It's been a good run but after four and a half years of nearly daily posts chronicling everything from my time at library school to the birth of my son to dozens of single link posts to all manner of technology stories and silly YouTube videos, the time has come to finally move this blog to a newer, snappier location.
This will likely be my last ever post at this particular URL and although my content will remain for the foreseeable future (see below), I'll likely also turn off comments in a week or two.
I've always loved the lists so let's stick a couple last ones here...
ADVANTAGE OF MOVING MY BLOG
1. Puts me on one of the leading blogging platforms on the Internet with all the advantages that provides in terms of timely development, a wide range of plug-ins and an established community.
2. The new site will be much more mobile friendly to both view and post from. It will also make it easier to incorporate other current technologies - those that currently exist and yet to come.
3. It will also have much better spam protection from what I understand. I wasn't getting a lot on this blog but enough that it was irritating to keep cleaning up comments linking to shady Australian vacation sites and so on. I also had to turn off trackbacks as that was unmanageable.
4. I think I finally resolved the issue with occasional outages that hit this blog about three times in four years as my site traffic grew but I still never liked being with a host that would shut down your site when you went over without any warning. I also got in the habit of doing a "CTRL-A, CTRL-C" before trying to do any post as I never knew when my current server was going to timeout on me.
5. Gives me a simpler, easier-to-remember domain that I now own and can take with me from host to host (as opposed to the current one which I rent and which was tied to this provider)
DISADVANTAGES OF MOVING MY BLOG
1. Since I'm currently on a non-standard platform, there's no easy way (at least that I've found) to import all my previous posts from this blog to my new one. So that history will stay here (my current host tells me there are no plans to end support for this blogging software. So as long as I keep my current jason@hammond.net e-mail address with them - which I plan to do - I'll still have my blog here at no additional cost) but won't be part of my new blog.
2. It's going to take awhile to get everything set-up the way I want on my new blog (I've got to remember that my current blog reflects four year's worth of tweaks and improvements) and though I've worked on WordPress a few times in the past, there will still be a bit of a learning curve now that it's my main platform.
3. It'll probably take awhile to re-build whatever credibility Google and other sites have given my blog over my four years of posting, gaining and trading links with other sites and so on.
4. It's a pain in the butt for you because you have to update your bookmarks, links to this site and RSS feeds (http://www.headtale.com/feed should do it.) Thanks in advance for taking a moment to do so!
(I'll stop at four because it's pretty clear that the advantages outnumber the disadvantages.)
The paint's still drying and I've got a few things to add and tweak but I'm excited to get in there and start building up my new history. So I encourage you to visit:
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Monday, August 9
The blog is dead. Long live the blog!
by
Jason
on Mon 09 Aug 2010 05:17 PM CST
Tuesday, June 15
Blog Holiday
by
Jason
on Tue 15 Jun 2010 11:46 PM CST
As I mentioned the other day, Shea, Pace and I are on holidays for the next little bit. And even though I have such a serious Internet addiction that I bought a wireless router on my way into Kelowna so I could have WiFi at my aunt's place (I wish I were kidding about that!
 ), I've decided that it's okay to have a bit of a blog holiday as well. I'm pretty proud of my (give or take) daily posting but I'm sure the half dozen or so people who read this blog regularly won't be heart-broken if I focus on being a proper tourist for a few days - wearing white sport socks with sandals, taking photos of every single thing I see, wearing a fanny pack (again, I only wish I were kidding about at least one of those things!  ) I'm not going cold turkey - I may do a few posts here and there but mostly I just wanted to publicly give myself permission to ignore this blog if I was too tired or burnt (hopefully literally if we finally get some sun one of these days!) Sunday, May 2
"You Can't Handle The Truth" - Media Bans in the Digital Age
by
Jason
on Sun 02 May 2010 07:21 PM CST
Everybody's probably familiar with the sad story of Tori Stafford, the young girl from Woodstock, Ontario who was abducted and killed last year.
