cogdogblog

"Blog on Blogs"- excellent educational example of weblog use

Blog on Blogs, a Weblog Review does double duty as a great resource for getting a handle on weblogs and a wonderful example of using blogs in an educational context, a New Media Studies course:

Seeded with a visit by weblog scholar Dr. Jill Walker, Blog on Blogs outlines the nine factors that instructor Scott Rettberg had his students frame their "blogged" reviews of other weblogs: Indentity, Design, Content, Time, Linking, Blog Roll, Inbound Links, Discussion/Comments, and Audience Analysis.

The students' blog reviews are organized into categories of 'Classic Bloggers', Comics Blogs', 'Digital Culture Blogs', 'Fiction/Writer Blogs', 'Food Blogs', 'Group Blogs', 'Persona Blogs', 'Photoblogs', 'Political Blogs', and 'Stockton Blogs'.

This is an excellent example of using the media (a weblog) for a compelling student assignment about the same topic (weblogs). More so (to me) than creating say a PowerPoint about blogs, or a Word document about blogs.

Blog on Blogs, get it? Like BlogShop?

MT Wiki

Here is a nice resource for MovableType-rs, The MovableType Knowledge Base is a wiki chock full of tips and suggestions.

it is well written and a worthwhile bookmark for anyone dealing with setting up MT or going beyond the basic templates. See for example a description of TrackBack or the overview of MT Templates..

The XServe Files: (Almost) Back in Business

If I had any doubt that my geek IQ was not so high... I think I have proved it in the last few days trying to get our new XServe into business with MovableType. Let's say that getting it running under Panther OSX Server is a delicate operation for those not familiar with planet unix.

The Apple OS apparently lacks a critical perl module that MT desperately needs. The order in which you do things is critical. It helps not to step on a crack or walk under ladders.

I was able to patch together a strategy with some help from ibry daily and links there to Kirk Samuelson. The ibry log touches on a suggestion that is better explained at OSX hints regarding the DBD module and a required edit to a Config.pm file buried deep in the bowels of perl.

To get back to action, I resorted to wiping out the server drive (again) and re-installing a fresh OS 10.3, getting the updates. It is critical (I think) to install the OSX Xcode tools as that updates Perl and adds some key files.

The next critical part is to NOT use the built in mySQL in OSX, but to download the source (it is a Mac pkg installer, just a click will do it) and install following the excellent instructions from Marc Linyage.

If it is a new install for MT, you will have to somehow get into mySQL and create a new database (I cleverly called my "movabletype" and create a user. Since I am moving mine from another site, I was able to get a dump file from my current MT database (basically a big text file that ends in .sql) and then to import that into my new server, essentially rebuilding the database.

Be sure to go to the OSX hnts site to get the details on editing that Config.pm file. This takes care of ibry's note 2 (do not bother with that, besides he left off the '.PL')

Next I followed steps 3 and 5 from Kirk Samuelson's instructions Note however that the web URLs provided there for the 2 downloads (in the "curl" command) are incorrect:

http://search.cpan.org/CPAN/authors/id/T/TI/TIMB/DBI-1.30.tar.gz

should be

http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/T/TI/TIMB/DBI-1.30.tar.gz

and

http://search.cpan.org/CPAN/authors/id/J/JW/JWIED/DBD-mysql-2.1022.tar.gz

should be

http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/J/JW/JWIED/DBD-mysql-2.1022.tar.gz

I was going along great until the last part of the DBD install as something was kaflooey with my database privileges-- I spent a bit of flailing cussing, flushing privileges, and somehow it got it right.

And that was it! Running the mt-check.cgi script is a great verification, but all the data was there. Besides a few places where I forgot to change the permissions, I was able to rebuild and edit a copy of this blog. There are some changes needed in the MT config since the path to my web files are different from the old Linux box.

Anyhow, I need to test a few more things, then tackle moving a phpBB forum, and we might be in business. The grand move hopefully will be done by Thursday (it better since I am leaving for the rest of the year), but the URLs here will stay the same.

