Odds and Ends - ADD edition

They say I have A.D.D. but they just don’t understand.  Oh Look! A chicken!

Dark Room (Windows)
Write Room (Mac)
JDarkroom (Java for Mac, Windows, Linux) 

Easily distracted while writing? How about a return to the good old days of nothing but you, your keyboard and a green-screen monitor. No e-mail, no chat, not even as-you-type spell checking.

 I love it.

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Just who are these people and where are they living?

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Laura Pearle recommends a good article, 'To the average Joe, blogs aren't cutting it" from The Guardian. about the "so what" factor of blogging. Reaffirms my belief that we are all blogging to the choir.

Blogs are also still essentially pull rather than push technologies. Pull technologies (like newsstands) require that one consciously  go to a source for updates (the daily newspaper). Push technologies (like home delivery) send the information (the newspaper) to you. I read my delivered newspaper every day; the newspaper I have to go somewhere to purchase only a few times a week.

Yes, I know RSS feeds go a long way into turning blogs into pushers. But when we teach folks about blogs, do we also teach feed aggregators at the same time? (And why is it so tough to get people to understand the concept behind them?)

This is why my district newsletters will continue to go out via listserv rather than simply appear as a blog entry. 

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What I thought might be the ultimate long-tail topic has been generating some comments. In January, I posted my reminiscences from the early 1960s about a school assembly speaker, Al Bell. I was delighted to read the comments other Iowans made about the profound impact Mr. and Mrs. Bell had on us young Iowans. This blog entry might be the ONLY posting on the topic of Al Bell on the web. although he is mentioned in a couple histories of Iowa schools available online. I hope Russ Wills gets his Al Bell project going!

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Forget your camera? Run out of battery life or memory cards? No worries. Get the e-mail address of other folks on the tour who are planning to upload their vacation photos to the web. This has happened on the last 3-4 tours I've taken.

I suppose about 90% of the pictures of the Eiffel Tower look about the same anyway. Who's to know you didn't take the photo?
  

The LWW having way too good a time with the kayak guides. Phuket 2007

For anyone interested (and I have NO idea why they would be), my Thailand pictures are now online.

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I am still thinking about Tim O"Reilly's proposed Blogger's Code of Conduct.  Puts me in mind of the old adage about laws - those that will follow them don't need them, and those that do need them won't follow them. As much as I am an advocate of free speech, it stops at the front door of the Blue Skunk blog. Anyone posts something that would upset my mother, either in language or topic, it will be deleted and the person posting blocked. The Blue Skunk just must attract a higher-class of readership with very good ethical standards since I don't ever remember receiving any abusive posts (or I am too dumb to recognize them). 

Oh, there has been a Code of Blogging Ethics  (and others writing about them). around for sometime.

And I have my own personal set of guidelines for what I post.  

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Absolutely gorgeous weather weekend here in Minnesota. Can't think of any state that deserves it more after this winter. 

Comments

[Janice Friesen]

"...reaffirms my belief that we are all blogging to the choir."
In my opinion it is OK to be blogging to the choir. I read blogs (when I have time) to inspire myself and think new things. Where else would I be able to read and think about what Jennifer Waggoner, Kathy Sierra, Wil Richardson, or Doug Johnson when I have time?

Now and then I look for blogs with opposite opinions to try to figure out why people are coming up with different conclusions OR blogs from people in an area where news is happening to find out the close up story.

Janice

[Doug Johnson]

Hi Janice,

The only danger I see to having a fairly closed circle of bloggers reading each other's work is that we may well come to believe we represent the majority of educators. My sense is that is a dangerous assumption.

For all that, I am a blog reader as well and would hate to give it up!

All the very best,

Doug

[Lesley Edwards]

Don't discount the number of lurkers, like me, who gain a tremendous amount of professional development from reading blogs, like yours. I recently started one of my own, mostly as a place to store things for the other librarians I work with but I am seeing more possibilities every day. I have masses still to learn but that's half the fun.

[Diane Chen]

Aha! I also posted about Al Bell at http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/blog/830000283/post/820008282.html because programming is such an important part of our "hidden job description."

[Almost American]

I'm sure more people would like reading blogs on a regular basis if they knew about aggregators but as you said for some reason getting the concept across is not easy.

- Ooh, look pretty shiny things! [wanders off . . .]