Phronesis

Who else knows that I'm a furry fractal?

I'm getting hugely excited about the new site and logo that Lucy Pepper is making for me. It's going to bring all the different parts of me together in Joomla (a CMS that comes as an easy install with DreamHost).

I first met Lucy when she was Vitriolica on Unkempt women and I was in Em Duas Línguas. We met through our blogs and discovered we lived down the road from each other did some blog chick bonding at my house in Setúbal.

The process of getting to my logo design could only have been done with someone who knows me - how lucky am I to have such talented friends?

The end of January and it should all be ready. Got to get my skates on.

Preparing to move blog home

I'm a bit spread out over the internet,what with my first webpage that I started for writing up my doctorate, and Eudaimonia I started for my professional life, my old (familiar) blog Em Duas Línguas and also this one.

Not to mention all the other bits of me splattered about the web.

So I'm making moves to get everything into one site. One problem is what do I do with this blog in Typepad? Do I have to keep up with the subscriptions just to keep it open? I hadn't thought of that before. My (free) blogger site stays there even though I don't use it anymore.

Now I'm wondering if Typepad has to be a life decision...

Is this cheating?

I'm the kind of person who doesn't post about half her blog posts. By the time I come back to a blog post I decide it's not worth sending. It becomes a downward spiral as I don't finish lots of blog posts because I know I'm not going to send them.

Now I have succumbed to another way. In Typepad you can write a post and save it to be published on a pre-selected day. As long as I write and finish a post the publishing will take place on the date I set a date for it.

There's a puritanical part of me that thinks that's cheating - but I'm going to continue doing it nonetheless. And maybe I've just discovered how real bloggers manage to keep up with their blogging!

Could do better

I've spent days perfecting my blog.

Many times.

But sooner or later it starts to look shabby - or just not me - and I want to redesign it all over again. Now I'm in a phase where I can hardly bear to write a blogpost because everything just looks all wrong.

Lately I realised I'm not alone.  Ahmed Bilal in Performancing writes about not being so hard on yourself when your motivation dips because of "all the things wrong with it". And White African talking about Blog Envy or "the feeling you get when you go to a blog and start getting those feelings of inadequacy." And I see Nancy highlighting the blogs that inspire her or that she loves.

So, here's the beginning of a list of blogs that in one way or another encourage me to improve my own...

Web2forDev, "Participatory Web for Development", is bi-lingual blog in a relaxed take-it or leave-it way. Things get messy when you design bilingual pages, but this blog is just neat, even with all the feeds, posts, comments and categories in two languages  (not translations).

37 days, by Patricia Digh, is full of little corner treats. Everywhere you go or click there's another interesting visual, snippet or saying. She is inspiring with her blogpost titles and the names of her categories. Her straightforward links to "My other sites", making me wonder why I never thought of something so obvious.

Kinkless by Ethan Schoonover has transformed the way I organise my desktop and manage my files and I'll be using his blog for more ideas when I get round to doing my own. He makes things look so simple. Please let that be me.

Webreakstuff, Fred Oliveira's blog on design, development and strategy is one that gives me ideas - even with the blog's pyjama background (sorry!) I look longingly at all the design stuff from Webreakstuff, which is so elegant and how I would love my own things to look.

Victoria Ward's blog, Taste the knowledge, has absolutely no visual or design features. Neither does it have any clever side-bar widgits or whatevers. But her writing itself is so full or visuals and design features, with nests of metaphors and analysis that I aspire to be able to do myself. In fact she makes me wonder if I should forget the visual aspect of my blog and just focus on the writing.

 

Tumblr

What a great idea. Tumblr - a mini-blog, for fleeting thoughts. Lots you can do and easy to use, RSS feeds  etc. It could be a tool for embracing the flow and I might try using it for taking notes as I read or write something...

http://bevtrayner.tumblr.com/

Thank you for the links

I'm learning to be polite through Andy Roberts on DARnet who thanks contributors to his blog.

The people I woke up this morning wanting to thank were those people whose links I follow and often harvest. While many of the links I tag come from obvious places like Techcrunch, Emily Chang on eHub, and O'Reilly radar, recently there have been some people whose links I particularly look forward to:

• Nancy White on Full Circle for links to tech and human things
  
• Ricardo on Zone41 for links to new applications
  
• Euan Semple of The Obvious for links to gadgets and other fun things
  
• Shawn Callahan on Anecdote for links to ideas about practice
  
• Beth Kanter for links to ways of using applications
• Ponto Media for links to a mix of things that interest me.

So here we go: THANKS!

 

technorati tags:thanks

Show me your widget

I'm having fun with Widgetbox which I got to through Beth's widget shopping where she's done a great widget review.

I'm the kind of person loves exploring other people's widgets and it's one of the first things I do when I go to their blog. But I wonder how many people actually notice or care about the widgets on my blog.

Think I'll do a poll to see if anyone really notices my widgets.

technorati tags:widgets, bethkanter

Blogged with Flock

I am working, really

I'm writing here from Prato in Italy. We went straight from a CPsquare Dialogue in Florence to a Community Informatics conference in Prato. We spoke a lot about blogs at the Dialogue. I realise how much I rely on my blog to keep all the different parts of my life in one space. Etienne Wenger's thoughts on "Knowledge citizenship" was a crucial one. I realise that my blog is an important part of my own trajectory as a Knowledge citizen.

The Dialogue was so rich and so nourishing. We met in a guesthouse in Florence with a view of the Duomo from our bedroom window and the roof terrace. Some of the notes from the dialogue are on the Prato Dialogue blog.

Now back to the conference.

Blogged with Flock

Interviewed by lisbonlab

Hugo Neves da Silva of lisbonlab has been doing a series of interviews with bloggers in Portugal, which I always enjoy reading. Hugo is one of the organisers of the SHiFT conference taking place on the 28th, 29th September (reduced rates tickets for two more days!)

Today was my turn to be interviewed and you can see the interview here. Something I enjoyed doing in the interview was reminiscing about my old blogs. I kept quite a few blogs before I even knew what they were. It reminded me of how different we all are. I jump in and do things before I know what I'm doing. And I learn while I'm doing and making mistakes. Other people need to know what to do before they feel confident to go and apply that knowledge.

And the rest of the world fit somewhere in between!

What do you think of ads on a blog?

There was an overwhelming vote of confidence for my new blog with everyone voting that Phronesis was an improvement on "Em duas línguas" or that they didn't know. Thanks for everyone who voted :-)

Now I have a ethical blogging dilemma and I thought I would put that to the vote. It's a about having ads on my blog. Is it right? Will it put people off?

I don't like ads when I go to someone's blog. They make me feel different about the person. Don't know why. It just does. But now BlogHer (*), a cool organisation for women bloggers, is going live with BlogHerAds and I'm wondering if I should join it. How hypocritical is that!!

The ads would be from "well-established and contextually relevant sponsors" and the idea appeals to me for two reasons. One is that it would raise traffic to my blog from people I think could be interested. Another is that it's a kind of affiliation with BlogHer. I don't imagine I would make any/much money from it, but I'd love to be pleasantly suprised!

My dilemma is this: Is it two-faced for me to have BlogHer ads? And would it put people off? So I've created another poll (it's in the sidebar) to get a reality check. I'd like to know what other people think. Thanks!

(*) BlogHer's Mission is to create opportunities for women who blog to pursue exposure, education, community and economic empowerment"