning to play guitar well enough to cover 'Country Feedback' by R.E.M. Wish me luck.

Peace, love, empathy

The byte stream that is 'Blog in Isolation'.

Oracle Corporation - Redwood Shores, near California.

Oracle today announced the release of a major maintenance release of version 11g of the companies flagship database server product.

Charles Phillips took the world by surprise by making a major announcement a full six months ahead of Oracle Open World as he addressed the media (including 17 carefully selected representatives from the blogging community):

'This release is the culmination of years of engineering effort aimed at delivering deterministic and reliable performance with the very highest levels of throughput. Oracle 11gR7 offers proven scalability for all Oracle applications including universal support for third party (aka legacy) applications while simultaneously reducing the cost of ownership and maximising the return on investment for all our customers.'

'Oracle are delighted to announce the immediate availability of Release 11.1.0.7.0 which is now available for every single platform (well apart from OpenVMS).'

'The release includes the productisation of a previously, hidden parameter known only to highly paid consultants. Previously, the configuration setting could only be invoked by dressing up in long white robes, waving a magic wand while dancing over sheep's entrails and simultaneously chanting holy, mystical incantations. The parameter previously known as '_GO_FASTER' is now available as a documented SPFILE parameter with possible values of 'FALSE, SAFE, CHEAP, TRUE or TURBO.'

Wall Street analysts were staggered at the news and, as soon as they sober up after yet another Web 2.0 lunch, they will give their carefully considered verdict but the Oracle stock price is expected to rocket following the press release.

Oracle also hopes to have a back-port for Oracle 10g and the legacy Oracle 9i database server available by the end of the month.

We were the best team. People say over a season you finish where you deserve to, but we didn't deserve to finish behind Manchester United. We were everyones second team.

Terry McDermott on Newcastle's near miss in 1996.

Just a reminder of the final League positions for the 1995-1996 season.