Category Archives: Weblogs

Almost the day : Birthday Month update

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Today has been a fairly laid-back day. Considering.

I got up at 10-ish and have been on slow ever since. Pauline & Kathryn’s class was having a reading day and I decided to forego more Protégé work this evening in Allen’s class. We will be doing more next week.

So I have been giving myself a break.

Last night was my party at Crane Alley. I thought it turned out nice [some pictures someone else's]. Thanks to all who came! I hope you find something to enjoy in your presents but I know music is a very personal thing. More in a bit about the party.

Tomorrow (Wednesday) is actually my birthday but it is set to be a little more down-to-earth than last night. I have an hour massage scheduled in the afternoon and there’s a full lunar eclipse early enough in the evening and it is supposed to be clear out. Bitterly cold. But clear.

I know to be a realist about the weather here in mid-February but I have some hope. That is, 28-hour or so forecasts are starting to be admissible evidence in my world.

I’ll probably take myself out to dinner somewhere—no idea—and if anyone wants to join me let me know. You are definitely off-the-hook for buying my dinner but I’d love a little company. Probably 6 or 6:30ish.

I went and saw my friend, Eva Hunter, perform solo Friday night in Danville. Gina was there, too, so that was nice. Eva was willing to sing me a song for my birthday but unfortunately the song I want hasn’t been in her repertoire for a while now. Since before I started seeing her perform 5-6 years ago. :(

A large amount of my “free time” after work and sleep from the evening of the 13th until sometime yesterday afternoon was spent compiling these, writing notes, burning and packaging them. Everyone who came to my party got a set. [One person left their's so if it was an accident just let me know and I'll happily replace them. But if you'd rather not that's fine, too.]

I haven’t made a compilation CD since coming to Urbana-Champaign in August 2004. Actually. The last one ended in August 2003. Oh my. A time of pure hell, but a year before I left and moved here still.

This was a hasty project that took up much of my time for 5 days, and it is certainly no attempt to be comprehensive. That would be a fool’s errand. I do like it, though, as I have listened to them over and over for much of that 5 days—certainly since the playlists were finalized. Of course, getting them finalized takes a lot of listening to transitions and such.

Starting tomorrow, I need to get back on track. Sure. It’ll be my birthday.

So I won’t try and make up 5 days of work in one—another fool’s errand—but I will begin with something I enjoy like beginning a new-to-me Harris book that looks very important to my paper.

Back to the party …

Thanks so much to whomever paid for my dinner and drinks. And an especially big thanks to those who took good care of Lisa. She would not let me give her a tip. She said my friends took care of me and very good care of her. Thank you!

She then told me I could come in for dinner next Monday and give her the tip. I told her I would do my best but laughed and said it would be smaller next week.

I got a ride over from a vixen and a ride home from a wonderful couple I wish I saw far more of. Of course, I wish I saw much more of everyone who was there. Tentative, vaguish commitments were made with a few folks. I certainly hope I see Ben around at some point. He’s at GSLIS but I just met him last night.

Rachel knit me a sweet hat during the party, or at least finished it there. Tom gave me a productive-looking book: Hickman, Larry A. 2007. Pragmatism as post-postmodernism : lessons from John Dewey. New York: Fordham University Press.

I had the butternut squash ravioli, which was OK but it was much better the 1st time. I had 4 pints of Guinness (and have felt surprisingly good today) and 3 sips and a lot of sniffs of a fine scotch compliments of El Diablo. A few other sips were had by others so it did not go entirely to waste; not that it did anyway. But more was “consumed” in the typical sense with the help of others.
Oh, by the way, the shirt I was wearing was having a birthday of a sort itself, it is 29-years old.

In between most of the above and here, I took myself out to the diner for dinner and began on that Harris book: Harris, Roy. 1996. Signs, Language, and Communication : Integrational and Segregational Approaches. London; New York: Routledge.

I’m going to close this now as I want to go back to slowly passing the evening. Tomorrow involves work and meetings and so on beginning at the normal time. But that is tomorrow still.

Successful WordPress upgrade?

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I finally got around to upgrading this blog’s version of WordPress from 2.2.3 to the newest, 2.3.2. There’s an brand-new updated version of the Cutline theme that I use that I still need to do but …

… I did something really stupid when I did the upgrade. With printed instructions in front of me. One of the critical early steps. What a freaking oaf!

