An Eclectic Mind

I finally get around to adding the rest of my original blog content to this blog.

I started blogging back in October 2003. Back then, I used a blogging software program called iBlog that created blog pages in plain old HTML. It worked okay but I soon outgrew it and switched to WordPress.

The trouble is, I used iBlog for more than two years, accumulating hundreds of posts. Although I was able to export those posts to XML, getting them properly formatted with their images and importing them into WordPress was extremely tedious and time-consuming. I worked on it periodically for months. And then I gave up.

This week, I’m prepping for a new book based on a collection of my blog posts. I realized that the best way to make sure I didn’t miss any of them was to get them all online on An Eclectic Mind. So I sat down and completed the tedious chore of importing the last bunch of posts, all of which have lots of photos and date from January 2004 to June 2005.

Here’s a list of what I added:

• On Close Calls
  Why a control tower clearance is something to be taken with a grain of salt. October 9, 2004
• Through the Magic of Photoshop…
  I get a photographic image of a helicopter that hasn’t been built yet. November 7, 2004
• A Trip to California
  I take a trip to California with my family to see Zero-Mike-Lima. November 24, 2004
• People are Pigs
  A tenant moves out and I am amazed by the way some people live. December 2, 2004
• A Trip to Quartzsite
  I have a nice flight to Quartzsite and back with some pilot friends. January 17, 2005
• Air-to-Air
  An air-to-air photo shoot gives mixed results. January 24, 2005
• Exploring the Desert by Helicopter
  We wander through a mill site, fly over an open pit mine, get a hamburger in the middle of nowhere, and see the “land now” light four miles short of home. February 5, 2005
• A Trip to Phantom Ranch
  We take a mule ride to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, spend two nights, and return to civilization. March 5, 2005
• My Trip to Georgetown
  I take Zero-Mike-Lima on a long cross country trip to take care of business and visit some friends. May 8, 2005
• Red Mountain
  We “walk inside a mountain” near Flagstaff. June 1, 2005
• Could it be? A building at our place on Howard Mesa?
  Our soon-to-be cabin was finally delivered to Howard Mesa. June 5, 2005

BLog Technicalities, On Blogging blogging, writing

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I’ve started collecting — and sharing — them again.

Over the years, I’ve posted almost daily lists of links to articles I’ve read on the Web that I think blog readers might enjoy. They come under the main title of “Interesting Links” and include the date on which I found them. Clicking the “links” tag in the sidebar will display them all, in reverse chronological order.

It might surprise some people to learn that this is mostly automated. I simply bookmark the page I want to share with Delicious. Each night, a plugin on my WordPress blog, checks in to see what links have been added. It publishes the day’s list as a blog post at around 11 PM.

That would explain why an “interesting links” page might contain a single link; I only bookmarked one link that day.

What I like about this solution (other than the automation, of course) is that it enables me to determine exactly what I want the post link to say and include a description of the post.

Some of you may have noticed that these posts stopped appearing at the beginning of December. The truth of the matter is that I simply stopped bookmarking links. I got busy and traveled around, mostly between Wickenburg and Phoenix. I stopped following Twitter — which is a great source of links to interesting information — so closely. And, frankly, I got lazy. When I found an interesting page, I didn’t bother to bookmark it. Maybe I realized that it might be the only link I bookmarked that day and I didn’t want it to be all alone in its blog post.

But I’ve started bookmarking again and hope to continue to share the best content I find on the Web — usually with the help of some Twitter friends.

And I’ll do it legally, by offering just a description and link, rather than a word-for-word reproduction of what I find. (More on slimebags who do that in another post.)

BLog Technicalities blogging, links, plugin, WordPress

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The start of a NaNoWriMo journal.

Yesterday, I spent a lot of time reading old blog entries as part of the process of adding excerpts that would appear in search results.

And now I must go off on a tangent to explain why….

On Tags and Excerpts

A few weeks ago, I added a feature to this blog that would list related posts at the end of each post when viewed in single page view. (If you don’t see what I’m talking about at the end of this post, click the title of this post to switch to single page view and you’ll see it.) This feature uses the tag feature of WordPress to match the current post’s tags to other posts in this blog. The posts with the most tag matches are listed as related. Makes sense to me and it actually works pretty well if all the posts are properly tagged. I set this up so it displays an excerpt after the post title. I tend to use vague titles in many of my posts — a blogging no-no, I know — so the excerpt helps readers get a better idea of what the post is about.

The trouble is, if I don’t create a custom excerpt, WordPress uses the first bunch of words — 50, I think — as the excerpt. This is not satisfactory. So I need to go through all those old posts and update them so they have excerpts. While I’m at it, I’m also updating the tags.

