Grex Web Conference

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Grex Web Item 9: Blogging
Entered by remmers on Thu Mar 22 15:03:39 UTC 2007:

The blogging or "web log" phenomenon is certainly one of the defining 
trends of the present-day web. Do you have a blog?  Do you have a set of 
favorite blogs that you read regularly?  If so, how do you "consume" the 
blogs that you read -- by going directly to the website? desktop RSS 
reader? personalized portal like my.yahoo?  other?

8 responses total.

#1 of 8 by cross on Fri Mar 23 13:10:59 2007:

Yes, I have a blog, but it's internal to work.  Most of the blogs that I read
are also internal to work.  Google blogsearch works pretty well.  :-)

#2 of 8 by fuzzball on Fri Mar 23 15:50:40 2007:

i blog on myspace.....
and my xbox 360 blogs.... (ask for link)
im thinking of starting a blog on the daily events of my work. as i 
experience some weird shit daily.....

#3 of 8 by cross on Sun Sep 2 10:16:49 2012:

I just started a semi-public blog.  So far, it is extremely primitive, but
interested parties may see it at: http://pub.gajendra.net/

#4 of 8 by falcon on Thu Sep 13 20:05:35 2012:

Thanks, I read your blog on dotfiles, it makes a good argument.  I recently
read a forum post about ubuntu thumbnails being stored in the .thumbnails
directory, without any arrangements for the system to remove old files.  Would
you agree that ".thumbnails" could be relocated under $HOME/var, which could
be cleared regularly without losing any config data?

http://embraceubuntu.com/2006/02/15/clean-up-old-thumbnails/

As for me, I'm a newbie and so I've nothing to blog about.  But I do keep a
"journal" which could compare something between a diary and a blog.  For me
it's something to look back on in review of my accomplishments and setbacks.
I wish I'd done it when I was younger, since the time seems to slip away.

#5 of 8 by cross on Fri Sep 14 16:15:48 2012:

Something like thumbnails are a different problem.  They're as much metadata
as anything; I'd suggest either colocating them with the content they
describe, or putting them in a subdirectory of the directory the content is
in.

Metadata is a hard problem on Unix-like systems: the abstraction is that files
are just sequences of bytes.  Metadata is limited and fixed (e.g., file
permissions, user/group owners, timestamps).  Richer metadata types have been
implemented in various places (BeOS did this, Mac OS X picked it up and
carried forward classic MacOS's resource forks), but you have to teach every
utility that deals with the data about the metadata, too, and that's kind of
a bummer.

In short: I don't think there's a good answer for what to do with things like
thumbnails.

#6 of 8 by falcon on Sun Sep 30 15:50:23 2012:

I see what you are saying.  But in the context of your blog, we have
.thumbnails/ in the home folder and I was just curious if you would agree on
moving that content under $HOME/var, just as you suggested putting user's
configurations under $HOME/etc.

The reason I'm asking is also to verify if my understanding of the filesystem
hierarchy is correct.  I've seen /var used for a vast assortment of tasks,
but if the thumbnails are variable output (from gnome in my case) then
$HOME/var should be right.

#7 of 8 by cross on Mon Oct 1 03:58:16 2012:

Well, I think that those are two fundamentally different problems.  $HOME/etc
would be for configuration stuff; thumbnails may co-exist with the relevant
data.  Or something like $HOME/var may also be appropriate (I could imagine,
e.g., web browser caches going in there).

/var came from "variable" or "varies": It was for things that changed size
a lot, like logs, spools, etc.

#8 of 8 by falcon on Sun Oct 21 01:50:39 2012:

Well, from what I've read from Ubuntu users online, that .thumbnails folder
sure does change in size, to the point that a lack of automated removal of
old files is an issue for users with nearly full hard drives.

Back to blogging, I am fairly obsessive about organizing information by
relevance, so for me, a blog which categorizes information by date has no
appeal.  The other problem is that as an amateur computer enthusiast, I don't
believe I would have an audience.  

It is possible for anyone to create content online, and in the case of
services like webs.com or weebly.com, to create an entire website complete
with forums and a wiki, with some basic point-and-click computer skills. 
Chances are good that in some of these communities, the number of authors is
higher then the readership.  Being a practical type, I don't see the point,
although this doesn't stop many others from creating their content.

Where there is readership, and the topic is narrow, is where a blog will
shine.  An author of a freeware flight sim maintains a blog that is only about
his aviation interest, even though he is an engineer and could talk about a
lot of other stuff too.  Since the freeware game is popular, he knows he has
readership who's interest with his website/blog is aviation.

The other problem is about location.  If someone authors a blog within his
or her personal website, and the subject matter of the blog is unrelated to
the general site, chances are people aren't going to find the blog, if they
are disinterested in the subject matter of the overall site.

If I were to make a blog, the topics would be wide, just because that's how
my life is going for the moment.  But I would be writing mostly informative
posts, specific to various tasks I might have been trying to accomplish. 
There is such a blog I have come accross, at onemansblog.com, where the slogan
is actually "specialization is for insects" - true to its word, there are
posts about everything under the sun.  I only happened to come accross it
while searching for a computer-related issue.  I haven't visited it since,
because there is no subject matter.  The main appeal there is amusement, for
those who might want to read daily about funny or unexpected things.  As for
a technical blog, I wouldn't find it useful overall.

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