I would say "Woah" but I am not that jubilant.

Kung-Log: Neo Says "Whoah"

Ok. I am trying some way out there, It is a Mac OSX app called Kung-Log that allows me (I think) to post and edit my MovableType blog directly from a friendly Mac OSX interface.

We will see what happens as I am "Kung-Log" blogging this one right now.

Woah.

update It worked! I am now modifying this entry, still from this KungLog app:

And Shazam! It has a Mac interface for uploading images to the server and it automatically generates the HTML to display:

Kung ho! This is pretty wild!

More cool Kung-stuff! You can upload an image via Kung-log and have it simply embedded as above (same as MovableType via the browser), but if you select the "thumbnail" option, it uploads and generates the code to display a thumbnail as embedded in the blog page AND builds the link to the pop up with the full image.

Let's give it a Kung-whirl:

Oh man, it creates and uploads the thumbnail!

Woah!

More updates Wang Kung! Even more to like. Kung-blog has an HTML menu for markign up selected text, and it is fully customizable, and you can create keyboard shortcuts. So for example, I use a special style sheet for my quotes from other web sites, so I can copy a portion of text from a web page (or any text for that matter), and just do a option-command q

And I get in one motion the copied text placed inside the DIV tags I use to markup a quoted portion of text.

This goes way beyond the non-existent HTML tools in the MT bookmarket.

And if that is not enough... K-L has a spell checker. I need that. Badly. And it was a slick preview that shows you actually how the page will appear, not the rinky dink preview you get via MT.

Wooooooah.

X Marks the (Jade) Spot

It is in the building... not only that, it is on my desk.

"It" is a brand new Apple XServe, and soon will be home to all of our MT blogs as well as hosting some experimental eportfolio services as well.

"It" is a 1.3 GHz screamer replacing an old 500 MHz PIII currently hosting this "jade" server. The server is slim and sleek, though quite a bit deeper (like 2 pizza boxes!) than one might guess just looking at the pictures.

"It" will take a bit of wrestling to get up to speed, as I am less of a server geek than most others. First of all, was getting a more proper version of MySQL running although I am still fumbling with how to get it to start up with the server. Done, sort of. Then there was getting a dump of the mySQL data from the current version on sucking them into the new one. Done, it is all there.

Then there was a bit of rummaging with the apache settings file (using the OSX GUI controls never seemed to do the right thing) as the server docs and CGIs are sitting on the second 60 Gb drive. Somehos mangled the PHP settings and got them back okay. Then there was some weird bumblings with MT and it not finding the DBD::mysql libraries. Really fumbled with trying to get the right installed, I think this one helped.

Then there will be moving all the server and blog directories over, and likely tripping up on permissions and changing the MT server path settings. Not done.

Then there is trying to get the MTBlacklist plugin to work- something got snarfed in the copy over. Not done.

Lots of cussing. Folks in the office are steering clear of me today.

More to come. Moving a house is painful enough, a server is a whole nother matter. My plan is to have this done before this dog closes up shop Dec 19.

Metadata for weblogs-- blizg

Go ahead, try and pronounce it... Blizg - The Blog Resource.

It does offer a helpful service. If you register a weblog at Blizg, it has a web form you can use and it will build you the meta tags to out in the <HEAD>....</HEAD> section of your main blog template that provide information about your blog, location, country, language, description, copyright, etc..

I had the geographic location from geoURL but that was all. Now I have a few more.

One major limiting hitch with Blizg is their limit of one blog URL per domain, leaving out anyone who has a Radio hosted blog http://radio.weblogs.com/xxxxxxx They better get around to fixing that!

According to my Blizg profile, these blogs are "similar" to mine:

funtongue scatterplot
My Wishes Weblog
life from an l-shaped desk
Urban Scrawl
ADRIFT [i wanna be sedated]
Boogie Church - it's like a blog, only boogier
Scary!!!