And, of course, I’m reading a lot of those old posts.

Why This Blog Exists

This blog has been around since October 2003 — six years this month. As I’ve explained elsewhere on this blog, I embraced the idea of blogging early on. I’d always wanted to keep a journal of the things going on in my life and blogging seemed the way to do it. Rather than rely on myself to keep a diary or journal that only I read, I could put a lot of my thoughts and experiences on the Web where others could read about them. Their comments and other means of interaction could help me understand other points of view and grow as an individual.

Sounds silly and idealistic? I don’t think so. I’ve met a lot of people through blogging — people I’ve become friends with. Miraz, for example, co-authored a book about WordPress with me a few years back after we met on my blog. Ann flew with me once and has introduced me to other people after finding me on another site I manage, wickenburg-az.com. There are other folks who have connected with me through my blog. They’ve all made my life richer and have given me good reason to continue blogging.

So, with 1,910 blog posts on this site and another 100 or so in the archives still waiting to be imported (long story), I’ve built quite a journal with plenty to look back on.

I do want to mention here that I’ve had a personal Web site since 1994. This blog is simply the current incarnation of it.

Back to My Original Train of Thought

So, as I was saying, yesterday I spent a lot of time reading old blog entries. It reminded me why I started this blog — as a journal of my life. So it makes sense to journalize my NaNoWriMo ‘09 experience as it happens.

I announced that I was thinking of participating in NaNoWriMo this year in a blog post yesterday. I’d actually written the post the night before, but the Internet went down (as it often does in Wickenburg) and I wound up posting it the next day. That was a big step for me. Although I didn’t say for sure that I was going to participate, publicly suggesting that I might was enough to get me thinking very seriously about it.

And if I move forward — which I expect I will — I thought I’d journalize the process for future reference.

Just Say No to Forums

I don’t think the digital ink had dried on that blog post when I got my first query from a Twitter friend:

so whats your userid on NanoWriMo ? you can probably guess mine

I could guess his, but I won’t share it here. My response was this:

I will not be participating on the NaNoWriMo Web site or forums. I don’t see any benefit.

My advice: When you’re ready to start writing, stop goofing off on the NaNoWriMo site. You can’t get work done there.

Indeed, I’d checked out the NaNoWriMo site back in 2005 when I’d first heard of NaNoWriMo. I was appalled. The site seemed to exist primarily to raise money — $110,000 — to build libraries in Laos. It was heavy on the NaNoWriMo-branded merchandise and requests for donations. Someone was obviously making money — possibly lots of it. It really irks me when I see people or organizations preying on wannabe writers.

The forums were full of NaNoWriMo participants chatting about writing or not writing. It seemed to be an extraordinary waste of time. Why would you spend any time participating in a forum when you could be spending that time actually writing?

Remember, the goal of NaNoWriMo is to write a novel-length work. I think the number of words tossed around is 50,000. With 30 days in November, that’s nearly 1,700 words a day every day for an entire month. Miss a few days and that number rises dramatically.

It seems to me that a serious author should be more focused on the writing task, not the socialization aspects of yet another writer’s forum.

Another Twitter follower had this to say about the forums:

lol maybe not but its addicting – as is twitter this year for me. :p It’s good advice though

I replied:

I haven’t checked it out this year. I was turned off last time I was there. Lots of people chatting, no one writing.

She replied:

Hmm… well that’s what the forums are for. You write the novel in your own time. For me the forums are a break during writing.

I’m afraid I let my cynicism get the best of me in my response to that:

If I need a break from writing, the last thing I want to do is visit a forum full of people whining about writing. IMHO.

I later pointed out the fact that I’m a cynic and linked to my first blog post about NaNoWriMo back in 2005.

What I also should have linked to is one of my more popular posts, “Why Forums Suck.” I think it pretty much covers my opinions on forums in general. Although a well-moderated forum can be an incredibly useful tool for getting and sharing information, the vast majority of forums have a signal to noise ratio that’s just too low to be worth wasting time on.

And I’ll go back to my original point: why participate in a forum if you can spend your energy writing the actual novel?

The way I see it, the NaNoWriMo forums may have value now, before the month begins. But come November 1, the serious writers should pretty much abandon it and get to work.

100 Monkeys?

I’ll step out on the line one more time here to remind folks that the goal of NaNoWriMo is to write a complete novel. That means it needs a beginning, middle, and end. It needs character development. It needs plot and subplots and underlying themes. It needs dialog and description. It needs to create loose ends and tie them all up before the last page. It needs to be compelling so someone will want to read it and written in good English (or whatever language you prefer) so someone can read it.

