I realized that there are a few folks that read this blog without the benefit of an RSS aggregator. To each their own, I figure. So, I just installed a handy plugin to let people subscribe to the output of this blog via email.
If that kind of thing turns your crank, head on over to the Subscribe page, where you’ll be provided with links to the RSS and Atom feeds, as well as a handy dandy email subscription form.
Read MoreThere are a few ways to subscribe to this weblog.
Via RSS: Blog Entries, Comments
Via Atom: Blog Entries, Comments
Read MoreIn the last post, I mentioned how the banner images I have on this site are photos I’ve taken at various stages and places of my life. Yes, I took each and every one of them myself.
Then, I realized that all documentation about these photos remains in my head. Which isn’t exactly a permanent or reliable memory store. So, I went and created a first draft of a page describing the images. I’ll update it as I remember more - I’ll have to pull exact dates from iPhoto’s library…
Read MoreThis page lists all of the images that are being used in the banner area of this weblog. I’m using a script to automatically and randomly select one of the images each time a page is loaded (but that may behave differently, depending on browser or caching). They are listed in chronological order, in the order they were added to the rotation pool - not the order they were taken.
Read MoreThis blog is published under a creative commons license (specifically, the non-commercial use, with attribution license) - chosen to let folks rip/mix/burn whatever they found useful. I really believe that type of sharing is important.
Regardless, I was a bit surprised to find this obvious homage to my blog design (well, to K2 and my tweaks), which closely mimics my blog’s current appearance - right down to recycling each and every one many of my blog banner images (which have been removed since I posted this).
In the background thinking/planning for our own “ePortfolios” project (man, I hate that “e”) we realized that many/most of the off-the-shelf portfolio packages were really just simple fill-in-the-blanks templates. Not really a portfolio, at all. Essentially a simple dossier. A collection of standardized data about a person, with no real creative input required or allowed.
A portfolio (e- or otherwise) is about as far from a simple templated dossier as I can imagine. Ok. Flying monkeys with laser guns on their heads would be farther, but you get the point. Portfolios are a process of creative expression. Of reflecting on what you’ve done, how you did it, and hopefully, where you’d like to go. Every person’s portfolio should be different. Different content, different presentation, different context. Things that a dossier just can’t capture. Dossiers are good for comparing batches of nearly-identical things, and helping to highlight differences between them. I imagine a hiring committee sitting at a big table with a stack of 500 of these templated dossiers, sorting them by some criterion to get to the Right Person To Hire.
Read MoreTed Buracas just launched a Calgary blogging site: the Blog at Calgary. It looks like a great start, with links to local media, arts, music, entertainment, etc… I’ve already found a new Jamba Juice replacement called *atomic - downtown, just north of The Bay. Next time I’m downtown, I’ll have to check it out (although that may not be for awhile - I seem to be downtown about once per season or so…)
Read MoreI was checking my feeds this morning, and saw that Jenny Levine (of The Shifted Librarian fame) has been added to the BlogBridge Experts List - giving her top library-related blogs as a starting point for folks who are into that kind of thing. Very cool.
In the announcement, they mention that The Shifted Librarian is a pretty highly ranked blog on the Feedster.com Top 500 list. It’s sitting at #369 right now. That’s also very cool.
Read MoreCome, on, Yahoo! Get del.icio.us into your data centre… Apparently there was a power failure in the server hosting facility where del.icio.us has been living (assuming it’s not in Yahoo Central yet), and it’s been barfing all over everything all day. I just went to get some links from my account, and got this instead:
Year: 2005
Author: The Structured Blogging Folks
Platform: Other
Category: Utility
Publisher: structuredblogging.org
Price: Free!
Rating: out of 5
I’ve been playing with the Structured Blogging plugin for Wordpress for a while now, and just noticed a new version - it’s almost up to the mythical “1.0 release”. They’ve added a bunch of new microcontent types with some great structured metadata appropriate to each type. I’m planning on using structured blogging a lot more in the future.
From the Structured Blogging project website:
Structured Blogging is a way to get more information on the web in a way that’s more usable. You can enter information in this form and it’ll get published on your blog like a normal entry, but it will also be published in a machine-readable format so that other services can read and understand it.
Think of structured blogging as RSS for your information. Now any kind of data - events, reviews, classified ads - can be represented in your blog.
Structured Blogging makes it easy to create, edit, and maintain different kinds of posts and is very similar to an edit form on a blog. The difference is that the structure will let users add specific styles to each type, and add links and pictures for reviews.
So, it’s an easy to use, flexible way of describing some standard types of things. People. Places. Events. Things. And the metadata is machine readable, enabling some of the early promise of the federated “repositories” by letting people search for stuff anywhere, and find relevant bits easily. The first bits of readily usable semantic web infrastructure.
Here’s a screenshot of the structured blogging microcontent authoring interface for Audio:
There is also a plugin available for MovableType users, if you happen to swing that way coughBrianahem
What would be really cool is if a new microcontent type of “learning object” was defined - letting you enter some IEEE LOM-ish metadata about a resource that’s used as a learning object. There’s your learning object repository, thank you very much…
I just got an email from Peter Samis, the lead Pachyderm wrangler at SFMOMA (complete with signature Tilley). SFMOMA just launched their podcasting program. They’re providing a feed with a variety of content providing information about the exhibits at the museum.
And, here’s the kicker. They’re taking it all the way. Instead of charging a fee for providing this service, they’re providing a discount on museum admission to people who take advantage of the podcasts! Talk about an awesome way to give people an incentive to come to the museum. The best of both worlds - they can take advantage of the podcast without stepping foot into the museum, but if they’re in the area, they get a break for coming in and seeing the collections in person. That’s great!
Read MoreWell, I’m kinda stumped. I’m following Brian’s lead in playing around with the Ubuntu Linux “live demo” cd - the one that lets you test drive linux on a mac without actually installing it. Worked ok on my Powerbook (albeit rather slowly), but I can’t seem to get my old 8600/300 to boot from the disk for the life of me. Searching Ubuntu Linux’ documents turns up dead links. Google turns up references to BootX and yaboot (BootX for Old World Macs like mine, yaboot for New World Macs). I’ll give up for now, but would love to get linux running on the old faithful Mac at home.
Read More