Recently, some new detail has apparently come to light but the judge has imposed a publication ban meaning no Canadian media can cover this aspect of the trial. The traditional media aren't happy about this and I can't say I blame them. ...the practical reality is that in the Internet age, trying to stop the
dissemination of information revealed in open court is impractical.
Indeed, placing limits on traditional, responsible media may be
counterproductive, as the only information available to the public will
be incomplete and rife with speculation and rumour. As the Globe & Mail says, all a publication ban does is give free reign for anyone with an Internet connection to add their speculation to the mix (hi!  ) or, with a couple carefully chosen keywords, even profit from the lurid interest. Some Canadian media outlets are doing the best they can to work within the ban, hypothetically musing their way through their reports. A publication ban is doubly useless in the Internet age when a blogger OR a news outlet just across the US border in Buffalo or Cleveland could publish the details without any sanction as was frequently the case during the Karla Homolka trial. Publication bans are even more useless in less sensationalistic circumstances. In the past, media have been prevented from revealing national election results from the east until polls have closed in the west. But again, anybody with an Internet connection and a modicum of technical knowledge could find out what was going on before going to cast their vote...as if enough people would ever be paying enough attention or change their vote significantly if they *did* see results for it to make a difference. Finally, just as with the attention drawn by banned books pushing the questionable item to the top of the bestseller lists, a publication ban only serves to shine a light on information that would've likely made little more than a ripple otherwise. From the Toronto Star article I already linked to above: The facts get distorted. This is going to snowball to epic proportions
and disgustingness. Really, I don’t understand how they’ll manage to
enforce hush-hushness. I’ve been going on Facebook all day to see if
anybody has posted anything about it. That’s so easy to do now, just put
up an anonymous page and say what you like. How are they going to stop
that? It’s impossible to keep secrets in this day and age.”
Thursday, April 22
All Day I Continually Think of Things I Should Blog About...
by
Jason
on Thu 22 Apr 2010 10:24 PM CST
...then I get home and frequently forget about all of them. Good-night Gracie!
 Sunday, October 18
But Who's Counting?
by
Jason
on Sun 18 Oct 2009 05:53 PM CST
I used six weeks as a time frame to create this widget but the hospital said 4-6 weeks so who knows, I might get lucky and heal fast. (Of course, I could also trip and fall on the snow or in the bathroom or something and screw things up even worse.) To help things along, I've drank more milk this weekend than in probably the past month total. And I'm going to try to stay away from bone-sapping caffeine products like Pepsi and chocolate. So we'll see how it goes.
I don't really believe in karma or fate or messages from above. But I suspect I was getting pretty cocky about my ability to get up and walk around and this is some sort of message that I better not take that for granted in the future. (I told Shea this afternoon, "I wish I was out raking leaves right now. Seriously!") Anyhow, this is the widget I'll be keeping my eye on for the foreseeable future... Saturday, October 17
SaskProgressive.com Launches As Municipal Elections Approach
by
Jason
on Sat 17 Oct 2009 10:24 AM CST
SaskProgressive.com, a web site dedicated to highlighting progressive candidates and pressing issues in Saskatchewan's upcoming municipal elections has officially launched.
The press release is below. (Full disclosure: I'm one of the "five guys with a web site" referenced in the press release and was involved in the initial planning of the site and have full administrative privileges.) --- ATTENTION ALL SASKATCHEWAN PROGRESSIVES Saskatchewan municipal elections are coming up later this month. In many cases, bland platforms will make it very difficult for voters to determine what candidates really stand for. SaskProgressive.com is here to help. Many of you will be familiar with the old Tommy Douglas story about Mouseland, where the mice would go to the polls and elect cats. As Tommy said: Now I’m not saying anything against the
cats. They were nice fellows. They conducted their government with
dignity. They passed good laws – that is, laws that were good for cats.
But the laws that were good for cats weren’t very good for mice . . . .
