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- June 12, 2006
Composing My Ideal Blog Post: Part I
June 12, 2006Read moreIs there an ideal blog post length? I just scanned through a few dozen of my 250+ word posts to see what secrets I could uncover about my own style. The following observations are based on my gut feeling on what makes for an effective “Dave-Style” blog post.
- June 11, 2006
A History of the World in 6 Glasses
June 11, 2006Read moreInteresting book mentioned on CBS Sunday Morning: Tom Standage, a technology editor for The Economist, wrote A History of the World in 6 Glasses. The premise: the drinks of the world—beer, wine, coffee, tea, spirits, and Coca Cola—are the lens through which we can understand world history.
- June 11, 2006
250 Words
June 11, 2006Read moreI have a tendency to ramble. I was reminded of this when participating in my first-ever podcast recording with J over at wynia.org. It’s only really a problem when I forget what it was I was originally talking about; I think most people who know me well come to expect it, and I’m OK with this most of the time. On the other hand, it does bother me that I lose track of my own conversations. I’m easily fascinated by tangents; in writing, this is forgivable because I can read what I just wrote and rescue my chain of thoughts by hammering in the connective logic.
A related issue I have with myself is the length of my rambles. I tend to run verbose, and I suspect this makes my blog inaccessible to daily readers.
So I have an idea: limit the amount of text in each post. This is an artificial constraint that may force me to focus on what I’m trying to say, deliver the punch line, and then get on with my life. The Quickposts category was an earlier attempt to do this, but I’ve noticed that these tend to be more “open-ended” inquiries. In my regular posts, I like to draw some kind of conclusion, or identify critical insights as a leave-behind.
By limiting the length of an article, I can focus on delivering a single idea with enough supporting context to make my point. I’m not sure what ramifications this will have for my blogging, but we’ll see how it goes.
I’ve just adjusted the size of my WordPress article composition window to hold about 250-300 words on my 1024×768 PowerBook screen; 24 lines high, in case anyone is wondering. That should make it easier to keep within the constraint without actually counting words.
- June 10, 2006
3D Browsers
June 10, 2006Read moreWith the Vista hype machine swinging into high gear, the coming wave of 3D applications is likely to break soon. This 3D Web Browser review on ExtremeTech is an early indicator for what’s going on in the application space, but it doesn’t look that promising yet; the design of the navigable 3D spaces don’t seem to provide any particular boon over 2D other than “it’s sorta cool”. I think there will be more innovation in the design of widgets and UI components that leverage the z-axis somehow. Not just “look 3D”, but actually is helpfully 3D. Prediction: we’ll see it first in MP3 players :-)
- June 10, 2006
Getting my RSS Subs under Control
June 10, 2006Read moreIn the past, I actually haven’t read a lot of other blogs. Oh, I subscribe to them, but I am bad about reading them. My thinking was that I needed to keep focused on getting my own stuff done, and didn’t need all those extra ideas swimming in my head.
When I was diagnosed with Adult-Onset Productivity-Responsibility Syndrome, I realized that getting back in touch with the world was a very big deal, both personally and professionally. I just need to be smarter about it! In other words, develop a process that maximizes my productivity in this regard.
The Process, inspired by the “batch cognition” approach that I see in GTD:
- Skim all blog titles only in Bloglines.
- Open summary for interesting titles.
- If it looks interesting, middle-click the post link (this opens the link in a new tab).
- Scan the article. Add it to my StumbleUpon toolbar if it’s exceptional.
- If it’s really good, print it out and file it in my General Reference.
It’s important that I middle-click the post link, not the links inside of the blog post itself. That’s because otherwise I lose the original attribution for interesting sublinks.
