Lasagna Factory

Can't We All Just Get Along? Depends on Who This "We" Is

2011-02-02T14:17:00.000-08:00

Can't We All Just Get Along? Depends on Who This "We" Is. A few weeks ago some Cocoon guys were talking about crushing UserLand. Now there's a Cocoon weblog that uses Radio. That's the way to go.

This is the usual UserLand put-down and disrespect masquerading as appeals to playing nice. I'll start believing this sort of thing when I see someone at UserLand using a non-UserLand product to do a weblog.

The only thing UserLand ever means by cooperation is basically "what mine is mine and what's yours is mine." Even the Blogger API, which may have been the one time I ever saw them make an exception to this rule, is about to be supplanted by this SuperMetaUberWeblog API, and you can bet your boots that if this thing gets implemented in the usual slaphappy way, DW will start pushing it as the "standard", and will fragment that community in precisely the same Microsoftian "embrace and extend" way he did with RSS.

If I were Evan Williams, I would be very very careful here, put the additions to the Blogger API on high priority, and be on the lookout for another hissy-fit landgrab.

Blogs and Journos

2011-01-04T14:16:00.000-08:00

I'm doing some thinking and reading about weblogs and journalism. I'd like to write a somewhat longer essay about my take on the issue, and I hope to start writing something up very soon, like in the next day or so. I'm starting to think that the same sort of assimilation that happened to the Web will in time happen to blogs, especially given this article (link from Scripting News) where already journalists are starting to see blogs as sources of realtime feedback.

DW adds parenthetically that "Uhhh Howard, we're not here for the corporations", but they may already be seeing non-journalist blogs as just another form of market research, not thinking of them as equals, or - even more unthinkable - potential competitors. This could be due to how journalists perceive their primary job - the distillation of diverse sources into a narrative - where the typical blog in their view is just another primary source which is not providing that same condensation of sources into The Story.

Not that I necessarily believe this is true, but it's one possible surmise, based on this one article, how journalists are starting to see the value of what they would consider "amateur" weblogs. In any case, this is just off the top of my head, and I'm going to try to get something more coherent down soon.

Yet more sickness updates

2011-01-02T14:14:00.000-08:00

Yet more sickness updates - Well, the infection and its side effects have pretty much disappeared. The leg gets better every day. It was giving me trouble every day towards the evening, but as of yesterday there were merely twinges.

But it's always something. I seem to have developed a second arrythmia to go along with my long-suffering SVT. When I was in the hospital, I had a brief episode of atrial fibrillation, which was treated successfully with digoxin and got me put on a heart monitor for 24 hours. Now yesterday am I woke to another bout of it, necessitating a trip to the ER and a boost in my beta blocker dosage. My electro-physiologist is now wondering whether the SVT is related to the afib, and he hopes to be able to clear it all up when I undergo the second catheter ablation ("this time for sure!" - Bullwinkle J Moose) in September.

None of this, the SVT or the afib, is life-threatening in my case. They're more just annoyances. The afib could be dangerous if I had long (24 hour or more) episodes, because there would be the risk of clotting and stroke. I have relatively short attacks (I was in afib for about 4 hours yesterday, and apparently converted back to sinus rhythm on my own), am taking daily aspirin and am at very low risk for clotting anyway. So I'm not in danger. But I want this stuff gone. I am sick of it, I am sick of being sick, and I have to say that strep skin infections are a terrible way to lose 20 lbs, but I'll take the weight loss anyway.