So please have a quick look around and let me know if you see anything amiss if you have a moment and the inclination.

Thanks!

3rd blogging anniversary and welcome to new readers

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Welcome new readers

On the 14th of Jan, Blake posted a story at LISNews, The LINews 10 Blogs To Read in 2008. My lowly little blog was included in that list. I have at least 29 new readers in Bloglines, which means, perhaps, 80-120 total new readers since then. Of course, the fact that the list was reproduced all over the blogosphere didn’t hurt either. ;)

Now Blake’s recommendation is wonderful to me, but I wonder what people expect based on that description. It is accurate but such a small part of me, even the part shown here. Also note the methodology; I come recommended based on a sample of probably one, perhaps two if I flatter myself. :) [There's a tie-in in that previous link to the name of my first (public) blog, ...the thoughts are broken....]

So, welcome to everyone who has come this way via the list. Please check out the other folks, too.

Please feel free to comment, correct, say your piece, etc. I do not worry about whether or not you agree with me or how long your comments are. Sometimes substance requires several paragraphs.

I do moderate all first time comments, though, to cut down on spam. Links are allowed but at some number shortly after 1 your comment will get flagged as spam, which I’ll hopefully catch. I do try to address all comments, and try to do so in a fairly timely manner. But I do sometimes fail.

And you can always use the Contact Form to send me non-public comments, too [Scroll back up and use the Contact tab at center top].

Who am I?

I am finishing a Certificate of Advanced Study (CAS) in LIS at GSLIS, UIUC. I also did my Masters here just prior to this degree. Organization and access of information has been my area with a focus on classificatory structures. Some of my post-MLS classes include thesaurus construction, classification systems seminar, information modeling, humanities ontologies, Topic Maps, bibliography, and Python programming. [Full list of my 80 or so grad LIS hours is here.]

I have worked as a computer technician for the department, broadcast distance ed classes and assisted with classroom technology, both on campus and virtual, been a thesaurus maintainer, and most recently work as both the serials cataloging GA and as one of the monographic cataloging GAs.

As I hope to be done this May (my 3rd Mother’s Day graduation, hopefully) I am now on the job market. I am primarily looking for an academic job doing something related to cataloging, metadata, vocabulary work, etc. If you know of any feel free to send me a link.

I am also a “habitually probing generalist” as my tagline claims, but that may be causally based more on brain chemistry at an early age than by culturally-trained bent [Although I have assimilated much of the cultural quite well. I'm one hell of a manual citation tracking machine, for instance]. I get intensely interested in highly specific things on occasion. And in the process of diving in deep one finds so many things one did not know about. Some of that stuff is going to be highly interesting and itself lead off in other directions. What a deliciously dangerous vicious circle this is.

3rd blogging anniversary

Three years ago today …the thoughts are broken… debuted with “So, what is this about, and for?” I once had a “best posts” which I began to update quite a while back. Not a job I actually relish although I would like people to see the stuff I prefer for whatever reason I label it “best.”

Oh. Crap. That page is much older than I thought and all of the links are broken since it moved from the first blog to this one. Oh well, perhaps you can search titles if you are interested in some of my early stuff (1 Feb – 25 Oct 2005). Some day I may get that list updated but since I’m nearing 1000 posts [and taking into account other time constraints] it won’t be any time soon.

My first blog was hosted at TypePad. On 20 July 2006 Off the Mark debuted [It does include all of my previous posts at ...the thoughts are broken... but all internal links are broken]. This means I’ve been on LISHost and WordPress for more than half my online existence; that is, blogging existence and paying for hosting.

The name of my 1st blog came from a line in a Grateful Dead tune while this one was named by Richard Urban and Walt Crawford.

Since May 2006 I’ve been taking a fairly narrow path for a generalist; that is actively taking. Much of my time is taken up by this. [See this post and comments for some comments on the curse of being a generalist; and also of having an "actively wired" brain.] I am looking at what the Integrational theory of communication and language might mean for LIS if taken seriously. Thanks go to David Bade for starting me down this road.

