Alan’s Kiloblog

I am considering moving the WordPress blog on ThinkNOLA so that it is the landing page and changing the URL structure. This is to create smaller URLs that are easier to cut and paste into email.

What has kept me from putting WordPress as the base is that I always imagined a different application there. An application that still exists primarily in my imagination. I’ll let that go. When the time comes, I can incorporate the existing URL structure into the new application. This is aligns with the attitude that content and archival is important, and that new code should respect the cumulative efforts of the user base.

Now, I am concerned that redirections will suck out some of my Google Juice, especially on the few articles that are rock stars in my mind. Articles about AmericaSpeaks are slipping anyway.

Ryan Vis said something about how by virtue of being a redirection, the landing page for ThinkNOLA.com is invisible to search engines.

Is is best to rework ThinkNOLA to accommodate the usage patterns of New Orleanians. They need URLs that won’t break in email. I don’t like using tinyurl.com with it’s mystery meat URLs. That can’t do much for my Google ranking.

People will copy and paste URLs into other forums, and if they don’t break, then incoming links to ThinkNOLA.com will increase.

Had to look and look to ask why this man was so familiar. He’s from Ann Arbor! The photographer has a very nice photoset of Ann Arbor places.

Switched TheBayouBoogaloo.com to a simple structure.

Used to do the long structure like http://kiloblog.com/2007/04/23/why-I-like-to-put-mustard-on-blueberry-pancakes, but who cares when I posted, really? It makes the URLs long and makes finding something via auto-complete in the browser pointless. I’m probably not going to write about my tangy, sweet breakfast taste sensation more than once. Certainly, I would not have to explain myself more than once.

My new structure is http://TheBayouBoogaloo.com/post/volunteer-2007. Because I’m able to edit the post slug, I choose one that would not be long, and not collide with a call for volunteers in 2008.

We didn’t have the concept of a notary in Michigan. I need to find a Notary today to notarize the articles of incorporation for Think New Orleans. Today will be quite a little trek.

I’ve decided to return to the original idea for kiloblog, which was that is it is a stream of consciousness blog, where I wrote what I was thinking, and sorted it out later. It is a place where I can be personal.

If you were following this blog because I wrote about some programming project that piqued your interest, you can read more about it, and in more detail at Alan’s Blogometer.

You will find a lot of talk about software development in this blog. You may follow it for a while and think that it is a programmers journal. That is because I will go on a software binge, muddle my head with thoughts about software, and offload them constantly.

Then, without any warning, I’ll be writing about some deep personal failing and it’s repercussions. Don’t worry. I’ve not snapped. It was merely a context switch, one that wouldn’t seem so odd if you were not expecting another soliloquy on Java serialization.

There once was a time when I said that I couldn’t do social work. That it is not in my nature to be able to deal with people’s problems. That’s work for a different temperament than my own.

I am angry with that sentiment.

I will have to simply dismiss that world view that was shaped by a pointed isolation from social problems, to an extent that any sort of service, read to children, bring meals to the elderly, any sort of tangental intersection might reveal evidence of the pressures that people feel every day.