I’m currently working at that moon base between Birmingham and Coventry known as the NEC setting up a stand for some Spring Fair or other. Rather that write about it now I’m making notes on my long bus journey using the handheld to be written up when it’s all over. It’s proving quite a surreal one this time – hope I’ll be able to do it justice.
In the meanwhile, a user survey, if you please, for regular readers of this weblog:
1) Do you read weblogs using an RSS reader? If yes, any comments on how this blog is displayed? If no, have you got a clue what I’m asking? Would you like to know more?
2) Do you regularly read my Link Farm? If so, do you read it on the sidebar of the main blog page, on it’s own page, or via the RSS feed?
1) RSS? Sorry, I haven’t a clue.
2) Read from the sidebar.
1) I’ve yet to hear any explanation of what RSS is.
2) I glance through the Link Farm. It’s much easier to read since you put the descriptions actually on the page.
I’d love to be able to say I do the RSS thing, but I’m still a bookmark man. Your homepage is in my favourites and whenever I look at your site it’s from there. And I use the sidebar link farm.
Daft as it sounds, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a description of how to use RSS as a site visitor (or I haven’t understood them and have blanked them from my mind, more likely! You probably explained it when you first had the RSS link on here) whereas I think I know how to set one up in the first place.
I like what you are doing with chum’s blogs, eg Mike Woods Is Unwell. Geocities was doing him a dis-service. Now he has the platform he deserves.
Don’t know the first thing about RSS but, yes, I do take pretty regular looks at the link farm sidebar.
I’m a linkfarm sidebar man myself. Although all the new explanatory comments tend to make it look untidy.
I have absolutely no idea what a RSS feed is though.
I just discovered that RASS is a radio activated security system so I guess I can work out what RSS means – or can I? So the answer to 1) is I haven’t a clue. The answer to 2) is that I do use the sidebar regularly. Some of the items are interesting, some are even useful!
And anything as small as a handheld or an iPod is only going to get lost in my travels.
Very interesting though not that surprising. RSS-XML syndication is probably one of the most exciting things to happen on the net and yet most users are completely ignorant of it. Expect some education soon (don’t worry, it’s not that hard). And, Dad? remember that bloglines site I showed you at Xmas? That’s RSS.
RSS – No idea.
Link farm – nope don’t read it.
Oh and forgot to mention but your link farm now looks a complete dogs-breakfast. Sorry.
1) I use a feed reader to read the site, but bizarrely
2) I read the link farm from the main page.
I don’t see any comments in my feed, but I suspect that’s a deficiency in my current newsreader.
Dave C: “link farm now looks a complete dogs-breakfast” – I know, just trying it for size. In a bit of a dilemma on how to display it best since it’s now of equal importance (in my mind) to this blog. Expect more changes soon. Though if you don’t read it then you’re just judging it as a mass of ugly text. Matthew L likes it better this way…
Jez: “I don’t see any comments in my feed” – There are no comments in the feed – I’ve thought about it but it would just mean that every time a new comment was posted the reader would display the post as a new one, when it isn’t, which would get tedious, especially with the spam/retard stuff I delete. I’ve not seen any blog feeds with comments included, other than Plasticbag which is just a link to the comments, not a count or listing.
I like the comments in the link farm. I have visited several sites from there recently because I knew what the links lead to, whereas I haven’t done that in the past.
So, the word in our house is, keep the comments!
Erm, one of my multiplicity of feeds is content+comments. My current reader – FeedDemon – does the wrong thing, and I don’t see the comments. Syndirella, otoh, did the right thing, but is deficient in other ways. Ah well.
Hmm, bloglines – I do remember it but somehow couldn’t really identify with it a day later! You have to understand that some of us have a real problem with the information age. For example, I wondered for months why people walk around shopping malls looking at their cell phones, then I discovered that they were reading text messages. There is, actually, a pleasure in not being in communication all the time (as I think you found out on the IoW?)
And I like your comments to the link farm. Perhaps it could be a separate (new) window?
Jez: Are we at cross purposes? I thought we were talking about comments to posts (like this), but are we talking about the comments on the link farm? Perhaps we’ll discuss it in the pub tomorrow…
Dad: “Perhaps it could be a separate (new) window?” I forget that not everyone uses Mozilla/Firebird. I’ll implement it soonish.
Keep planning to set up an RSS feed, but haven’t yet. There always seems to be something else to do. I think a little colour variation might improve the New Look of the link farm — which I do use, as you’ve doubtless noticed. But then, you’re not much of a one for colours …
Jeremy: You already have an RSS feed for your livejournal – check your source code. Or do you mean something else?
Help me out with the colours! What would you recommend?
I did mean something else. I was being grammatically mucky. I meant a page of RSS feeds from the blogs I read — I can shove them into my friends list, but I don’t really like to. No, my own RSS feeds are just fine! (Though you’re not feeding the weekly strip titles in any more on Bugpowder, pout.)
Colours — italic text at that size isn’t nice to read for me. Separating out the link and your description of it through colour instead (darker blue/lighter blue, blue/grey) would be easier on my eye … but you don’t indicate links generally anyway (except when the mouse is on it) so it might look inconsistent.
(Personally I do find having to skate the mouse around looking for which word is the link an Annoying Thing, but I’m Old Skool like that — links should look like links! But that’s not a very Moveable Type attitude.)
Sounds like you just need a Bloglines account, unless you want build one yourself.
I wondered when you’d notice the weekly strip thing ;) Problem is it slows down the rebuild. I’ve got a plan for a “recently updated stripblog” page though when I’ll get around to it god only knows.
Since the linkfarm descriptions seem to be important to people I’ll make them clearer. I’m reticent to make every link on the page underlined though – there’s so many it’d look awful. Interestingly my step-mum said the same thing – she didn’t realise the blue words were links. I would have thought that the fact that they’re the only blue words on the page, and that links are traditionally blue, would be obvious enough, but what do I know.
“Unless you want to build one yourself” – Having lost my blogger blog several years ago when their impoverished server crashed, I have shied away from relying on third parties. But I would like to have interaction on our site. Is it possible to have an interactive site without (1) too much programming skill and (2) total independence from others sites? Jez’s site seems to be what I am looking for but when he starts writing about what he does for a living I get hopelessly lost and assume that it takes his skills to do it!
BTW, I have not yet had time to read the whole tutorial but I think I will be able to understand it when I do! Well done!
Dad, I’d hate to think that a bad experience with Blogger would put you off automating your site in any way. The thing about Movable Type is that it’s not a hosted service like Blogger so you’re not at the whim of someone else’s mistakes. It runs on your own server so it’s as reliable as the rest of your site. I’m not 100% sure if you can run it on focalplane but we can look into that later. To all extents and purposes (ie to the layman) Jez’s site works the same as this one – a big database holding all the posts, comments and layout templates and a program that creates web pages from that. The only difference is Jez wrote his himself while I, um, didn’t.
This might have been better as an email, but what the hey!
“she didn’t realise the blue words were links”
Christ on a bike. Your links are navy blue, aren’t they? But the regular text is set to browser default, so we see text in our preferred colour.
My default text colour is navy blue. Mystery solved …
I’d never have thought of that. Regular text is now set to black!