Cutter’s blog

This morning, I found another WordPress blog via Scobleizer (via RSS, of course). Cutter sounds like an interesting dude. I wish him well in his quest to tackle the 40 peaks in the Southeast over 6000 feet. That’s the whole reason I was drawn to his site. I didn’t even know there were 40 such peaks. I figured Mt. Washington was the king among few peers. Even Katahdin is well below 6000 feet.

I really need to get off my sedentary butt and start climbing something. Blogging doesn’t help. As we’ll see in a bit…

Not sure how best to squeeze my comments in with his, but here goes. [I really don't like the way Flock does this. But at least it gets you off to a (raw) start.]

cutter’s original blog post

I also haven’t done much to spread the word about this blog. And so far its traffic hasn’t rivalled Instapundit or Boing Boing.

This is on purpose. I’m interested in seeing the viral nature of blogging. I want to see how traffic builds and dialogue ensues through linking and connecting.

That’s what people people always talk about as a unique characteristic of blogging, so let’s see it if works.

I’m sure linking to Robert Scoble’s site helps a lot!

There’s another viral aspect of blogging I’ve noticed, though. That’s how blogging seems to consume the blogger. I’ve seen many who admit they’re hooked. Several months ago when I met Jeff Jarvis he even admitted to blogging in church.

Well, I haven’t taken to blogging in church (yet), but I do maintain our church’s RSS feed of recorded sermons. Blogging does tend to consume, though.

Here I am at 5:00, er, 6:00 in the morning with thoughts flying through my head faster than I can wrestle with Flock to get them on my blog. I was hoping that the Shelf feature of Flock would help, but it’s entirely ‘drag & drop’. There’s even a disclaimer at the bottom of the 13 ways page to that effect.

So I’ve taken to keeping potential blog topics in a text file. My brother said that the hard part of blogging is thinking of things to write about. I don’t have that problem. It’s more like having the time to develop those thoughts into something coherent–and to wrestle with the technology to get them posted on the blog. There’s also the whole thing about chasing rabbit trails all over the Internet while researching some topic or just doodling on the ‘net.

I think WordPress.com is a good choice for this experiment. Maybe the best reason is because it’s free. Still, I’ve worked with WordPress enough to know it’s a full-featured product that works well right out of the box.

I wish WordPress.com had more customization options, but I presumed those would eventually come. Robert Scoble has since confirmed that with his own custom version of WordPress.com.

Yeah, I was looking for a way to get started blogging, too. It’s about time! WordPress seems like a great tool. I was thinking of hosting my own site, but that would entail building a new box, moving over my existing content, and tweaking WordPress, etc, etc. Then I found the free WordPress.com site and I was good to go.

In the meantime, the experiment continues. It will be interesting to see when the experiment ends and the obsession begins.

Good luck to you, Cutter! I’ll add you to my blogroll and RSS feeds.

technorati tags: blogging

OPML sampling

Here’s an interesting post that I ran across from a couple of sources. Now which one do I credit? Or do I go right to the original?

Blogging with Flock is OK, but I hate the way it formats the sampled text from the item that I’m blogging about. Should I go back and reformat it, or should I just leave it as a plain citation? At the very least, I put in some underlining and line breaks.

OPML Sampling: Build a Page Showing the “Best� Item From Each RSS Feed
NOV262005
OPML files are a pretty general tool. However, one of their most common uses is to distribute a list of RSS feeds. I’ve got mine up (contains something like 200-250 feeds). They’re also popping up in blogging networks and as a way to share groups of related sites.
When I look at an OPML file, I often want to sample it: to see what the sites included are like. I don’t want to just import the whole thing, sight unseen into my feeds, or to visit each site, one at a time.
What I wanted was a way to see a “good� post from each feed to get a quick feel for it. So, when I couldn’t sleep last night (not feeling particularly well), I kept my mind busy writing a solution. You can see a sample of the output, which shows you the sampler for the Web 2.0 Workgroup’s OPML.

OPML Sampling: Build a Page Showing the “Bestâ€? Item From Each RSS Feed– The Glass is Too Big – J Wynia

Mom fished too

scan0035

Originally uploaded by GLuft3.

This is my mom. Here she is waders and all in the river at Morey Road on opening day.

Here’s a shot of the old man at the same river.

The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald – 30 years ago today

The sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald – November 10, 1975
The SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior 20 years ago. Gordon Lightfoot’s song “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” (1976, Moose Music, Ltd.) is a tribute to this ship wreck and the men who lost their lives.

Sinking of the Fitzgerald

 

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is my first post. It’s a start…