Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with blog

Best tablet and workflow for blogging

melissa — Mon, 13 May 2013 08:57:44 -0800

I would like to purchase a tablet so I can do more blogging without lugging a laptop around. What are the best tools/apps/workflow tips to be able to do this without tearing my hair out? Special snowflake stuff inside. Here are my snowflakey specs:

I blog using self-hosted Wordpress, and I can do basic maintenance on it myself.
I already have a Bluetooth keyboard I like, and that works with both iOS and Android.
I currently have an iPhone 4S and my husband has a Nexus 7 tablet I can experiment on.
I'm leaning towards an Android tablet because there are more options at various price points (read: cheaper).
A 7 inch tablet is ideal - will fit in my purse with the keyboard and all my other purse stuff.
I would love to be able to insert Flickr/Instagram pictures easily, but the more I search, the more I see that this isn't really done outside of the iPad-only Blogsy app. That app looks like what I'd like to use, but I can't justify spending so much more on an iPad (with all new connectors/accessories) on the basis of one app that may or may not stick around.
I am reasonably comfortable with HTML. I just think it's ridiculously difficult to insert Flickr images into the WordPress mobile app.
I have and use both Dropbox and Evernote. I know that Evernote works in rich text and can cause unusual formatting when exporting to Wordpress. Should I consider a plain text editor and work in Markdown? (I've never worked that way before, but it looks easy to learn.)
I have no problem paying for apps if they're worth the money.
Outside of blogging, I would be using this tablet mostly for various social media (Twitter/FB/Pinterest) as well as reading web stuff from Pocket and ebooks via Kobo/my local library. I'm not a big gamer, but I'd probably watch occasional videos on it too
I'm in Canada if that affects any tools/toys I can purchase.
I'm willing to wait if the Next Big Thing is worth it. (I need to save my pennies too!)

How do you make blogging on a tablet work for you? What's your workflow? Thanks!

Tips on starting up a science-themed blog

daisyk — Sat, 11 May 2013 03:16:18 -0800

I was convinced to start a blog under my real name, for the purposes of being visible on the internet in a positive light while applying for jobs. Unfortunately, now it's up, I hate it and never want to write anything there. Since my partner is sick of me wailing about it, I thought I'd ask you guys for tips on low-effort ways to post on a blog with a general theme of 'interesting science news'. I've been blogging under pseudonyms for about ten years so the concept itself is not new to me. My problem is a combination of the following:

Raging, lifelong imposter syndrome, or so I'm told. I say it can't be imposter syndrome if I'm right about my inadequacy! </logic> (Yes, I am in therapy.)

Not wanting to merely recycle news stories from elsewhere with one picture, a link and my name stamped on it. I feel this adds no value and dislike blogs that only do this.

If I write about news within my field, but have no useful insights or expert knowledge about it, this will look worse than not saying anything.

If I write about news outside of my field, I definitely won't have useful insights or expert knowledge, so why bother?

I've been told (by my partner) that curating interesting science news is also a useful service, even if I don't write much about it myself, because there's such a lot of information out there. Unfortunately, I don't want to spend hours and hours wading through all this information myself either. I should probably use that time to look for jobs, right?

I'm a slow writer. I second-guess myself, worry that I'm accidentally writing something incorrect or offensive, and have to read my source materials through several times to feel sure I understand them completely. This is the case for my pseudonymous blog; for this real-name blog, it's worse.

I would be happier just to delete this blog, but it's keeping a couple of annoying hits for my name off the top of my Google results. (I started a PhD eighteen months ago that didn't work out, and the year I spent there is listed on my CV as 'research assistant'. I'm searching for another position as a doctoral student. Some links have recently surfaced that still refer to me as a PhD student in my old department, and I don't want to have to explain this in interviews if I can help it.)

Is there a way to make short, non-labour-intensive posts about science news that won't make me feel I'm just making the internet worse? Quigley's Cabinet is an example of what I'd love to make if it were possible, but it would take me hours and hours a day to keep it up. On the other end of the scale, I do like Science You Can Love, which is only reblogs. I feel you can get away with that on Tumblr, though, and not so much with a 'real' blog.

