Different Blogging Concept
Tumblelogs
I've been noticing tumblelogs such as my personal favorite, Projectionist or the Zen Habits Tumblelog. A tumblelog is much like a linkblog, only instead of just links and witty summaries, you have varying types of items including, links, quotes, code samples, chat log snippets, images, and movies. If I'm off on my simple description of tumblelogs, please correct me in the comments.
I like tumblelogs. The simplicity speaks to me.
What Did You Do Last Week, Mr. Gonzalez?
Another pair of thoughts that have been rolling around in my head today are Alberto Gonzales (Conservapedia Entry, for kicks) not being able to recall details of his daily work a week later when being questioned by congress, and, secondly, the various ways I have tracked my daily activities in my professional career.
How I Track Now
Currently, to track my actions on a given task, I have, in order of most-to-least reliable:
- The Product - be it code or a spec or an email. Re-reading your own code is not only a lesson in humility, but it can jog your memory about what happened.
- CVS Log - for code I have committed
- The CVS diff - for uncommitted code - I compare my version to the repository
- A Note in the Note System - which may contain my resolution, or at the very least, the original request
- Status Emails - I try not to email people in favor of the notes system
- Printed Specs - say it isn't so! A spec! Oh god I'm getting turned on! - usually there is no spec :-( If there is, it's usually archived in my very tidy desk drawer
- Handwritten Notes - either I make them on the spec or in my notebook
- Memory - last and least, my feeble mind.
I hear you ask, "OK, smartypants, what did you do last week on Tuesday?" Ya got me! I actually have to check... Hold on. Damn! I'm as bad as the Attorney General! But seriously, if freakin' congress was asking I would figure it out quick. I definitely could do it, though. And I don't even have my own staff (working on getting one, believe me).
Personal Best System
The absolute best! note taking, logging, and productivity system I ever implemented for myself was simply a copy of Microsoft OneNote with folders arranged for the Year, then Month, and a Page for each and every day of the month. On each page I would take notes in an outline style. I set up a template page with a single unordered list and set that as my "default page template". I used the "todo list" feature too, but not as heavily.
It took a little extra time in my day to recap or stop and make a note every hour or so, but in the end it was worth it. It was searchable, too, so I could easily find out about some unique project I had worked on. Also, in a weird way, I was accountable to the log. If I had a day in there with nothing on it, the OCD in me started frantically asking, "What did I do that day?". I miss that system. It rocked.
So What?
Another thing rolling in my head is the concept of morning pages, or journaling. Point being, all of this is colliding and I'm thinking of a different way to blog. Not vastly different, mind you.
Everything is a Blog
In fact, there is truly nothing new under the sun. All modern web content software is a blog, if you think about it. The concepts of an entry, summary pages or feeds, and comments apply to forums, The Board, blogs, Q&A forums, you name it.
Every "new" or unique implementation is just icing. Change the nouns. For a forum, an entry is a "topic". For the board - they're a "quote". Change the behaviour. Thread the comments and it's a Forum. Change the URL scheme and it's a categorized web site.
Eventually some groovy programmer is going to come along and take this idea, and meta-programming (code that writes code), and program a system where you can rename "entires" and "comments" to whatever you like, and turn on threading, and other features, and generalize the whole darn thing. A Blogformer tool, if you will.
The Different Concept
Anyway, the different concept is this: Basically, the way I had set up OneNote, only on the web, plus a tumblelog. There would be entries, obviously. The summary pages would each represent one day, but the items would be listed chronologically, instead of latest first. I.e. the "woke up early and went for a jog." entry would stay at the top all day. The "just found this goofy YouTube video" entry would fall to the bottom.
Maybe have 2 levels of visibility - public and private - to hide stuff that is work related, sensitive, or personal. One author, anonymous comments (with required email and moderation of course). A cookie would get me into the private stuff and the post form. Everyone else would see the public stuff. Shazam! Call it daily log or "dailies" or something.
Sub Domain
I'm thinking of coding this in the next few days. I could publish it using a subdomain. The subdomain daily.philsown.org was already used (and abandoned) for my "daily photo" site. I would like to bring that back too, but with a little more automation. I'm way into automation these days. Cronjobs and scripts pulling information around and doing things for me. Maybe a set on my flickr account and a feed reader on the dailies site that grabbed photos in that set and published them once a day...
I digress, again. Maybe dailies.philsown.org or log.philsown.org or something.
I'm also thinking about packaging it and letting people download it. Already been done? Lame? Interesting? Got stuff you want to log?
Architecture
As a side note, to PHP nerds who package software: How do you architect your systems for easy distribution? I'm thinking either boring scripts, or a few included Classes that are called from display templates. I'm set against the "one index file" for everything formula, mostly for the sake of display. I.e. I hate functions that escape PHP to output html. That's ugly. Thoughts?
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