Blogging again

I've been making an effort to maintain my commitment to writing in the blog every day. OK, every day-ish. But it's a struggle some times. Who am I writing to? I miss the feeling of blogging as a conversation, when I had comments and relationships with other bloggers, when I had the sense that I was talking to people. How did that even happen? I don't really remember.

Almost none of the bloggers I first became attached to as a reader, back in 2006 or so, have blogs any longer. Most just stopped: one writer I adore is mostly on Twitter these days; another migrated her activity to a Flickr photostream and now I no longer remember the name she was using so I can't even look her up. To be honest, I was more of a lurker/reader than an interlocutor, but I read many blogs faithfully, commented on some, and felt I "knew" the folks who shared something about their lives. I appreciated the way people were able to create conversations. Some spaces had such healthy comment sections that I learned a lot from them. I think the kind of blogging I am remembering was personal or confessional, even when it was academic or about a theme, not a substitute for journalism or marketing, but a place where you encountered a voice. And in the beginning, the kind of writing and publishing activity that was academic blogging was entwined with concerns about anonymity and publicity, especially as we academics negotiated our semi-public personae in our forays into digital teaching spaces.  

Some of the changes in blogging happened because of money--when bloggers were able to monetize their blogs, what they did changed as a result of the pressures of writing for advertising. Some single-topic bloggers got a book deal, others became paid consultants. A "successful" blog was the goal, and readership or subscribers were leveraged into ad revenues.  The proliferation of platforms also led to a fragmentation of connections. Now a lot of that conversational energy animates social media, where writing a short personal essay is not the goal. A subset of bloggers has migrated to Instagram where the impulse is to put out aspirational content; others are (still) on the evil Facebook, or vlogging at YouTube, or podcasting. Some changes in blogging happened when platforms like Tumblr or Livejournal were sold to companies that gutted them.  Maybe the short personal essay on Medium is where some of that confessional energy has gone, and some survives in the form of a personal newsletter and link round-up by subscription.

Who are the audiences? So much of what is published about blogging today treats audience as the target market for a brand. Blogging as a form of journaling isn't about building a brand. I know at least some of my posting here is a way to take notes on the things I learn, or to embed YouTube videos about the movies I watched, so in that sense the audience is me. If there's no uptake for one's personal ramblings, why write in a blog as opposed to a notebook at the breakfast table? Maybe because writing in a journal these days feels a lot like whining while writing in the blog forces me to do more than blurt.

2012 that was

As an exercise in reflection on 2012, I looked at the first post of each month. This has been a year of transformations in my household, many of them wonderful, exciting, and joyful. And at the end of the year, I have had to buckle down to finish a task undertaken a while ago, but not yet completed. I'm ready for 2013.

January. We were in Spain for the holidays last year, too. We took a day trip to a restored wetland that has become a place where flocks of cranes and all kinds of other birds and wildlife are flourishing. Restoration, new life, possibilities!

February: I posted the Ted Talk by neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, because he writes (and speaks) so beautifully about the sense of self and our physiology. I'm working on changing up my meds so that I can live with my wonky brain chemistry in a healthier way.

March: "8: The Play" Same-sex marriage was to be theme throughout the year, up through the elections. It feels as if a corner has been turned. I can't/won't become cynical.

 April A death: Adrienne Rich. I owe her a lot. Rereading "Diving Into the Wreck."

May: another death, another formative context; Tomás Borge, the Sandinista revolution. Idealism, degradation. Can we pardon those we feel betrayed us?

June: commencement speeches (from Laurie Anderson, from Neil Gaiman)  for my high-schooler's graduation.

July: for me, this was the year of modest, but joyful gardening: a new rain garden in front, tomatoes and herbs in back.  Tending my garden, rooting out invasive species:

August: Another death: Chavela Vargas, lived to see the world ready to celebrate her (public) coming out in her eighties.

September: a year of dance, a moment when my pop culture TV fix unexpectedly gave me with a shot of genius: Axis Dance Company's performance.

October: the video for "Get your cray on" by K-pop idol G-Dragon.  Where do fandoms and pop culture meet up in acts of translation/opacity?