So not an anniversary for this specific blog (although my friend, Iris, said last night that it’s the same blog with a new title. Perhaps.) but a blogging anniversary. Just to be clear.

Zotero, COinS, WorldCat, linking …

My blog has a plug-in that generates COinsS data so that OpenURL and COinS aware tools will recognize this data and do something contextual with it. For instance, Zotero (which I recommend highly) can import that data from the web page. If I click the icon [contextually variable] that shows up in my browser’s address bar the post metadata is imported: Post title, author, blog title, date of post, URL, and access date. And, no, I don’t have many of my own posts in Zotero. There are a few posts, though, that are being used in my bibliography and CAS paper so they are there.

But I also use Zotero to output COinS data to put in my posts when I cite a source, like in my weekly reading posts. And I do far more of it for print resources as it is easier and more reliable to get information in automatically. And if I can provide a resolvable URL for a web resource anyway then how important is the COinS data for them. Again, I do not have that many web-based resources in Zotero; comparatively.

I also try to link to WorldCat for stuff they have records for. By the way, they are providing data for the taking by Zotero also. A couple days ago I linked to a work record in LibraryThing that I had brought in from Oxford University being the only one in LibraryThing to have it (or claiming to have it). I got that data into Zotero from the LibraryThing work page which also gave me some data. I think, in this case anyway, that WorldCat would have been better.

So, as Blake said, I write about print stuff. I read a fair few books (mostly non-fiction) and lots of articles, to include photocopying a boatload of stuff not online. Most of it is LIS literature or related to issues in LIS.

Extraneous

Well now. I think it’s all been a bit extraneous and somehow self-indulgent so far. ;)

My blog is both personal and professional. This state has been written about and commented on many times here and elsewhere. Consider the name of my first blog, …the thoughts are broken….

Here’s a few more lines for a bit of context:

If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine
And my tunes were played on the harp unstrung
Would you hear my voice come through the music
Would you hold it near as it were your own?

It’s a hand-me-down, the thoughts are broken
Perhaps they’re better left unsung
I don’t know, don’t really care
Let there be songs to fill the air

Grateful Dead. “Ripple.” American Beauty.

This is the positive view of making best use of one’s broken thoughts. I’ve been listening to American Beauty since it came out and “Ripple” has always been one of my favorites and always deeply personally meaningful. That meaning has shifted and changed and grown over the years but it has always been positive.

The other side of broken thoughts though is know as fragmentation, depersonalization and moral minimalism. [See these posts perhaps. Actually, I do have an overview post of these issues less than a year old.]

Thus, the title of my 1st blog was both a warning to myself and a positive statement of how to make things better. Changing the name for my new blog had nothing to do with considering my thoughts to no longer be broken. That is a lifetime struggle based on the way our society is structured.

In the meantime, I try to keep my chin up and gently coax a few of those thoughts into being coherent and whole. As Robert Hunter wrote 38 years ago:

Let there be songs to fill the air.

Where are the blogging LIS educators?

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Back in August 2005, Joy Weese Moll started a movement to identify the MLS student bloggers, which also led to many questions and discussions. Nowadays we have a Ning to hang out in.

I think it is time for a new list and some more questions. Who are the blogging LIS educators? Why are there so few? [assumption and anecdote] What prevents or holds them back from doing so? [I can think of a few possibilities]

I am aware of Michael Stephens and Jens-Erik Mai. Who else is there?

Yesterday a friend wrote me with the following questions:

I’m getting ready to do my Field Exam list and it struck me that the
blogosphere keeps me pretty up to date on practitioner stuff in the
field – but other than Michael Stephens, i don’t think I have many LIS
faculty blogs in my list of feeds.

Are you aware of any good L (particularly I)S blogs by faculty members
where they discuss emerging literature and research practices?

There’s some good ones emerging for digital humanities (Matthew Kirshenbaum, Dan Cohen, etc.). Who’s our LIS faculty blog star?

