Look downstream 

Neither Kent Newsome nor Donna Bogatin see the utility in mobile blogging. Me neither, so much, as things stand right this second, but I can see all kinds of ways to specialize blogs and make it huge.

Yesterday I mentioned a field trip app for education that would have custom blog fields to make blogging on the run a little easier. (Would it mess up the feed to have extra fields in addition to title, summary, body, extended? I hadn't thought about that part until just now. Hmmm. Maybe they could be a hash within the body.)

Anyway, here's a completely different example. Couple weeks ago I saw a woman in a convenience store taking a picture with her camera phone of a refrigerator case, and jotting something down on a clipboard. I figured she must work for a distributor of some product line -- I think she was shooting juice cans. What if her company mashed up something from a blogging tool so her photo would be posted to the web along with the text of whatever she was writing on the clipboard? It could be displayed and categorized along with entries from people in other districts doing the same thing.

Moblogs don't have to look like or be anything like blogs as we think of them now.

Cutting and running 

Agree with Dave about the phrase. I remarked on it a couple weeks ago after I heard what's his name, the Republican National Committee chair, saying it, then saying it again, then saying it again. Probably on Meet the Press.

Well, what can I expect for $15 a month 

My web host doesn't have a late enough version of MySQL for me to run the new version of Moodle. Shoot. Installing 1.5. See how that goes.

A broad, sweeping tale of unimaginable splendor 

Them who 

I heard in e-mail from a Raymond Chandler fan. I wasn't writing as carefully as Chandler does when I mangled an antecedent. I meant to say "I don't know why women like brutes;" not "I don't know why women like Chandler and his creation." I'm afraid I do like Marlowe, but it bugs me a little that I do. I have some guilt over Mr. Rochester and Heathcliff too. Not the cat, just to be clear.

Whatever, I'm in the mood and just added a bunch of 40s and 50s mysteries and films noir to my queue. Yeah, I rejoined Netflix. I didn't like not having it.

What a sweetie pie; what a dick 

Last night my 17-year-old kept coming in and asking me with my bad back if I was OK and if there was anything he could get for me. He's the nicest kid.

Meanwhile I'm reading Raymond Chandler and I don't think his Phillip Marlowe, the private dick character, would ever take care of anybody in that way. What a brute. Why do some women like them? I think I know. What a culture, where not being afraid of having a gun pointed in your face and slapping women are part and parcel of the same man's man persona.

Party girl 

I'm having my every-other-month drink to take my mind off my back. A bottle of vodka has been known to last me over a year. Big change from my wilder days in my 20s. I'm not sure I'd know that person if I met her, but I think I'd like her. I'm less sure if she would like me.

I wonder... 

I don't see every new OPML Editor blog, but I have this sneaky feeling that all the new ones I have seen on the changes page aren't working. You know that error page you sometimes see with the new ones about not having a blog directory? I think that's all I've seen of new users since the server change. Could be nothing. Maybe they don't want to use the blogging tool. They should ask if they're interested enough, but as an evangelist I hate to see them just get discouraged and drop it. Maybe I'll try signing up on a fresh computer later and see what happens. First I have to see what Marlowe isn't letting on this time.