Blog: a Noun; a Verb

Depending upon the topic, how technical the details, and the purpose of the text, I recognize that the inspiration behind writing and the discipline of refining it are not necessarily equal means to the same end. As the former is required before the latter can take place, I hope to change my habits as author/ editor, that I might not concern myself to be so studied. At least, I hope to impose less restriction on what I publish– that I might regard the content of NoviceNotes™, less as a reflection of myself (assuming the site might cast into the minds of readers, something of an image of who I am), and more as a collection of notes; to recall my former tendency to share the little discoveries, that I might place more importance on recording what I’ve learned in hopes that others might find something insightful in it.

Blog Awareness

The preceding entry (dated 2009-10-08) is the first post I’ve authored in the past few months which has not rested for any length of time in a draft-state– having been published immediately upon first composition, at the very culmination of the thought, transcribed– has thus escaped the alternate, unfortunate end. Other compositions exist, however, in what I think of as the NoviceNotes: “requires editing” queue, doomed to be deleted for collecting too much proverbial dust, perhaps, should I neglect revisiting to edit and post them soon. I share my thoughts on the matter here, that the reader might consider his or her own habits in web log maintenance, and to serve as my own reminder. So, I want to get-back, as Paul McCartney advised Joe-Joe^†, and rediscover my earliest approach to writing NoviceNotes.

Premature Destruction

If a draft is destroyed because the content was rendered obsolete by new technology, maybe it is telling of why I might be better advised against placing text in draft, altogether. If I resolve that the content was too sophomoric for publishing (having become more learned of the topic in the meantime), or my own interest in a draft-item has diminished, or– self-censoring out of vanity, that foul motivator– leading myself to believe that readers are not likely to be interested in my text, then the article is subject to deletion. Having gradually adopted this draft-revision process (rather, draft-deletion) over a period of years, I have come now to see this, my tendency to save compositions in draft, is not without a relatively significant impact on NoviceNotes™.

The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking^‡

Although authoring a draft, and refining it through subsequent revisions generally results in a better published article (assuming follow-through to completion), my observation prods me to evaluate the balance of my effort to maintain this web log. I must ensure I focus a realistic, or proper amount of energy toward the publishing of draft items, to develop a better awareness of the results of my effort– in general, my productivity– so I do not let viable content to rust for authoring, instead, more new drafts. I must prioritize this process of revising drafts, indeed placing it ahead of certain minutia of web log maintenance, the work which more arrogant advisors might categorize as “the fun stuff”, such as the activities involved in tweaking the CMS (or fumbling about with different CMS platforms altogether), an ever alluring diversion leading perhaps to an inflated sense of accomplishment. If any such related activities get in the way of the real work of the web log– that is, the writing; the actual log; the written journal which is the heart of the thing– after hashing these thoughts out here “on paper”, I hope to have a keener sense to see it happening.

Tech Support is You: A Scenario

Suppose, upon arrival at work next morning, you find yourself engaged in the minutia of the illustrious role of Systems Analyst; PC Tech Support; IT dude / IT chick: whatever the term used to summon your attention, your duties are essentially to save-the-day for all you survey, as the one-and-only, all-purpose, resident computer guru.

Sir! Ma’am! Uh, I can’t find the “any” key!

Through the din of finger-snapping atop raised arms waving, you hear pencils and pens, tap-tap-tapping from various cubicles, surrounding you on arrival as if in a tick-tock mockery, these subjects grow impatient with your attempt to assist others, one-by-one.

Regardless of each User’s private Operating System of choice; whether he is a PC, she is a Mac, or the group is Linux, as half are devout Debian, and half are faithful Fedora followers (each of the latter, a contemporary Unix derivation), let us assume this enterprise runs on a basic LAN, where each user is accommodated with his or her own Microsoft Windows XP system, and associated, assigned login ID’s.

One at a time, over the course of the morning, each user on the LAN seeks your assistance with a system problem. With an unusual coincidence of problems, you deduce each individual system on the network is suffering from a malfunction at the primary access point, since the symptoms appeared to propagate throughout the network in a uniform manner.

Go Right to the Source: Ask the Horse!

