Yes, I’m two and a half years late to this thread, but tag clouds are indeed the new mullets! IÂ couldn’t resist enabling the tag cloud widget for WordPress. You can see the tag cloud on the left of this blog, if you scroll the page. So far I’ve tagged three entries just to goof around.
I had other things on my plate today… but it was smart to upgrade WordPress 2.3 on a Sunday after church, because it broke, and that gave me several hours to focus on this problem. Things should be o.k. now, and there’s nothing wrong with WordPress 2.3; the error was between my ears.
Before upgrading, I set up a test site (which is what you’re supposed to do) but I cut some corners (which is what you’re NOT supposed to do). Naturally, since I cut corners, I was punished. I was also punished for guessing what the problems would be (I was fixated on the idea that the Cutline theme would create issues) and not inspecting the list of known problems carefully enough.
The whole reason I waited to upgrade was to gage other folks’ experiences, and if I had paid attention beyond the “LGTM” comments (Looks Good To Me), I would have thought more about the key change to the WordPress category/taxonomy structure, which would have forced me to slow down, disable every plugin in my old installation, upgrade, and then reenable every known compatible plugin one by one. Plus I would have had the time to find substitute plugins for favorites that aren’t working correctly.
What went right: not rushing out to upgrade right away; putting up a test site and testing my theme and some plugins; following the discussion at the Cutline theme site; waiting for a day when I had spare time to address issues (and not the day before a trip, either!); staying collected enough to take a term from the database error message (wp_post2cat) and run it through Google, which lead me straight to the WordPress Codex.
What went wrong: not testing everything that needed to be tested; not doing a simple compatibility check with the very helpful lists of compatible, incompatible, and iffy plugins; focusing on my guesses, rather than relying on simple methodology; rushing to get the “cool upgrade” rather than focusing on maintaining a working blog.
It may not have seemed that I rushed, because I certainly wasn’t in the first wave of installations, but I didn’t have a need that trumped doing things right the first time.
My punishment fit the crime: I lost several hours on a nice Sunday to upgrading software. But I have been set free under the early-release program, and will write for an hour, go for a long walk/run, and then write some more.
Do our paths cross, gentle readers (and writers)?
October 11, 11 a.m. ET: One-hour web presentation from the comfort of my office, “Death to Jargon,” for the Outagamie Waupaca Library System (no, I don’t know how to pronounce that)
October 18, 8:30-12: “Library 2.0,” Williamsburg Public Library, Virginia–this will feature Olde Tyme 2.0, New and Improved 2.0, 2.0 successes, 2.0 failures, 2.0 head-scratchers, and 2.0 “Please don’t make me fly around in Second Life in this teensy miniskirt” examples.
October 26 – November 1: Internet Librarian, Monterey, California. I fly in Friday (wearing sensible slacks and clogs, no teensy miniskirt), stay at a cheap motel friend’s house close to Fry’s electronics store in Palo Alto, wake up, geek out, drive to the Bay Area, visit friends in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, and Santa Cruz, eat real Asian food, stuff a duffel bag with goodies from Trader Joe’s, then drive to the conference earrrrrrrrly Monday 10/29. I don’t have any responsibilities other than to be All Ears And Eyes (and Keyboard-Tapping Fingers). Where shall I trick-or-treat?
November 4 – 7: defrag, one uber-cool conference that I foolishly agreed to speak at. Sure, I want to be on a conference agenda also featuring Esther Dyson and David Weinberger. “Hi, my name is Two Buck Chuck, and I’m here to talk about agronomy and astronomy… no wait, folksonomy and taxonomy… hey, why are you leaving the room?” My stage fright notwithstanding, if you’re interested in attending defrag but are on the fence about it, drop me a note at kgs at freerangelibrarian dot com and let me persuade you. (Also, I had a thought while out running today–I try to have one thought per day, whether I need to or not–and it was this: for faceting and library data, technology has trumped taxonomy.)
November 8-9: Jim Rettig’s ALA Presidential Implementation Task Force, ALA Headquarters, Chicago. I think we get to suggest how he spends his time and money during his year as ALA prexy.
November 12-15: NISO NCIP Meeting, Atlanta. Whee, I get to travel on the Monday of a three-day weekend! What a terrific way to honor America’s veterans (including me). I promise to drive my tripmate crazy on the drive north by singing “Danger Zone” the whole way up there. The meeting itself should be fascinating (it’s about a standard intended to help attach the hip bone to the thigh bone in library software). Then I swing around and drive home just long enough to drop off the rental car so that I can scoot to the coast that night for…
November 16, all day: PLAN Workshop, “Writing for the Web,” Panama City, Florida. A great way to wrap up several weeks of learning and travel–my favorite new best thing to teach, and the beautiful Florida coast. (A mere stone’s throw from the equally beautiful Destin outlet stores.)
December 19-23: Personal writing retreat (yes, this is a good time to be away–Sandy will be very busy; Christmastime is big business for her). After I was rejected by a famous writing center, I thought, I don’t need a writing center to have a writing retreat. A laptop, a cooler of healthy food, and a motel room on the coast will do me fine. I can then roll back into Tally like Pa coming home in that blizzard in one of the Little House on the Prairie books… look, it’s me, and I’ve brought you an orange and a clothespin doll! (My other thought was to make the writing shed happen during this time; in any event, it’s my own special Writing Advent.)
We also have a personal trip factored in here, to New York City. It’s been several years and I miss it; Sandy has been back once or twice since then, but I haven’t. Our needs are pretty simple: a trip or two to Zabar’s, riding the bus around the city, good ethnic food, a long pass through Century 21, walking down the Upper West Side, prowling all the places we could take for granted when we lived in or near New York.
