Category: Meta

Jan 18 2010

Monday Meta Madness

In part because we have some new Admins on board I’d like to discuss scheduling a bit.

I strongly believe in appointment blogging.  Just like TV I think people tune in at specific times to catch their favorite authors and chat.  Of course, like a DVR, the content is always there so you can interact at your convenience and carry on extended conversations.

Still, there’s nothing sadder than pounding your refresh button and finding nothing new.

At DocuDharma we have 14 regular Front Page posts per day.

At 9, 10, 11, and noon I do Front Page promotions from member content.  I generally pick them between 3 am and 8 am so if you want your subject featured in the morning it’s best to post your essay previous to midnight the day before you wish it to appear (especially if the subject is time sensitive).

At 6, 8, 10, and midnight buhdy does Front Page Promotions of member content.

So as a reader of this blog that’s what you can expect when you click in, along with whatever our members contribute whenever their muse smacks them upside the head.

Jan 14 2010

Bloggers Behaving Badly: Closed left is as bad as Daily Kos

I see that another Bowers-instigated flame battle is going on over at Closed Left.  I lurk the site from time to time to see just how much progressive issues are being censored in favor of the Chris Matthews-type drivel Bowers favors, and I saw this posted on the front page:

It turns out that if I delete content from a website that I–quite literally–own, then I am engaging in censorship.  I don’t remember the part of the first amendment that declares everyone is allowed to use everyone else’s printing press.

The latest mess appears to have begun when someone posted a quick hit to call Obama an ass clown.  Okay, nothing controversial about that since Obama is, in fact, an ass clown.  But the site administrator didn’t like it, so the QH was deleted.  After the fact, the justification was fabricated that the term “ass clown” is somehow homophobic, even though there is no evidence to suggest that it has ever been used in such a derogatory manner.  The comments are divided along the usual lines, with Bowers and his sniveling, lying little sycophants defending the action and others crying censorship.

This isn’t surprising at all, seeing as how Bowers routinely violates his own site’s rules only to turn around and chastise others for committing far lesser offenses.  For example, a while back the owner of Closed Left posted a snarkfest taking others to task for using the Quick Hits feature to call other people out.  Later, Bowers proceeded to use the quick hits section to call out another poster, whom he banned for voicing criticism against him.

When I posted about this glaring act of hypocrisy in both a diary and a quick hit, I was banned from posting.  The rules that apply to everyone else at Closed Left do not apply to the site owner, who is free to act like a child while treating grown adults like children.  The result?  More of the same bullshit that goes on at the Mediocre Orange Hype: scolding lefties to sit down, shut up, and drink the Democratic party Kool-Aid while pretending to be outsiders crashing the gates.  The left deserves better from its self-appointed “leaders.”

Jan 12 2010

DD Justice Vigil Open Invite

Jan 11 through 22. See my initial essay yesterday. January 22 marks the day that Guantanamo would’ve closed had that been… possible…. according to that 2009 inaugural promise.

Dharma Bums. For the duration of this ten day or so Vigil, I invite you to contribute or participate in whatever way you choose, but I would like to encourage you to attend bloggily in some small or large way.

A very simple thing anyone can do would be to change your sig for the duration.

Another simple thing you could do is to post an Essay on the subject. You can post three per day here y’know. 😉 Surely you’d be willing to devote one to this effort? It doesn’t have to be info heavy or link rich even. Some thoughts, a photo montage or music video or something simple is fine.

Just do it. No Sign Up Sheet or anything. Be excellent.

Attend.

Witness.

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No justice, no peace.

Jan 11 2010

not so simple.

there are ideas in there. in the egg that is my head.

i feel them sometimes… ideas pecking away, crackling my skull in measures. small fractures, small shatterings etching lines like routes on road maps.

they stay there too, incubating in that folded womb of electrical impulses and chemical spills.

until: viola… ideas formed from thousands of specks of sight, sound, sensations, rushed out between gulps of air and pigs in a blanket at some cocktail party, or picnic, being blogged, painted, or played on some instrument.

THINK. THINK. THINK. so. here’s what’s been birthed in my head of late . . .

Yeah. The deal? It’s all about the deal. … and lots and lots of money.



cross posted at dKos

Jan 11 2010

Monday Meta Madness

So during the holidays Richard Gilmore (my dad) asked me about our business model.

Well frankly, my personal business model is that buhdy provides me this wonderful free playground to romp around in and I leave all the hard decisions up to him.

But as I explained to dad we do have at least a theoretical business model that is based partly on donations and partly on advertising revenue.

The yearly nut is around $360 to keep the doors open.  We mostly solicit donations to do that because it’s far more reliable than ad revenue though it can leave you beholden to your donors.

Still, it’s not the most expensive publication model and we owe a lot to pacified that it’s as good and cheap as it is.

And we do sell ads, though not as many as I would expect and I’ll tell you why below the fold.

Jan 11 2010

Simple.