November. By the time election day arrived, I felt like Shamus the dog in this political ad Montgomery Burns made for Mitt Romney: quivering, whimpering, desperate to escape ("another jumper).

December: The Pixies, then and now. I only learned later that the performance I saw last year was by  people who had created a second chances for themselves after breaking down and breaking up. "Where is My Mind?" (1988).

1988-2012. Twenty-six years

spring cleaning the blog

It's Spring Cleaning time! The new banner gets rid of the snowy landscape in favor of a shot I took in SF, of a display in a Japanese restaurant window on Fillmore Street. Fresca has pointed out the banner contains a Japanese version of Leo the Large.

I'm excited because I have to have everything in my office packed up and ready to move by May 19; our building is going to be renovated! They've only been promising to do that since I arrived in 1988. This means sorting through the accumulated crap of about twenty years--longer than I have lived in my present home. I need external motivation (such as "we will tear down the walls") because every year I give office clean-up a shot, and every year I fail miserably. This time, I will have the motivation of a deadline and at least 20 free boxes--about half of what I'll need-- and furniture movers, to get me going. But there is no point in starting that process until after the semester is over, so I'm having to resist the urge to plunge in immediately as a form of procrastination.
I'm itching to do the same at home, although I did most of that last summer during the big purge and I have to wait for the same reason: two papers to finish writing! Class prep to do! But, the itch must be scratched, so I decided to tweak this blog instead. I have not been happy with my blogging process lately. So I decided to play around with the layout a little: I've removed the bloglist and I'm adding the blogs I follow to my iGoogle page instead. I may change my mind about this, but I'm going to try it out for now. As I've moved to using iGoogle to manage my online calendar, gmail, news feeds and work-related sites, I realized that it was probably a better way for me to keep up on blog feeds than an RSS reader or a blog list. So if anyone who was previously linked to this page misses their link, I am following you in a different way.

In the summer, I plan to migrate from Blogger to Word Press, but that will take some time and attention that I don't have now. I think it will be a better platform for work-related blogging, given what I've seen others do with it elsewhere. Not a priority, just on the agenda.

3 years old!

Fresca posted a collage of the first lines of her blog posts, and invites us to do the same. A variation on the cadavre exquis
I am surprised that I have almost reached a thousand posts! And I did not realize that I have been bloggin since August 2006. It doesn’t seem that long.
(Too lazy to repost with the links in the original posts)

8/1/06 Watch out, or I'll use the eye-beams!

9/1/06 MMMM. Chocolate.

10/1/06 Some are so disappointed and angry about politics today that they confuse the media images of poltics with what politics is really about: it is about power, and about finding ways to make alliances so that your goals and interests are accomplished by those in power.

11/1/06 There is a lot I want to write about Oaxaca, but work is relentless this week.

12/1/06 Rob Bresny (Free Will Astrology) offers these words to Scorpios this week:
"Earth Island Journal says scientists have discovered natural ways to clean up old munitions sites.

1/1/07 On New Year's Eve, we ate our twelve grapes in time with the bongs of the clock.

2/1/07 Woo-hoo!

3/1/07 Hey, our second blizzard in a week, and this one is even bigger than the one on the weekend.

4/1/07
Here's a picture from a stroll by the Mississippi last weekend.

5/1/07 I'm going to perform in a talent show on Thursday.

6/1/07 Shriek.

7/1/07 The little stretch of the Mississippi River that runs through downtown Minneapolis has such a fascinating history.

8/1/07 This one is for my favorite pug-lover, from her momo.

9/1/07 On the sidewalk by Dolores Park.

10/1/07 Check out the cool photos of family and friends over at our neighbors' blog!

11/2/07 I had the pleasure of attending a talk by journalist Jeremy Iggers yesterday.

12/1/07 I've been on a kick with trying to remember those "sea change" moments of the pre-digital era.

1/1/08 I am not so good at recognizing the finer details of regional accents, but I find it fascinating.

2/2/08
I browse fimoculous* because Rex Sorgat collects all the year's end lists, and let's me know what latest pop culture trends are a-happenin'.

