Tag: Blog Nation

Five for Fighting.

Ghost in the Machine is five years old today. Well, what a long, strange trip it’s been…I must say, I don’t think I ever envisioned this lasting half a decade when I began back in 1999, particularly when I’ve never been able to keep a journal-journal for longer than a year or so. And to be honest, I had been considering taking a hiatus of late…Even before the election, I’d been feeling thin and stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread, and since then — as with many of you, I’m sure — my frame of mind can get quite Boromir-ish at times. But, that being said, blogging’s in my blood at this point, and the onset of Dubya II seems a particularly terrible time to put the keyboard down. Besides, how else am I going to find an outlet for my political antipathies and terminal fanboyisms? So y’all are just going to have to deal with a nervier, punchier GitM in the weeks, months, and years to come…five years down, and here’s to many more.

A Cry for Help.

Is anyone else out there having a problem with interminably long rebuild times on Movable Type? It’s been slow as molasses around here since 3.11, and 3.121 hasn’t helped matters. And it’s gotten to the point where it takes 15-20 minutes to post a single entry or to delete one wave of comment-spam, which obviously is cutting down on the choice links and commentary in these parts. Advice on rectifying this would be greatly appreciated, either here or at my post in the MT forums. Update: Michal Sabren, the always friendly proprietor of Cornerhost, has tweaked the archiving around here, which should hopefully bring things back up to speed.

Immovable Type.

Well, GitM has been running slower and slower ever since I installed Movable Type 3.11 a few weeks ago, and, yesterday afternoon, the server decided it had had enough. So I’ve been locked out of the blog here for the past 24 hours, and MT is still running slow as molasses. I also discovered my digital camera batteries have all gone the way of the dinosaur, which may nip my proposed Flickring in the bud too. Sigh…it’s been a very entropic week.

My Friend Flickr.

Since it’s getting such good press around the blogosphere (and since Raza at High Industrial was kind enough to send me an invite), I’ve opened an account over at Flickr, which so far seems like a rather neat photo-sharing application (and one whose deep functionality is probably wasted on me.) At any rate, I’ve been meaning to take more pictures lately, so hopefully this’ll provide a nice impetus. If you’re on there, say hello.

A sad and shocking hiatus.

Many condolences to the family and friends of Aaron Hawkins, a.k.a. Uppity Negro, who tragically took his own life sometime last week. While his site wasn’t in my daily blogroll, I eventually found myself there a number of times over the years, and his posts and commentary were consistently funny, passionate, and well-written. Aaron was an inspired individual, and his loss is tragic. (Discovered on All About George.)

Letters to Clio.

If you’re here by way of Ralph Luker’s kind referral at Cliopedia, welcome to GitM. You can find other (US)-history related content at the orals lists and among the writings…The general booknotes and soapbox may also be of interest, although many of those library entries were written way back in the summer of ’97 at the ripe young age of 22, and they show it. And, if you’re looking for other quality blogs by budding Columbia historians, I’d recommend Baldanders, The Naked Tree, Peasants Under Glass, and Pickle in the City, all excellent sites maintained by colleagues in the program.

Firedster.

While tooling around on Friendster the other day, I noticed I’d somehow lost a handful of friends very recently. Now I know why…one of them was fired for blogging. (More here.) Hmmm…given the innocuous content of Troutgirl’s posts, this would be lame in most any circumstance. But since Friendster’s whole bag is “social software,” this seems particularly pathetic. (Found via Plasticbag.)