I like the idea of a science news blog. Unfortunately, I've worried about it so much that even thinking about making an entry can push me into a panic. Some outside advice would be great—thank you!

Academia and anonymous blog posts

quarsan — Fri, 10 May 2013 05:49:41 -0800

Do any academic institutions allow uncredited blog posts? I've been following a post from the College of Europe. It's a notoriously EU Institution friendly place, but yesterday an anonymous blog post appeared on their official blog, criticising the current EU Commission president. It wasn't outspoken especially, apart from by the college's usual standards.

Today, it vanished with no explanation. Thanks to the Streisand effect, it has now become widely known.

One person has appeared to offer an explanation, but there's no indication that they are a current student or academic at the college, but the defence seems to be: an academic institution cannot allow anonymous people to publish on its blog without being responsible for what they say. No other academic institution would ever allow it.

An academic has said "the contribution was not signed, and this does not seem to be a great start for an honest debate."

Apart from not understanding the Chatham House Rule for a start, this does seem a little, well, what does it look like to you?

Preparing to launch! Hosting advice & projects.mefi advice sought

christopherious — Sat, 04 May 2013 13:35:14 -0800

My new website is nearly ready to launch and I need (1) advice about improving performance via webhost features/alternatives and (2) advice about how to build a good post on projects.metafilter.com where I'll be seeking feedback. I'm just about ready to open the doors on a new blog type website (previously). Most of my other sites have been for employers and clients who knew their audiences and had very clear requirements, and were able to fund powerful webhosting. This site is personal and my budget for now is small, and I'm not clear yet on who exactly it will appeal to, but I have a feeling it will draw a wide audience based on initial tests with a tiny, private audience.

So I have a couple of questions about hosting/performance and getting community feedback on projects.metafilter.com.

1. Performance - It's a Drupal 7 site that links to most of the content via views, and lives in my Dreamhost shared hosting plan (without VPS) under a user account that's not hosting any other domains. I have Boost caching enabled, so once the doors open that should help minimize sql queries. I also turned on db optimization. Am I likely to run into trouble with Dreamhost's memory cap? I know there are some options under Dreamhost such as VPS, but is that best? Or am I better off considering an alternative host? Any sage advice from Drupal 7 devs? I have a feeling it will get lots of traffic and I'd like to be proactive about ensuring a good first impression.

2. Feedback - I want to get feedback from experienced bloggers and blog readers. Where can I find some really good best practices for launching new blog type sites in general?

2a. Where can I find some best practices for projects.mefi posts? If I post there, should I just open the site up to anonymous traffic, or should I keep it locked away and provide user accounts in the thread? Opening it up to anonymous browsing will improve performance and will be simpler all around, but it will also mean that other folks will see the site before it's possibly "fully baked". I want it to be as close to perfect as possible when I launch.

Thanks in advance!

Subvert the dominant paradigm with Hyperlocal news sites

IndigoSkye — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 10:03:02 -0800

The era of the printed daily newspaper is on the way out, but can hyperlocal step into that void? I'm looking for examples of great hyperlocal blogs or news websites that are doing it right. Baristanet, West Seattle Blog, TheAlternativePress, and Red Bank Green are all examples of independent Hyperlocal blogs and news sites that are doing it right, possibly even profitably, in the post daily newspaper era. Please share your favorite hyperlocal sites. If you work for one, I'd love to know what your typical workday day is like?

Hey, Art!

heyho — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 18:26:37 -0800

Please tell me of your favorite art/design/architecture blogs, pages, and websites — the more obscure, the better. I see a lot of art, but I don't see enough art. I'm looking not so much for current-happenings type links, but rather pretty much everything else, including no-longer-updated-but-still-standing art/design blogs that are very well curated.