3/1/08 I took these photos last year in the Tubo, the oldest part of Zaragoza.

4/1/08 Another season of Dancing With the Stars, my guilty pleasure.

5/1/08 I feel like the human jukebox; a word, a phrase, a line can trigger the memory of a song, and it is as if someone hit "play", and the music is there.

6/1/08 A very lucky young lady is on an 8th grade field trip with about 40-50 of her classmates, (and their intrepid principal and teacher chaperones) to the Black Hills of South Dakota.

7/1/08 A while back I poked around on the topic of "the phonological loop" and earworms, those songs you get stuck in your head.

8/1/08 This summer, the show time open thread over at Blogging So You Think You Can Dance (or BSYTYCD) was a place where I felt comfortable joking, expressing my feelings, sharing my pleasure (or displeasure) about the show and my crazy fixation on it, since many of my friends and family just aren't that into it.

9/1/08 I'm very grateful to Krista at Thinkery for collecting links to stories on today's events in Saint Paul around the truncated RNC.
10/1/08 Takin' it Back With Barack, Jack! (for Swing voters!)

11/1/08 Pour mes amis francophones: Un des Justiciers Masqués, un duo comique québécois, a réussi a parler avec Sarah Palin pendant presque six minutes avant de lui dire qu'il n'était pas vraiment Nicolas Sarkozy,"Sarah Palin se fait avoir!"
and
Following the trail of serendipity leads to amazing things!
and
We joined our friends with whom we've spent Halloween ever since our kids were very little.

12/1/8 Thanks to the power of Twitter, (conjunction!) I learned about a rare astronomy event, the "Celestial Frownie Face" explained here at National Geographic: "Planets, Crescent Moon to "Frown" on Skywatchers Dec. 1"

1/1/09 We were both so sad to leave San Francisco and ten wonderful days!

2/1/09 There is so much love and respect for these two great competitors [Nadal and Federer] who are both gentleman and generous souls.

3/1/09 Rachel Maddow interviews Left Behind authors Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye, about their enormously successful books, socialism, the rapture, and how best-selling novels (tens of millions sold!) influence the worldview of millions of Americans.

4/1/09 I rousted myself out of bed early this morning, washed my hair and skipped the all-important coffee ritual (also known as skritch-the-kitty-while-the water-boils time), trying to make it by 8:30 to a talk I was eager to see.

5/1/09 Yesterday was the birthday of a very dear friend, Maria.

6/2/09
Governor Pawlenty, "Governor of Brigadoon"--a portrait by Michael Tortorello, posted on The Uptake, courtesy of Noah Kunin.

7/1/09 I am absolutely fascinated by this video: it's a sampler of rap in 30 languages from all around the world.

8/1/09 How are those beer summits going?

9/1/09 Today I went to the ATM, then went to the cafe to work on class prep.

10/1/09 The Wikepedia entry on pain says,"This article is about physical pain. For pain in a broader sense, see Suffering."

11/01/09
Christopher Walken recites Lady Gaga's "Poker Face" as only he can.

Urban gardening dreams

Sunday morning is for lazy reading and coffee, and adding ideas to the "Maybe/Someday" project list, like "start a vegetable garden....next year."

This morning I read all the posts in "The Starter Garden", a blog in the NYTimes Gardening section by Minnesota novice gardner (and professional writer whose work I've enjoyed in City Pages) Michael Tortorello, in which he has been chronicling his adventures this summer creating a vegetable garden in the city. I've always enjoyed his writing, and he started some great conversations among newbie and experienced gardeners all over the country with his posts about about how to get started, germinate seeds indoors, get rid of the lawn, use manure or not, deal with rabbits and deer, face the triumphs and disappointments of gardening. It looks as if there are many other stories in that section that I'll enjoy ("Peter Rabbit Must Die" sounds like the response of many a gardener who has discovered how fast rabbits can raze your garden to the ground.)