I had to reply with my addition of Jens-Erik Mai as a possibility. I find that sad. I can think of many reasons why LIS educators might not blog, and those may even be very good ones on an individual basis, but I told him I would ask my people on the tubes anyway. [I definitely 2nd reading Dan Cohen. I suggested his blog for the LISNews list of 10 Non-Librarian Blogs to Read for 2008. Submit here]

As we send this out to the larger group I think a wave in the general area of what is meant by “LIS faculty” [my friend's term] or “LIS educators” [mine] is warranted. No disrespect meant towards librarians with faculty status [or those in the track] but you are not what we mean (probably). I think faculty in the official sense, restricted to faculty of the LIS schools, is too narrow. Many LIS students are educated by adjuncts of various stripes, both locally and by distance ed. I think all of the educators of our students who meet the other sorts of criteria my friend proposed (or similar enough) could go on the list.

So if you are a librarian who also teaches and commits a decent amount of your blog to items of educational interest then I am interested in putting you on the list. If you teach a course or two as a side job and your blog is on the supreme awesomeness of your cat … well, I feel sorry for your students and I’m not interested in you probably. ;)

Somewhere in between all that and towards the positive side are folks like Meredith and Dorothea. I am interested in them and I read their blogs. I also find them educational. But not the sort of educational my friend means anyway, plus he knows of them already.

I guess we can call it the “Supreme Court” test. We’ll know one when we see one.

And as far as that goes, I am agnostic on whether Stephens and Mai make the list. :)

So who, or where, are they?

Send me some suggestions for blogs by LIS educators that contain a fair amount of educational content, if you know of any.

Need a New Name, Round 2

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Don’t worry … I’m not looking for a new name for this wittily named blog (wasn’t christened by me anyway ;) ). I’m starting a 2nd blog and no worries. I am not breaking my thoughts here, either. This is nt a professional/other stuff split like has been discussed here before from assorted angles.

My intention is to install a 2nd WP install and the CommentPress (“a WordPress theme for social texts”) theme. If you’re not familiar with CommentPress you should check it out as it has some real potential in varied circumstances. Comes from the good folks at The Institute for the Future of the Book. Here’s an example install with the Iraq Study Group Report.

So, what would I use it for? Current and recent past thoughts (barring unforeseen copyright issues) include: Draft Final Working Group Report, Hsieh-Yee’s report on cataloging/metadata education*, Panizzi’s 91 rules, drafts of parts of my paper as I write it, suggestions from others that fit within my interests, … and then hopefully discussion around those sorts of entities, at assorted resolutions down to the paragraph.

On one hand, I have a very specific and timely (past now) idea and, on the other, a very vague one.

And the beauty of it all … I need a name for it. This is your chance for fame and glory in perpetuity. Just ask Richard and Walt; they still get the credit (or blame?) for naming this blog after about a year and a half now.

With any luck it will be a proverbial water cooler.

Please send suggestions. Most likely without water cooler being involved, though; or, at least it was not an explicit hint.

Now is your chance to:

Find the line, find the shape
Through the grain
Find the outline and things will
Tell you their name

Suzanne Vega “Night Vision” Solitude Standing

Also, it’s your chance to prove Andrew wrong:

you weren’t there that day for the naming of things
the naming of things

Andrew Bird “The Naming of Things” The Mysterious Production of Eggs

Will you be there on naming day?

* Hsieh-Yee, Ingrid. “Cataloging and Metadata Education: A Proposal for Preparing Cataloging Professionals of the 21st Century.” A report submitted to the ALCTS-Education Task Force in response to Action Item 5.1 of the “Bibliographic control of Web Resources: A Library of Congress Action Plan.” Approved by the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services. Web version available since April 2003 at http://lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/bibcontrol/CatalogingandMetadataEducation.pdf.

Color me “Tickled Pink”

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The LISNews 10 Blogs To Read In 2008

Kirsten gets the credit for bringing me the news. ;)

Congratulations to all the outstanding company I found myself amongst. Wow!

Thanks Blake and the perhaps one person who nominated me!

I really love the write-up Blake gave me. :) If those aren’t your reasons, and you have no good ones of your own then perhaps you don’t need to read me. But if they are ….

Hopefully not a factor at all but in the spirit of openness, Blake and LISHost are my hosting service. I recommend them highly.

This really made my day as I headed out of the house about noon. As many of you know I haven’t been doing too well for awhile now, and this year (although I have been somewhat mute about it) has really gotten off to a crappy start. So this was kind of like a 2nd New Year’s Day for me.

I haven’t given up yet and a new start to the year helps a lot.