It’ll get better, in time. Just give it time. All it takes is time. We’ll get over it… in time.

Ahhhhhhh… the magic of elapsing, collapsing time. Whatever “it” is, it’ll fade away. At some point, it’ll be gone. The pain. The burden. The memory. The obligation. At some point in time, it’ll be somebody else’s problem . . .

Well, far as I can tell, time hasn’t stopped our collective problems from becoming more untenable. Bigger. Stronger. Holy flaming underwear, Batman. What the fuck do we do now?

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cross-posted at dKos

Jan 04 2010

Monday Meta Madness

You know, it isn’t like I’m not providing enough content.

My current concept is a constant Computer Corner, because I do that and I’m interested in experiences with Windows 7 (I run an XP shop and highly recommend it).

But the bigger question is this- what kind of content are you willing to provide?

I usually promote 4 essays a day and for the most part I’m content with your random ramblings.

I’ve had the Muse hit me upside my head and I totally understand.

Yet if you push out a publication worthy of promotion on a regular basis and can deal with a deadline you don’t need much of a title (or responsibilities) to draw my attention.

What you need is commitment.

I can run a show about nothing, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry Davis are not geniuses.

Yet I’d far rather run a show about you.

So think about it.

I hate spunk.

Jan 04 2010

Good Americans

By: Teddy Partridge Sunday January 3, 2010 8:01 pm

My father worked alongside some Germans, too, who had very nice families like ours. Socializing in the long summer evenings was sometimes part of his job, and (sort of) part of ours, too. But if the mom and dad were my dad’s age or older, I used to wonder: were these the ‘good Germans’ I had read about in my history books?

I mean, these people didn’t simply appear in Germany during the Marshall Plan, America’s wonderfully generous reconstruction of free markets and political institutions. They must have lived through the second world war, right? What role did they play? Were they soldiers, civilians, students, citizens?

When Germany was doing barbaric things, I asked myself, what were these people doing? When their state was acting in ways since condemned by the civilized world, what did these folks do? Did they know? Did they pretend not to know? Did the benefits of their situation somehow outweigh the risks of objection?

Did they know and not care? Or did they not know? Or did they not want to know? Or did they know now and simply want to forget? Did we all want to forget?

How, I wondered then, could an entire nation go insane and then, afterward, act as if it hadn’t happened? How did that work, exactly?

Jan 03 2010

Quantity vs Quality — is one metric “Better” than the Other?

Quantity vs Quality — is one metric “Better” than the Other?

Back in the day, during my “formative college years”, I was given an assignment, that definitely changed the way I looked at the world ever since.

The lessons I learned in that Creative Writing class, I still carry with me, to this very day.

The assignment:  Read the American Classic:

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert M. Pirsig

And then, Write an Essay on “What does it means to write a Quality Essay?”

(ie. Why is one Essay, better than another? … How can you tell?)

Is it the count of the words that matters … or their depth, when taken as a whole?

Jan 03 2010

Late Night Noshing

Nosh on this

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Jan 01 2010

The People Speak

The People Speak



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

Dec 30 2009

So, a blog entry equals EPIC FAIL. Here’s what to do next

Crossposted at Daily Kos

  Hello.

   Yesterday, I posted a blog entry here at Daily Kos and a few other websites that was, to say the least, not my best work. In fact, it was a total FAIL. Some might even say EPIC.

Image Hosting by PictureTrail.com

    In order to rectify the dis-service done to all by the first erroneous article I had published, I will be posting a full retraction here based on observations and analysis provided by credible sources, but before that, I thought it might be helpful and fun to explore the reasons why blog entries become EPIC FAILs, and what the publishing blogger and commenting bloggers can do should such a situation of EPIC FAIL occur while traversing the intertoobz.

    So, before addressing the aforementioned corrections regarding the EPIC FAIL blog entry that I posted yesterday, lets first turn our attention to what an EPIC FAIL is, and how a blog entry might become one.

What is EPIC FAIL, Alex?

    The following video will explain what exactly a FAIL is and what it takes to make a FAIL Epic, but generally speaking it is any time when one person, group of people or object can not achieve it’s intended purpose or goal. What makes that FAIL Epic is simply how bad the performance is.

    With this in mind, a blog entry, whether a full diary/article or comment, becomes an Epic Fail under the following circumstances.

1.    Not based on fact/reality

2.    Off Topic

3.    Stupid/offensive

4.    Trollish

5.    Other

    I think these 5 examples cover the universe of blog EPIC FAILure perfectly, and though an EPIC FAIL of a blog entry can fall into more than one category, for the ones that just make you shake your head there is always the fifth choice, other, which could just as easily be labelled WTF and no one would know the difference, but I digress. We will cover WTF at some other time, it is a big subject to deal with, and one at a time is enough.

   So, now that you have identified EPIC FAIL in a blog entry, what do you do?

More below the fold . . . .

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