With productivity impacted, slowed, or even stalled completely, you jump into action, searching the vast Microsoft Knowledge Base for a hint of a solution to the problem. After scanning several redundant, cross-referenced, often cryptic texts (devoid of the concrete solution desired– as to download a hotfix, or other software related resolve for the problem), a bit of sidebar text catches your eye. The details are enough to make one’s jaw drop, yet somehow the revelation comes as no surprise:

The following is an excerpt from one such KB items of my recent perusal. Maybe, in another ten years, I’ll feel 100% confident about how to run a secure [ Win Xp ] system.

You must be logged on as an administrator or a member of the Administrators group in order to run the computer in Recovery Console. If your computer is connected to a network, network policy settings may prevent you from completing this procedure.

My question: if my system is connected to a network (which it is, of course), does this mean

1. I may be unable to complete the process of logging in as an Administrator
2. I may be unable to run the computer in Recovery Console

My second question: how do I find an answer to my previous question?

I came across the article while searching for some peace of mind, as I contemplate how I might best handle a problem with my Win XP system in which my user, a member of the Administrator’s group^† remains unable to perform tasks with require administrator privileges.

What then is the Systems Administrator to do, in order to solve the problem, if the system(s) do not recognize the user (and associated actions) as being of the Administrator group? In other words, if the Administrator hasn’t the permission to initiate processes to lead to resolving the problem, what possible alternative might there be?

I realize that, to imply generalities about Windows is to do little more than jump aboard the same, tired old bandwagon. As well, my text isn’t entirely clear as I cite nothing specific, but this entry is bourne of my own frustration as I believe I’ve reached a dead-end in an attempt to repair my own system; a system which is a part of a simple home network.

• Where are the real answers?
• What solutions might a real Sys Admin employ, if he or she were responsible for the productivity of the entire (small) enterprise?

Artists, rejoice! Now your vision is supported by the Exalead™ images by-color web application for returning queried image search results, based on a unique criteria for advanced searching: the visible color spectrum, as defined by a palette of colours, which are easily selected via the application user interface.

More details are available at ExaLabs, where Exalead Chromatik is a featured project amongst many more interesting experiments coming out of Europe in association with Exalead™, my personal favourite Search Engine, . Before you move on to something else, do check out the impressive Chromatik demo, available at Chromatik.Labs.Exalead.com. If you like what you see there, I recommend you indulge in an extended look at Labs.Exalead.com . I expect you’ll better appreciate my interest in Exalead, in general, after a perusal of their own interests.

That’s right, folks. I finally broke-down, upgraded the CMS, and installed– believe-it-or-not– the very first theme I checked-out, for improved version-support– what, with all of this whack new WP dot two point jack, widge-a-didgeridoo dope junk! (…and i do mean… didgeridoo!)

P.S. Oh, don’t worry– I will junk-it-up with some-branding-kinda custom-CSS-imagery combo, soon enough. Gotta get to that, so… just you wait n’ see!

“…oh lord, won’t you buy me… a color TV… oh lord, won’t you buy me… a color TV… Dialing For Dollars is trying to find me…”

Check out the coolest new thing! This markup language, rather– a presentational, formatting syntax (for typing *one thing*, to have it _published_ in a particular visual style) capable of converting simple, readily available keyboard symbols into valid HTML.

This special formatting syntax, known as Textile, is targeted toward the countless web citizens who, while they are active in the most populated corners of the web (maintaining blogs, participating in community forums, social networking sites, etc.), they have little to no functional knowledge of HTML, XML, and XHTML, the basic– if not currently most common– building blocks required for publishing web content.

How is it that people, without knowledge of HTML, have been able to publish so much of it? The answer is in preformatted content management systems, like Google’s Blogger, or in the bbcode common to forums, where simple syntax is used to change text styles, enabling HTMilliterate people to breathe some life into chunks of otherwise plain text. From what I’ve seen of Textile, it looks as though the doors to web publishing will open a bit wider to empower more users, with more options, a less cumbersome syntax than bbcode, where a single character is used to indicate bold or italic type (such as the asterisk [*], underscore [ _ ], etc.) instead of the rather bulky, square-bracket, letter, square-bracket (i.e. [i]italic[/i] [b]bold[/b] ).

Maybe you don’t find this to be all that fascinating. Maybe you are excited, and eager to learn more. Please don’t let me hold you any longer! Try the Textile sample page. It just might open the door to your next web publishing project, while it takes care of writing valid code, served up in attractive style in what may be the most user-friendly option for the non-html-skilled web citizens.