Blog News

I wonder if the weightiness of the topic, the amount of research required, the stress of it all and all that is related to the lateness of the strip.

by

The strip is finally up, and there’s a very good reason it’s so late: I’m just about done with a lengthy discourse that starts with this strip and will ultimately close out the first phase of the argument and carry on into Phase II. (Yes, I know it’s more than a little disturbing that the first phase took a month.)

To celebrate, I’m going to take a full week off from doing any of that sort of heady research and use the time for more productive pursuits, such as working on posts I’ve been putting off (expect at least one webcomic post to actually come along on Tuesday), then spend some time on another research project I anticipate being much simpler, before re-starting work on the Global Warming Series.

I actually think the remaining phases, despite being the more heady parts, could be a little easier for me to write, since they’re less philosophical, less foundational on their own, and could be a little less interconnected. (Famous last words…)

Random Internet Discovery of the Week

by

I don’t see how this is any different from a spiffier version of this. I mean, it’s barely been two months since that earlier RID! The alternative is to get insane, and probably hypnotized.

The Random Internet Discovery is a colossal failure compared to what I originally had in mind for it. I hoped I would have a bunch of interesting sites that would appeal to me and that I would want to disseminate and expose to the teeming masses flooding Da Blog. Back when I had my political series last fall I hoped to bring in whatever interesting political sites I could find. Maybe I could find interesting webcomics or other interesting things.

Instead the RID has been a parade of funny astronomical stuff, cat pictures, other funny pictures, sites that should probably be illegal, religious sites not worth commenting on, interesting lists and tools, and just plain incomprehensible stuff. There have been maybe one or two RIDs worth commenting on since I started it in August or so.

The RID hasn’t been part of the “enlighten the world” plan I had for Da Blog at all. Its main value has been in giving me one less day that I have to think about posting. The irony of that is that I had planned to write rather interesting commentary for the sites I actually found relevant and interesting. By and large, the RID has been incredibly disappointing and pointless.

So I’ve started a new Da Blog Poll, the first since the new year. It’ll run for two weeks and ask whether or not I should continue the RID, stop it, or introduce biases into my StumbleUpon account. I ran a similar poll when I started the RID and the consensus seemed to be that I should allow all interests in, and I didn’t intend to introduce any biases by flagging it whenever I encountered a site I liked, but that system doesn’t seem to have worked that well. “Fixing” RID by introducing such biases could make RIDs slightly rarer, by bringing in sites I would need to actually write something about, but it would also make RID more meaningful to me and to my audience.

Your thoughts?

Not a good day.

by

I was all set to have a mostly April Fool’s-free day. I would be spending most of my time preparing for the next epic Sandsday series. I wouldn’t get tripped up by anything today, that’s for damn sure.

Well, I’ve been dodging April Fool’s jokes left and right on the Internet, while getting bogged down in writer’s block and distractions for the series and fighting off a headache. (Right now I have two strips written and they’re probably going to get the hatchet treatment.) And I have an assignment I need to get done for tomorrow… and last night I got around to coming up for an idea for the OOTS post that doesn’t rely on following the current strips but which is going to take quite a bit of doing… and I still need to look for a job… and I’m already getting a head start on falling behind on the textbook…

Maybe I can make some incremental progress on the series while waiting to see the new OOTS strip…

Before, I might have thought V could stretch the splice into the next book. Now? Not so much.

by

(From The Order of the Stick. Click for full-sized terms of lease.)

I’m going to try and be quick with this.

Because it was a makeup for arguably not having a February OOTS post, I don’t consider the post I made when V took this deal to be an official OOTS post for most purposes.

That means I still owe you a March OOTS post, and that will probably come when the next strip does.

But I do want to give a cautionary tale to Aspiring Webcomickers Everywhere, regarding the previous strip, which I don’t think Rich thought through.

OOTS doesn’t accompany its strips with posting dates, which means later archive bingers won’t realize the connection to March. More to the point, now and in the future, non-Americans won’t get the joke at all. And it doesn’t help that, legibility reasons or no, the Arizona State Sun Devil is misidentified as simply “Arizona”.

The moral: Use topical strips with caution.

That is all.

Okay, I have to check this out.

by

Sometime next week, you’re going to get a sports TV graphics roundup and review.

Because SportsCenter is overhauling its graphics package.

I may wake up slightly before 6 AM on Monday just to see it debut. I wonder if this is a sign that SportsCenter and other ESPN programs are (finally) moving to the graphics package that has populated ESPN’s actual sporting events since the debut of MNF on ESPN (and been ubiquitous on them since April 2007)?

Or… is it an entirely new graphics package, and I need to watch baseball’s Opening Night the previous night to see if it makes its “real” debut there?

Tweeting out of a facebook in my space.

by

When I started Da Blog, I mentioned that “you won’t see me get a MySpace or Facebook account” and I lumped in MySpace and Facebook along with blogs as things I didn’t think there was anyone left in my age group who didn’t have them.