Sites like this do provide an interesting window to some obscure blogs, e.g. the "geographically close" neghbors include:
spastic yak somebody's diary, what they ate for thanksgiving, shopping stories, obligatory cat photos....
A Simpler Way, Evo Terra. Herbalist, educator and aimless musician
Retards.org Nathan from Tucson appears to be a computer geek and into music, some it may not be all that legal. Check out his charm and duct-tape phone.
VeganPoker "a site dedicated to my ramblings about playing poker, living a vegan lifestyle, and whatever other random thoughts stumble out of my head."

There is a place in the world for everything!

Cutting Off Goofballs (Maybe SpamRoaches)- Expiring MT Comments

I'd rather be blogging about something else, but after a raft of stupid "Neat Blog", "I agree", "Cool Blog I'll be back" comments, often from the same IP with faked emails, appearing on very old posts (ones that pop up on Google), I have taken another level of blog protection.

Taking a cue from Greg's effort, I have set up a close comments script that de-activates the comment forms on entries older than 30 days (using a PHP script described at geeksblog but the link has actually moved elsewhere). It is pretty easy to set up for MT blogs using mySQL. (Note to Greg- you need to run this as a cron job to keep closing comments off).

This is not too horrible as there are hardly any relevant comments that come more than 30 days later. It does not quite close the comments door as far as Stephan warns but is a step I can live with for now.

BlogShop del Norte (UBC)

Recently Brian Lamb and Jim Sibley conducted a Canadian Blogshop at the University of British Columbia, and plentifully acknowledged the materials in our BlogShop from down here in the far south Canadian hinterland province of Arizona ;-)

Actually the UBC version takes it a notch further by posting the workshop materials in a wiki. I liked their idea of creating a BlogLines account with RSS feeds from the workshop and it's participants' play-blogs.

However, I must admit being a bit scared at the look of Jean the Blogging Grad Student.

In addition to this work, other recent blogshop-type activities include:
* ETUG BlogTalk
* Nick Olejniczak's A Course About Weblogs (syllabus done as a wiki).

If there are more, please let me know.

The more the merrier, and I say in developing your local blog introduction eforts... beg, borrow, and steal as much as possible from other efforts.

Update (a few hours later) See also Ginger's Blogs in Education "This page is designed to provide you some resources if you want to get started using blogs for yourself or with your students. The use of blogs in instructional settings is limited only by your imagination." It is worth checking out if only for the graphic of "The Blog"

Melbourne Digital Arts Conference: Papers, and Weblog Site

I found it interesting that the May 2003 Melbourne Digital Arts and Culture Conference (melbourneDAC) created a web site for the conference using MovableType (some links seem to go to non MT pages)- an interesting use of weblogs beyond "cat diaries".

But beyond that, as was noted at Kairosnews was that all of the presented papers are available online (PDFs). Sadly, this practice is rare at professional conferences, where so much effort goes into printing those bulky volumes that get tossed or dumped on a shelf after the show.

As noted:

I'd agree that there are some intriguing titles, e.g. "The Myth of Interactivity or the Interactive Myth? - Interactive Film as an Imaginary Genre", "The Utopia of Open Space in Role-Playing Videogames", "Ceremony of Innocence and the Subversion of Interface: Cursor Transformation as a Narrative Device", etc.

As they say down in Melbourne, "Good on ya, 'mate!"

Blogging in the Margins- Comment Blogging

Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, English professor at University of Maryland, blogs about comment blogging a different mode of effective participation in the blog world simply by using the comment space of other weblog. Kirschenbaum cites how François Lachance effectively is part of the world of blogging without his having his own blog.

This is precisely, and even more eloquently stated, the point I tried to make in the BlogActing: (blogging is a social process) section of our BlogShop- that blogging is more than writing and publishing your own- it is reading, reflecting, contradicting in the comment-space of other blogs.

<tiphat>tip of the blog hat to jill/txt for a pointer to this one</tiphat>

Print Styles for MovableType Blogs

One of my main reasons for using MovableType (MT) for blogging is that most of the blogs I read that seemed well designed, structurally and graphically, had MT under the hood. And the pages produced are clean HTML, even XHTML validat-able, and the templates use CSS sensibly too (as opposed to osme other blogs that are still publishing cruft table-laden HTML, full of extraneous divitis, font tags, etc).

