Thursday, February 23, 2012

I Didn't Get A Maintenance Manual With My Blog

There's lots of maintenance to do with a blog.  A lot of it is technical as the system adds new gadgets and new looks.   Some of it is related to changing times and circumstances.  For example I need to change my photo policy.  I wrote it at a time when there was some disagreement between local Alaska blogs and the Anchorage Daily News about use of photos.  But basically monitoring photo use by others is pretty impossible.  All I basically want is some courtesy and a link back to my originals for non-commercial use.

And I tried to be restrained on labeling, but now it turns out I have some labels for things mentioned only once and no labels for things/people mentioned a dozen times.  But given that people find me through Google using terms not on labels, I'm not really sure if that matters.

And then there is updating old posts.  I've got so many posts up, it's hard to do that.  I've found I sometimes write something new about an old topic.  Then I put a link in the new post to the old and a new link in the old post to the new one.

But today I've added photos to three old posts and none of them, by themselves, was worth a new post.  So I'm doing it here.  Four years ago, while running to Venice Beach from my mom's, I took a picture of the empty lot where the old Pioneer Bakery used to be and a sign that they were building condos.  That lot on Rose stayed empty for a long time, but now there are almost finished condos there.  So I added a new picture to that old post.

But I also discovered that some of the photos on that post no longer are connected to their original link.  They now look like this:
I have to see if I can find the originals or I just have to delete them.

Three and a half years ago, the city planted a new Italian Stone Pine tree in front of my mother's house.  It's grown a bit since then, so I've added a new picture to that post.

Talking about new trees, the city of Santa Monica put in about 100 new Canary Island Pines along the Penmar Golf Course on the Dewey side last week.  One day there was nothing there, the next day they'd put in a 1/2 mile of trees.  (How do I know what kind they are?  I asked the men putting them in.)

And finally, I've added a four months later picture showing the scar now from my Mohs surgery last October.

While I appreciate all that the new technologies can do, I also would appreciate a cease-fire for all but the most significant developments (life saving improvements) so I wouldn't have to keep adapting to a new update on every different software, phone, camera, etc.  Some things are good enough and I don't need all the improvements.  But, following up on the previous post, those things keep us all distracted from all the ways corrupt businesses and the public officials they install manage to destroy our democracy.

3 comments:

  1. I anticipated the problem with broken links when I launched my Mt View blog in '06 and personal blog in '08. I link the images back to my flickr page. flickr maintains a permanent URL for each image and I pay them 24 bucks annually to store an unlimited number of images. And since 99% of the images on both blogs are my own, it works pretty good. When I moved the Mt View blog from Blogger to Wordpress in '08, all of the images migrated to the new site without a hitch.

    If i want to link an image from someplace else, or maybe a video I do it in such a way that the story could stand on its own if the image or video isn't available later. I rarely if ever go back and update posts more than a month old.

    I'm somewhat crosswise on flickr's policy [though I believe they have relaxed lately]. They used to want you to promote their site with each image. But I figured, it's not as if I'm messing with anybody else's intellectual property here -- these are MY images. And I do include a flickr widget on the sidebar of both blogs.

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  2. With you on the continual maintenance issues: I'm gradually doing a virtual comb-over, as all my old posts from a couple years ago are all wonky looking now. Mostly it's just reformatting the text and resizing the images back up to maximum whenever it randomly resurfaces.
    Also, are you uploading images to Picasa by any chance? Since Google runs both that and Blogger, the hyperlinking and storage has been simple, long as I remember to keep the image portfolios organized.

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  3. Clark and Jamie - Picasa automatically hosted my photos because I'm using blogger. It was a while before I realized that. Most of the photos are my own, if not I try to identify the source. Early this year Picasa created some single photo albums. I have no idea why and I really haven't stopped to figure out how to do anything more than I have to do there.

    I'm willing to let the old posts look however they look - it's part of the evolution of the blog I guess. Mostly, I can't imagine doing that much maintenance. Maybe we should chat sometime about what you think is important to do at Picasa.

    Thanks for your comments, it's all very daunting keeping pace with all the stuff that is constantly changing.

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