When you write a novel, you’re telling a story.

What I took away from my NaNoWriMo non-experience back in 2005 was that people seemed to think it was more important to get the 50,000 words out than to actually write a coherent piece of literature. Even one of my Twitter friends this year gave me this impression when he wrote:

Doubt I’ll make anywhere near the 50,000 words.. real life will get in the way

It’s not the word count that matters as much as whether the entire work holds together as a novel.

100 monkeys with typewriters can churn out 50,000 words of text in a month. If you’re participating in NaNoWriMo, don’t be a monkey.

On Life Getting in the Way

The above quote brings up another topic for consideration: the responsibilities of life preventing you from completing a NaNoWriMo project.

The main reason I’ve never participated in NaNoWriMo is because of work and related responsibilities. I write for a living. The last thing I want to do at the end of a day full of writing step-by-step instructions for completing a mail merge with Word (for example) is spend any more time in front of a computer, writing.

I also travel extensively and, when I do, I have numerous responsibilities for either getting work done or seeing to the safety and comfort of passengers. Clearly, NaNoWriMo would interfere with my ability to perform while on the road.

Notice that I said that NaNoWriMo would interfere — not that my work would interfere with NaNoWriMo. That’s because if I participate in NaNoWriMo, it will become a priority in my life. That’s not to say I won’t do anything else — I do have other priorities. It just means that I won’t let life get in the way (if I can help it).

Isn’t that the point of NaNoWriMo? To force you to finish the novel in a month? To make time for it? To make it happen?

And this goes back to something I said back in 2005: You cannot write a novel without the complete support of your significant other or family. Fortunately, NaNoWriMo makes this easy. After all, you only need their support for a month.

More Coming

I think I’ve written enough about this for today, so I’ll stop here. Tomorrow, I’ll get specific about what I’m doing to prepare for NaNoWriMo.

Are you participating in NaNoWriMo? Let us know by sharing your comments — and perhaps a link to your own journal — here.

BLog Technicalities, The Writing Life blogging, NaNoWriMo, novels, WordPress, writing

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Making it easier to get the content you want.

One of the problems with this blog — at least as far as blogging experts are concerned — is that it covers too many topics. Blogging “experts” agree that to have a “successful” blog, it should concentrate on just one topic. That will attract people interested in that topic and keep them coming back for more, since it’s just what they want. A while back, I tried this by spinning off all the book support blog posts to a separate blog — Maria’s Guides — and leaving the rest behind here. I changed the name of this blog to An Eclectic Mind to help communicate the fact that there’s a lot of topics covered here. I refuse to spin off each major topic to its own blog — at least right now — because there’s so much overlap in the topics and because I simply can’t be bothered managing more than the 5 or so blogs I’m already dealing with. So this blog covers all kinds of things, from flying to photography to life in a tiny desert town to travel to politics to…well, you get the idea.

Finding Content with Categories and Tags

I’ve made content easier to find by embracing WordPress’s category and tag features. Categories are broad topics, tags are narrower ones. For example, you’ll find Flying as a category, but you’ll find helicopters, airplanes, airports, aviation, helicopter video, etc. as tags. The idea is that if you’re interested in flying but don’t give a hoot about helicopters, you can click the airplanes tag and zip right in to content that discusses airplanes. (Don’t expect much; I’m a helicopter pilot.) You can find all categories listed in the sidebar’s category list and all categories assigned to a post in the post’s footer. You can find the most popular 75 tags in the sidebar’s tag cloud and all tags assigned to a post in the post’s footer. All posts have at least one category; all recent posts have at least one tag.

(You can also use the Search box in the header to find content on the site, but even I don’t have very good luck with that. Too many results. This blog has nearly 2,000 posts and unless you’re looking for a topic with a very unusual word — for example, “cauliflower” — you’ll likely come up with more results than you’ll want to wade through.)

Which brings me to the real topic of this post — getting the content you want delivered right to you.

Using RSS to Subscribe to Categories or Tags

A friend of mine who is always sharing aviation photos and videos by e-mail recently discovered my “nosecam” helicopter videos. I create these by fixing a POV.1 video camera to the nose of my helicopter when I go flying. The resulting video can be tediously boring or extremely interesting or somewhere in between. I take the best videos, process them a bit, and put them on Viddler, a video sharing site. (And no, I really can’t explain why I don’t use YouTube. I should probably rethink this a bit if I want the videos to be seen by more people.) Once online, I usually create a blog post with the video embedded. Those are categorized Flying and tagged helicopter video.

