On Blogging Platforms (welcome to my new blog)

cfox@mit.edu's picture
October 14, 2012

I started my livejournal in December 2002, because everyone else was doing it.  Early on, I made the specific resolutions to keep all content public (which has been violated on a few occasions, but only a few) and not to fish for discussion/controversy, and to keep it safe and clean as a real-name public presence.  Livejournal is more or less a ghost town, these days - I've been in a rut where I post infrequently, link from facebook to my livejournal posts, and let "I should really find a better blog platform" derail the impulse to post.

Now for work, I've done the server setup and moira/afs integration for this http://drupalcloud.mit.edu/ project.  I don't think a blog is a fabulous fit for the service, but it's close enough, and there's some need for an active early-test site on the production services.  So here's a place to be.  Not all of the sidebar stuff is worked out yet: I need an archive index on a sidebar, and also a blogroll, but the way the project limits the content manager role in drupal, not everything is possible, and some things are possible but I haven't done them yet.  I'm making the decision to launch with incomplete setup, because I think hitting hard against the limitations is the way to find them and learn from them.

I'd like, but don't have, automated cross-posting to livejournal - I'm going to do some manual linking to here, as I get started, and reevaluate later whether I need to keep it up.

The name?  I free-associated from "eat your own dog food" to "nice doggy, here's a biscuit."

Comments?  You're invited!  But you need a CAMS Account: https://idp.touchstonenetwork.net/cams/CreateAccount.action I'm actively interested in opinions for how workable/convenient it feels.

In the future?  I've got a blog project I want to do - a package of letters from a distant relative, almost 100 years old, that want to be scanned and shared.  It'll take some quality time with a scanner to pull it off, though.

Pictures?  My photo posting workflow has been hit hard by my phone no longer wishing to be a USB device.  But yes, there will be photos.

[Edited to add: I had commenting closed before, just got it turned on.  There's also a problem of a lack of landing page after authenticating, which I don't have a quick way of addressing, but is on the list.]

Tags: 

7 Comments

Yay, I see a comment page now.

 
 
I am also sad about the lingering scribe-like death of Livejournal; neither Facebook nor Google+ seems designed for longish-form blogging.  I guess the distributed model, with everyone having their own blog site, and maintaining an RSS feed list instead of a friends list works. 
I do really like seeing your pictures and quilts and math tricks somewhere, though! :) 
(Now I must test out all the editing commands)

(It decided to expire my comment page as "outdated" and made me reload it, which was vaguely annoying)

Another thing that would be

Another thing that would be nice is the ability to sign up for "tell me when a comment I posted has a reply". :)   I didn't see the replies to mine until I came back to comment on the retail therapy post and saw things that seemed like replies in "Recent comments", because "go back and read a blog post I've already read" is not something I think to do.

Hey, where did my picture go?

Odd, the formatting in the comment box is a little different in the post.
1) In the comment box, a single return gives a paragraph break with a blank line in between.  In the posting, it is just a line break. 
2) I included a random picture with the picture link, but it left it out of the comment.  Possibly this is a result of the comment posting being "obsolete" and having to reload the page.   Trying again.

Touchstone FTW

Yeah, Touchstone login works!
 
Like Laura, I'm still on LJ, resisting the move away. It serves my needs (I find I don't blog nearly as much as I used to).