::scr Blogging

[Simon Batistoni]

On 23/11/01 15:01 +0000, alex wrote:
> 
> i disagree.  i don't think HTML is a particularly good thing to know.

Eh. Possibly not HTML, but the general idea of markup, of how the
content gets from their keyboard to a website visitor's screen. For
the same reason, I would expect professional authors to have some
grasp of the concepts of print typography - of what will work and
what won't in terms of textual tricks.

> > There are two types of page which I think of as drivel - the first
> > is a personal diary which is publically accessable.
> 
> yes, most biographies are drivel, but some are great.  it is not entirely
> bad that the great ones are hard to find on the bookshop shelves.  it's
> good to have to try.  i'm not into biographies in general, but others are.

I'm not really talking biographies, though. A good biography is
generally done in retrospective, because hindsight allows you to
edit everything down to the most meaningful points. Perhaps the
turning point in $subject's life was the despair they felt when they
broke up with their first love, for example. Perhaps it warrants a
chapter in a biography. But the salient mood changes, the 2 years of
coming to terms with the loss is dealt with in a few pages.

Whereas in an online blog, our $subject will be talking about their
hurt and anguish for *several paragraphs a day* for 2 years, and
it will be the raw outpourings of a bleeding heart. This is not fun
to read, and as I said, I don't think it's actually beneficial to
$subject.

> > I agree, although the image of the Crypt in IMB's "Feersum Endjinn"
> > keeps lurking in the back of my mind...
> 
> wassat?

Sorry. Should have explained before.

It's a huge data network which permeates everyday life. Everyone has
implants which mean they can dip into the crypt at any time to look
for things they need. It takes on a presence as a sort of virtual
world, where time is vastly speeded up - a day in the outside world
is something like 80 years in the crypt. But there are vast areas of
it which are effectively submerged in chaos, because they contain
the drifting remnants of people and ideas. Unskilled people who
enter the chaotic areas of the crypt can never manage to surface
again.

That summary doesn't really do it justice, but it's the "chaos" idea
I was getting at.