Or a particular art/design school's website that is brimming with interesting galleries. That sort of thing. Something I'm not likely to find by tripping down a Wikipedia path. An extremely fascinating (amateur) Flickr or Instagram account, even. Or an art or artist fansite that is particularly detailed or otherwise compelling. Or a small-museum website that can't be missed. Or the site of an obscure-but-amazing artist who no one seems to be aware of.

I'd rather not describe which styles, periods, or media I tend to prefer because I'm getting bored with my own direction, so show me what's great!

How To Prevent Spam on Wordpress Blog

goalyeehah — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 08:27:35 -0800

I have a wordpress blog. Comment sections is being filled daily with spam comments. Is there any way I can block these?

Need help finding websites similar to Thought Catalog

The Biggest Dreamer — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 07:27:31 -0800

Are there any blog/writing websites out there that are like Thought Catalog, but slightly more... mature I guess? Without the high-school/college drama or pop culture nonsense. Sometimes I feel just slightly too old for TC's target demographic. :/ But I do enjoy reading short blog posts from a variety of authors. Thanks in advance

What UK Legal Implications are there with documenting bad service online

dougrayrankin — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 05:00:41 -0800

What are the legal implications if I start a blog documenting the poor service my property manager provides, and asking others to share their opinions of this firm? I can speak for the factual accuracy of my own experiences (I have their letters and invoices etc, as well as my responses), but what about others? This question seems a bit above my level, but basically I am having a nightmare with my property managment firm who are (amongst other things) invoicing me for periods when I didn't own the property, agreeing to waive a fee and then issuing another invoice in which said fee has reappeared, failing to respond to direct queries of mine (I email a direct question, they write back as though they didn't even see that part of the email), failing (despite me now having asked four times) to send out a direct debit mandate, attempting to force membership of a communal buildings insurance policy for considerably more per month than my current buildings AND contents policy costs... the list goes on. Already this firm sees their name appended in Google's autocomplete with words like "suck", "rubbish", "complaints" and "terrible". I'd like to provide a focal point for those with a frustration to state their case, and then to make sure that anyone searching for the firm sees all of these just as prominently as the firm itself. It is an attempt to shame the firm into improving its service.

How to get listed in RSS Feed Reader searchers?

msalt — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 07:52:43 -0800

I have two specialized blogs in very specific areas (palindromes, Taoism). They do not show up when I do keyword searches in RSS readers such as Feedly, while barely related blogs do (e.g. one by a woman named Hannah with palindrome in the title. How can I get my actually directly-on-topic blogs to appear? Their names are slight variants of the main keyword (The Palindromist, Taoish) so when I set it up with Feedburner I added the keyword to the description in parentheses. Doesn't seem to have solved it. Thanks!

I want a distributed Facebook.

eviemath — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 23:02:08 -0800

I want a distributed Facebook. What necessary pieces are already available, and what work would need to be done to integrate currently available necessary pieces? The basic idea:

Users must have their own web space. User data (pics, posts, etc.) are stored locally on the user's own web space. A list of other users and their access permissions is also stored locally.

A central service keeps a list of all users for verification purposes, along with an index to the local user sites. (So that users only have to log in once, rather logging in separately at each of their friends' sites.)

Comments on user posts could be dealt with in one of two ways: (i) comments are "owned" by the user whose content the comment is associated with; (ii) comments are just another type/category of post with a link. Users could enable tracebacks to semi-effectively create comment threads (this would be a bit ungainly; I'd prefer option (i)).

News/RSS type feed that automatically updates each user on their friends' selected activity when said user logs in to their own node. (Ideally, this could be a one-stop feed for everything the user is subscribed to: the distributed social network, Twitter, news feeds, podcasts, etc.)

The client interface must be secure (grar WordPress!), doesn't have to be super customizable (grar WordPress themes!), but does have to do all the basic social network stuff (let you post text, photos, videos, sound, and links; be searchable (keywords would be a nice addition); let you manage who can see and/or comment on which posts). I have a preference for open source projects, as well.

