Thursday 29 November 2001

Pic of the day: Breaking the first rule of online journaling?

Meta

I got an e-mail today from my Internet service provider, Telenor Internett. They said that their hard disks are full, so it would not be possible to upload to the homepage until sometime Friday. This presumably means I won't be able to upload this diary before Friday either. (Unless I can sneak in by deleting old entries. I've done that twice this last week or so already - it is not a quite new problem. But the text of the e-mail indicated that they would disable FTP, the protocol used for uploading.)

I'm sorry there is no way I can reach you people and tell you. I have never really considered a mailing list, like many other journalers have, to tell you when and where I upload. After all, I use to upload every day, and always to the same address. (If you have a modern browser, you could even tell it to upload my journal automatically when it is changed.) Not only have I not felt the need for such a mailing list, but none of my readers have requested it either. I don't expect you would sign up even if I had one. The anonymity of watching without being watched is a part of the experience for some, I'm sure. Some of you know me offline or from other online fora and would feel uncomfortable talking to me if I knew you were reading, right?

I try to write a short notice in my LiveJournal when there is such a delay. But I don't expect all of you to read that, even though there is a link from my front page. It has a whole different style (it is mostly for my fellow online comic friends). Besides, they have often technical difficulties too. Still, it is probably the best place to look for breaking news, especially if this journal is not updated.

***

Since I have already tainted this entry with meta, I guess I may as well go on. Meta, in the parlance of the journalers, is when we write about journal writing. The first law of journal writing is: You don't talk about journal writing. This is a bit weird, at least when it takes up so much of one's time and mind. On the other hand, writing meta means a very real risk of getting caught in a loop. Writing about writing about writing ... especially when some people start to debate with other journalers in their journal. Then comes the need to explain, and the whole thing takes on a life of its own.

Even so, some of the best online journals out there do it now and then. Then again, sometimes it blows up spectacularly.

OK, I just remembered the name for those mailing lists. "Notify lists" they are called. The idea seems to have been originally to notify readers that a new entry was up. But I see that quite a few journalers use the notify list as a kind of secondary journal, and more exclusive. Presumably because they know certain people are not on that list. I hope I won't ever be in a situation where that is necessary.

And some journal writers even have an online forum. I won't bother to try that. If people don't e-mail me (well, it happens, but not every month) then certainly they value their anonymity more than to attend a forum. It's not like I want to build a community around myself anyway. This is mostly a daily letter to my friends, except my friendship is open to anyone who wants it. (At least as long as it does not involve borrowing substantial amounts of money ...)

***

Since the day is spoiled anyway, let me tell you more about how I write this stuff. Some days I write it first in Word97 or StarOffice 5.2, to check the spelling. Then I paste it into Programmers File Editor. When I feel lucky (or, more likely, lazy) I just type it in directly in PFE. I guess I could have used almost any plain text editor, but I like PFE. (Sadly, this little wonder is no longer developed or supported, but its latest version is rock stable.)

I spend typically 1-3 hours a day on the journal. This is not because I type slowly, but because I think slowly. I also tend to edit heavily, sometimes to the point of rewriting the whole entry or writing two or three different ones, of which I post one. For some reason, I rarely use any of the surplus later, not even topics with a long time horizon.

The fastest and easiest entries to write are the blue ones, the game reviews and such. The hardest are the gray. The red and yellow vary. Some of them are very easy to write. It can be hard to determine the right color, though. For instance, in Scandinavia it is not considered dubious to talk about breastfeeding or debating whether or not sex is good for your health. In America, I understand that many workplaces have filters that would raise alarm by such content.

I upload the daily journal with the FTP program that comes with Windows. It opens a black box where I type in strange commands, and then it uploads the files to a place on the ISP's server. No cute hand-holding software here. I used CuteFTP the first days, but it wanted to be paid if I were to continue. It was not worth it. I've written cryptic commands for so many years already that I don't mind doing it three minutes every night.

If there is anything I have not mentioned about the process of writing a journal, you are certainly free to ask. If you are ashamed to let me know you're reading, just open a hotmail account under the name "Daffy12345" or somesuch. If you choose the topic carefully, I will still read it.