The Scrolls

Archive for the ‘Blogosphere’ Category

Awesome Friends

There is this 30 days of letters blog meme going around. It requires you to write a letter to someone, once a day. One of those requirements is to write a letter to your best friend. The truth is, that’s really hard for me to do. I have so many amazing friends that I cannot help but give more than one of them the title “best.”

My primary best friend is one Ashley and she has held the title since middle school. The thing that I love about our friendship is that she will always hold the title, even if we haven’t spoken in weeks. And sometimes, when we do speak, we can just settle into comfortable silence. It rocks.

Then there’s Dez. We ran in the same circles for years before we began to talk to each other but now we talk to each other pretty much every day. I would be lying if I said she isn’t one of the reasons that I wake up. Truth be told, I can’t remember just when it was that I realized that I need her in my life but I do. We can be silly. We help eachother with websites and ideas. Yet she’s just as good at being my shoulder to cry on when I need her to.

Ashe and I haven’t always been friends. Or even had the best friendship ever. We’re both pretty stubborn when it comes to things. We can both be emotional. But we can discuss things of a serious matter or that are completely nonsensical, too. I enjoy that.

Even those people who aren’t quite my best friends are too awesome for words. Where would I be if Jenn hadn’t taken me in and spread her amazing positivity all over the place? What kind of person would I be if I hadn’t met her little boy? I honestly shudder to think of the thought.

And two people I could never forget to mention: Lars and Christie. Lars is my Dutch friend who is funny and silly and listens to my crap even when I don’t want anyone to have to listen to is. Christie makes me laugh and smile and..despite the fact that we met using pseudonyms, she has quickly become a friend of the real me, too.

Lately, I’ve (re)started talking to two people whom I feel belong in this post but may not even read it. One of them is my friend Giles. He’s been on my MSN list forever, I don’t even know how we met but I do remember that he’s half Irish. Our conversations are always so entertaining. I can be so stupidly funny (or maybe just stupid) with him and it’s great.

And there’s miss Loony, another one of those folks who I knew of but never talked to. Not any more. We’ve chatted quite frequently, often being ridiculously silly. She went me a message one day when we hadn’t talked about how she missed me which was crazy because I’d missed her, too, and it was great knowing that.. I mattered in someone’s life.

You might ask how I gathered all these awesome friends. You might be surprised to hear that this list barely covers my awesome friends. Honestly, I feel awful for leaving people out of this post but, if I didn’t, it would literally never end.

The truth is, I’m really lucky to have my amazing friends but I think part of the reason that I have amazing friends is because I am a pretty good friend myself. That’s definitely one of the things that I have pride about. It’s one of those things that maybe I didn’t intend to do but now I never intend to stop. Quite frankly, if I died and the only good thing people could say about me is that I’m a good friend, then my life will have been well worth it.

Yes, Please

Daddy Forever is giving away a Lenovo ThinkCentre A63 tower computer and two ThinkVision L1951P LCD monitors and I have to say, I’m in! We all know how old my computer is and as well as it’s served me and as much as I love it, I wouldn’t mind having something newer and something with two monitors! So here’s my blog post entry and here’s hoping that I win. XD

Blogging and Photography, Not Mutually Inclusive

I am reading random blogs, linked on EntreCard (also debating still being a member as I get few drops and rarely find any blogs worth reading. The widget is just taking up room on Reviews by Cole), when I stumbled across a post which said this:

Every good blogger carries a camera with them at all times

It wasn’t the point of the post, even. The blogger had broken her camera while in her purse and was looking for some advice but that’s what my mind honed in because all I could think was: Huh? Because you have to be ready to snap a picture when something happens in a moment’s notice? Wait, isn’t that what a photographer does? So now all bloggers have to be photogs, too?

I don’t buy it. Remember how blogging, a form of journaling, started out on manually coded webpage which didn’t look too snazzy? Me, too! And you know what blogging was all about? Text, like the very stuff I am writing now (or, that you are reading right now. Hurry up, by the way, you’re slowing my typing speed ;)).

Of course, many bloggers post photos, they are helpful or just pretty sometimes. The photos are more important for some than others; there are even things such as photoblogs which focus only on photography. I have often thought I should post more but if I don’t, my blog isn’t losing anything. My voice shines through quite well with just text, thank you very much.

Photography is really the new web design. Everyone and there dog has a camera, which probably explains all the dog pictures. d= People are studying photography and making money from it the way they used to study HTML and graphic making. The general standard for photography has risen, just the way the standard for web design rose over the past decade. What was considered acceptable in previous years is now laughable, in both fields.

As standards have risen, tools which help us to meet or exceed them have popped up as well. Even uncustomized WordPress themes are heads and shoulders above the sites I used to see in 1999 and even my several-year-old digital camera produces pictures far superior to any of those I can recall in the family photo album. And I’m neither as educated or motivated about photography as some. DSLR cameras are no longer only in the hands of the pros which is sort of a double edged sword but my point remains the same: photography is everywhere. And it’s totally cool if it’s not my thing and dabbling in more than one art has its advantages, too.

But just because it’s everywhere doesn’t mean someone should expect it. Just because we all could run out and buy fancy cameras with fancy lenses and do fancy bokeh shots, doesn’t mean we have to. And just because we blog, doesn’t mean we have to include photos. All we “have” to do is type and the result is a blog.

So what do I say in response to this (besides everything I’ve already said?)

Every good blogger carries a good head on their shoulders at all times

And you can quote me on that!

The Final Stretch

Can you believe NaBloPoMo is nearly done? Two thirds of the way, at least. It’s been pretty good so far. I’ve kept up better than I expected. Plus, I feel like blogging more than I have when I wasn’t pressing myself for fodder. Maybe we’ll keep it up in December. Probably not though.