Then life is pretty quiet until it’s time for ALA Midwinter, in mid-January.
Originally uploaded by griffey
I could not resist blogging this photo of my friend Jason assembling a crib, and yes, there is a jargon tie-in (related to yesterday’s request for examples of jargon used by librarians, and thanks for the great examples so far).
All day long we drown in vast rivers of formulaic, jargon-turgid, mind-deadening prose. Library websites, annual reports, signs, flyers, help pages… then the world at large with its plastic fantastic commercialized tsunamis… then the idiot box, with its bright jumping colors and its insistent messages (my favorite being that to be a successful female detective one must wear clothes a size too small; the other day a detective showed up on a crime scene in a nipple-revealing blouse that had dotted swiss sleeves, for crying out loud.)
When we try to freshen our brain, what do we hear? What, I ask you?
To start with, I woke up the other day to hear someone chatter on Twitter that I could go to YouTube and hear the same annoying commercial that has helped keep me from purchasing an iPhone.
The problem with jargon isn’t that it’s merely unclear. It’s that it makes us unclear. It puts us in a jar and tells us what to think and how to think it. It makes us more excited about commercials or the ghastly word pudding of library help pages than we are about the sound of a woodpecker pocking the tree outside a bedroom window or the particular pale blue of the mist that hovers above a warm, wet street after an autumn rain.
Jargon helps make us forget about war and climate change and the small heartbreaks of everyday life.
Meanwhile, I have two captions for this picture.
The commercial world: “Having a baby changes everything.” (How I love hearing that, a clear reminder that as a childless woman I will remain ever-un-evolved. Then again, the company responsible for that slogan isn’t targeting my wallet.)
The real world. “Having a baby changes everything… OMG! OMG! Having a baby changes everything! I am not ready for this! Somebody please HELP! If I can’t get this crib together how can I put this kid through college… Hey, I think they left some parts out of this kit… I feel hungry… I bet there’s a snack in the fridge… I can finish this tomorrow.”
On October 11, I’m giving a one-hour talk called “Death to Jargon,” and I could use your help.
In many ways this talk is just a condensed version of the workshop I’m teaching in November, “Writing for the Web.” For the “Death to Jargon” presentation, hosted by the Outagamie Waupaca Library System, I want to present both bad and good examples of good library writing, and explain how to write the good stuff and avoid the bad stuff.
(You know the bad stuff: that arcane, passive-voice, brain-stem-numb Biblish.)
Wherever, whenever, online, offline: we must stamp out the Jargon Monster!
Do you have examples of sparkling-good, jargon-resistant library writing?
Do you have examples of heinous jargon-laden brain-confusing library writing?
In either case, I’d be ever so grateful if you shared them with me at kgs at freerangelibrarian dot com (unless you want to post them here).
I’ve been blogging every month at ALA Techsource for two years, and have decided it’s time to move on. Here’s my last post.
It was a good run and I look forward to seeing where it goes (just as I was pleased to see Joe Janes step in as the Internet Librarian, a column I started and wrote for seven years).
I feel a little scared, in a way, because I stopped writing for Techsource in order to give myself time for other writing — both other types of technology writing (feature articles, writing outside of LibraryLand) and literary writing. Techsource was fun, but I need to push myself — and to be pushed by other forces.
One of those forces may be about exploring other genres. I had always thought I didn’t have to write fiction because when I come up with ideas for stories they are always bits of scene, sometimes just brief gestures, and I assumed real fiction writers were driven by Plots and Narrative and Aristotelian Unity.
For a couple of months I’ve been haunted by two images: a woman sitting down in a pew after making an announcement at church, and a minister slipping on a mess of beans spilled on the floor. But I just assumed it would pass.
But two nights ago I finally picked up Stephen King’s On Writing, and he blew that excuse to bits. He poses”what ifs” and scenes and images; writing for him (as it is for many of us) seems like a game, a marvelous puzzle, a personal challenge.
On to the next personal challenge. On to the game.
dweinberger posts this today: “stopped by a fruit-sniffing beagle at US customs Confiscated my apple, a well-known gateway fruit.”
I baked it just for you. As the title suggests (“Wikipedia’s Awkward Adolescence”), I tried to hit the middle ground; like Google and the Big O, Wikipedia isn’t going away any time soon, so I’d rather be constructive than dismissive, especially for a tool I use every day.
Wikipedia is a hugely fascinating culture; to my mind — though this wasn’t the article in which to spell this out — the editorial culture reminds me most of church groups that have developed extralegal rules. Squint just enough, and it’s just St. Margaret’s Guild all over again. (All religious organizations have these guilds — usually women’s groups or men’s groups, though sometimes organized around other themes. Some religious leaders speculate it’s just one organization busing the same two dozen people between churches, temples, and mosques.)
This isn’t criticism; it’s an observation about human behavior. We seek structure. Everything is not miscellaneous. We want to alphabetize, we want pecking orders, and every organization coalesces into leaders, followers, and (where the writers sit) kibitzers.
But for fifteen years I’ve been under strict orders not to write about church life (something that makes me wonder if it’s time to try fiction), so we’ll let it stand right there. If I wrote a book about Wikipedia, though, I would insist on having a chapter called St. Margaret’s Guild, editor permitting.
(Oh, and there’s a glitch in the article I’m trying to get fixed; Clay Shirky suddenly pops up sans attribution.)
Here’s my favorite del.icio.us link for September 27th:
Here’s my favorite del.icio.us link for September 27th: