How to be ignored on the internet.

It’s simple, post something that’s sensible, thoughtful and nuanced, and watch the tubleweed roll.

It appears to engage your readers you need emotive hyperbole, partonisingly simplistic knee-jerk arguments, anger and aggression.  Either that or some popular bloggers are operating some elaborate in-joke on a level I just don’t get.

Unfortunately, I don’t do knee-jerk or aggressive. I just do nuanced and thoughtful. So I’m going to have to get used to the obvious fact- life’s not fair.

Video Test

This is Stewart Lee’s brilliant routine on PC. I’ve posted the text of this routine before, here it is live.

Warning, the it includes “strong language”.

Ben Goldacre gets understandably frustrated.

You may call this article a rant. I call it a reasonable point, well made.

Haitus

This blog is going to be closed while Sarah and I go away. We have set up a honeymoon blog which we might be able to update as we go!

Links Update

I’ve updated the sidebar. James C has moved his blog to a new domain name, and tactfully reminded me on Wednesday. I had already updated the SAGGA Blogs Digest, and my own digest page on bloglines, but forgot to update the sidebar.

Also, given it’s been in the news recently, I’ve included a link to the Lib Dem page about the BAe bribes scandal. You can still catch Monday’s Panorama on the subject at the BBC Panorama website.

Apologies to Kinja Readers

I had changed the settings to alter how this blog is listing in search engines. Trouble is Kinja doesn’t rely on feeds like bloglines, but sends virtual robots out to read blogs in the same way as a search engine. What that means was I’d stopped people who’d subscribed through kinja from reading my blog. But- if I jam this stick in this gap in the template and heaaaaaaaaaave.

Oh dear, sorry about that looks like I’ve just released a backlog of posts. Normal service will resume soon, I promise!

Good tool- press draft

When writing a very long piece it’s often sensible to press draft and come back when the meaning of the words on the page isn’t fresh in the mind. Because while the concepts behind the article are still fresh it will obscuring the fact that while what you say is clear, some of the syntax may be disjointed. In the past I have boggled at a proffessional writer’s claims to be able to self edit, given that as the writer your view of the clarity of a piece is always going to be obscured by the fact you know what it’s supposed to mean.

To use a computing analogy, you can’t run prose through make, to see if it compiles.

In other news I’ve been getting experience of the perl scripting language, whilst developing quite an important website.