Now WordPress has the incredible ability to generate an RSS feed based on any category or tag. The formula for creating the feed URL is very simple:

• For a category on this site, http://www.marialanger.com/category/category-name/feed/rss where category-name is the abbreviated name of the category. You can get the exact category name by looking in the address bar after clicking the category’s link in the sidebar. So the RSS feed for the Flying category would be: http://www.marialanger.com/category/flying/feed/rss
• For a tag on this site, http://www.marialanger.com/tag/tag-name/feed/rss where tag-name is the abbreviated name of the tag. You can get the exact tag name by looking in the address bar after clicking the tag’s link in the sidebar. So the RSS feed for the helicopter video category would be: http://www.marialanger.com/tag/helicopter-video/feed/rss

Of course, knowing in RSS feed URL is one thing, but using it is another. You’ll want to put this URL in your feed reader. If you don’t have one — or don’t even have a clue what I’m talking about — check out Google Reader. It’s a pretty popular feed reader that starts you off with a complete explanation, with video, about RSS feeds and how it works. Perhaps some of the more knowledgeable folks reading this post will share their favorite readers; I’m not big on feed readers and do all my feed reading from within Apple Mail.

Getting Helicopter Videos by E-Mail

Now back to my aviation video friend.

After looking at a bunch of my videos on Viddler, he e-mailed me and asked me to include him on my mailing list to be notified when new helicopter videos come out. Well, I don’t have a mailing list. I’m not one of those people who sees something cool on the Internet and e-mails it to half the people in my address book. In general, I don’t like to receive e-mails like that, so I certainly don’t like to send them.

But I realized that there were probably a few people who were interested in the videos, had no patience for RSS, and couldn’t be bothered manually checking this site periodically. So I whipped up a Feedburner subscription feed specifically for the helicopter video tag. Folks who want notification of the latest helicopter videos published on this site delivered directly to their e-mail in boxes can subscribe using one of the following methods:

• Enter your email address:

  Fill in the form in the box to the right.

• Click this link: Subscribe to “An Eclectic Mind | Helicopter Videos” by Email

Either way, you’ll be sending your e-mail address to Feedburner. Feedburner will send you a confirmation e-mail to assure that you really want to subscribe and this isn’t an attempt by someone else to add you to the list. You will get that e-mail message almost immediately. You MUST follow the instructions in the confirmation e-mail message to complete the subscription process. If you don’t, the subscription will not start. If you can’t find that e-mail message in your in-box, check your spam filter.

Once the subscription is activated, you’ll get an e-mail message only when there’s a new helicopter video on the site. That could be once a month or it could be three times in a week. I tend to release them in batches.

I use the Feedburner service because it’s good. It does not generate any spam. Your e-mail address is not shared with others. I know this because I also subscribe to several of my own feeds, just to make sure spam isn’t going out with the feed content. It’s also really easy to unsubscribe from; just click the link in the bottom of the e-mail message you get.

Getting All Content by E-Mail

You may have noticed an E-Mail Feed link at the top of the sidebar on this site. That’s for all site content. If you subscribe to site content using that link, you’ll get everything, including the helicopter videos. If you’re only interested in the helicopter videos, unsubscribe from that feed and subscribe to this one instead.

I hope this long story (as usual) gives you the information you need to subscribe to the content that interests you most here.

BLog Technicalities, Flying, On Blogging blogging, helicopter video, web design, WordPress

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Site redesign is just about complete.

As I blogged last week, I was on the verge of updating my blog to WordPress 2.7 and a new theme. Less than 24 hours passed before I did both. I really couldn’t wait.

The new theme is called iNove. (I’m not sure whether I should pronounce that eye-nove or in-nove. If anyone has a clue about that, please do let me know.) I found it while putting together the exercises for my upcoming Self-Hosting a WordPress 2.7 Blog Essential Training course for Lynda.com and I pretty much fell in love with its simplicity. But what I really liked was the inclusion of an “east” and “west” sidebar, which makes it possible to put categories and tags in two narrow columns, side by side. A tiny bit of CSS tweaking to widen one column while narrowing the other and a bit of WordPress hacking to change the maximum tag cloud font size, and it looked just the way I wanted it to.

For the first time as a WordPress user, I’m making a special effort to utilize widgets for most of my sidebar content. This is a huge change for me, since I normally hand-code all of my sidebars. The good thing about this is that it limits what I can put in a sidebar without installing more plugins. And let’s face it: my old design was simply too busy.

Comments? Observations? Use the comments link or form for this post to share your thoughts and suggestions.

BLog Technicalities, Call Me a Geek blogging, design, web design, WordPress

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