Are Diaspora hubs far enough along in development that they could be used in this way (if, for example, someone volunteered the web space to host a central index), or do they also rely on all data being stored on central servers? What options are available currently that do (all or) parts of this? For example, you can get extensions for WordPress that allow user management and access control locally, but there's no central registry of all users or the sort of indexing I'm thinking of. And there are security issues with the community (yet not open-source) development model for themes and other extensions. Other CMSystems, like Drupal, or courseware type content delivery systems, like Moodle, are similarly non-networked (though maybe more secure?). There maybe seem to be some identity verification type options - something about avatars?? - that such an application might be able to piggy back off of?

In summary:
1. What pieces of the puzzle are currently available?
2. What work would need to be done to integrate these pieces? (Eg. a standard, well-vetted theme for WordPress or Drupal or something, together with a wrapper/central verification and RSS service that would hide the login details for each individual blog site, make the user experience seem like a unified social network rather than accessing individual blogs, and allow for a news feed on their friends' activity.)

Best blogs for following behind the scenes of the Obama Presidency?

agregoli — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 21:20:55 -0800

I recently found Mrs. O, a fashion blog about the First Lady's wardrobe - but clothes are not really that interesting to me. I'm AM curious about the other best blogs and ways to follow Obama, his family, and the current administration - as a well as any web presence that showcases the best of "White House whatever" in general - no matter who is in charge. A wide range could apply - anything from photos of the First Family in casual life and doings (like Mrs. O), or discussion/analysis/notification of current policy initiatives/announcements, etc.

Interesting blogs about weird technology?

GenericUser — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 02:17:58 -0800

I'm looking for blogs that cover old and/or niche technology, in the vein of Something Awful's "Obsolete technology" thread or JWZ' "retrocomputing" tag. Suggestions?

So creamy!

mon-ma-tron — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 09:40:35 -0800

My Google-Fu has utterly failed me on this. Can anyone help me find this specific blog post about baking steel-cut oats? Okay, so this is a little odd, I make baked steel-cut oats all the time. I'm not looking for a recipe for it.

What I'm looking for is a blog post I read about a year ago, written by a woman, about how she makes baked steel-cut oats. There was a story in it about her husband having steel-cut oatmeal while they were on vacation? At a bed-and-breakfast, maybe? He loved them because they were "so creamy!" But, no time to make in the AM at home, steel-cut oats take too long, so she bakes them the night before (1 cup oats, 3 cups water, pinch of salt) at 300° F for 1 hour, cools them and keeps the oatmeal in the fridge to be microwaved in the mornings. I think the post title might even have been called something like "One Minute Steel-Cut Oats."

I've searched using Google, Google Reader, FoodBlogSearch.com, Foodily.com (my regular recipe search engines). It's not a post from any of my regular foodie blogs (101 Cookbooks, Amateur Gourmet, Bitten Word, Danny/Gwyneth Project, Homesick Texan, Kitchn, Last Night's Dinner, Orangette, Poor Girl Gourmet, Thursday Night Smackdown [RIP, sniff!], Smitten Kitchen, or Spice Spoon).

I feel like it might have been a link from the Kitchn, but I've been through all their posts about steel-cut oats and couldn't find anything.

I can't for the life of me remember how I came across this blog post. Hope?

Help me move my blog from Blogger to WordPress.

The Girl Who Ate Boston — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 07:35:04 -0800

Should I try to move my custom-domain blog from Blogger to WordPress using the WordPress "import blog" feature, or is it worth hiring a professional to be sure I don't mess it up? Also, WordPress template questions. I understand there's a feature on WordPress that will allow me to import my blog from Blogger. Does anyone have experience using this feature? If it's relatively foolproof, I'd like to use it and save my money. On the other hand, if I did hire a professional to move my blog, how would I go about finding such a professional and about how much should I expect it to cost?

Details:
— I have a custom domain name.
— The blog has about 15 posts and fewer than 5 pages, so it's not currently a huge blog.
— I'm planning on using the WordPress.com hosting platform, not the self-hosting on WordPress.org (at least for now).