But while they look great on screen, full of nice colors, MT blogs do not print well, especially if you opt for the cool grey background/white text style sheet (e.g. "stormy").

Ironic isn't it? An appication named "MovableType" is missing a key element to make it printable. Sadly, it is a fact, that despite our "modern" digital age, a lot of web pages are printed.

So in this post, I will describe how to add a print style sheet to your MT blog so that when the pretty pages are printed, they come out readable. And this is without needing a "print friendly" icon, just the brawn and power of CSS.

This came into play when I ran the workshop yesterday, our the "blogshop", as I wanted to provide paper handouts for the step-by-step instruction sections...

This is all frightfully simple. By adding a print style sheet, edting two lines in some templates, we can have screens that appear full color glory on the computer:

View image of how it appears on screen, or see the actual web page.

But simply by clicking the browser "print" button, the new style sheet can generate a readable page, removing link underlines, and un-needed sidebars:

View image or how it appears in printed form or see a PDF version of the entire printed content.

So how is it done? Easy as pie! If you are not very familiar with CSS, find someone who is, or if you know a little (that is my category), you may want to review this nice write-up from mediatinker that is an illustrated guide to the MT style-sheets.

(1) We start by using a base your regular style sheet template. Go to your MT control center, click "templates", then click the "Stylesheet" template. Use your mouse to highlight and copy all the content from your style sheet.

(2) Return to the templates list, and create a new MT index template (click link "Create new index template", pretty easy, eh?). Call it what you like, but I named miine "Stylesheet for Print". The file name can be anything, but let's make it easy, and call it "print.css". Now paste in the regular style sheet that you copied from step 1.

(3) Now is where it gets a bit trickier. You will need to move through the different sections of the style sheet, and look for things that have colored backgrounds. I changed most of mine to white "color:#fff", or maybe to distinguish a header, make it light grey "color:#ddd". The task is to take any element that is colored, text, borders, etc, and make them black, grey or white.

I made all of my text black "color:#000", and some borders grey, "color:#666".

(4) You also may want to hide any underline effects on links as there is no need in print to denote a link (after all, you cannot click it!), so change any links classes to "text-decoration:none", e.g.:

A { color: #000; text-decoration: none; font-weight:normal; }
A:link { color: #000; text-decoration: none; }
A:visited { color: #000; text-decoration: none; }


(5) Hide elements you do not need to see in the printed version. I did not see it necessary to print the stuff on the side bars, so in one fell swoop, they are hidden by:

#links {
display:none;
}


Likewise, I hid the comments form, the comments, the comments header, and the individual post menu links:

.comments-post, .comments-body, .comments-head, #menu {
display:none;


Finally, since I am not printing the side-bar links, I can maximize the print width space, by removing or commetning out the float and width styles for the "#content" class:


#content {
/*float:left; */
position:relative;
/*width:90%; */
background:#FFF;
margin-right:15px;
margin-bottom:20px;
border:1px dotted #333;
}


(6) I did mine rather hastily yesterday and there is more I could condense or streamline (another day). You can peek at the print style I whipped up:
http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/blogshop/print.css

The best way to edit and test this is ot first create a text file version of this new css file on your desktop computer. Then go to one of your blog pages, and use the File -Save As... menu to save a copy of the page as a local file (html source), and save it in the same directory as the "print.css" file. I called miine rather brilliantly, "temp.html".

next, open "text.html" in a text editor, and modify the line in the <head> section that reads:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/blogshop/styles-site.css" type="text/css" />


to read

<!--link rel="stylesheet" href="http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/blogshop/styles-site.css" type="text/css" /-->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="print.css" type="text/css" />


I simply commented out the regular link to the style sheet so it would not be used, and in stead used the local print.css style sheet. Now you can iteratively edit the print.css styles and view the local "temp.html" until it appears as you would like to see it printed (note for Internet Explorer users, the browser tends to cache style sheets, so I usually open another browser window. load the *.css file in there, and do a SHIFT-REFRESH to update the style sheet changes).