I had given some thought to doing something like that this summer, but remembered how back-breaking the work to start a garden is (I've done it with others twice; once in Berkeley and once in Minneapolis), and I ended up buying a share with a CSA instead for my veggies, and trying to grow some herbs on my back porch (with mixed success--I am a lousy gardener by myself, but an enthusiastic helper with others).

I'm going to take it in small steps. First step is to read other people's stories! I thoroughly enjoyed this book: Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer by Novella Carpenter. And she has a blog! and it's just as awesome as her book, which I loved, loved, loved and am willing to lend to anyone who promises to give it back eventually.

Spamblog? moi?

I was away for a week, a whole week! and kind of off the grid, but while I was on the road, I casually deleted a terse email purporting to be from Blogger, claiming that my blog was acting like a spamblog and it would be frozen until I contacted them. And that if I didn't contact them in 20 days my blog would be deleted! I always assume this type of email is phishing, so I hit delete and thought no more about it. But when I went to write a post, it turned out that for some reason, which I have yet to discover, this blog had indeed been locked down. After requesting a review, I can now have access to my blog, but this is the message I see:

Your blog is marked as spam

Blogger's spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog. (What's a spam blog?) Since you're an actual person reading this, your blog is probably not a spam blog. Automated spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and we sincerely apologize for this false positive.

We received your unlock request on August 25, 2009. On behalf of the robots, we apologize for locking your non-spam blog. Please be patient while we take a look at your blog and verify that it is not spam.

Find out more about how Blogger is fighting spam blogs.

According to their description, my blog does NOT have the characteristics their algorithm is supposed to detect, and I am not a spammer or a bot, but what a curious incident. In the first moment, I felt guilty, the way I used to feel decades ago when they first installed those anti-theft gates in bookstores and libraries; even though I wasn't stealing, I was sure the alarm would sound and I would be hauled off and searched. As with the annoyance of car alarms and malfunctioning security systems in stores, that initial guilty reaction long ago gave way to exasperation, then resentful acceptance. And as with the security protocols in the airports, where I have been searched and questioned and some folks I know have wrongfully been placed on watch lists, the seemingly random nature of being singled out makes me mistrust the security efforts themselves.

Two seconds later, I didn't feel guilty, I felt annoyed, especially as the notice on my dashboard said my blog would be deleted if I had not responded in 20 days, and I can't remember how long ago I deleted that email! Of course, I haven't backed up the blog; I'm not a business, this isn't work, and I'm lazy. Now, I feel a slight panic: Why was Blogger messing with me when I was so obviously NOT a spammer? What automated detection system had they set up to catch spammers that would catch innocents like me in its trawl? How often will I have to mail in proof of my non-spammer intentions in the future? Is it time to move from Blogger to WordPress?

Poking around, I see I am not alone and that many others have commented, ranted, or analyzed this situation already. Google, which owns Blogger, is trying to control the proliferation of spam and malware, but its response has triggered many of the kinds of reactions I've had: why me? One site, which is politically paranoid in nature, assumed this was part and parcel of an ongoing campaign of political censorship, and who knows? How can we tell? I don't make that assumption in my case because I'm a little nothing in the big blogoverse, but an automated bot can scoop up krill like me along with larger fish, and with our greater reliance on cloud computing, we are also exposed both to malicious spam and the sledgehammer response.

Blook: Qu'est-ce que c'est?

How does digital media reproduce what print media does, and how does it make something new? Audiobooks are a highly successful way of delivering a book's text to a listener rather than a reader: someone who is blind, someone who is driving, someone who likes the sound of the human voice and the experience of having someone read out loud, all welcome the audiobook.

The written text of a book can be hosted online, and the existence of digital libraries. Project Gutenberg is one of the oldest, in which books in the public domain are digitized and made available to the world as ebooks. These are works that originally appeared in print, as opposed to material created in a digital format or "born-digital." Some copyrighted material is also being made available in online formats by publishers. A book published by a University Press may also be housed online as a way to bring readers to that press's site or to promote scholarship in cases where the author sees the opportunity to keep the work alive, long after the usual print runs have ended.

