So, I've been reading Rebecca Blood's book on blogging, and also "We've Got Blog" (2001), a critical reader on blogging and how blog culture is changing the internet and our world.
And I'm very excited because I'm ahead of SO many bloggers, in that I've been weblogging for public eyes since I was about 13-14 on the popular site LiveJournal as the user lenablair. But, now that I've been reading all of this theory and criticism and am sort of experiencing the subtle yet numerous differences between LiveJournal and Blogger, I'm experiencing anxiety over writing. Others apparently get bloggorhea with the ease that entries are posted, but I've been constipated more and more as I've gotten older, spent less and less time in front of a computer.
Thus, I've grown to understand that I am an experienced weblogger, but have not, historically been conscientious. I wrote to get ideas out in this unique forum, my friends' "Friends pages." In a friends' page one is given a glimpse into the thoughts, feelings, and happenings of one's friends/acquaintences/"friends." But, I still haven't quite figured out how Atom, RSS feeds, and XML fit into this all, that is, I'm so used to having all the most recent entries of ALL of my friends blogs show up sorted by time and date posted, that I'm not sure how to really delve into reading non-LiveJournal blogs and becoming a part of that community, since it seems to be more based on this earlier idea of the weblog, which was more of a filter for cool new sites on the web or news stories, as opposed to this sort of common public diary.
So, I need to tackle these technical aspects: I need to keep writing entries, write seeds of entries, even if I keep them private till I feel like (or never) develop them. I've got to read other blogs. I've got to find other artists that aren't computer-based in media and figure out how they work out blogging. This is actually a foremost concern because I find myself having less and less time in front of my laptop, and it's not as easy to post impulsively.
Then, I must work to find my voice. What is the tone, content, and personality people will associate with my blog? How can I reveal more of the more interesting aspects of my life while still using Blogger like LiveJournal to catalogue banalities of daily existence?
But, if anyone knows anything about how I can make a friends page with my LiveJournal friends and RSS and Atom feeds on it, I'd be super-super excited to know. |
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Lindsay - finally, an entry about blogging.
ReplyDeleteDon't get my wrong - the other stuff is great as well. It would be good if you could find a tone of voice that combines both - the personal and the "meta" personal. Have a look at some of these entries:
http://blogcorevalues.blogspot.com/2005/05/blog-voice-or-blog-writing-style.html
If this project is going to work, you have to write every day - otherwise, there's no point. Remember, this is supposed to be the equivalent of an entire COURSE. You need to read and think and write - every day. Allot yourself a certain amount of time - just before you go to bed, or first thing in the morning. Just write, don't edit. See what comes out. If you're confused about finding a voice, or if you're unsure about how much to reveal about yourself - well, write about that. Write about you hesitation and procrastination. Write about how it feels to have all this time and your hands and STILL you procrastinate and hesitate. Be honest and forthright. But don't keep putting it off - or this independent study won't work. So far, I don't see a lot of work.
This is trivial in concept. You just need to aggregate all the entries in one place. There's a number of Firefox extensions, some web applications, and a pile of desktop apps.
ReplyDeleteWizzRss is probable the best of the FF extensions. Note that Thunderbird has built-in (if fairly clunky) support for feeds. There's also an Outlook plugin.
Popular online readers include Google Reader, BlogLines, and FeedLounge. Sadly, they don't support digest authentication, which is needed to view Friends-only entries from LJ.
FeedReader seems like the best free aggregator for Windows.
You can get an OPML listing of your LJ friends using the export tool