I was alerted that my RSS feeds are currently very ugly, given that there are no line breaks or links.
This is a known issue with the version of Podpress that strips the formatting…I’ve implemented a hopeful fix, and would love for someone to let me know if it’s helping.
đŸ™‚
I got fed up with trying to keep fixing the theme I had, so I decided to go ahead and move to a new one. It’s very different, but I hope that everyone likes it. This is a variant of Sunburn, heavily modified to my liking by a bunch of spacing adjustments, changing the sidebar to be absolutely positioned and swapping in a bunch of content, and adding my “pulse” to the header/footer.
So: whatcha think?
Forgive the metablog post, but I was looking at some trackbacks and such, which led me down the road of Technorati, and then back to the mothership: Google.
I’m not sure how, but I made the first page of results for “Pattern Recognition” on Google, at least for now. Given that it’s a phrase that is not only the title of a bestselling book by one of my favorite authors, but is an entire academic field of study, I didn’t expect to be there.
But there I am.
Just an idea that others might find useful…after participating in the remarkable 5 Weeks to a Social Library course offered by my heroes, I began to think of ways to re-use all of the incredible content.
As you may have noted, at MPOW we’re hiring two new librarians. Hiring new librarians is always accompanied by some type of orientation process. The Head of Reference and I are going to collaborate on the orientation process, and the plan is to use some of the 5 weeks presentations as introductions to tools we’re using and concepts we’re interested in pursuing. Here at UTC we’re using WordPress, Joomla, RSS, del.icio.us, GAIM, and the plan is to implement other things discussed during 5 weeks…why reinvent perfectly good introductions and explanations of those tools?
I’m thrilled with the thought that all of this content can be used for free, and for any number of things…learning takes many forms. I know that it’s going to save me enormous amounts of time at MPOW. Thanks to the organizers, and also to the participants who graciously allowed your work to be licensed for reuse.
Gonna be doing a bit of template hacking over the next couple of days…Ive just had really not good luck in finding a template that doesn’t bork poor LISHost. So on to another, trying to find one that I don’t have to manually debug.
Just a few days ago, a post showed up on BoingBoing. For those of you who haven’t had this happen, it can be great (lots of people reading my stuff!) and terrible (the /. effect, aka: melty servers). I just looked back over my raw hits to see how much of a difference BoingBoing made. Here it is, in all its naked glory:
So I went from around 3000 hits a day to about 65,000 hits in a day. If your server isn’t ready for that, it can come as quite a shock. Luckily for me, Blake Carver and LISHost are amazing, and kept my blog up for the entire process.
Well, I upgraded to the latest WordPress release, and it brought with it broken. I had used the php function get_links for a TON of customizations on my blog…my sidebar, my random byline in the header, a couple of pages…and what did they do? They killed it. The call is now wp_list_bookmarks, and the options are less straightforward and I’m still not sure I can do what I want with them.
Just as a warning to anyone else who might be upgrading, if you’ve done a lot of customization with the links, beware the upgrade. And if anyone has any thoughts on getting the new system to behave like the old, let me know.
After being informed that my current theme is causing no end of errors for reasons unknown, I’m going to be playing with my themes for a day or so. Just to let everyone know, so you don’t think you’ve ended up in the wrong place if it looks a bit funky.
Also, I’m up for suggestions if anyone has a favorite they’d like to see used.
Well, now that both contracts are signed, I can talk a bit about my next two writing projects.
First up, I’ve agreed to write an article for Library Journal. The topic? A new reference/instruction project here at UTC involving podcasts and iPod rentals. We’ve got grand plans that we hope to put into practice over the course of 2007 that involve video and audio production and leverage our new website (just launched today!). We’re looking for integration and experimentation from our reference/instruction team, and I have faith they’ll come up with uses that I can’t now imagine. But for LJ, I’m going to write up the entire planning process, from grant writing to how we’ll handle the various challenges involved in a project of this scope.
Second…I’m currently under contract to write a book for Linworth Publishing, tentatively titled Biblioblogging (almost certainly that will change), along with my partner in crime Karen Coombs. I plan on blogging portions of the work, research, and process involved in this writing as well.
These two things, along with the new job…well, let’s just say that 2007 is promising to be interesting if nothing else.
A very nice writeup of my ALA presentation from Karen Schneider via LITABlog…it was just a ton of fun to do, and Karen is entirely too mum about her involvement in the process. She was the instigator that got Steven, Karen C., and myself together to do the thing in the first place. Thanks, Karen! I hope to get the chance for a repeat performance next year.