Time to lower the wall

While I can, and generally have, met the posting goals, this is taking up too much time to be practical. Time to lower the bar before this becomes all consuming. New goal is 8 posts per day. Hopefully this will not affect the pleasantly upwards traffic trend.

400th blog post

This is the 400th post on my blog reboot. My first post on this iteration was New Years, 2011 as was my second. It was that second post, titled Deniable Intimidation Echoes, that I think motivated me to get back into the blogging game. The GOP is still quietly being intimidated in the US. The dynamic hasn't chaned in 3 years and 400 posts.

Diversifying my information sources

I'm a little creeped out by people who have no clue what's going on outside their own little circles. Epistemic closure, a sort of intellectual isolationism is something I find repugnant. Google plus makes it easy to get out of that because people share circles of hundreds of others and you can just grab them, sight unseen and find a whole new world. That new world has really upped may daily consumption of cat pictures but also of people who think significantly differently than myself and who I can have a discussion with. I foresee circle building and pruning is going to be a regular activity for me going forward and it doesn't come naturally for me. It is good for me though.

Sharing to Google Plus vs Scheduling Posts

I'm experimenting with a new posting style on my blog that absolutely will not work without scheduling posts. Up to yesterday I've been posting live as the mood strikes me but there were a number of posts that never got written because my writing muse tends to be bursty and it just didn't make sense to publish all those posts at one time. So yesterday I posted once every two hours for the full day, time shifting 2AM to 3AM because blogger would not let me post then.

I did very well on traffic yesterday, up perhaps 25% but looking back the conversation was nil. All my comments are apparently coming in via Google+ and when you schedule posts via blogger, auto-sharing on Google+ does not work. A very significant number of my readers are coming in via other channels so the traffic went up but it went up entirely without my Google+ audience.

There doesn't seem to be a good set of choices here. I like the community and conversation I'm getting out of Google+ but I need scheduling to fully take advantage of my posting capability and to move posts to a more predictable stream instead of having them come out in clumps. Anybody out there have a simple solution for this situation?

Test Post

Working on scheduling posts and finding blogger doing the oddest thing. It won't let me do a 2AM post. 1AM or 3AM is just fine but 2AM switches to 3AM. So this is a test post to see whether it's the display that's gone strange or whether this actually will post an hour later.

Daily practice setup

In my attempt to create a more disciplined life, I'm adding to my daily practice of writing. Every day I owe 1 post to both this blog and my business blog Citizen Intelligence. Yesterday I blew my first deadline, this was on the business blog. I've decided to create a buffer to avoid that in future and will be publishing a buffer count for both blogs and any additional buffers I add to the pile daily at this location.

scheduled posting in wordpress works nicely.

I experimented for the first time posting ahead on my business blog today and it went off without a hitch. It's actually interesting splitting up my writing to two different blogs and I think it was a wise move to choose two different platforms. It makes it more difficult for inappropriate subjects to bleed over, as nonsensical as that may sound. Having a different set of tools puts my mind in a different mood.

New blog

I'm separating out my business blogging for Citizen Intelligence from my personal and political blogging which will continue on this blog. The first blog post introducing the blog is up. I hope you'll add it to your reading list. It will eventually get integrated into the company site but we're not quite ready for that yet.

Vacation coming up

I don't know if I will be blogging this week at all but apparently, T-Mobile will let me use up data in Mexico without additional charge so I'll give it a try. There may be photo blogging or I might just break my post-a-day streak. I'm not sure.

Technorati approval delay

Technorati has historically had a wide range of final approval times. I started the approval process on this blog on the third of December. At the end of 2013, it is apparently taking 10 days to get through final approval. That's not awesome but it is tolerable. Good job reviewers.

Testing 'Share This'

Marginal Revolution has a neat article on central planning for parking and I thought I'd just pop it out in google plus which is where I hang out most of the time. I clicked on 'share this' thinking I'd find google plus but no joy. Instead I find a link for Blogger so I'm testing if it will go to the right blog.

Update: It worked right the first time. Next time though I think I'll put it on save as draft so I can get the labels right from the beginning.

Update II: Google plus was in there after all, but I like pushing it out through blogger (which does google plus itself) better.

Update III: Interesting, it seems like direct publishing doesn't trip the push to Google plus.

Writing block, political disgust

Politics has just hit me so bad lately that the stupid is burning. It's burning so badly that I'm horribly discouraged in my writing at this point. My writing may be getting even more eclectic for a bit. Output is probably going up as I transcribe comments more.

Nick of time

Incredibly tired, almost blew my streak, but promised one per day, and here I am @ 11:55 pm. I must be mad.

More Flit-TM marketing

Technorati still is awaiting final review but I thought that while I was waiting, I'd start another blog directory listing, ontoplist.com. This one requires either payment for listing or including their badge on your front page. Tightwad that I am, the badge can be found below the archive listing on the right. Supposedly it's a 72 hour turnaround but I wouldn't be surprised if that doesn't include weekends. We'll see.

Registering for Technorati

I thought I'd get a bit more serious about traffic and register this blog with Technorati. Apparently they have now have a 'claim code' process and here's my code ( BHS828DANBM4 ). Now off to do more paperwork.

 Update: "Dec 03, 2013. We are evaluating your claim. You will receive email when review is complete, usually between 24-72 hours."
 Update II: "Dec 03, 2013. We have successfully crawled your blog and found the claim token, and your claim is now awaiting final review. You may now remove the claim token from your feed."
Update III: Technorati has finally approved the site on 12/13/2013, 10 days wait for final approval.

My luck continues its odd split of very good and very bad

On the bright side, nobody is dead in a ditch. On the not-so-good side, figuring that out last night meant I had to bail on startup weekend Lafayette. T-Mobile needs better coverage in that town.

I will definitely be attending the next one that I possibly can.

Just got a new phone

I've just entered my two week bliss period where I've gotten a new phone or other piece of tech and am enjoying the increased productivity but my internal scheduler hasn't upgraded my expectations on what I can do in a day yet so... productivity bliss.

This time it's the iPhone 5s so I expect to take this personal blog a bit more multimedia in future.

89k Governments Document project

Just put up the first draft of an index to a writing project that has been bouncing around in my head for some time, the 89k Governments page. The purpose of the project is to write and refine what it is I'm trying to get done with Citizen Intelligence. It's time to organize and structure these thoughts as I start to seek people to come on board and turn Citizen Intelligence from a one man effort to something that has enough manpower to have a real impact on US governance and the relationship between the people and their public servants.

Shifting Schedule

Going to be working more on the business of Citizen Intelligence this week and prepping things for startup weekend in Lafayette. Blogging will likely be affected, though I'm not quite sure which way.