That last post about Campisi’s has attracted over 20 spam comments in less than 24 hours. Interesting. Normally this site, with fairly low traffic, might get about 2 or maybe 3 spam comments per day, which are all caught by Akismet. I wonder what in that post got the spammer’s attention. The built-in Akismet antispam application here at WordPress has killed off about half of them, but the others initially go through. Weird.
Category: blogging
Posts about blogging
I imported some entries
I’ve been writing about my Aikido learning process on another blog. Today I imported all those entries into this blog. I’ve decided to keep all my blogging stuff here. The advantages of having a free server, free updates and spam protection, etc, etc, are hard to beat. I also think the user interface is great. I might do some work on customizing a theme — we’ll see. WordPress just keep adding cool features to this system. I like it.
aikido, life, and other stuff
It’s been a while since I posted here. I’ve actually been experimenting with a blog on my other website, writing mostly about Aikido, which I started last month. The weather has been horrible, so no skateboarding. I’m taking the 2nd part of beginning Spanish at the local community college. That’s twice a week and Aikido twice a week. So I’m busy.
I’m still sort of torn between continuing to use WordPress and this free blog environment or go completely back to my other Moveable Type stuff. The nice thing about WordPress is the spam control. It really works well. I also like the built-in community here and stat tracking. I also like the “blogroll” feature here. On the other hand, I am really good at customizing Moveable Type, and I prefer its categorization system. Overall I think the convenience of WordPress my outweigh the customization of MT. When I find the time I may download WordPress and install it on my server and see what I can do with it.
Blogging on the decline?
I haven’t been making a lot of posts lately, mainly because I just haven’t had that much to say. I’m trying to avoid the “what I had for lunch” type of posts.
Anyway, a coworker sent me a link to this article from Information Week, which discusses a report from the Gartner Group predicting that blogging will peak in the first half of 2007. I’m not surprised. Hell, I kept another blog for 2 years, and posted regularly, but a few months ago I decided to try to focus my efforts on specific subject areas. With concerns about online privacy growing, I think people will be less inclined to put up a lot of personal experiences, at least not without more anonymity. There are so many other choices for online socializing too — flickr, tons of subject-specific message forums, groups, myspace — the list goes on. Then there is the fact that young people are increasingly using text messaging and other mobile technology to keep in touch rather than email and the web.
So I’ve been reading — or really just skimming — a lot of books about blogging from the last 2 or 3 years. Seriously, I haven’t found any that were particularly interesting. The best one I’ve found is Blog!: How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture. This book has interviews with a bunch of different, “sucessful” bloggers, who do lots of different kinds of blogs. Political, social, technology, personal, whatever. Nice thing about this book is you can pick the ones you are interested in, read one in 10 minutes or so, then do something else. Much like reading a blog.