Articles by Joe Crawford

Here’s how San Diego Blog looks today, not bad, and certainly better than it’s looked in a while:

In November 2006 I sold San Diego Blog. I started it in 2003, SanDiegoBlog.com, and had a good run I think. But by 2006, I had moved away from its namesake city and was dealing with other issues. I could no longer maintain the site and. I initially didn’t want to sell. What I looked for was another person who would take the site on with a passion. But that’s not how it works. People do labors of love because they’re in love with them. You can’t just give away a labor of love. Well, you can give away the final product of a labor of love, but people have non-paying obsessions of their own.

So I got an offer, and we negotiated, and I took it. And it was good thing, a blessing even. It was cash at the right time and helped a great deal.

The site had not made much money, basically it paid for its hosting. I could not pay writers, but I have generous friends who contributed sporadically.

One of those friends is JeSais. The other day she got sick of old posts of hers notifying her of new comments, often spam. She did some stuff about it. I was a bit saddened, because I still sort of believe urls should live forever. Something about posterity I think—and also something I had read in 1998: Pages Must Live Forever.

But I understood JeSais’ actions. I still get some of the same notifications about comments on old posts. They continue and gather comments, beacons stuck in high positions in search engines. They are there and gather communities around them, partly because at some point I had installed the WordPress plugin subscribe-to-comments.

The one with the most comments by far, 240, is “PSA Crash in 1978” was written in 2004. It’s been gathering comments for four years, including some rather heartfelt remembrances, some from folks claiming to be witnesses and rescuers. I’m reminded of a passage in Philip Greenspun’s book Philip and Alex’s Guide to Web Publishing, from 1999. The part where he talks about having gotten feedback on a photo of his remains moving to me. To read it scroll down to “What happens if you take all of these steps? Sometimes magic.” in Chapter 1: Envisioning a Site That Won’t Be Featured In suck.com.

Nine years later and the majority of comments on web pages stink. They’re full of bile and anger and poor spelling. There’s so much on some sites that we build tools so we can avoid them.

But not all sites are just crap. I get some rather nice comments on my own blog. Ironic, since for years, I did not want comments. I’m still ambivalent about the need of comments. But I know there can be great value in them. Look at Metafilter. They manage to have a strong community, and get some great comments. Perhaps part of the reason is that the gardeners of that site actively promote the best comments. And if you’re a member, you get to flag a comment or mark it as a favorite:

Members are more involved with the site, they read the comments and give feedback about what they like, and with each of those flaggings or favoritings, something social is happening. Membership is reinforced, and even casual visitors benefit by seeing indicators good comments as they scroll. Some comments are even highlighted on the main page of MetaFilter.

Leah gets some good comments on her blog, though over on Real Mental there are even better comments, but then, comments are moderated over there because of the sensitivity of the topic. The community there understands, and it works well. It’s a great blog I’m proud to have hosted on my servers. When I think web pages are dead I think about blogs like RealMental and all the corners of the web where people’s conversations are social and kind and thoughtful and enrich the lives of the participants. This is where the spirit of those old pages has gone, I think. A smaller world, but so much richer.

I love Citizen of the Month, but he makes me cringe sometimes. Not when he writes about his foibles, that stuff is great. He can be ribald and hilarious and his voice is wonderful. No, the thing that makes me cringe is when he worries and wonders about how to increase traffic to his blog—how to get more comments. An amount of comments is a poor measure of value.

I was talking with Oh, The Joys at BlogHer. I had never met her, never read her biog, but we casually started talking and there was a “click” as she talked about commenting on blogs. She said something that hit me strongly, and I understood completely: “I don’t comment on people’s blogs anymore because my friends were worrying about whether I was commenting on their blogs or my other friends blogs and keeping score—I don’t need the drama so I just stopped. I still read them, but I don’t comment anymore.” I’m paraphrasing.

I don’t have the same drama of commenting, but I get it. It’s part of the mix of what can go wrong with blogging and commenting and the social structure of el blogosphero.

A few weeks ago Matt Haughey wrote a post called Becoming an old (blogging) man that I identified with strongly. I didn’t comment. It’s stuck with me though, this problem of comments. At DrupalCampLA this past weekend I saw a presentation by Steven Chan. I’ve spent a lot of time programming in the past few years, and not thinking very hard about community anymore.

I’ve got the bug again. It may pass. It probably will pass, but in the meantime I’m thinking about the web more seriously than I have in ages. And not just the web, all this mediated communication we have.

I see my kids more in text messages and MySpace and Facebook and twitter and email than I do in person. They’re advancing in age rapidly, all 4 in High School or beyond. Devon has moved into a place with roommates, Alexandra will graduate from High School in the Spring. Tyler will be able to drive on his own in a few weeks. Tony just started High School.

Aside: I have mixed feelings proofreading that last paragraph. See that word, “kids.” That word is funny. The full disclosure is that they’re my stepkids. Also, they’re scarcely kids anymore. They’re teens. Young adults. Stepchildren? StepYoungAdults? StepTeenagers? Whatever they are, they’re family and I love them and want the best for them.

But having limited time with them, and thus limited to mediated communication helps me appreciate “IN REAL LIFE” time. Not just with them, but with fellow nerds too. It’s been great attending the cocktail parties part of BlogHer with Leah, DrupalCamp this past weekend, a local Linux user group a few weeks ago, and occasional Geek Dinners down in L.A. I get a lot out of the social part of these online communities. I’m not as aggressively social as I was in San Diego, but even low-key-social is great.

Some part of my recent community activity is affecting how I view the web and its comments. This post was formed out of these experiences. I frankly have no idea where my current thoughts are leading me, but I do feel led. There’s something essential in the way I see the web that’s changing. I hope for the better. I hope it will inform my work, professional and even my labors of love.

