Month: November 2007

Micro-blogging

I’ve found that the two most useful benefits of having this thing are (mostly) that I can start to solidify ideas in my own head, possibly for later reference, and (tangentially) that it can spur conversation with friends, either online or in real life. Both are rather rewarding.

A lot of times, I come across something that I think is worth noting, but I don’t have enough of a grasp on it to dash off 500 or so words. I just want to make note of it, to get it out of my head and somewhere where I know it might do some good.

There are times when I just want to whip off a one-liner (possibly with a link) and send it out to the world. I realized a long time ago, however, that in the context of a blog (or journal or whatever this is), that that could be very annoying. People might get notified by RSS every time I did that and would get very sick of me. Or, at the very least, on this page, one line posts take up way more screen real estate than the one line.

My solution to the nuisance problems of the one-liner was to batch a bunch of them up and post them as [bullet posts](http://flying-squirrel.livejournal.com/tag/bullets%21). It seemed like a nice compromise.

These days, however, there are whole web 2.0 businesses dedicated to getting people to posting one-liners. Notably [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/), but also [Jaiku](http://www.jaiku.com/), [Pownce](http://www.pownce.com/) and others. Kind of instant messenger status messages gone public. With friends lists and crap.

As I hinted with my [Facebook post](http://www.flyingsquirrel.ca/index.php/2007/11/05/dear-facebook-please-try-harder/), the idea of having to set up yet more social networks on yet more sites does not thrill me. I don’t have a problem getting a Twitter or Jaiku account, but I want to use the tools I want to use, not the tools the masses deem the most popular.

I’m kinda particular that way. I’ve been noticing it’s becoming a recurring theme this month.

At some point in the near future, I’m going to figure out a new way to do the Twitterish micro-blogging thing. I’m not going to do it, though, until I have a way to surface the data on my own site, and other places where I’m already spamming people. I kinda want to make it seamless, and I want to store history for it on my own server, so I have it even if the Web 2.0 bubble bursts and all (or even just some of) these ridiculous things go away.

My current plan is to do what I have been doing: bullets! posts. I’d use a micro-blogging service like Twitter, maybe, and have my blog fetch updates over the course of the day and post it as a bulleted list.

And I’d probably wrap the [linkblog](http://del.icio.us/flyingsquirrel/linkblog) into that, because it’s really the same sort of idea.

I’d also want to find a way to propagate the one-liner to any site that has a micro-blogging paradigm and where there are people who might be interested in reading. Like Facebook and its status messages.

Of course, Facebook being Facebook doesn’t make that easy, but it looks like there’s a way to do it…

That’s the plan, anyway. Not sure if I’ll get around to it this month, but I think I’m getting there–conceptually, if nothing else.

Presqu’ile

[Presqu’ile Provincial Park](http://www.ontarioparks.com/English/pres.html) is one of my favourite places.

My mom had me drive out there to Brighton today for an art and craft show and sale. And while I’m not a huge fan of that sort of thing, it was actually a rather nice craft show with reasonably-priced locally hand-made stuff (unlike the usual made in China crap you usually get at craft shows), and the art gallery had the artists there showing they’re stuff (not that I talked to them of course).

The nice thing, though, was walking through the park between the craft show and the art gallery at the old lighthouse. It was a beautiful day, and there are more leaves on the trees here. We saw two different species of woodpecker, one of which was [very large](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pileated_Woodpecker). It was all nice and calm and peaceful and I got to talk to my mom about stuff.

My plan for today was to take the camera and post pictures of Belleville and Presqu’ile and stuff, but I ended up leaving the camera at home. So this is all you get.

Diwali

I’m back in Belleville.

The drive back wasn’t that great. Getting onto Highway 8 was a challenge. I think people have started Christmas shopping or something. Between K-W and Toronto, it was rainy and busy and not very fun at all. So I went up on the 407.

Seeing fireworks going off in the subdivisions along the highway wasn’t as much of a surprise as it might have been. I’d driven that way during [Diwali](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diwali) before.

The first time was a surprise. One doesn’t generally expect to see fireworks going off all over the place throughout the suburbs. I made a mental note to figure out what the heck was going on that time, and the Internet provided the answer. The Indian festival of light. Who knew?

I drove straight to Belleville without stopping, listening to Doctor Who audios. [Valhalla](http://www.bigfinish.com/96-doctor-who—valhalla-469-p.asp) was pretty good, with a companion-less 7th Doctor. Personally, I kinda expected more from [Marc Platt](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Platt), but I enjoyed it. Giant, intelligent termites in space. Who doesn’t love that?