WordPress template questions:
(1) I don't mind paying for a premium theme, but I can't really experiment with the theme "preview." How do I go about deciding what theme to buy when I can't experiment with them?
(2) I can't play around with the template layout until my blog is already transferred, at which point I'll have traffic coming. (Right?) I don't want my readers to see my in-progress layout but I can't think of how to avoid/minimize this besides doing the Blogger/WordPress switch in the middle of the night. Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance!

xml files: how to see and search them under OS X?

zadcat — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 10:59:14 -0800

I need a way to see and do a simple search on two large xml files under OS X. I've been blogging multiple times a day since 2001. There was a break and restart in 2006 and then I changed from Blogger to Wordpress in 2010.

Everything is peachy with the Wordpress blog. This question concerns the old posts from Blogger.

I have two chunks of xml from Blogger – one 10.4MB (5,974 posts) and one 12.5MB (7,594 posts). The files also still exist within Blogger but lately when I've tried to look things up I'm getting more intrusive errors, and the interface for dealing with them has never been great.

There are so many posts that these files have overwhelmed standard scripts for importing into existing blog formats.

I don't want to make the old entries accessible to the public again – this is a news blog so most of the links are dead anyway – but I would love to have an interface here on my own Mac where I could read the old content easily (instead of laboriously post by post with errors popping up as at present) and run a simple word search on it.

Rocket science? Are there tools I'm not thinking of, even ones I may already have?

Name my university learning blog

Paragon — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 18:28:33 -0800

Looking for a descriptive and short name for a blog about university study. Save me from bad puns and opaque acronyms! I'm starting up a blog for students at my university. The focus will be on study skills, assignment and thesis writing, and university events and resources relating to those topics.

Because it's an official blog it has to have a fairly vanilla name, but that usually translates to odd acronyms, puns, and/or neologisms, and I'd like to avoid those if possible. I'm looking for something short (2-4 words), descriptive, and memorable.

Names incorporating "learning" or "study" are especially welcome. Something similar to "The Learning Nation" would work well (except there's already a blog by that name).

How do I interior design on the cheap

goosechasing — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 07:52:39 -0800

I want to learn how to furnish and decorate my apartment on a budget. What blogs should I look at? I already know about Apartment Therapy. Simple (read: easy, little to no labor, cheap) DIY stuff is awesome too. My style is eclectic. "On a budget" means I'm currently scouring thrift stores, yard sales and super deep discount furniture places. Gonna make the voyage to Ikea a few towns over when I have a better idea of what do about my space.

Thanks.

How do I write a blog that's professional and personal?

kat518 — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 13:48:43 -0800

I work in communications and would like to start a blog that I could link to from Twitter and LinkedIn. But I'd also like to write about my personal life. How do I thread this needle? I'm a mid-level communications professional for a major national nonprofit. I also organize a regular get-together for fellow professionals with an email list of 900+ members. I consider myself a writer so I would like to write more and start a blog to show off my writing skills and (barf) build my personal brand.

I'd like to write about work, including writing, social media, communications, as well as work life, like networking and dealing with colleagues. However, I don't just want to write about work life. I'd like to write about things that interest me, events I attend, organizations I volunteer for, activities in which I participate. I'd even like to write about friends, family and my generally boring life.

I'm lousy at self promotion but I pride myself on being genuine, perhaps painfully so. I would like to motivate, encourage and inspire and I think a good way to do that is to write about things with which I have struggled. But I don't want to be in a position where I am applying for a job, someone reads my blog and thinks, this person is crazy. I do enough to self-sabotage :)

Do I need to start two blogs - one under a fake or non-name and another under my name? Do I need to approach everything I post from the perspective of, if a potential future employer saw this, would they freak out? I realize that to some extent, I don't want to work for people who would freak out if they knew some personal things about me but I worry that if I self-censor all the time, I won't have anything to write about.

Not having things to write about is another concern of mine. I frequently sit down to write and nothing happens. Do I have to update on a schedule or is it better to focus on quality writing occasionally than half-hearted writing regularly? Are there places I can look for writing prompts that would be helpful?

