Writing and blogging
wcrawford | September 18, 2009I posted what was to be the last post on this blog yesterday. This morning, in clearing out archives (of stuff that originally appeared on the original site), I accidentally cleared out the most recent 25 posts instead of post 796-821. (Don't ask.)
I'll restore the other 23, maybe, at least to one of the two sites. Meanwhile, for anyone who didn't get the message:
This version of Walt at Random is ending.
The original Walt at Random will continue (with, eventually, posts from this one added.)
Here's most of what I said yesterday about reasons for this change:
As noted on what was, for a while…
wcrawford | July 15, 2009I don't usually go nine days between posts, but...
You can blame ALA Annual 2009 in Chicago for most of that. I (still) travel without technology, so no blogging from ALA--and also no keeping up with blogs, FriendFeed, etc. (but email once or twice in the hidden Internet room in the exhibits).
There's also getting ready for Chicago... and catching up from Chicago, which is likely to take another day or two. Particularly since it's mixed in with continued "trying to fix wifi/internet" (which may finally be fixed, by replacing both modem and router)--and dealing with people doing quotes for…
wcrawford | June 30, 2009It's time for a serious post. E.g., a careful analysis of patterns of spam attempts on a widely-read but essentially dormant blog.
The blog in question is now entitled "Walt, Even Randomer" and combines four years' of Walt at Random archives with the occasional new post that isn't right for the new home of Walt at Random--e.g., reviews of old movies, ALA schedules, pure copies of posts from other blogs (except for the announcements of new Cites & Insights issues, which do appear on both blogs).
The semi-dormant blog was averaging 3,000 page views per day when the active portion moved and…
wcrawford | June 28, 2009In the past few days, one of the best libloggers called it quits: She explicitly said there won't be any more posts on that blog.
By itself, while it's noteworthy, I probably wouldn't post about it. The writer isn't going away, the archives aren't going away, and the circumstances may be unusual.
But there's a context that might be worth discussing and pursuing further--actually two contexts, one only marginally related.
Direct context
One comment on this shutdown said that, according to the writer and a colleague, this particular blog was the only consistent liblog around (not in those…
wcrawford | June 24, 2009When I wrote this post, I left out a whole second "trigger" because of time and energy.
That trigger--once again, wondering whether my humanities background (rhetoric major, math minor) leaves me simply unable to cope with the true Scientific Mind--regarded the format used for publication.
Or, to put it another way, the widespread and vehemently-expressed view that PDF sucks (to use a polite version).
What I saw, in several conversations, was a seeming demand from text-miners that everything must be in HTML (or, better, XML) so it was easy to mine, with a complete disdain for layout and…
wcrawford | June 11, 2009The first major essay in Cites & Insights 9:8 carries forward a set of discussions that began in the April 2009 issue, Cites & Insights 9:5.
Both essays are largely "masses of metablogging"--that is, blogging about blogging--with a healthy amount of commentary and synthesis. The earlier essay (which, if you hate PDF and don't mind crude HTML, is separately available here), discussed blogging as a median medium: a sweet spot in a casual media hierarchy of length, thought and formality.
After that discussion (which I think many of you will find interesting on its own merits), there's…
wcrawford | June 10, 2009Most, but not all, of the archives for the original version of this blog now appear here.
I omitted old movie reviews, cruise line commentaries, and a handful of "temporal posts"--ones that really have no meaning at this point. In all, I omitted less than 10% of the posts.
There are a lot of posts in the archive that don't fit very well in ScienceBlogs--but none of them have channels, and they're there for archival purposes.
Another "scibling" made a great suggestion--that instead of importing my whole archive, I repost selected posts, flagging them as "from the archives."
I didn't do that…