I’m about to stop this blog

I’m a bot over WordPress and just want things to be a little easier. I started blogging at Teach and Learn Online and stayed there happily for 2 years. Now after 3 years here, I think I’ll quit it.

But when I started work at Otago Polytechnic and starting showing people how to blog, it became controversial with some of Otago’s IT people. I decided to get to know WordPress in anticipation of IT saying, “ok, we’ll support blogs but only on our own install where we can control it”. Thinking WordPress would be their logical choice I thought I better start getting to know it and encouraging staff to use it so their skills would be transferable.

But to their credit IT have not moved in any of that direction, and I think I might like to go back to Blogger. I’ve never really liked the usability or speed of WordPress, nor the amount of spam and bot action it seems to get. I’m as worried as the next person about Google everything, but I’m not all that precious about content either. Easy come easy go really. There are lots of ways to back up and regenerate content I’ve found. Creating a book from my blog is one of the most rewarding of them all.. I’ve been meaning to do that again these past couple of months, there’s about 3 years of blogging that needs to be brought into a third book just so I can have something tangible on the shelf for all these words. Its a good process to go through, reviewing old notes and reformatting them.

So anyway, I’ve set up a new blog on Blogger. Leigh Blackall. There’s nothing on it for now.. and I’m not entirely sure when I’ll start writing there.. perhaps when I finish the book version of this blog.. that might be a good start. I won’t bother exporting and importing.. its sadly not easily doable from WordPress to Blogger, but nor is it necessary. This blog can stay, as does Teach and Learn Online. All links in tact. Apart from the URL and the template, you could view these 3 blogs as I do.. 1 big blog fluidly distributed across the Internet as though it where one big platform.

Can anyone think of any good reason why I shouldn’t stop this blog and go to my new Blogger blog? I don’t care about loss of readership. I’m confident the ones that count will update their feeds 🙂

Iran bloggers

A great video short by Aaron Chiesa, Toru Kageyama, Hendy Sukarya, and Lisa Temes about Iranian bloggers.

Blogging died in 1882

We were all then convinced that it was necessary for us to speak, write, and print as quickly as possible and as much as possible, and that it was all wanted for the good of humanity. And thousands of us, contradicting and abusing one another, all printed and wrote – teaching others. And without noticing that we knew nothing, and that to the simplest of life’s questions: What is good and what is evil? we did not know how to reply, we all talked at the same time, not listening to one another, sometimes seconding and praising one another in order to be seconded and praised in turn, sometimes getting angry with one another – just as in a lunatic asylum.

Leo Tolstoy: A Confession. 1882

NZ TV and Blogging

I was on my way to work this morning and caught this on the TV before I left. I’ve loaded it to YouTube so others can see it too. It is a brief TVOne Breakfast look at Blogging, specifically the Qantas Media Awards (what a lame website!!).

I think it an interesting insight into NZ Mainstream media perspective of social media. The Breakfast host is your usual self assured, arrogant kind-a-guy that you get on these shows, and I thought he was pretty subdued in his dismissive attitude of blogging compared to other things I’ve seen him have a go at. I think he was distracted by the fella he was interviewing actually, and didn’t want to risk looking silly with all this techy it geek stuff.

After note: Comments made by Caroline, and a few others have taught me lots about the TVNZ and Breakfast website. I was impressed to see that all the shows are recorded and eventually offered as streaming media. I wasn’t able to find the Breakfast recording above, but Caroline found it and offered the following links:

http://tvnz.co.nz/view/tvone_minisite_index_skin/tvone_breakfast_group

http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/488124/1028238

http://tvnz.co.nz/cda/tvnz/video_popup_windows_skin/1028307?bandwidth=128k

At the time of adding this note (21st March) the streaming media file didn’t come down with audio, so I’ll keep theYoutube copy up until I see a working version.