Since then, I’ve seen a number of blogs shacking up with MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter and reposting the posts that are already on their blogs there. I’m wondering, why? You already have an RSS feed, why do you need to put alerts of new posts on Twitter as well? Why repost your blog entirely on MySpace or Facebook and obviate the need for people to visit your blog and view your advertising? If you really want to be on MySpace or Facebook, why not just put your blog there in the first place

I had the same questions shortly after getting my first webcomic-post-created bump, when someone created a feed for Da Blog on LiveJournal. I never really got a satisfactory answer – seems the creator wanted a one-stop shop to read Da Blog and his other feeds from his LJ friends list. I’m not sure if even that applies to MySpace and Facebook (or, to a lesser extent, Twitter).

Well, I think I’ve found the reason why people would dive in to that sort of thing voluntarily: to aid in blog promotion.

The friend function on MySpace and Facebook has become a complete misnomer grossly deprecated from its original function. Probably the vast majority of “friends” aren’t. Celebrities accept every friend request under the sun, allowing any fan to claim their favorite celeb isn’t just someone they really like, they’re BFFs! On the flip side, small-time bloggers and other attention whores (and I use that term to describe a lot more bloggers than the community would like to admit, and I’m one of them) beg for friends on the off chance that people will discover them off their “friends”‘ friend lists. Never mind that when you have 600 friends, they become meaningless. (Some people may not even know who the people are who they apply to be friends with.)

Friends have become trivialized, but their organization hasn’t. The problem with using MySpace and Facebook to pimp your blog is the hassle of applying for friends, and even more so, dealing with friend requests. (One or both may allow for en masse friend approval, without looking at the individual requests, but it’s not a networking site that wants to fight the trivialization of friends. Or spam, for that matter.)

Twitter is better for such a purpose, since “friendship” isn’t reciprocal – there’s a distinction between “following” and “follower” – so people can link you just by announcing they’re following your tweets, and you don’t have to do anything. So between the potential blog-promotion possibilities and my own growing interest in its original purpose (I’m always doing something, ideally), has actually made me seriously consider becoming the latest to follow the crowd and hook up with Twitter.

Oddly, perhaps the major reason why I have some misgivings is the tagline at the top of Da Blog: “The ONLY blog written by Morgan Wick.” That reflects, in large measure, the multi-blog nature of Da Blog as I see it, obviating the need for me to take part in any other blogs. It was originally intended as semi-ironic, since it would be pretty unlikely I (or anyone else) would need any other blogs anyway. But not only has a growth of alternate platforms increased the possibility for things that could be considered “second blogs”, if I were to join Twitter it could easily be considered, despite its restrictions, a second blog for me – if it didn’t even supercede Da Blog.

Besides, I’m better than annoying everyone with what I’m having for dinner.

At least I’m not violating my first-post promise… if only because I’d rather avoid the hassle of coming up with and enforcing a friends policy.

Out with a whimper.

by

This is not the way I intended to do this.

For the first time since July 14 of last year, I did not have a post on a weekday yesterday.

I had been intending to continue The Streak until I hit the one-year mark. Oddly, that might have resulted in extending the streak into at least September and possibly (after college football season) December, because of at least one project I have in the works.

Honestly, after abandoning webcomics posts for March on the grounds I needed the time to work on a paper, I’ve been completely procrastinating. I spent most of yesterday sleeping, watched more TV than I should have or planned to, went out for a while and had no place to really use the Internet (nor, for the most part, did it cross my mind to), and used the last few hours of the official Tuesday playing games rather than at least work on the paper. Really, the paper’s barely started and I’m going to need a three-day blitz to write… eight pages? I hit a research bottleneck where I had to go running around for books to cite to make the point I intended to make (by not being what it calls an “indiscriminate collection of information” Wikipedia may actually be hindering the Web’s potential as a repository of all knowledge by attracting too many queries for it to itself) and that’s been taking up a lot of time I could use actually working on the paper.

(For the sort of research I want to use not just for this paper, but spending much of my life doing, I have a feeling I’ll need a lot of money for books… and I STILL don’t have a real job…)

I may well start a new streak with this post anyway – I have posts planned for the remainder of the week and may try to get a second post out today.

Sure it’s obvious, but it was necessary.

by

(From Ctrl+Alt+Del. Click for full-sized performance review.)

Normally, I defend Ctrl+Alt+Del. I defend it against accusations of Mary Sue-dom, I defend it against accusations that it’s unchanging, I even defend it against accusations of bad art.

But Ethan’s yelling mouth in the last panel… is positively grotesque.

As for the storyline? I’m watching it with interest to see where it leads, but it’s too early to form an opinion yet. Way too early.

As for the “weekly” webcomic post? Not looking good for it to happen on Tuesday, I’m afraid. Maybe later in the week, but…