But I just discovered the existence of a word I had never heard before today: blook. Here's the wiktionary definition:

1. A book serialized on a blog (weblog) platform.
2. A book about blogging.
3. A printed book containing content which first appeared on a blog.
* 2006: "'Blooks are the new books, a hybrid literary form at the cutting edge of both literature and technology,' said Bob Young, founder of self-publishing site Lulu which organised and sponsored the prize." US cook wins blogging book prize BBC Online, 3 April 2006.

But, as it turns out, the term has been in existence since before the advent of blogging, as the Wikipedia entry details: blook was a term coined to refer to objects made to look like books, but which were not (a shortening of "looks like a book". There is more than one contender for recognition as the originator of the term, but I'm more interested in learning about the variety of things to which it might refer. There is a "Blooker Prize for Blooks" (formerly called the Lulu Blooker Prize) that has been in existence for about 2 years, and serves as a great introduction to a number of "blooks" out there.

An expanded idea of the blook comes up in this article in the Guardian about a phenomenon in which writers of non-fiction books essentially keep writing: the dedicated book blog (what Graeme Thomson calls, with a wince, the "blook") but here he is talking about the extension of a bounded text (print object or its audio or visual reproduction) into a site that acts as a repository for related material or acts an extension of a conversation about it. "A new stage in the life-cycle of content" is what the Blooker Prize site calls it, and that will have to do for now.

Ana Clavel's two book related sites are examples of how the creation of a book also inspires the creation of art, installations, events, and post-publications conversations: Cuerpo naúfrago and Las Violetas son flores del deseo.

"A good book blog (or – must we? - "blook") becomes a supplementary text, a place to explain, elucidate, apologise, dig deeper."

He gives as one example the blog/blook of Alex Ross, the music critic for the New Yorker, has won The Guardian First Book award for a work of non-fiction for The Rest is Noise. His "blook" extends the book itself with audio files, a little video about the book, an archive of reviews, and other features that function, as Thomson says, like the special features of a DVD, and an expansion of the world referenced by the book over time.

Update on BSYTYCD from Movmnt Magazine

This summer, the show time open thread over at Blogging So You Think You Can Dance (or BSYTYCD) was a place where I felt comfortable joking, expressing my feelings, sharing my pleasure (or displeasure) about the show and my crazy fixation on it, since many of my friends and family just aren't that into it. The blog's host, whom I knew only as Ted, and his co-hosts Sue B. and Natalie, did a wonderful job, and folks who participated in the comments often warmly thanked them at the end of the show's broadcast for providing links, updates, recaps, song lists, and a civil space in which to watch together.

When Ted announced abruptly this week that he was putting the blog on hiatus, I hoped it was only because he was busy with work, (or had a life, unlike me!) and not because of some personal distress or problems. Blogging can become time-consuming. As all the comment sections had been closed, I wasn't quite sure how to get in touch, but enough of us found each other by clicking around on the blogroll, that by Thursday's show we had a group chatting again at the blog Levy on TV, thanks to Nate.

I just received this comment in my earlier post about the hiatus. As several of BSYTYCD's commenters had wondered what was up, I thought would I bump this message from movmnt magazine's Editor-in-chief, David Benaym up to a post. Here's the whole message, which is also on the site. Thanks, David, for sharing this news.

For two years, a blog has made a difference covering Fox’s TV hit show, So You Think You Can Dance. Created by Ted Austin, bsytycd.com brought together accuracy, newsworthy links and stories, always with the right amount of criticism or humor without indecency or any kind of voyeurism towards the contestants, their private lives or rumors. The only focus has always been on their performances and talent. The site gathered information and opinions without censorship, followed by a respectful blog audience inspired by Ted’s spirit to respect one another.

That is until a certain part of this’ season’s audience of SYTYCD and by extension, BSYTCD.COM, showed some disrespect towards some of the contestants and used inappropriate language to express whatever anger they might have felt.

Everyone at movmnt would like to thank Ted for leading the blog community to a respectful and accurate coverage of the show. Just two weeks before the season’s finale BSYTCD is going on hiatus. Ted expressed in a last post that he “tried to make it to the end of the season, but just have too much going on.”

