David Lee King

social media | emerging trends | libraries

Dave’s Informal Rules for Commenting on Dave’s Blog

By

Someone commented on one of my posts yesterday, I commented on his/her comment in another post, that person then commented back… which I think is great! That’s one of the advantages of RSS and blogs, right?

But I also realized that this blog is read by many people, and someone else might have considered commenting before, or getting in touch with me, etc… and they might not know how. So…

Dave’s Informal Rules for Commenting on Dave’s Blog:

  1. Feel free to post a comment on anything here – it adds to the global discussion (in my little virtual neck of the woods, anyway)
  2. Leave a comment by clicking on “Comments” at the bottom of each post (you have to go to the actual blog site)
  3. Understand that I have the option to post about your comment, agree/disagree with it, use it as an example, think “yes” when I see it, but not post anything else about it, or ignore it… however I see fit
  4. So that said, please feel free to comment away!

And, if you want to contact me, go to my website – you’ll find email and IM info at the bottom of the page.

Someone Doesn’t Know Me Too Well

By

Just received a comment on one of my posts, “Luddites have XML Feeds, too!” … from, of course “Annonymous.” Here’s the comment:

I think, also, it is important to point out to those who are concerned about disappearing printed materials that the rise of new media/technology (radio, television, telephone, phonograph, audio and video cassettes, cds, dvds, etc.) has never supplanted all of our old and familiar means of transmitting and storing information. The printed book will likely outlast every new innovation in technology simply because it is an irreplaceable part of human culture. There is no need for fear mongering or even mild concern. Luddites should sit back and relax. Once upon a time, the written word was considered an innovation beyond the spoken word. We all still talk to each other, however.

Hmm… where to start? First, my take on the printed book. A Book is a large body of text. Paper is one of many ways to display that large body of text. Books used to be stored on leather scrolls. Thankfully, people figured out bound paper worked better.

I think we’re seeing the beginning of moving away from paper to electronic form. I can now read a book in paper, on my PDA, on a cell phone, at my PC, in email form, using an e-book reader, etc. It’s still a book – just not in paper.

Now, to deal with the comment itself:

“…the rise of new media/technology (radio, television, telephone, phonograph, audio and video cassettes, cds, dvds, etc.) has never supplanted all of our old and familiar means of transmitting and storing information.”

I wonder if Anonymous has heard of a relatively new-fangled invention called an Online Public Access Catalog? I believe the OPAC has supplanted the “old and familiar means,” don’t you think? Also, the typewriter has been supplanted by the computer.

And… does the printed word actually “transmit?” That I’d like to see.

“The printed book will likely outlast every new innovation in technology simply because it is an irreplaceable part of human culture.”

Hmm… “irreplaceable part of human culture” …. that’d be sorta like:

  • Horses and carriages
  • morse code
  • LPs
  • Cowhide and pottery shards for writing material
  • Pants that ended at the knee
  • Plows
  • Swords as weapons

NOTHING IS IRREPLACEABLE. Longlasting, yes. Irreplaceable? No.

“There is no need for fear mongering or even mild concern.” and “Luddites should sit back and relax.”

Hey, I actually agree…

“Once upon a time, the written word was considered an innovation beyond the spoken word. We all still talk to each other, however.”

Apples and oranges… apples and oranges… Annonymous, the point of your comment is about paper-based information, so you can’t logically use the spoken word as support for your argument.

I have had fun with this comment, to be sure. But I’m hoping someone learns something from this post, too. As I once heard someone say, “eat the meat, and throw out the bones.”

Blogging Makes You Smarter!

By

Take a look at this article, “Brain of a Blogger (found via Darlene Fichter’s link blog).

In this article, two MD types argue that writing a blog is good for your brain. Why?

1. Blogs can promote critical and analytical thinking.
2. Blogging can be a powerful promoter of creative, intuitive, and associational thinking.
3. Blogs promote analogical thinking.
4. Blogging is a powerful medium for increasing access and exposure to quality information.
5. Blogging combines the best of solitary reflection and social interaction.

So. since I blog AND email (since email lowers IQ), it’ll all even out in the end, right?

PS – for a fun discussion of the silliness of the whole “email lowers IQ” study, check this out.

Aligning Images in Blog Posts… Please

By

blogimageAnd now for a little lesson in HTML. The image on the right is a blog post (good blog, too, by the way). Notice how it’s arranged – first a chunk of text, then an image, then another chunk of text. Lots of bloggers post this way – they insert an image into the text of their blog post. Images within a blog post can even be useful at times (this blog post is one example (hopefully…).

However – look at the image of the blog post. Notice all that empty white space to the right of the image? Wouldn’t that post (and many others on many other blogs) look a whole lot better if the text would wrap around the image? I think so… hence this post. I’m going to teach any interested parties how to do that image wrapping thing:

Wrapping text around an image in a blog post:

    1. Write about something, and find an image to drop into the post.
    2. Drop it in however you normally do it.
    3. (the hard part*)… look at the HTML code for your fine blog post, and find the img tag (that’s the image tag).
    4. Somewhere around the width, height, and border parts of the tag, add this: align=”right”
    5. The align=”right” addition will make the image go to the right (align=”left” will do the same thing, but cram the image to the left of the page), and will make the text wrap around the image.
    6. Here’s an img tag example, from my post: img style=”BORDER-RIGHT: black 1px solid; BORDER-TOP: black 1px solid; BORDER-LEFT: black 1px solid; BORDER-BOTTOM: black 1px solid” height=”251″ alt=”blogimage” src=”http://photos10.flickr.com/12155718_78a7dca8ee_o.jpg” mce_src=”http://photos10.flickr.com/12155718_78a7dca8ee_o.jpg” width=”413″ align=”right” border=”0″
    7. Here’s another important part – stick the img tag where you want the top of the image to appear. For example, I wanted the image in my post to appear on the right side, and starting at the first line of text. So I dropped the img tag right smack before the first line of text.
    8. That’s it – all your blogging friends will think you’ve turned especially hip.

* One caveat (I love saying that – it sounds so completely stuffy) – You have to be able to get to the HTML code part of your blog. I know you can using Blogger, but I don’t know if other blog packages allow this. I’m assuming they do…

edit: Of course, it also works best if you first pick the correct size for the image the first time around…

Update: Cliff at Beyond Bullet Points made a comment – his blog posts DO word wrap on his blog… just not in Bloglines (where I read his blog posts). So, checking into that a little bit… apparently, Bloglines likes more normal HTML (align=”right”) but doesn’t like CSS styling (Cliff’s post includes this style=”FLOAT: left for the word wrap thing.

That makes sense – I include a 1 pixel border style in the img tag (which you can see in #6 above) that also doesn’t appear in Bloglines. So just an FYI here… and thanks for the clarification, Cliff!