I've heard bloggers say and I've encouraged others to just write and see what happens, that the things you write about are the things you write about and therefore what you blog about. I'm concerned that I might be writing a blog about doing yoga badly and weak communications advice.

If I wanted to blog specifically about work or link to work, is that something I should talk to a manager about to cover my butt? When do you start promoting your blog? I would like to use the blog as an opportunity to discuss that which can't be covered in 140 characters on Twitter, so I'd like to be able to tweet blog updates but I don't want to do that right now because there are so few posts and the ones that are there are about doing yoga badly and weak communications advice. I do not want my personal brand to be that of a person who does yoga badly and offers weak communications advice.

I also feel frustrated with the idea of blogging because I worry that I don't have much that is truly unique to add to the conversation. But I still think it's a good idea because, well, who really does? Also, there is that line in The King's Speech where Geoffrey Rush asks why anyone should listen to Colin Firth and he exclaims, "Because I have a voice!" But I would watch Colin Firth read the phone book so maybe that's not the best idea.

TL; DR - I'd like to start a blog but I worry that what I'm starting with isn't very good. I don't want people to read mediocre stuff I've written and judge me based on it. What do I do (besides become a better writer)?

Philly Blogs

Rory Marinich — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 03:00:53 -0800

Help me find the best-written most interesting blogs writing about Philadelphia.

Post not-so-Secret

threeants — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 12:27:29 -0800

I'd like to start a blog featuring my small collection of found (used/sent) postcards. What measures should I take for due ethical diligence? I have some cool old postcards that I bought at thrift stores. I'm hoping to scan them and post them on a blog. They're all sent from someone to someone else (i.e. not me or anyone I personally know). I'd like to preserve/show as much of the contents as is ethical.

===

concerns:

--It stands to reason that generally, if someone's selling a used postcard to a thrift store, the sender (if not the recipient as well) is likely to be unaware of the sale.

--Visible names and addresses.

mitigations:

--The postcards are old. The most recent ones are from the 1960s. The vast majority of people involved are probably dead.

--The text is banal. People don't tend to send postcards confessing their deepest hopes and fears. They tend to write terse sentences about hotels and weather.

--There may not be much of an expectation w/r/t postcards in the first place? Anyone can read them while they're in transit (as opposed to an enveloped letter).

--There might be value in leaving names intact so people doing historical/genealogical searches on their family members could come across these...maybe? I know I'd be thrilled if I randomly came across a postcard sent by my great-grandfather or what have you.

--This is basically what historians do...right? Maybe? No?

===

So what should I do? Black out part of the name? Part of the address? Can I leave both intact? Is this project too ethically fraught to even embark on? Naturally, whatever I do I'll have a notice saying that if you are somehow party to one of the postcards, I'll take the entry down at your request.

Thanks for the advice!

Help choose a WordPress theme for a simple, 365-post photo blog.

cribcage — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 10:56:40 -0800

Please help me to choose a WordPress theme for my (second) daily photo blog. My problem is that I want something so plain and simple that I'll probably have to pay for it, but the paid themes are complex and difficult for me to decipher. The content will be 365 posts and an archive gallery, presented as simply as possible. My ideal website would be really simple. Upon loading the page, I would like the current day's photo to display with minimal distraction—maybe just the blog's name along with that photo's date and a one- or two-sentence caption. There should also be an equally unobtrusive way to open an archive gallery, which would just be a single page of images. If you click on an image, you would again see just that image (now full-sized) with minimal distraction (blog name, photo date, brief caption).

In other words, each daily post would be just one photo with a little else as possible. The blog's front page would display just one such post at a time. You could activate a textless gallery, just a big collection of photos (similar to the Expression WordPress theme), to browse and open previous days' posts.

That's all I need. This is purely an art project. There will be no ads, I don't need a biography page or contact info, and I don't need hierarchies for different categories of posts. The archive gallery will eventually consist of 365 different photos, and then the blog will end. (Bonus points if I can then make the gallery the blog's front page.)