Movmnt will do his best to perpetuate your legacy, Ted; hoping that all the good that happened for the past two years via your blog initiative will be remembered and carried-on by your faithful reader base.

The loss of Blogging So You Think You Can Dance definitely marks the end of an era.

Step into the light,

David Benaym - Editor in Chief, Movmnt Magazine

Originally posted on www.movmnt.com/bsytycd_00933.html

I don't have any more information on this, but I am sad that Ted seems to have experienced incivility and hassle monitoring the comments. There's more than enough of that going on at other sites, as we all know. It's also a reminder to me to remember, when I hit that send button, that careless words can hurt. My rule of thumb for this blog, and for my comments, is that if I were not happy seeing my words on the front page of the local newspaper with my name attached to them, then they don't belong online. (I actually went back through my Disqus comments to see if I had been guilty of having used inappropriate language. I confess I did say "Nigel STFU' in one comment, but I don't think that is quite the level of incivility this message suggests. ) All I can say is that Ted did a great job of shielding us from this, as I never saw any of it on the site. What a shame, and a good reminder about how we are all renegotiating human interactions through this technological interface in ways we do not yet always understand very well.

If Nate continues to be gracious enough to host an open thread next week for the last two shows, I hope we will all feel free to express our opinions AND live up to the standards BSYTYC set during its run. Once again, many thanks to Ted, Sue B. and Natalie!

How to advertise online without making people watch your commercials

It's all about content. Find out what people want to watch or read, give it to them, and they will come.
There are only three of them, but they are the most brilliant cartoons about living with a cat that I've seen. They've also generated millions of views on YouTube, and when they are picked up by megatraffic sites like Cute Overload, we are thrilled to find them. Simon's Cat has his own YouTube channel where you can see the other two cat cartoons. There's not much on the channel: "Official home of the 'Simon's Cat' films from Tandem director Simon Tofield." As far as I can tell, Simon's cat is a great mode of advertising for the Tandem website, although I wonder how many cat cartoon viewers actually click over on the site link in the profile to see what Tandem is all about, watch the ads they make, read about the company. Maybe industry people, who are probably the principal target market? He's left bait in the form of a fourth video just called Tandem logo. When you click on it, that is all you see: the logo.

Maybe Chris Matyszczyk, over at Pond Culture, could explain it to us; he seems to have created the blog Pond Culture as an experiment: make a blog with the plainest of templates, no archives, no links to other posts, blog about some of the most highly trafficked stories of the day and provide only wordpress tags to generate traffic. Monitor the site to see who comes there and why. If they bother to click on the profile, they can find the URL of his other website, but it is not hotlinked. So part of the experiment seems to be seeing who actually goes to the trouble to venture over to his other sites which is embedded in complete connectivity. Oh, and he writes witty and dryly entertaining posts about being a European living in the SF Bay Area and what the view is like for us pond dwellers as we look up at the antics of the mass media, the advertisers, the politicians, and the sports franchises as they market, sell, and promote. I found his site through a link on BSYTYCD, but found it funny enough to read my way back through the blog even though he provides absolutely no archive or category shortcuts (that would compromise the purity of the experiment, as would external links).

But I digress: here's the latest from my cat's alter ego on the internet, Simon's Cat 'TV Dinner'. It is not an exact reproduction of Leo's behavior: Leo's voice is much louder and more annoying; Leo claws at the bed just out of reach rather than the sofa to get me to get up to feed him; Leo jumps up on the TV tray table in order to knock my electronic devices out of reach; we don't have a remote, but I'm sure he could work it if we did. He does steal your spot as soon as you get up, get all in your face while you are using a laptop, yowl relentlessly for food (or toy activity) while you are trying to watch TV, and do that thing with his claws when he does get on my lap.

RadioLab

I can't remember now where I first read about this great show, RadioLab on New York Public Radio. It's a science show that is really about being curious, and about story-telling It uses sound in a wonderful way. "Each hour is like a little movie for your ear" it says in the show's FAQ.