I’m not in Belleville for any particular reason. Although, as this post might demonstrate, I could probably use the downtime.

Sarah Jane Adventures

I remember when I was a kid, just starting to get into Doctor Who and just starting to read Doctor Who Magazine regularly, that I was a bit surprised at how incredibly popular [Sarah Jane Smith](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Jane_Smith) was among fans. People would write in about how she was so much better than any current companion. I remember a cartoon that didn’t seem to have a punchline at all, nor did it make any sense to me. It was just a picture of a boy sitting at the end of his bed, hugging his knees, staring up at the poster of Sarah Jane he had hanging over his headboard.

It didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. To me, she was maybe a little silly and annoying, but otherwise totally average as far as companions go. If I was going to choose a companion to obsess over, it would be someone like Nyssa or Zoe. They were *smart*. And cute and demure, of course. Certainly not confrontational. And not *empowered*, either, although 13-year-old me didn’t have any particular concept of what that meant.

Sarah Jane makes are more sense to me now. Because of any of the companions, if there was any of them who you could imagine going off and having adventures of her (or his, for the rare case) own, it would be Sarah. [Nyssa](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyssa_of_Traken), while I still think she’s wonderful, ended up an interstellar chronic care nurse. [Zoe](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoe_Heriot), while we’re not entirely sure, is probably back living her life as a space librarian. (♥)

And that’s exactly what happened with Sarah Jane Smith. She’s not just having exciting adventures as an investigative reporter, she’s fighting monsters and saving the world, just like the Doctor.

And that’s pretty much what [The Sarah Jane Adventures](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sarah_Jane_Adventures) are about.

It’s a kids’ show, but it actually works fairly well. Doctor Who is nominally a kids’ show, although it’s traditionally aimed above the mark. SJA is on the kids’ channel of the BBC and is aimed squarely at kids. Besides Sarah, the principal cast is kids and it’s much lighter.

For a kids’ show, though, it’s surprisingly well written. While not quite to the same level as Doctor Who, the stories have definite emotional impact. It’s a bit silly and light and fun, but it still feels like it *matters*.

Compare and contrast with Torchwood.

One thing I noticed about the show while we were watching it: the writers seem a bit less reluctant to drop in references to the original series or lift wholesale obscure monsters from the new series. I have a theory about this, too. It’s the kids.

When you present adults with things they don’t understand, they get all flustered and frustrated and annoyed. Obscure references to things that they haven’t heard of are a turn off. Kids, on the other hand, take it all in stride.

What’s more than that, it’s the kids that are likely to pour over Doctor Who Magazine, the Annuals, and the new monster reference books they’ve been releasing. They know this stuff now. And putting sly little references into their show rewards their efforts.

I think it’s nerdily cool too, but they’ve shown considerably more restraint in the past for this sort of thing. I think they’re doing it for the kids.

Anyway, I hope they bring the show over here. I don’t think CBC is co-producing. Maybe it’ll show up on BBC Kids or something. Regardless, if you get a chance and you have any interest in Doctor Who at all, give it a try. I promise it’s better than Torchwood.

Even *with* the sonic lipstick.

Blogging tools

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned before that I use [Markdown](http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/) for blogging. I love Markdown. It’s awesome. If I had my way, I’d use it for all my writing.

After spending years making web pages, I can’t be bothered writing HTML anymore. I hate WYSIWYG editors–they’re way too fiddly and distracting and it’s all too easy to end up with inconsistencies.

The way it works is I type up my blog entry into WordPress in Markdown and it saves it in Markdown, exactly as I typed it. It only converts it to HTML when it’s displaying it. This is sane and reasonable and obviously the way it should be.

I’ve been trying to find some sort of offline blogging tool. Web apps are great and everything, but I don’t trust them. I’ve lost too much work to closed tabs and browser windows.

I’ve always really liked [Semagic](http://semagic.sourceforge.net/) for Livejournal…

Uh, hold on, there goes the point of this post. Apparently (as I’m reading that link, having just retrieved it), Semagic supports the MetaWeblog API now. So I can use that. Or at least I’ll have to try it when I’m on Windows at work tomorrow.

Huhn.

Anyway, this was going to be a rant about how while there are many, many offline blogging tools on Windows, including and especially [Windows Live Writer](http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/), and most of them have an HTML code editing mode, they all very irritatingly strip the whitespace before saving.

Strip the whitespace! That’s outrageous! While HTML parsers have no need for whitespace, people coding HTML absolutely do. And it’s part of the syntax in Markdown.

Semagic doesn’t strip whitespace, though. So I’ll have to give that a try.

Well, that turned out better than I thought it would.