(7) Once that you have the style sheet doing what you want in a printable format, simpley copy/paste the style sheet content to your MT "Stylesheet for Print" template.

(8) The last step is editing your other MT templates to use this new style sheet for printing only. This would likely by your "Main Index", "Category Archive", and "Individual Entry Archive" templates.

Again, in the <head> section of these templates, change the line that reads:


<link rel="stylesheet" href="<$MTBlogURL$>styles-site.css" type="text/css" />


to now read:


<link rel="stylesheet" href="<$MTBlogURL$>styles-site.css" type="text/css" media="screen" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="<$MTBlogURL$>print.css" media="print" />


<9>And of course, you will have to Rebuild the site to update all the pages that use these templates.

Now the browser will use your normal display style sheet "styles-site.css" for the screen view and will use "print-css" when the HTML is sent to the printer.

Most people may not need this function, but if you perceive that there is a need to print blog pages, you might as well make it print friendly.

BlogShop 2.0

Maybe a bit ambitous to call this a complete revision, but today I ran the second iteration of our weblogging workshop, or BlogShop 2.0 for a group of 20 faculty and staff at Phoenix College.

Pretty much the sections for using MovableType are the same, but I spent some more time trying to illustrate with more examples the potential of blogs in education.

I am grateful for some suggestions from Brian (who is running a similar one soon) and Scott for some new examples and resources. I plucked quite a bit from the ETUG BlogTalk these two and others were involved in.

This came into play iin the new section on uses of blogs in education, especially the matrix (Reloaded? Revolution?) that Scott has shared.

To be honest, my new section here is really just scraping the surface, and will be a work in progress. I also tried to make a pitch that blogging is not just writing, but a social process to participate in (short version: "Comment at other blogs, damnit!)

For this group, I set up three "play" blogs with about 4 accounts per blog, Toy Store, Sandbox, and Playpen.

Now that I have seeded the interest, it is up to the tech staff at Phoenix College to support it ;-). To be honest, setting up numerous blogs in MovableType is very painful and tedious, and until the MTPro comes out, I would recommend setting up a Pro account at TypePad, where for maybe $100 per year, they could run unlimited blogs, and have a much easier time of setup.

What came out of the questions from the group? Interest in being able to make blogs restricted (password), or parts public and parts private... (My response is, first, "why", but second, if it is important, you have to create directories in password protected directories). Questions about will this be integrated into Blackboard and WebCT? (likely, as Bb is working on a building block interface, and I would not be surprised if WebCT was dabbling too- after all their strategy seems to mimic Microsoft- but for now there is no reason why they could not outlink to a weblog). Questions about ptotecting art work from right-mouse-click stealers (instrinsic web problem- if you do not want art taken do not post it on a web site??). Questions about why so many blogs are poor or uninteresting in design (Answer, they mimc the rest of the web where there is more bad than good, but also note that there are different audiences out there, more may be information hungry for text and links rather than pretty interfaces).

All in all there was positive interest, but the usual caution and fear of new technology.

And in the audience were people already with blogs!

A blog shared by Cheryl, a media technican at the college, is Campesinos de Arizona (Farmworkers of Arizona) documents the making of a documentary video (this is a project Cheryl works on outside her day job!). This is a great example of a blog for project journaling, and she mentioned they use the MT features for email notification to keep their board of directors updated on the project.

And then there is Chris's outside work blog, 101 three sixty five (a play on his Radio assigned URL). For a long time Chris has been a head of the web pack! His blog has a collection of his photos and web site work, and he got a lot of traffic with his Ultimate California Gubernatorial Recall Candidate List.

So let''s see where they go from here... My work is done, I just stir up trouble, so paraphrasing my favorite author

RSS Feeds for MovableType Trackback and Comments

Wow, the sound of my own hand slapping my forehead with a loud, "duh!".