The trouble wasn’t with the colour of the cat. The trouble was that
they were cats. And because they were cats, they naturally looked after
cats instead of mice. Do you know which candidate or candidates in your municipality share your progressive values? Do you know which candidates are on your side? Can you tell the cats from the mice? Our mission at SaskProgressive.com is to help you figure that out. SaskProgressive.com is a cooperative effort to identify those candidates for mayor, council or school board who reflect our values, who will stand up for the needs of citizens, not the greed of developers. At SaskProgressive.com you will be able to click on your municipality / school division and see which candidates share your progressive values. To make this work, we’re going to need your help. We already know about some progressives who are running for mayor, council or school board – but we don’t know them all. If you are a candidate in the upcoming election and you believe you share our values – or if you know about a candidate who ought to be on our list - go to SaskProgressive.com and use the contact form to tell us about your campaign and to provide a link to your campaign website. -30- SaskProgressive.com is a cooperative effort by five guys with a website. Thursday, September 10
"I respect him as a blogger and a librarian, so why shouldn't I do it?"
by
Jason
on Thu 10 Sep 2009 09:28 PM CST
Yikes - at least Lisa was only inspired to start a recurring Music Monday post after reading my blog instead of doing something really crazy!
 That does bring up some random thoughts... - I get contacted by or comments from or connect to about one new library school student (or someone contemplating going to library school) about once every month or two on average. I consider it a huge honour that people find this blog and then find it useful and/or entertaining after that first visit. - I'm really bad about updating my list of links on the left side to the blogs of people I know (and weeding out the ones that have become inactive) since I usually add these blogs to my NetVibes account and then laze out on doing more. I'll mess around - maybe NetVibes has a widget I can embed or something that would work better. - this is probably a longer post but I wonder if blogs are becoming a bit passe? With people getting a lot of their information from Facebook and Twitter, where do blogs fit in anymore? Longer, more thoughtful posts for one thing (I guess I'm out on that count!  ) Niche information is still easier to find on blogs than on FB or Twitter probably. I don't know - it'll be interesting to see where blogs are at in another year or so.- And completely unrelated, Reddit has a sub-reddit called "IAmA" where people from various walks of lives post "I Am A [Blank]" and then answer questions from other users, very similar to the idea of Living Libraries that is making the rounds in libraryland lately. Here's one "I Am A Former Children's Librarian - Ask Me Anything" which is interesting although, being Reddit, there are also a few off-topic, goofy or inappropriate questions (well, depending on your POV - it is called "Ask Me Anything" after all!) Saturday, August 8
We're #100, We're #100!!!
by
Jason
on Sat 08 Aug 2009 12:02 AM CST
A web site called BachelorsDegreesOnline.com has posted a list of 100 Best Blogs for Librarians of the Future and guess who's #100? Yep, that's me! I guess if I'm not #1, #100 isn't a bad spot to be in terms of where you'll get noticed - especially in a list that long.
They gave me a head's up that they'd be linking to me and I have to admit I thought it was just another piece of blog spam - a trend I've noticed lately, both in people linking to me and also from those who are posting comments is that they'll take a moment to personalize their e-mail just a wee bit (I just deleted a comment in my John Hughes post that talked about how much "Breakfast Club meant to them" then linked back to a Runescape-related site  ) rather than being completely blatant about being a desperate attempt for Pagerank. The fact that the site doesn't actually mention library degree programs on its front page - when you select "Masters" programs or when you browse through their list of Degrees by Subject - makes me think my initial assessment isn't far off. Maybe not 100% spam but definitely not a totally altruistic link either. Oh well, it's all about the reputation/attention economy so why not let them link to me and I'll link back to them and maybe we all get to bask in each other's Google-enhanced glow? Plus that page with the list of the "100 Best Blogs for Future Librarians" is titled "Learn-gasm" and has a picture of a saucy-looking librarian-type with glasses pictured so what could possibly be suspect about that!  [Edit: Jessamyn did a post on why we shouldn't link to these types of sites because of how it undermines Google's search algorithms. I don't tend to think of my site as having a lot of weight in the biblioblogosphere and therefore, the link I made to this site as being relatively harmless in the grand scheme of things. Plus, in my post, I said the site was spammy and that it was a dumb site overall ("Learn-gasm"? Seriously?) but it's true that Google's robots don't understand that sort of context...yet. So I do realise that my linking to them is a vote for their site in some way - even if I do it in a somewhat tonque-in-cheek manner. But I guess, even if they're a thinly veiled attempt to get eyeballs to their off-shore degree programs or whatever, the list they've come up with is still useful so, after some internal debate, I think I'm going to let my link stand and maintain my belief that people who do end up on this site will know it's crap or follow the links to sites that are actually helpful. I'll also continue with my hope that soon Skynet Google will even figure out how to tell the crap from the good stuff even better than they already do!] Sunday, July 26
An Unplanned (But Greatly Enjoyed) Blog Holiday
by
Jason
on Sun 26 Jul 2009 08:44 PM CST
As is probably quite obvious, I try to post to this blog on a daily basis at the minimum. I occasionally miss the odd day (and even then, I sometimes back date posts the next morning to keep up the daily post record - if you see a post dated anytime within ten minutes to midnight, that's a pretty good clue that it's a backdated post) but rarely more than that in a row. Even during holidays or when I'm mostly away from a computer for other reasons, I tend to find Internet access or pre-post a few entries in advance or whatever.
