Tag Archives: blogging

A brief chat with Keith Povall

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This is the first in what I hope will be a series of posts featuring brief interviews with some of the friends I have made online.

Keith Povall and I have never met but I know more about him (and he about me) than most of the people that live on our street. It’s a rare day that we do not exchange a few words.

Keith is a curry chef; raises carnivorous  plants and, of course, a blogger. He is also the curator of a cringe-inducing (for me) archive of photos of people wearing sandals and sox. Yes, he was a dry, biting sense of humor.

You also need to know that I am a shameless anglophile. I love all things British. The way they talk, their food, and their weather. So, my plan to to touch base with Keith every week or so and get his take on things happening in the world.

And when we run out of things to talk about, I’ll introduce you to some other lovely people.

AUDIO: Interview with Keith Povall (13 min)

This is why I blog

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In March of of 2009 I posted an idea for an iPhone app for people who suffer from Alzheimer’s Disease. It continues to get comments, the most recent from a researcher in Australia New Zealand:

“I like your ideas! I am leading a small team of researchers that are in the process of examining uses of mobile computing technology in neurorehabilitation, including developing custom software for the iPhone. Our initial work is in traumatic brain injury, but it is likely that much of the work would be applicable to people with dementia, including Alzheimer’s Disease. That’s an area I’ve worked in previously, so will certainly be interested to extend the research into that area in the future as well. Thought you might be interested to know a little of what we’re up to.”

It would be fun to know that one of my ideas made it into an app that helped those dealing with this disease. If you or someone you know are using smart phones to “compensate for cognitive difficulties,” get in touch with Dr. Babbage.

Assuming Dr. Babbage found my post via a Google, I searched “Alzheimer’s Disease iPhone App” and it was number one result of 424,000. Twitter, Facebook, etc are all fun and/or useful but blogging is the only way I know to reach so many different people.

Dave Winer’s proposal for a new kind of blog comment system

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“I know some people think that blogs are conversations, but I don’t. I think they’re publications. And I think the role of comments is to add value to the posts. If you want to rebut a post, then you can create your own blog and post your rebuttal there.”

This makes a lot of sense to me. If there is ever an easy-to-implement version of Mr. Winer’s system, I’m there.

Back to the blog

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Leo Laporte has become disillusioned with social media and has returned to his blog:

“I should have been posting it here all along. Had I been doing so I’d have something to show for it. A record of my life for the last few years at the very least. But I ignored my blog and ran off with the sexy, shiny microblogs. Well no more. I’m sorry for having neglected you Leoville. From now on when I post a picture of a particularly delicious sandwich I’m posting it here. When I complain that Sookie is back with Bill, you’ll hear it here first. And the show notes for my shows will go here, too. Social media, I gave you the best years of my life, but never again. I know where I am wanted. Screw you Google Buzz. You broke my heart.”

This post resonates a bit for me. I like Twitter and Posterous and some of the other tools I use (a little or a lot) but I, too, fear they are a distraction to my first love, this blog. I gave up on Buzz early on and don’t expect to stop using Twitter (it feels like a completely different thing to me). But I understand Mr. Laporte’s frustration and decision.

Attachments

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My pal Keith pinged me this morning to let me know there was a problem with this website. I raised the hood to discover that all content (posts, pages, media, etc) was gone. Eight years of posts. About 5,000. I have a back-up from about 3 weeks ago, but still…

Not so long ago this would have sent me to DEFCON 5. But I’ve been reading about ego and how we become attached to and identify with things and ideas, and I found I was eerily calm. What if all my clever posts and the rest vanished forever?

I spent a few minutes considering this and realized they were/are nothing more than footnotes on a past that no longer exists (except in my head). What’s happening this moment is more important (and real).

What have we learned, grasshopper? That we are not our thoughts, OR our blog posts.

Downtown Rotary rocks Posterous

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Jefferson City has four Rotary Clubs. Learfield Honcho Emeritus Clyde Lear belongs to the “Downtown Rotary Club” and he asked me to meet with a few of the members to explore the idea of a blog. We got together a couple of weeks ago at the Coffee Zone and after asking some questions, I suggested they start with Posterous.