I left for class after a leisurely morning in 18° sunny weather shortly after finding out about this. It was actually pretty nice out for semi-cold day; no wind). And I chose the music perfectly as I started American Beauty, which begins the immensely apropos “Box of Rain“:

… any morning, any evening, any day
Maybe the sun is shining
birds are winging …

….

Look into any eyes
you find by you, you can see
clear through to another day
I know it’s been seen before
through other eyes on other days …

….

Walk into splintered sunlight
Inch your way through dead dreams
to another land
Maybe you’re tired and broken
Your tongue is twisted
with words half spoken
and thoughts unclear
What do you want me to do
to do for you to see you through
a box of rain will ease the pain
and love will see you through

David Dodds, The Annotated “Box of Rain”

David Dodd’s assessment of the connections between this song and “Ripple” are the exact same ones I have made for decades. And first song on the respective sides of the album; that way of knowing is pretty much gone, sadly. And while unclear thoughts are not exactly broken thoughts, there is some kind of connection, in my life at least.

There are, of course, many other wonderful tie-ins to a sunny day, a new beginning, an awakening.

Thanks again, Blake.

Off the Mark in 2008

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There will be changes in this blog this coming year. Not necessarily, and, in fact, not particularly, intended. Those intended may well not happen.

“Some things read this week, …” posts will likely continue. They will be reconfigured somehow—not yet discerned—by the change in my reading habits, at least through mid-May.

As the year begins, I am working on a bibliographical essay tying Hjørland and Roy Harris (and Integrationsism) together. From there I will be embarking on producing my CAS paper as previously described here. This is a major undertaking for me as for achievements go; even academic.

I shall also be pursuing a job; preferably to begin shortly after defending my paper in early May. I could, in theory, start a job at any time. Although I still have 3 years from this coming May to finish my degree, I much prefer to finish this May and then start a new job. But I remain open-minded.

So, “Some things read …” posts will most likely be much simplified as I will mainly be re-reading things from (primarily) this past year, along with re-reading parts of things. I will want to keep some record for myself, but it need not be fully publicly expressed. I will comment when I have anything particular to say about a specific piece or idea, though.

I will be reading some other things, though, as I hope to sit in on 2 seminars: subject analysis and ontology development.

Seeing as how my “Some things read …” posts were a goodly portion of this year’s output I imagine output will shrink, for several months anyway.

I doubt I will be much engaged with any (other) big ideas or the biblioblogosphere either. Not due to lack of desire; there was so much I wanted to engage with this past year and/or more deeply engage. No doubt the future will remain the same on this one.

No idea as to how the job search will affect my blogging. My goal is certainly to get one and a good one that fits me, too. Perhaps less public display of my angst and pain is forthcoming.

I have some evidence that there is already wild speculation regarding what kind of decision I am currently putting off and hoping to forestall. If one were to go back a couple months in this blog and read forward (with some exemplars linked above) they would find much of relevance to decisions that must possibly be made. All three posts are long and cover several areas.

“Perhaps they’re better left unsung” discusses the seminars I hope to sit in on this Spring (why linked above), issues with school (anymore) and especially Python class mid-semester, and depression (See especially the comments).

“Certificate of Advanced Study Project” discusses my CAS (why), generally, originally (early plans), and the route to my current topic. Links to “Tunneling …“.

“Tunneling for rabbits” is the first explicit description of where I am headed.

No doubt there are other commentaries sprinkled among my blog, but the situation is that I am right back to this “place.” Sure. Some, if not much, of the immediately felt/lived experience of mid-late Fall semester is only a memory, but the place I was and the decision(s) I felt I had to make soon, at the time, are back as full-strength, lived experience.

I’m kind of at the same place as Jennifer was, school decision-wise, mid-year. But for vastly different reasons. I adore my program. Sure, it has issues; every program does. But, all in all, it’s been great. Perhaps I just need a break. There’s much more that feeds into my “situation” but it all ends with staying in or leaving school.

On top of feeling this way, I must make serious forward progress with my work on Harris and Hjørland. As I wrote before,

“Yeah.” Anyone got a match?