Shea had a family reunion this weekend and I wasn't sure whether I'd post or not but in the end, I decided to let it slide for the weekend. This is partly because my new iPhone only had spotty coverage at the regional park where we were camping (literally, I would get no service standing by the camper then walk back fifty feet to the firepit and get a bar and a half...sometimes.) That was enough to check e-mail and do a Facebook update here and there but that was about it. Add in the fact that I can post to my blog from the iPhone but that I can't access all of the blog's editing tools, only the very basic ones, made me say "Ah, we'll just let it slide for a couple days." For example, here's one of the photos I sent to Facebook of Pace "driving" his Grandpa's new 1970 dune buggy on the knee of his Uncle Marsh...  I have to admit that blogging's felt like a bit of a burden lately too - I think this is partly because I felt so inspired writing about Ryan Meili's campign for the leadership of the Sask NDP that the comedown afterwards was bigger than I expected. Writing about libraries, technology and other topics that catch my attention is still fun but maybe not as meaningful as my political blogging? I don't know - I'm sure I've gone through lulls before (hell, my third post ever on this blog is titled "Day Three and Already Nothing to Write About") and on that note, I'm heading for three and a half years as a blogger (hard to believe) so maybe that's part of the restlessness I feel? I have a couple ideas floating around - I've joked about adding more of those semi-easy recurring features like my "Friday Fun Link" and my "Music Monday" things - I was thinking of doing a "picture of the day" now that I've got the iPhone and have a camera with me pretty much 24/7. I've also been tossing around the idea of moving to a new server and converting to WordPress. Finally, I've also been thinking of changing the focus of my online energies to more life streaming (which is what a lot of us online are already doing to varying degrees with our Twitter tweets and our Flickr photos posts and our Last.fm music scrobbles and so on...) I don't know - maybe I'm just burned out from a weekend of fun in the sun and lots of visiting and lots of chasing kids around a campfire and lots of beer and so on. Hoepfully I'll recoup a bit in the next day or two and get the fire back (er, as much as anything about libraries can get you fired up. Well, actually maybe it can! Thanks to DJ for the link on Facebook!) Thursday, July 23
Head Tale Blog - Mobile Version
by
Jason
on Thu 23 Jul 2009 12:22 AM CST
Amazing what getting a mobile phone will do in terms of making your realise that your blog is quite, uhm...heavy...with all kinds of marginally useful widgets, random links and assorted other junk.
Luckily, there's a really easy way to use Google Reader to create a poor man's mobile version of your blog. Just bookmark the following URL on your mobile and you'll have the condensed Head Tale ready to go whenever you want (the trick works for any blog/site with an RSS feed - just append the site's feed address to the end of this link): http://www.google.com/reader/m/view/feed/http://blog.jason.hammond.net/blog/index.xml (tip found at: http://www.labnol.org/internet/design/how-to-create-mobile-phone-optimized-blog/2132/) |
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