Blogging

My Homebrew CMS Was Co-Authored by Cthulhu

I publish this blog and seven other sites with Wordzilla, a CMS I wrote for myself and have never released. I began it 20 years ago and the PHP codebase is best examined in small doses because to look upon its full extent would bring a descent into madness worthy of Yog-Shoggoth. There's a spaghetti of half-implemented features, integrations with long-dead blogging services and random one-off solutions to ancient problems like the spammer from China whose IP block is still banned from ... (read more)

2023/09/23

Helping Doc Searls Survive a Blog Apocalypse

Five days before the Blogs at Harvard server was scheduled for shutdown, I asked Doc Searls on Twitter where his blog would be moving. He'd been on the server since August 1, 2007, and had written a staggeringly huge number of entries. I was not expecting his response: Holy shit. I hadn't heard it would. Do you have a link? This began a frantic four days in which I helped him export his blog to a new server before the meteor struck. The move was from one WordPress server to another. ... (read more)

2023/07/14

This Blog Has Been Around for 7,500 Days

As of today, I've been publishing this weblog for 7,500 days. Workbench began on Nov. 7, 1999, on the Blogger platform under the name Referer_Log. The name comes from webserver files that reveal the link someone clicked to reach your site, which could be used to find out what other people were saying about what you wrote. Since I viewed blogs largely as a vehicle for ego gratification it seemed appropriate. The homepage had this kidding-but-not-kidding purpose: "Make People Like Me." Later I ... (read more)

2020/05/19

Whatever Happened to the Blogroll?

One of the side effects of reviving an old site design on Workbench is that this blog has a blogroll again. Bloggers used to put a long list of links on their homepage to other blogs they read (or wanted you to think they read). I don't know why everybody stopped doing that. Since I was borrowing an old design from 2008 I decided to bring back the blogroll too. I used the same blogroll but dropped the sites that are inactive or gone after 12 years, leaving these 20 diehards: A Whole Lotta ... (read more)

2020/05/12

I've Disappointed a Comment Spammer

Though I haven't been blogging actively in recent years I've been cleaning out the comment spam regularly because I'll eventually be writing here again. This morning I found this gem on a comment touting a cheesy online Flash games site: The next time I read a blog, I hope that it doesn't disappoint me as much as this one. I mean, I know it was my choice to read, but I actually thought you'd have something interesting to say. All I hear is a bunch of whining about something that you could fix ... (read more)

2019/10/12

You Should Be Reading Shelley Powers

... (read more)

2017/07/31

Seth Finkelstein Kills His Blog

One of my favorite writers who covers the societal implications of technology, Seth Finkelstein, is shutting down his blog after 11 years. The closure of Google Reader this morning, which will cost bloggers a huge chunk of readers who follow them over RSS, was the final straw: It's been clear for a long time I've considered blogging to have been a failure, for me. I'll skip reciting again my delusion. In sum, while I treasure the occasional indication that someone has enjoyed something I've ... (read more)

2013/07/02

TalkLeft's Unusual Comment Policy on Trials

When I'm interested in a high-profile trial, one of my go-to sources for analysis is the liberal blogger Jeralyn Merritt, whose TalkLeft focuses on crimes with political implications. Merritt is a criminal defense attorney in Denver who has been running the blog for over a decade. While reading her posts on the George Zimmerman murder trial, I was surprised by a comment she made to a user of her site: I have repeatedly warned Ricky not to ask readers to help prove the prosecution case. ... He ... (read more)

2013/07/01

I Fill Random Target Employees with Rage

The seven-week break I took on Workbench, which just ended 11 words ago, is the longest since I began my personal blog in 1999. I'm doing some work in social media these days and thinking about launching a new company to commercialize software I've been developing for my own use the past six years. I also am deep into the manuscript for a new edition of Sams Teach Yourself C++ in 24 Hours. My absence did not make Target employees fonder, as a recent comment to my five-year-old tale of shopping ... (read more)

2010/06/09

Blogger Suggests Debt Collection Story is Bogus

Lambert Strether, the founder of the liberal blog Corrente Wire, has suggested that my story on the woman who sued the debt collector might be a hoax: The story (cross-posted here) is sourced to a phone interview with the woman's lawyer, Ross Teter. The best I can find in a quick search is this court docket item. I would want to make very, very certain that this story isn't really a way of propagating links to the "credit repair" services and forums, whose links appear further down in the ... (read more)

2010/04/06

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