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- More Pepys and me
To continue from where we left off, on Friday Pepys' Diary was Slashdotted, which is nice although doesn't hold nearly the same thrill, cachet or fear it once would.
Later that day I recorded an interview for NPR's All Things Considered show, which is now online. I'm not quite sure why old media is more exciting than new, but it's wonderful. Going into Broadcasting House, into a room packed with strange electronics and a handful of BBC engineers, into a tiny room with two microphones was thrilling. One engineer explained that, “this is going via Bush House and onto Washington,” which seems a technological marvel even when I'm picking up email from a computer in California every day. And talking through a microphone to Americans in a studio in the US seems far more space-age than my daily transatlantic online communications. I've always found radio somehow more magical than any other medium; the internet, TV, movies, CDs don't seem a patch on a voice coming out of the little box in the kitchen.
But all this is beside the point. The point is, I don't hate my own voice, which is a relief.
In Pepys' Diary, Personal on 5 January 2003. 1 comment. Permalink
- An introduction to weblog terms for weblog readers
[This article is now also available in French. 5 March 2003]
The audience for Pepys' Diary can be split into two groups: Those who write and/or read weblogs and those who have come to the site purely because of an interest in Pepys. The former group are familiar with the language of the weblog world (Weblog, Blog, RSS, Trackback, Permalink, etc) while the latter aren't. And why should they be? This kind of language is a hangover from when weblogs were written largely by and for web geeks. And that's fine — this is a new and fast-changing environment where the technical underpinnings of website construction always lies just beneath the surface. But at the same time sites like Pepys' Diary, that cover non-technical matters, must be aware that such words often mean nothing to new readers and should explain such concepts in terms normal people can understand. Otherwise it is impossible for a reader to tell whether to ignore an “RSS feed” or learn how to use it. So, here's my brief guide to weblog terms for readers, not webloggers…
In Misc on 5 January 2003. 15 comments. Permalink