The TweezerMan (not sure if I want to know the story behind that name) has provided easy to copy templates for creating RSS Feeds for Trackbacks and RSS Feeds for Comments from MovableTyple weblogs, all using available MT template tags.

Although I get e-mail notices of these items, an RSS feed makes it nice to toss into my aggregator to scan these add-ons to my blog. I seriously doubt anyone esle would want to subscribe to these feeds, but hey, they are there:

CogDogBlog MT Trackbacks RSS Feed:
http://cogdogblog.com/alan/trackbacks.xml

CogDogBlog MT Comments RSS Feed:
http://cogdogblog.com/alan/comments.xml

I guess one could then employ the MT RSS Feed plugin to deploy this info elsewhere on the site.

But wait, there is even more from the TweezerMan! He provides a rather sneaky but sensible way to create static HTML content pages (I guess in Userland Radio they are called "Stories") that avoid going the route of creating new templates for each. I will be dabbling with it in the future, but take a look at this approach for perhaps other ways to take advantage of MT's templates.

MT-Blacklist 1.5 Out: Stop Blog Spam Cold

Now out to improve your MovableType blog sanity, is Jay Allen's miraculous MT-Blacklist - A Movable Type Anti-spam Plugin version 1.5.

This is a large update and offers one click, de-spammiing of both comments and trackbacks, adding to blacklist file, and rebuilding of offended files. It is like magic.

I had one arrive today with 4 links not even on tyhe blacklist, and killed it cold, dead in seconds. I love the satisfaction, even if it is still reactionary (they spam, I spray). It is more fun that squashing cockroaches, and very parallel, except cockroaches have more more nobility and integrity than spammers.

Please, somebody with some deep pockets of extra cash, reward Jay Allen for heroic coding.

Syndicating "Best of Show"

I've took a little twist on RSS to deploy it in another fashion here at CDB. This was partly to response to a post by James Farmer as he tried to find an alternative approach to blogrolling.

Maybe not understanding Radio as much as I should, I commented that it might be feasible to create his own RSS feed his blog could subscribe to. Not being able to clearly explain it in text, I decided to code an example on my blog.

Here is what I did- on my right side "links" i have a section called "Best of Show" where L list the title and link to my recent presentations. Until now, what I did was to edit my template every time there was a new one (and there were four this month).

I thought I could just create my own RSS feed for this content, display say the 5 most recent on the front page, and display them all on an individual page.

Now I can update both by editing my RSS feed. Simplifies my life! Here is what it took to pull this off in MovableType and the MT-RSS Feed plugin:

First I had to set up a feed, using the Webreference tool described in Writing RSS 1-2-3. You can find this feed at:

http://cogdogblog.com/alan/show.rss

Where I used a format of:
Title contains both the presentation title and the date in parentheses.
Link URL for the online version of the show
Description - the abstract.

On my front page, I use this code:

<MTRSSFeed file="http://cogdogblog.com/alan/show.rss">
<MTRSSFeedItems lastn="5">
&raquo; <a href="<$MTRSSFeedItemLink$>"><$MTRSSFeedItemTitle$></a><br />
</MTRSSFeedItems>
/MTRSSFeed>

<div align="center"><a href="show.html"><em>all best of show</em></a></div>


which gives me the titles and links for the 5 most recent items on the front page of the blog, along with a link to the page with the full list.

On my Full listing page template (create a new index template in MovableType that saves as "show.html"), my template uses:


<MTRSSFeed file="http://cogdogblog.com/alan/show.rss">

<MTRSSFeedItems>

<div class="blogbody">
<h3 class="title"><$MTRSSFeedItemTitle$></h3>
<p><$MTRSSFeedItemDescription$><br />

<span class="posted"><a href="<$MTRSSFeedItemLink$>"><$MTRSSFeedItemLink$></a></span></p>
</div>

</MTRSSFeedItems>
</MTRSSFeed>


Nad that is all- now I just hand-edit my RSS feed, pop it to the server, and rebuild index templates. Dynamic.