Digital Brainwaves

Digital Brainwaves is undergoing theme changes, and I’m ironing out the interactions with plugins and widgets. Please be patient with things that look weird, I’ll likely catch them all before I’m done.

Updates are complete; let me know what you think, and/or if there are any problems. There are still a few tidbits I’m planning to add here and there, I should get some of that together this weekend.

Sometimes, the best thing to do isn’t to keep trying to revive the dead horse but instead to clone a new horse.

I have no idea what that means, but can somehow be interpreted to link to this: the two previous TV shows I was trying to blog kinda fell behind and have been quietly abandoned. I’m going to try to start over tonight with the season 7 premiere of American Idol. Tune back in later tonight for my comments as I watch the episode. I may try to semi-liveblog, in which case I’ll publish as I see stuff, then add more later.

A company called Disqus (pronounced “discuss”) has put together a feature that I feel Tumblr has lacked — comment threads.  They’ve now been enabled on my tumblelog, Brain Dump, so feel free to comment on items you see over there.

So, I’ve been doing NaBloPoMo for two weeks now… Comments? Questions? Suggestions for more posts?

Open thread, comment on the above, or on whatever. Just keep it quasi-clean.

A popular tradition has resumed for many of my friends this month, as November is NaNoWriMo — National Novel Writing Month. The idea is, write a novel of at least 50,000 words over the month of November. Doesn’t have to be a good novel, just has to be a novel.

I’ve never been all that good at writing creative fiction, which kinda hampers my ability to do much on that front. However, Eden Marriott Kennedy started a new sibling to NaNoWriMo, called NaBloPoMo — National Blog Posting Month — that only asks you to write a blog post every day, weekends inclusive, throughout the month of November. No cheating, either — you can’t back-date posts. Plus, in theory, if you wanted to drive yourself completely insane, you could do both projects.

Now, obviously, as you can see from the date on this entry, I’ve already fal– well, no, I wasn’t on the wagon to begin with. So I’m already starting out chasing the wagon out of town. We’ll see how well I stay on it through the rest of the month… Maybe I’ll consider a novel next year… at the minimum, I want this to help me write more here.

It’s that time again.  Turn your web site pink for October to promote awareness of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

I have a lot of fun posting random photos, videos, links and quotes that I find online, along with cameraphone photos I shoot and IM conversations on my tumblelog, Brain Dump. The thing that irks me a little about it, though, is that there’s no comment system — you don’t get a chance to tell me what you thought about my links and such.

So, for your feedback on my tumblelog, and for just general chatter and havoc (probably more chatter and havoc than feedback), I’ve opened the Digital Brainwaves Forums. Go. Register. Have fun. Play nice. Keep your feet off the sofa, and the blood off the carpet.

OK, seriously… more brain droppings, less random links.

– Andy

For the record, no, Andy, you’re not the sole inspiration for this idea, but take credit if you want. I’ll probably deny it.

One of the new blogging trends is something called a “tumblelog.” Basically, where many blogs have long entries, post titles, and discussions, a tumblelog is just stream-of-consciousness, “this is the crap I saw/browsed/heard online/in person today” log — something that kinda goes back to the original meaning of “blog” — a web log, where you record and share the things you saw on the web.

The folks at Tumblr make creating and maintaining tumblelogs extremely easy. I’m still working on getting some kind of feedback mechanism and links back to this main site, but it’s close enough to release to the wild. You could have a look up in the top of the sidebar for the link, but I know you’re too lazy at the moment, so click through here to the Brain Dump.

———

Something else you’ll notice… there’s already posts there, dated over the last several days. Many bloggers (I’ve done it myself) will start their blogs with their first post, and immediately start seeking attention for their “Hello World!” posts. I read a neat trick recently, and decided to try it: I’ve been posting stuff to this new tumblelog for several days, so that when I unveiled it, there was already something to read. Hope you enjoy.

No, seriously.  I’m trying to get an idea of what things people read my blog for, to get an idea of what to write about going forward.  So, go on.  Tell me why you come here, and what kinds of posts you look for from me.

I’ve decided not to post my del.icio.us bookmarks here any longer, as lately, it’s seeming like I’m getting a lot of those posts and nothing else. If you’re still interested in the bookmarks I post, check out del.icio.us/pauley. If you use an RSS feed reader, you can bookmark the feed, del.icio.us/rss/pauley. I’m going to try to post more often, too — I need to have more original content, not just link lists.