compilerbitch | And now... [drum roll] Introducing... er, Me.

In a fit of sorting-out-my-personal-web-presence, which has been a royal mess for the last couple of years at least, I now have a Wiki and a 'real' blog. Not that LJ is less than real -- actually, in many ways, I think that LJ is far superior to independently hosted blogs, at least for the things that I use LJ for. Which is, to be honest, for chatting to a fairly wide circle of friends, organising parties, finding out about other people's parties, angsting about angsty stuff, you know, the usual.

I realised recently that what I don't typically do on LJ is actually 'blog' in the usual sense of the word. No quotidian ramblings, no book reviews, not many pointers-to-interesting-stuff-on-the-net. In general, my style has been and will remain (on LJ) that of someone chatting to close-ish friends, to the extent that most of the good stuff tends to be friends locked.

I have decided to have a go at the other kind of blogging too -- writing in a more journalistic style, potentially for a wider audience, though of course it remains to be seen whether anyone will want to read it!

On the subject of my Wiki, it's main aim is to replace two grotty out-of-date web sites, one academic and one personal, with a single, rather more sorted place-to-put-stuff. Most importantly, I want to use it to maintain a download page for my academic papers, but I have a vision for extending it a bit to become a Wiki in the more traditional sense supporting some of my weirder bits of mathematics that, eventually, might make their way onto Wikipedia. The style for that stuff will be aimed at compatibility with the mathematics pages in Wikipedia itself, so to that end I have installed the LaTeX support for MediaWiki (works a treat). I'll probably also post reference pages for my artier interests (cartoons, photographs and music).

OK, so here's some linkage:

http://findatlantis.com/ -- currently pointing at my Wiki, though I may point it at my blog instead eventually
http://findatlantis.com/wiki/ -- direct link to my wiki (won't move)
http://findatlantis.com/fablog/ -- direct link to my 'other' blog

findatlantis -- syndicated RSS feed from my 'other' blog (feel free to friend it!)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Heh. I tend to use my LJ for all these things at the same time, on the assumption that if people want to read it it will be because they have some inherent interest in me anyway, so they get the whole deal ;-)

I suppose I've almost done that, but I feel held back from posting too much on LJ due to the signal-to-noise thing, coupled with the fact that the stuff I do in my PhD would kill most unprotected readers stone dead within minutes. I really *do* need the Wiki for professional reasons -- I am basically pimping a bunch of new maths ideas, travelling a lot and giving lots of talks, so I need to support that with a good web site that people can search and download papers from.

OK, I don't *reeeeeally* need the other blog, but I'm going to try it for a while and see.

I find my non-technical readers just learn to switch their comprehension off when an entry starts above a certain level of technicality ;-)

Done. Looking forward to reading more of your writing. Also, please consider posting more about your research!

I will -- that's the main point of the new blog and Wiki. What I want is to get to a point where, if I have a cool idea, I can post it to the Wiki and then write something more accessible about it on my blog.

Now if I could just persuade Wordpress to do inline LaTeX...

I need to sort out personal websitey stuff as well. I have issues with wikis because to be honest they all look like wikis. I find the 'simplified' markup to be pointless, might just as well use HTML. But that's just me I'm sure, and I don't like manually editing full HTML pages, so off the shelf software is good because I haven't got the time to redo my old online website editor. In the end the point is getting information across.

Yeah, I never use my LJ for real blogging either. Just minor news, checking up what other people are up to, etc.

I find that whilst I am perfectly capable of hacking html web sites, I just never actually can be bothered to actually do it. The simplified Wiki markup just seems to lower the bar somehow to the extent that I don't mind getting on with it and doing it.

It is easier to type == Blah == than

Blah

admittedly.

If I find the source to my old website editor (merely a template + content engine with output to static HTML pages) I might add some of the better wiki markup to it. Although I think I'd rather have *bold* and /italic/ and /*bolditalic*/ and _underline_ than what MediaWiki uses. The lists in MediaWiki are easier too.

I'll be watching this closely, you are doign what I've been meaning to do for ages. I've 3 websites that really need to be turned into one or two at most.

I also set up a seperate 'blog (affable-lurking.org/blog) as a place for tech rants, reports and thesis wibble as well as the usual stuff that doesn't really fit with my usual LJ style of post (whatever that may be).

I'm sure I saw a wordpress plugin that did LaTeX, I may even have installed it myself. I'll have to check.

If you remember what the plugin is called, let me know. To be honest, I've not yet tried very hard to find such a thing, having only installed wordpress this morning, but at least my intentions are honourable! :-)

This is the link I just dug out from my bookmarks:
http://sixthform.info/steve/wordpress/index.php

It is a bit more oriented to running wp on OSX (as I was doing at the time) but the info on plugins is valid no matter what.

I'm mildly amused by you^*r attitude of what does and doesn't constitute "real" blogging. Who's to say what the purpose of a blog should be?

* Plural.

The blog police. They come round in the middle of the night and force you to write goth haiku if you don't hit your quota.

Quite, but my argument still stands. I'll try it for a while and see how I like it.

If there are things you want to blog about but think other people will hate, either put them behind cuts ("Warning - geekery follows" etc.) or use filters liberally. Quite a few friends have really detailed filters letting them rant about Big Brother, politics, computer geekery, work, really personal stuff etc. and only include the friends that want to see it. They then once in a while mention the existence of these filters, just in case anyone wants to request that they can go on one. Means that they can rant and rave about all sorts of stuff, safe in the knowledge that anyone who doesn't want to read it can be dropped off the filter.

will you be reading comments on the LJ feed for the other blog?

Yes, but as there doesn't seem to be a way to get email notifications, responses may be a little sporadic. This LJ isn't going away, however! I still think that LJ does what LJ does better than anyone else -- it just does something slightly different to the rest of the world's idea of a blog.

And now... [drum roll] Introducing... er, Me.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Blah

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject