morrisseyed

Long time no post.   I’m again weighing the options between WordPress (either WP.com or WP.org) and Blogspot.  In short, WP offers superior blogging capabilities. Its editor is fast and reliable.  Whereas Blogspot’s editor simply can’t be trusted with its markup, any issues WP once had on its WYSIWYG side were resolved long ago,   Wordpress offers more space for image-uploads, and handles them better than Blogspot can, as well.  Wordpress has excellent spam protection; Blogspot has none.  In short, I feel like WP is a “professional” blogging service, whereas Blogspot can best be described as the AOL of blogging services.  Blogger may be everywhere, but it is known more for its warts than for its beauty marks.

The one thing BlogSpot does offer, though, is integrated Javascript in its badges.  For a number of valid reasons, all related to security and privacy, WP.com does not allow its users to add JS to their posts, pages, or widgets.  On the one hand, one can make due with this limitation: the ability to write eloquently does not require JS patches to other Websites.  However, most of the interactive, colourful fun that has popularized blogs - all those widgets that display the writer’s recent photos or songs listened to or places visited - all require JS to operate.  This means no Twitter on Wordpress.com blogs.  No Last.fm.  No Librarything.  No Nike+ badges, etc.

For anyone keeping up with me and my thoughts through a feedreader, this is a dilemma of little consequence.  For anyone coming across the site content through a google search, however, things a little different. Those colorful and regularly updated widgets make a world of difference not only in content and design, but in reader retention.

Thinking about this subject is in many ways an exercise in self-indulgence, but it remains an important and interesting subject to me.  I’ve been, and remain interested in the manner in which we relate to others and ourselves on the internet, so blogging tech and blogging advances is important to me.  For this reason, I’m going to start copying some of my content into a blogspot account (Don’t worry RSS types: you won’t be doubled up on mitch-content) and track its progress.  I’d hate to give up on WP’s blog editor, especially for Blogger’s archaic system, but until WP.com begins to develop more in-house work-arounds to the JS issue, I think I’ll have to go back to Blogger.

Meta Meta Meta.

i’m sitting down, post-work, watching the germany poland game (69th minute, 1-0, Germany). The Pineapples is convinced i should be drinking beer and eating chips because “it just sounds like something some one should do when watching these things.” i’m not entirely certain if she means watching soccer, watching tv, watching a germany-poland game, or just watching-watching. either-or, i’ll hold off on the chips and beer for some other time.

i’ve been considering one of my internet projects this weekend. i’m really enjoying my daily searches for neato-looking images for mitchellirons.com/culture. several of the images have been sitting on my hard drive for some time (the first goya, for instance - saturn eating his young - is one of the first things i looked on the internet after the Calamitous Hard Drive Crash of Dec’06), while others took a bit of work. there are definitely some broad themes running through this small collection of images. i knew when i started that they’d be eurocentric - it’s hard for me to avoid that. i was also aware that as much as i’d try, i’d have a hard time accomplishing an appropriate gender balance; i’m a little bothered that everything so far cites men. what didn’t occur to me, however, was just how geared toward war the project would be. i had aimed aimed to mix up some high and low and popular culture in collection, but that was my only intentional design. the more i consider things to post or recall what has been posted, however, the more i must sadly confront just how much our culture has been affected by war.

in some ways i should understand this fact. i’ve reflected too often on this in my own academic writing. but the fact that it has a residual effect in this silly little venture reveals how important war and suffering is to understanding ourselves..

(post-script: rough notes is not dead. rough notes just requires a lot of time to work on.)