Metablogging

This blog was pretty much dormant during the summer months, but I’ve been trying to blow the dust off and bring it back to life during the last week or two. The most visible part of this process was that I started posting again, but I’ve also made some minor improvements that I thought I should point out.
First of all, I moved the blog to a new URL. That happened not because I thought it would be an improvement, but because my ownership of the old URL (logopolis.info) was about to expire and I decided not to renew it. I had obtained it for free a year ago as part of a promotion, but after the first year I would have to pay to renew my registration. And in the meantime, I had became aware that some services (such as WHOIS privacy) are not available for .info domains. I resolved to switch to a .net domain when my free year ran out. Nobody had registered patberry.net, so I reserved that domain for later use. At the beginning of September, as the expiration of the logopolis.info registration loomed, I moved this blog to patberry.net.
Movable Type 3.2 was released on August 25, and I upgraded a few days later. This wasn’t directly responsible for any changes that are noticeable to the readers of this blog (except for the “Powered by Movable Type 3.2” icon that’s currently visible in the sidebar), but it included a number of improvements to the behind-the-scenes user interface that make it easier to maintain this blog. One of these was an improved power-editing mode that allowed me to assign categories to many entries at once. Using this new feature, I was able to complete a task that had been on the back burner for months: I assigned categories to every entry in the Logopolis archives, all the way back to my first blog post in October 2001.
After I had categorized all the entries, it became obvious that an awful lot of them are about blogging. (As of today, only “Employment” and “Pop culture” have more entries.) In other words, a substantial portion of my blogging is actually metablogging, or blogging about blogging. And here I am doing it again right now. I’d better change the subject before I trigger some kind of feedback loop.
While I was at it, I installed this alternative logo for Movable Type. It only appears on the pages that I see when I’m posting to (or otherwise maintaining) this blog, so no one but me will ever see it. But the standard logo is boring, and I figure anything that makes my blog-posting experience more interesting might encourage me to post more often. I admit that installing an upgrade that only I can see is an unbelievably geeky thing to do. But I did also make some improvements that are visible to readers: I changed the body text font to one that I think is easier to read, and updated the page icon to match the current color scheme and title font.
I know what you’re thinking — these are incredibly tiny changes, so why am I blathering about them? And you’re right, but I did warn you that I was going to tell you about minor improvements to my blog. And besides, if these changes were obvious, I wouldn’t need to point them out, now would I?
The point of all this, I guess, is to answer the question I asked several months ago. My blog isn’t dead, and that’s why I’ve been buffing the chrome and touching up the paint. Now I just need to drive it more often.

One thought on “Metablogging

  1. It definitely is easier to read, and I’m glad you explained the changes, because that got you writing again. And we look forward to more of your blogging!