Tag Archives: Blog

General update, Social media

Extra interaction

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There’s been some wonderful comments on the blog, between the PageRank upgrade, my increased frequency of blogging, and the inlinks from the BBC. Thanks to everyone for getting involved; from Outcasts fans from Australia and the USA upset about the show cancellation, Apprentice fans in the UK and beyond offering interesting insights on entrepreneurship, to my friends and family getting stuck into the various other discussions that have kicked off. Many thanks.

Thanks to those who’ve got in touch offline too – via Facebook and email. Really interesting and entertaining to be able to flex my brain in different directions like this.

I’ve got a new blogging project in development, which will take some of the more technical content off this blog, which I think would be good for most regular readers.

More on this later…

Software, Technology

Trialling Disqus

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I’ve been thinking for a while that this blog needed tighter social integration into Facebook etc., and came across Disqus ("discuss") whilst researching commercial spam filters for a client. Am trying it out here – it’ll allow you to comment on posts by logging into your Facebook, Twitter or Disqus account and hopefully diminish barriers to commenting marginally, not to mention make for a slicker, more interactive commenting experience.

Thoughts appreciated.

So far, all I’ve really had opportunity to notice is that the set-up process was fairly seamless and I had to do remarkably little hackery to get it to take the place of the native WordPress commenting engine, and that it syncs into the WordPress DB so even if Disqus someday goes bust (always a worry for Silicon valley start up services) – I’ll still have all the comments here.

Books, Software, Technology

Kindle blogstore… ish

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I made good use of the Kindle app over the sabbatical – I read my way through most of Joe Abercrombie’s back catalogue, including the First Law trilogy, amongst others, via the iPad and iPhone, whilst feeding Emily and when on planes, trains and boats.

So it was with some excitement that I realised that I could add my blog to the Kindle store and make it available to my adoring public via another channel. I’ve done so, and you can subscribe here… if you live in the US and have a full-on Kindle device. I’ve no idea why it’s not available in the UK… Can anyone educate me?

As to why is it that Amazon hasn’t provided similar features on the iPhone/iPad that it has going on its own device…? Again, not sure. Presumably to force sales of the Kindle to people that want to read blogs, newspaper etc., and make some money from the hardware sales… But you’d think that they make most of their money from the book sales rather than from the physical hardware??

Running

Welcome, The Long Slow Run readers

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…both of you.

For the best part of a year, I’ve run a second blog, the Long Slow Run – initially in collaboration with a colleague, then solo, charting my newfound passion for running – which I took up last March and has seen me run two races (so far) and subject myself to hundreds of miles run and at least three pairs of trainers in the last 12 months.

Keeping up two separate blogs – when most people who seem to follow my antics do so via Facebook rather than RSS – seemed increasingly pointless, and a brief poll on LSR confirmed that people weren’t too bothered.

So – all my posts from LSR have been imported to division6, and a separate page (up in the nav, or here for those of you keeping up via RSS/Facebook) will now capture all my running related posting. I hope you either enjoy it, or will forgive the further profligacy on here. I can promise that my blogging volume is likely to drop to relatively normal levels once the sabbatical ends in a few weeks…

General update

One vs two blogs?

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I blog on a lot of different topics over here and since my partner in running blogging crime, James, has been absent for the last 9 months or so I’m wondering if I shift my running posts to the other blog and retire LSR as a separate entity. I think most people keep up with my via syndicated content on Facebook/ Twitter anyway, so the actual address of the blog doesn’t matter too much, but please let me know by responding to a few questions on this poll. Thanks!

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Technology

Possible disruptions

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I’m having to upgrade to a professional hosting package so there might be some disruption. The avalanche of traffic thanks to the various Outcasts posts has doubled my bandwidth allocation this month and the price penalty made it worthwhile going to a pro account for the year (!!). With my newfound blogging passion I can only hope that traffic will continue to grow so it seemed a worthwhile investment. Good on 34sp for the help with the hosting and migration and my domain registrar 1and1 for providing relevant DNS settings information.

Please bear with us…

Personal

Random flow of consciousness

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As I mentioned recently, I’ve been using Evernote to remind myself of topics I want to blog about – and this has made the process of sitting down to actually write something relatively effortless. Captured links serve as aide-memoires, accompanied by a line or two on what the thought was I wanted to capture, explore, investigate.

It’s fantastic for the discipline of blogging, but I haven’t yet applied a filter by topic, and haven’t worked out a way to sort my blog post ideas thematically – so apologies if you’re getting a fairly random flow of consciousness. I’m by nature interested in everything, so posts will continue to vary from communications consultancy to technology and software, to soup and cooking, to film and TV, to babies and fatherhood  (ooh, also golf, running, etc. etc.)

So hope you’re enjoying the ride. I’m loving blogging at the moment and hoping that friends will continue to engage, here on the blog and via FB, as I continue to spout out random thoughts, insights and random views on this, that and everything.

Personal

Eight years of division6

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I’ve spent just over eight years writing this blog, which made its transition to WordPress in March 2003 (it had previously lived on motime (now defunct) and Blogger in its pre-Google days).

That translates to nearly 1000 posts, over 500 comments, tens of thousands of visitors and a great deal of enjoyment and satisfaction for me. Whilst these stats pale in comparison with the vast majority of genuinely popular blogs out there, my inconsistent, polymath tendencies make this a difficult blog to pin down and want to follow.

So here’s to you, my friends and Internet followers, for making it an interesting ride, and here’s to future blogging.

And here’s to the fans of Outcasts for making this month the most popular month on my blog in 8 years!

Juneathon, Running

Juneathon

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I was blitzing my way through a bunch of new running blog subscriptions (you’ll see some new links in the blogroll) when I discovered Juneathon, a virtual challenge to the running community to run (or exercise) and blog daily throughout June made by Cathy at Jog Blog. Given that @jimbocoyle and I share the authorship of this blog, we figured we could go for a joint effort at facing the challenge! Sorry if this is a bit of a cop-out… but it’ll improve the chances of a daily post for y’all!

Here’s our commitment to enter on JogBlog’s official Juneathon page.

I still haven’t conquered the hay fever so the first few days could be a challenge, but I managed a cycle today (another new personal best, probably the last for a while, we an average 12mph pace for the 3.5mile cycle, London traffic notwithstanding), so that’s a contribution ahead of June kicking off!