We’ll see.

Onward.

I was thinking of these lyrics the other day and wanted to find our more about them, they’re based on this passage from the New Testament’s Matthew 25:31-46. I have to say this is a pretty clear call to do good works on this planet. It’s a favorite song growing up Catholic.

Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers;
That you do unto me.

When I was hungry, you gave me to eat;
When I was thirsty, you gave me to drink.
Now enter into the home of My Father.

Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers;
That you do unto me.

When I was homeless, you opened your door;
When I was naked, you gave me your coat.
Now enter into the home of My Father.

Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers;
That you do unto me.

When I was weary, you helped me find rest.
When I was anxious, you calmed all my fears.
Now enter into the home of My Father.

Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers
That you do unto me.

8am Mass at the Cathedral, then here at DrupalCamp this morning. Spirituality + education. Not many better ways to spend a day. Tonight family dinner with the whole crew. Feeling thankful.

Here’s the entrance to the church after Mass today.

Golly I’ve been quiet. Got way behind on a bunch of stuff. Got to catch up.

Worth a read, via Paul Kedrosky: The Death of the Credit Card Economy:

This shock to the system may further damage the already-fragile psychology of the consumer. Writing a check or deducting the price of a pair of shoes directly from your bank account packs a much more potent emotional punch than charging the pair of Allen Edmonds loafers on your American Express platinum card. Chalk it up to a concept called “the pain of paying,” said Dan Ariely, the author of Predictably Irrational. (It’s a concept the parents of his students at Duke University feel every semester.) Imagine that a restaurant, rather than charging $30 per meal, charged 50 cents per bite, with a waiter standing tableside collecting after each chomp. That would be an extremely unpleasant meal. But credit puts a safe distance between the ecstasy of consumption and the agony of payment, and thus makes us feel better. Said Ariely: “If it’s more difficult to get credit, it might make people feel more pain of paying and therefore spend less.”

Nice to see this talked about. The concept that paying cash hurts more should be familiar to Dave Ramsey fans.

Perfect.

via Japan Probe.

(I explain the title of this entry at the end of the post—in case you were wondering)

Yesterday I drove to Union Station to see my friend Chris Greazel. Chris I’ve known for over 20 years, ever since he was the artist and I was sort of the cartoonist at my high school. He’s still quite talented, see Greazel.com.

Anyway, I had a great time. Here are some random photos from short trip to Orange County:

Here’s me entering at the transit center end of Union Station in downtown. I took Metrolink to Irvine to see him. One of my favorite places in the world is Union Station downtown. Also, I love trains. Also, it was nice to avoid traffic altogether for my trip to see Chris. Usually we meet somewhere in the middle—but time constraints for Chris have been more significant lately, so I made the trek south.

He picked me up and we headed to have some dinner. We had wonderful bento-style box dinner. I had some particularly good teriyaki beef. I don’t have photos of that, sorry. We talked about all the things we usually talk about—everything from life, kids, money, health, everything. The completeness of our communication is something I cherish. We are good counsel and ears for each other. Again, no photos of that. After the meal, we hit a Jo-Ann Fabrics store I saw on the way to the restaurant. I was itching to buy some ink, but they did not have the ink I wanted. They did, however, have these Obama and McCain masks (not pictured: H. Clinton and Bush masks):

I also nabbed a photo of Chris in front of the pens. The lighting is harsh and fluorescent, but as he said “that is how I look.” I owe him a better photo than that. Maybe next time.

After that, he showed me where he works, they have lasers there! It must be the future:

The company he works for does excellent work in laser-etching products, and he’s their chief designer. It’s impressive stuff.

After that, he dropped me at the Fullerton train station on the way home. I nabbed this spooky self-shot of me as the train north was arriving. I kind of like it.

The train home was uneventful but comfortable. Before I knew it I was back at Union Station, and getting my car:

I paid my $6 parking fee, and headed home, though I did first stop at World Book & News in Hollywood to look at magazines. I am so unimpressed with how parking on Cahuenga at Hollywood Blvd has gotten harder over the years. There are many clubs and bars down there now, and you can scarcely park. That was frustrating, but the newsstand had some interesting items. After that, I headed home. All-in-all, an excellent capper on a month of vacationing.

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Postscript: Also, Chris and Pensacola should have been “Chris and Pens”—but my terrible replacement phone, a Razr, did predictive insertion and decided I must want “Chris and pens” to be “Chris and Pensacola.”

jwz has all the details on the breast reduction that took place in the re-release of Knick Knack. I remember seeing Knick-Knack at a computer animation festival and at other animation tournees in San Diego and I do remember the original version. In fact, I think I have a VHS tape with the original versions from a Pixar short release.

How much of a breast reduction did the toys get? The screen captures tell the story best:

Before:

After:

Again, the full details are available via jwz.

Huh. Okay. You can see what my Mash profile looks like today only at http://mash.yahoo.com/websandiego. I wonder what Yahoo! will do in terms of social networks now? I think they’re focussed on OpenSocial, whose aim is to federate social software. I guess if you can’t build something standalone, build tools to embrace and extend other social network applications.

Here’s the text of the email:

Dear Yahoo! Mash member,

Thank you for trying out our Mash Beta service. We hope you had fun with it.

Please note that we will shut down Mash on September 29, 2008. As a result, your current profile on Mash will no longer be available. We strongly recommend that you return to http://mash.yahoo.com and copy the content that you wish to save onto a separate document.

For a list of FAQs, please refer to the Mash Help Page.

Thanks for trying out Mash!

Matt Warburton

Yahoo! Community Manager