I really do not want to discuss this right now. That’s why it didn’t come up any time over Christmas. Emotional energy? I have none for this. I am thankful that it is delayed for the moment, and hopeful that it can be forestalled. For that to happen I must—besides going back to work—do a lot of (quality) serious work until the 11th. Spring semester starts the next Monday, the 14th.

Back to the (post) topic at hand, and the intended changes that may not happen. I would like to get upgraded to current WordPress version, and I’d like to get an install of CommentPress running. [Still says CommentPress isn't playing well with the newest WP. So upgrading is secondary.]

If I could get a CommentPress install (as a 2nd blog) up and running I might put up some of my paper as it gets written. Or not. Would’ve been nice to have for the LC Working Group’s Draft final Report but that is water under the bridge.

So. Changes, possible changes, and not so much change but reversion to a postponed state.

Productively non-productive

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Thanks to all my friends for sending their condolences in various venues. I am uplifted by your care. I’m a right proper heathen but if your views run differently and you can spare a thought for my aunt’s family right now that’d be awesome.

She was a rock for that family. For a very long time.

[I apologize for any odd paragraph formatting below as WordPress is screwing with me relentlessly on this.]

I think or, at least, I hope that I was productively non-productive yesterday. I didn’t do anything directly related to my bibliography, although, perhaps, that could be argued.

I read lots of my own stuff (and comments) from this blog over the past year. While I did, I did lots of electronic annotations in Zotero, copied and pasted anything useful written about articles or books by Hjørland or Harris (or related) into my draft bib, noted blog posts that will be useful when I come to write my bib essay and the CAS paper as a whole in my wiki, and other minor related tasks. This morphed out of the books read in 2007 delaying tactic I was on primarily Saturday.

Late in the evening, I took the content of my 2 posts on Hjørland’s “Semantics and Knowledge Organization” ARIST chapter [part 1, part 2]and got them re-formated into a Word doc with any redundancies removed and internal and external citation lists merged for both at the end. Printed out it’s 11 pages solid. Now I’ve got to put that work—and an awful lot of unanswered questions, some very big—to even more work. Still. This is mostly CAS paper stuff primarily; although, this is the paper with the one Harris reference. Hmmm. Definitely bib material.

I’ve been varyingly unhappy, perhaps unsatisfied is better, with my blog for quite a while. Can’t quite put my finger on what exactly about it that bugs me. But I do know that it’s various, and varying.

Part of it is not being able to cover everything I’d like as deeply and/or as broadly as I’d like. But that’s just life. I do wish that my “Some things read this week…” posts were better. Better in the sense of more fleshed out entries for far more of the things read. Some wrap-up thoughts, etc. “Progress” is important but this is a prime area where I could employ some goals towards Slow Reading. [Please ignore that "progress." I wrapped way too much up in that term.]

Speaking of John Miedema, there was an interesting post and comments at a recent post, “Have you set an end-date for your blog?” [BTW, there are frequently interesting things to read at Slow Reading.]

Have you set an end-date for your blog? Interesting question, and idea. For the right reasons, it is a grand idea.

In a comment, John writes:

Hi Peter, I’ve put one blog to “sleep” so far (http://johnmiedema.wordpress.com). It was my first public blog, had the usual first blog characteristics — wandering mission, odd mix of personal and professional — and was a real learning experience.

Well, I guess—nope, didn’t put it to sleep but gave it a new manifestation and expression, and name—that is fairly similar to me. It explains my 1st blog pretty well, and it explains this one, too.

wandering mission, odd mix of personal and professional — and was a real learning experience

Well, my mission wanders no more than I do so not really applicable, although all output probably evidences differently as far as appearance to others. But an intentional “odd mix of personal and professional,” certainly. And it remains forever—hopefully—a learning experience.

I know John wasn’t implying that these “usual first blog characteristics” are anathema to every blog. Perhaps just those he’d prefer to write. ;)

Hell, I’d love to be able to write a highly focused topical blog or two. And that’s also a part of my non-satisfaction with this blog. But writing those blogs is not me. Or, at least, not me right now.

And based on what I read yesterday, it has been highly focused for a while now. It’s just highly spotty, and not really intended to be so focused.

End date? Sure. It’ll definitely have one. I’m just in no position to set one right now, unsatisfied as I may be. Let’s hope I don’t just disappear it, though. :)

Comment Timeout installed

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Following Walt’s lead following Jessamyn’s (and others), I finally installed James McKay’s Comment Timeout for WordPress.