I have been browsing WordPress themes, and the selection seems huge. But the more overwhelming problem is that when I narrow down to a few themes that I think might fit (Expression, Fashion9, HQ Photography Responsive, etc.) it's really difficult for me to distinguish between them because I'm not conversant. Paid themes offer a lot of power and customizing, which I'm sure is why most people pay for them, but as an HTML dummy I'm having trouble cutting through all that to figure out how to buy one theme that will accomplish my goal. My approach would have been to try them one-by-one, trial and error.

I'd appreciate any help from suggested themes, tips on how to customize a theme to achieve what I'm looking for, or general advice on how to distinguish between some of the features that exist given what I'm looking to accomplish. Thanks in advance!

Blogging for IRL friends?

zeek321 — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 13:22:55 -0800

Have you deliberately used your personal blog(s) to make IRL friends completely outside your social circle? I would like to make IRL friends who share my SFW and NSFW interests, of the vague, sprawling, intellectual variety.

There aren't any existing meetups in my area for my interests, and previous attempts at creating said meetups (I tried hosting a few for months) brought in people who were very nice to chat a bit with but who I wasn't interested in being friends with. (If my interest were meditation, just as a pretend example, I would get tons of new-agey types, when I really wanted people who were interested in ancient texts. And this would happen no matter how carefully I worded the meetup description, with multiple ongoing experiments over a year. Again this is just pretend, but this is the kind of thing that kept happening.)

Do you have a range of difficult-to-classify, sort of introverted interests? And they're outside the mainstream but not halr-splitting minutiae that only a handful of people in the world would be interested in?

Do you blog? Did this accidentally or deliberately lead to IRL friends? Do you have any tips for me? I have SFW interests and NSFW interests. If you do too, do you have two blogs or just one?

Basically, I'm trying to decide whether to commit to blogging for a year or five or if I should put almost all of my focus on mingling at IRL events that don't quite fit my interests and referring to stuff I'm interested in, in conversation. A few minor hits so far. (I'll probably keep doing that anyway.) The blogging into a black hole has been gratifying but emotionally draining and time-consuming, and I'm wondering if I should stick with it until I become more googleable. I would also start getting more involved as a blog commenter, have a blogroll of somewhat related blogs and that sort of thing.

One thing that concerns me is that if I focus on a handful of interests instead of one main theme, would that make it much less likely for people to be able to google for my content? Another concern I have is that I've personally never found someone's blog incredibly awesome to the point where I've emailed them to say hi. Should this tell me something?

(Part of the problem, if you're going to ask me to actually post my interests here, is that it's difficult for me to summarize and classify them, except for listing lots and lots of thick books that are all interconnected to me but seem to come from lots of different subfields, and I'm not interested in the subfields in isolation, and the people in those subfields don't seem interested in stuff outside their work. So, I'm thinking writing might be a way to help articulate and clarify what I care about while serving as beacon for other potentially interested people.)

Would you commit to this route if you were me, specifically as an IRL friends strategy? I would also be actively working on making my writing less dense and run-on-y. I might just have to keep writing, for my own sanity, but it would be motivating if people had success stories and said, "Yes, write with your blog in mind."

Wool ewe help me name my knitting blog?

orange swan — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 15:11:12 -0800

Forget about all the nameless kittens and babies crying in vain for an identity. It's time to Name! That! Blog! So I've come with an idea for a blog, and I would like a clever name for it. My idea is to launch a knitting blog (yeah, one of those) in which I review knitting patterns in a semi-serious, semi-pointing-and-laughing way, and post interesting knitting-related items. Interesting if you like knitting that is, because otherwise you'd probably rather enter a pickled herring eating contest. Knitting puns have been done to death, but I have such faith in the wit and creativity of the MeFi community that I'm sure you can come up with some brand new, wildly amusing pun.;-) And I have a name ready that would do to fall back on if you don't succeed.