DrunkenBlog

Ahyll bee bahk

One of the stranger aspects of having a blog is that if you don't post, people kinda start to get worried. It's your face to them, which I'm actually fairly comfortable with as it's a remarkable improvement over what God gave me. So whenever I don't post for awhile, the longer the time between posts the steadier the trickle of emails asking if everything is kosher.

I'd have to assume these are readers who have mostly stumbled onto the blog relatively recently, as anyone knows I have a habit of going AWOL for awhile. Originally this was from the emotional scarring, but as I started trying larger things the time just gets sliced too thinly, even while heavily multi-tasking in the evenings or mornings. So far I think the record is almost a month, but it's worth noting that the month after that had a three solid chats each week. Which is basically the problem: I don't go anywhere, it's just not immediately obvious that I'm around doing my thing.

I.E., the blog needs a big overhaul... which I'm sorta working on, it can just get a little surreal in terms of time when I'm splitting the hour or so an evening I allow myself to work on DrunkenBlog-related things five separate ways and some things end up taking precedence over others. Eventually I'll be able to devote 10 minutes to giving you an idea of what I eat through on the web each day, but if I did it now, with the way things are setup, the structure of the blog would deteriorate exponentially faster than it already is.

Trust me, that the categories and archives and such are as fubar as they are annoys me just as much as it annoys you, let alone the other tangled pieces of the web. (I.E., if you have a few minutes and want to whip up a nice vector version of the cow so I can use it in the redesign, I'd be grateful.)

Because of the way the time gets split, long-time drunkers (yeah, the blog as it currently exists isn't that old, but hey) know the blog can often appear to be dead while in fact it's just dormant, and chances are there are some large things coming up. In fact a really big one might be coming up within the next few days, but it's a little dicey because of what it involves... If you see it in the next few days, you'll immediately understand.

Since that was incredibly vague, I can give a somewhat clearer but still vague idea of what's coming up:

• About the chats
  Yes, I'm aware it's been two months since I've had a chat or roundtable on the Blog. Yes, there are more coming. One is actually finished, and within 5 minutes of the lawyers clearing it will be posted. One is incredibly behind, involves the PowerPC, and is slowly gnawing at my conscience. Those who read the blog religiously have an idea of another I'm grinding on.
  
  Additionally, are four more already in the pipe in various stages, and I'm working on getting an OK on the fifth and I have an idea for the sixth. There are two more off the top of my head that I think would be interesting to do but haven't even started the process on... There'd be another on the 'interesting to do in the future' list, but the Panic Guys never answered my mail. They still make a great Usenet reader and FTP client, though. Basically, I'm working on it, and thanks for the patience.
  
  
• El bloguero cervecero (Part 2 of 2)
  Yes, there will be a part two. This one confused a bunch of people... basically, people had been after me to try splitting up the longer posts for a whole variety of reasons (all of them solid), and since I was going to be doing a big one I decided to take the advice and give it a shot. It went really well. Until I forgot to write, and then post, the second part the next day. And then got pulled into other things. It'll come, just have to clear the brain of some things before I can build up that stream of consciousness again. Sorry to leave you hanging.
  
  
• A few new RSS feeds soon
  Y'all were very helpful with various suggestions regarding the feeds, and there will be several new options being added, including the excerpts you see on the front page, etc. Most of you should be happy, with the exception of those emailing for full-feeds. I really love full-text feeds, and am grateful to have access to them on other sites.
  
  It exists, but at this time after testing it out the full-text feed will only be given out to someone who donates. $5, $10, $20, whatever. Donate anything, and the full-feed is yours for life. Not a subscription, unless a perpetual subscription exists; more like just keeping some sanity. If I just threw it out, there's a sizeable percentage of people who'd throw it into their reader just to have it, which wouldn't be good. Raising the threshhold to the tiniest of donations means those who really want it will get it without it becoming a crazy burden.
  
  As mentioned in previous posts, what I do is just a little different from a lot of sites. Someone was kind enough to mock point out that Yin and Yang was 13,200 words in length. Whether or not it needed to be 13.2k words in length is up for debate, but suffice to say something like that would be absolute murder on the feed if everyone went for it, especially if there's anything large also in the feed. Seriously. There's also a full-text feed that includes the comments, but there have been times when that one is just borderline insanity.
  
  A bunch of people suggested selling subscriptions to get the full feeds and such. I'm not there yet for a variety of reasons. In my mind, in this context, if something is a donation it's about appreciation of whatever value someone derived from what came before. Regarding the feed, like I said it's perpetual, and someone could donate $1 and get it.
  
  If something is a subscription, there's an unwritten expectation of what you're expected to do. I've seen a couple of sites go down this road, and while it's worked for some, I've seen others wander heavily into the valley of pandering or the other things I mentioned in a previous post. It's just too easy: you want to make your readers happy, and give them what they want.
  
  Before you know it it's 2007 and you're extolling the virtues of the newly released solid-gold-iPod that will never, ever rust and how, due to simple trickle-down economics, it will pull the Mac out of its sub-5% marketshare. I'm a weak man, and prefer not to tempt fate when it's not necessary... So I wouldn't expect anything in the vein of 'subscriptions' any time soon.

Hmm. Come to think of it, the site could probably use a FAQ.

 Posted by drunkenbatman
    January 06, 2005, at 10:40 AM