Before I show you their progress, you have to see what they had before.

This really isn’t their fault. They had no way to update the site or improve it’s design. But they felt like they had lots of stuff they’d like to share with their members and the public. For those that haven’t seen my earlier posts on Posterous (as in ‘pre-posterous’), it’s a blogging platform or a “life-streaming” tool or both… but it doesn’t matter. The best part of Posterous is the ability to post by email. Photos, videos, audio, whatever.

In the screenshot below, they have photo and audio of a talk by MU Football Coach Gary Pinkel. Rotarian Jason Jett says he recorded the audio on his iPhone and just mailed it off to the new site. Simple as that.

While the Downtown Rotary Club tends to skew a little older than the other clubs, I’ll be very surprised if any of them one has a cooler, more content-rich site. Posterous is a great solution. Free, simple to use, and getting more features all the time.

Green Zone

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If you liked the Bourne series, you’ll enjoy Green Zone. [If you did not like the Bourne movies… why are you even reading this blog. There is nothing for you here. Hit the back button now.]

IMDB: “Discovering covert and faulty intelligence causes a U.S. Army officer to go rogue as he hunts for Weapons of Mass Destruction in an unstable region.”

I think we can scratch Green Zone from W’s Netflix queue. And if you lost a loved one in that war, you might want to skip this movie, too.

History might vindicate the Bush years but you’ll be damned hard pressed to find any movies that remember them kindly.

The movie is based on Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s Imperial Life in the Emerald City.

UPDATE: Got some push-back for closing comments on this post. Do I care about the opinions of the people that read this blog. I do. But this is my blog. This is where I express myself.

If you have something to say about one of my posts and the comments are closed, just say your piece on your blog (you know, take ownership for your views, with your name and everything) and send me a link (stevemays at gmail dot com) and I’ll add it to the post.

YouTube SimpleGallery

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I love WordPress. I won’t bore you with all the reasons. But one very big one is: plug-ins. These are little add-on’s that add extra functionality to your blog/website. Today one of our sites needed a way to display multiple videos on a single page. I found several plug-in’s that looked like good candidates and settled on one called YouTube SimpleGallery. It’s free but I made a small donation to the developer.

I usually test plug-in’s here, to get the hang of them. If you click on the VIDEO tab at the top of the page,you’ll see a bunch of thumbnail images that –when clicked– play the video on YouTube.

You can also configure the plug-in so the video pops up in its own window.

Steal this blog, too

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Markus Mindaugas’ blog is called “living on impulse.” I’ve only been following for a couple of weeks but his posts are consistently positive and upbeat. Yesterday he invited readers to “steal this blog.” I hope he doesn’t mind if I share most of that post here:

Feel free to take, steal, re-purpose, or do anything you want with anything you find here (including my best photos). A link or reference would be be much appreciated, but is not required. I’m not worried about ownership. I’m not worried about losing anything. There’s nothing I can possibly lose by someone taking something I created and using it in any way they want to use it.

The only reason for me to copyright something would be for me to control it, a need to derive income from it, or a fear of misuse. I have no such fears. Besides, even “altruistic-licensing” can get really hairy and become a mess.

I am supremely confident in my own ability to create new stuff as needed. As soon as I write, photograph, or otherwise create something it’s already in the past. If anyone finds a use for it, fantastic. If it helps them out in ANY way, fantastic.

If someone wants to use something I created and finds it helpful and wants to share it – that’s awesome. It’s a compliment to me. I am in no way diminished by it, only enhanced. Besides, anything I create I will never “always have”. I will have to relinquish it, at the latest, when I die. So why obsess or hang on to it? It’s gone the minute I am done creating it. So I’ll let it fly.

While I have no illusions about the value of the ideas or images I post here at smays.com, I’d like to make the same offer. Take anything you want, use it anyway you like. I’ll make some more.