For the last couple months, and more so the last couple weeks, spam has really been ratcheting up. In the last 24 hours it has been completely over the top (for me)—more than 10-25 x average.

I am hoping this plugin may help reduce some of this. One reason is that I have generally always scanned through the list of Akismet captured spam as once in a great while a legitimate comment gets caught. In fact, if I comment on my own blog from my PC (logged in from my Mac usually) any comments I make get caught as spam about 50% of the time. But with this much spam I simply cannot look through it all and even if I did I might well miss the legitimate comment in all the noise.

If you have made a comment in the last few days and it did not show up, I sincerely apologize.

I really hope this helps!

I, too, have set the closing time at 180 days.

[Update]: Having lived with this for around 48 hours I can say that it is either a really odd coincidence (as Walt suggested as a possibility) or I can call this a resounding success.

I went from somewhere around 60 spam an hour to a total of perhaps 20 in the last 48. That is 20 total.

A plea to those who output their del.icio.us stuff to their blog

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Please don’t!

Maybe I should take a different tack first. Instead I will try to combine them.

If anyone reading this blog uses any means to output the items they add to del.icio.us as blog posts I would be interested in hearing your reasons for doing so. Now, if you have a blog that serves this purpose primarily then feel free to answer, although I already have a sense of some answers why one would do this.

My question is more to people who send this info to their “regular” blogs. I don’t know if this practice is taking off, or if I am just reading more people lately who do it. I do know that several people that I have read for a while have begun doing this.

Let me also admit that I have on a very rare occasion marked one of these posts as “Keep New” in Bloglines.

I am not claiming that one shouldn’t make their del.icio.us postings public. But there are ways to do so and are, I believe, so by default. If you think that you are providing a service to others—and you may well be—then you could always find another way to remind people that they can use the tools available within del.icio.us to watch your every move.

Now honestly, this has been bugging me for a while. I certainly do not mean to pick on Karen, and I had been intending to write this post days ago, but … do I a link to the Weather Channel blog or an Onion article?

OK, I know I’m about to lose half my readers, but I really do not find the Onion even slightly entertaining. I know it’s something all the “cool kids” are supposed to read and be able to discuss, sort of the hipster equivalent of knowing what happened last night on whatever the current hot reality TV show is. I don’t know why or how but, clearly, their vision of humor is somehow skewed from mine. Psst. And I honestly do not think many folks really get it either, but one must keep up appearances.

Anyway, my point—if anyone is still reading—is that regardless of what you are adding there is a 99.999% chance I could care less.

“So what is the problem,” you ask? “You’re using an aggregator, just ignore my post.”

Well, ignore may well become the operative word. The issue is that, despite what some think, dealing with all of this stuff does take real physical and cognitive labor. The physical labor is not generally the kind that makes you sweat, but it is the kind that may very well lead to overuse injuries.

I am a cataloger. I work at the computer all day. And if any of you are the slightest bit familiar with our systems you know what a nightmare of usability that they are. And then there are the design choices committees of librarians make about how to set up the search options in an OPAC and the various entries to it that compound the problem for someone who needs to do anything besides a keyword search.

On the cognitive front, just like you, I have more than enough to slog through and I try to subscribe to information sources from people whom I truly want to read. This is not to say that I am guaranteed to want to read every word that you write. Certainly not. But if I have kept your feed around then a conscious decision has been made that I find what you post of value, at least generally.

Adding your del.icio.us stuff to your general blog is a guarantee that—for me—you have just significantly impacted that decision in a negative manner.

If you rarely add stuff to del.icio.us then I probably will barely notice. But if you add stuff almost as frequently as you post….

Maybe this is just me. I don’t know. And you probably shouldn’t care if I read your blog or not. But I ask that you give a few minutes consideration to what your blog serves as for you, and then consider whether adding your del.icio.us content to it serves that purpose. If it is congruent, fine.

But I’m wondering whether it truly is. And while I advocate doing what you want with your own blog, always, I also realize that generally part of the point is to have folks read it. So, be sure to consider whether this additional content also serves as a useful and appreciated bit of content for them.

In my case, the answer is almost 100% No.