Congrats WordPress, Now Get to Work

I’m feeling a bit better today, good enough that I cracked a smile when I signed into my dashboard to see this from the WP Development blog: WordPress Wins CMS Award. Let me say I don’t want to fail to recognize the hard work that has gone into this script which makes my life easier and has always been free. Free is important and so is easy. WordPress is a wonderful blogging script, no doubt. But I think it might be a little premature to award its CMS abilities.

A while back I wrote a post entitled “WordPress Sucks as a CMS.” It’s a pretty popular post when it comes to spam; a good portion of spam comments are left there, probably because it used two very hot keywords: WordPress and CMS. If you missed it, let me sum it up: page management is awful. And it really is. If you’re using WordPress for more than a dozen pages, in addition to posts, you’ll probably agree with my complaints.

I haven’t gotten a lot of other feedback because I feel my demands are higher than your average blog owner. However, they’re probably pretty tame in comparison to others who are using WP as a content management system. I simply want to be able to edit my pages without such a headache. To their credit, many folks have stepped in to create plugins which do help with this but it’s still not perfect. Plus, I feel that most of these functionalities should already be built into WP if it wants to be a serious CMS contender.

With that said, here is what I want to see WP folks:

Sortability

Currently, the pages are shown by order, if specified, with all private pages showing first. If no order is specified by the user, pages are ordered by ID (creation date). If there are child pages, they are shown after the parent page, before the next parent page which is shown by order/ID. I have 29 pages of.. pages and there is no way to adjust how many I see or how they are sorted, even though name and modification date are both shown. Furthermore, there is no easy way to view child or parent pages. To me, all of these things should already have been built in the system a long time ago. Right now, I use a plugin called pageMash which let’s me do something of these things but it’s not flush with WP’s dashboard or as complete as I want.

True AutoP Control

Again, I have to use a plugin to get rid of the paragraph tags that WP inserts, which break my code and make my site invalid. While WP Unformatted is a lifesaver, I don’t think I should have to install a plugin when a checkbox should suffice. This would aid in posts, too, but I mainly run into the AutoP issue when working with HTML code on pages.

Page Importing

I recently added yet another plugin which allows me to add batch pages (and it’s not the only plugin intended to convert a site to WP) after converting them to spreadsheet-like form. The plugin isn’t perfect and the process needs to be done carefully, especially when it comes to content containing HTML but it would be great if WordPress included a way for people to import content from their old sites, you know, instead of just copying and pasting.

Full Searchability

Quite simply put, the ability to search everything (not just posts), is a must. Pages are no less important.

Too much blogging?

I read a community type blog that has been putting out something like 5 entries a day. It’s entirely too overwhelming, difficult to keep up with and generally has become work to read. I try not to post more than one entry a day as that seems like a good amount to work with. It’s enough to keep it interesting but not so much that it swamps the visitor. Plus, after a while, you don’t have anything worthwhile to say so you just wind up posting a bunch of entries that aren’t reallly blog-worthy. I have Twitter for that kinda stuff.

Do you think you can blog too much? What is your limit?

I Am Not A Mommy Blogger

I am female, I am married and my husband is in the military. All of these things generally indicate that I “should” have children and that we don’t does make us kind of the odd ones out but I’m generally okay with it. It also makes me the minority when it comes to blogging. You see, 5 or so years ago when I was in the prime of my teens I hung out in a lot of communities made up of peers around my age and more folks has blogs than did not. Teen bloggers were a sizable force but as we have grown up, our numbers dwindled and today’s teens don’t show nearly the interest that we did a few years ago. I’m okay with that, too, as I still enjoy it. It’s why I’m here and doing NaBloPoMo.

In their wake, “Mommmy Bloggers” as they are called (but who first called them that, I have no idea) stormed the scene and I’m cool with that, too. Girl power and all that. I don’t want to be stereotypical but it seems like a lot of stay-at-home-moms found the internet around the same time; perhaps the recent economic conditions contributed to more people being at home again or perhaps there’s no real reason and I’m just making stuff up. I’m not making up what a sizeable force they have become, however.

Recently, PR companies and people have started to look at the blogosphere as a way to spread word and have been offering their products and services for reviews and giveaways. As a blogger, I love the idea of being recognized for my contribution and, hey, who doesn’t want free stuff, right? But these PR folks have been majorly focusing on Mommy bloggers (it makes sense if they are doing a lot of the household shopping, I’ll give you that) and, in addition to their sheer numbers, “Mommy blogger” has pretty much become synonymous with “review blogger” even though it’s totally and completely erroneous.

There are daddy bloggers and retired bloggers and travel bloggers and grandparent bloggers and working professional bloggers and all sorts of bloggers who do not fall into the category of mommy blogger and they are being completely overlooked not only by PR folks but the community at large. A while back, I was reading an article on Blog Friendly PR about blogger-PR relationships and instead of “review blogger” it used “mommy blogger” as if there are no reviewers who are not moms. I’m a female, I blog and I review but I have no kids. I recently joined BlogHer but, to my dismay, that oversight runs rampant there as well.

I’ve visited at least a hundred review blogs in the last month (that number is probably really low but I’m trying to be cautious), about 95% of which were moms and their sidebars were filled with buttons for other mommy blogs and groups and communities but nothing general. There are not very many review communities it seems and I’d hesitate to call any of them quality but even the “general” ones have an undertone of mommy.

So here I am. I’m not a mom and you know why that works? Because I can offer unique insight and reviews about products that moms may never have a need for, because my lifestyle doesn’t involve kids which may just mean more time to dedicate to more interests, including your product.

I’ve nothing against mommy bloggers. They’re here to stay and their perspective is respected for a reason but they’re not everyone or everything. I’m just tired of feeling like the rest of us don’t matter.