I am now listening to older shows by podcast on ITunes. So far I've listened to an amazing show about Zoos and animals. There's the story about the man who first built a gorilla habitat that was not a sterile concrete box, and what happened when the gorillas first set foot in their new home; the story about the man who stuttered so badly as a child, but could talk fluently to his pet animals when he sat in the closet with them in the dark. He ended up going to Central America and working to create a jaguar preserve in Belize.

The next show I want to listen to is about laughter. "Laughter: we all do it. But why?" Do animals laugh?

Is Laughter just a Human Thing?

Aristotle thinks that laughter is what separates us from the beasts. That a baby does not have a SOUL, until the moment it laughs for the first time. Historian Barry Sanders, author of Sudden Glory, says that according to Aristotle, this moment of "human ensouling" is supposed to happen when a baby is 40 days old. We follow radio producer Amanda Aronczyk as she tests this theory on her newborn baby.

What is this "blogging" thing of which you speak?

I have failed miserably in my attempts to get my family to read or comment on my blog, even though I started it to share pictures and news with them and have BEGGED them to comment! Yoohoo! Mom? Sis? Daughter? Guys? Help me out here, give me a comment! Delurk already!

If you want to know more about the whole blogging phenomenon, Sarah Boxer has a great review at the New York Times Review of Books, with a list of several new books about blogs and blogging, and some choice quotes from bloggers. She gives a good explanation of what a blog is, what kinds of things make it fun, and what it can do that other kinds of writing can't. Of course there is much more to say on the matter, which is why all those people are writing all those books.
My favorite quotation is from Twisty, blogger at I Blame the Patriarchy, the first blog I started to read regularly and the blogger who inspired me to buy a digital camera so I could take pictures of food. Alas, Twisty seems to have lost interest in blogging, much to the sadness and dismay of her commentariat, who miss her compelling story of cancer treatment, her photos of food, her articulate and funny rants about radical feminism, and the bumptious community of commenters. Yeah, not everybody liked her, but I found her to be a consistently entertaining and articulate voice. She also had a reading club moment when she got a lot of people to read Shulamith Firestone (at their request) together. But she has more or less stopped posting, without formally announcing she's ending the blog. This happens. Blogging can be something people do for years, and then they decide, for good reasons (it's taking too much time, they got that book contract, they don't feel the urge any more) to stop. But quite often you can still read them in the archives.

Aggregation!

Just a year and a half ago, I had never heard of blogs. This summer I started to learn about social networking. As I'm discovering, he proliferation of on-line usernames and profiles in places like Flickr, YouTube, Netflix, Amazon, Television Without Pity discussion boards, allows us to not only view content or use services, but to create content and share tastes, ideas, etc. But managing all that data and all our profiles becomes cumbersome! Now I'm learning about social networking and identity aggregation.

Here's an example of someone who has been a creative force in this area: Rex Sorgatz, webmaster extraordinaire, futurist, internet analyst, former Minnesota resident, generator of the list of lists, MNSpeak co-founder, (interview with him here) is aggregating his own life over at fimoculous.com. Here's how he explains the name:

What is this? A fimoculous is a micro-organism that consumes its own waste for sustenance. Fimoculli are therefore a self-perpetuating ecology. A mono-parasite, a homo-symbiosis, Fimoculous.com devours the filth expunged on the mediascape. (Oh, and it aggregates my life.)

Here's how he talks about "self-aggregating":

Once you start thinking of your life as aggregation potential, you start to wonder about all kinds of possibilities. ("How dangerous would it be to expose my clickstream?") Although this isn't revoluationary thinking, I like the idea that this site updates even when I'm not explicitly creating content for it. When you start to think about your blog as a receptacle for capturing all parts of your online life (and perhaps even your non-digital life), you can start to imagine a constantly updating page of personal data. To get metaphysical for a moment, the self-aggregator becomes another version of you.

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One of fimoculous' links today is a very comprehensive round-up of the various means of citizen documentation of the I-35 bridge collapse by a local blogger and internet analyst/marketer. It's a great example of how someone has pulled together in one place a series of links to the the various ways that users/citizens do more than consume content; they create and share, and interact in new an unexpected ways.