Meet the New Blog. Same as the Old Blog.

Fact is, this is kind of a risk for me. One of the reasons I never went for a real blog before now was the whole Comments thing; I’ve seen too many bloggers ranting endlessly in the wilderness, day after day, the same fat goose-egg of “Zero Comments” lurking beneath each post to underscore just how little anyone cares. People told me I should run a blog, and their arguments were sound– but I had no desire to advertise my complete and utter irrelevance with an unfilled comments queue. Nor did I wish to draw attention to my insecurity by explicitly disabling comments. The ol’ newscrawl was a good compromise: if people wanted to comment, they could damn well write me an e-mail.

And they bloody well did. And I’ve been falling behind in my correspondence ever since. So now I can either continue to fall behind, or resort to one of those lameass form-letter responses– or lighten up on the Comments issue, so that folks have an alternate avenue of approach and I can answer the same question once instead of many times. So that’s what I’m doing. This is the New scrawl. And I promise to be be every bit as lackadaisical in its upkeep as I was with the other one.

But if I don’t get any comments, the whole damn thing is liable to come down. I have a fragile ego.

It’s up to you.



This entry was posted on Saturday, April 21st, 2007 at 8:41 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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David Nickle
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David Nickle
16 years ago

Two words, Watts:

Don’t. Jump.

And also: congratulations on the whole Locus Awards finalist thing. Might wanna blog that one sometime…

razorsmile
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razorsmile
16 years ago

We certainly wouldn’t want that soooo …

… Comment +2 😀

Mac
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Mac
16 years ago

You’re probably in for an interesting ride with a public comments feature, but I think it’s a good decision. Especially as even the nuttier SF people don’t come close to touching certain elements of the UFO crowd!

Mary
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Mary
16 years ago

Hey, this place looks pretty spiffy. And we can comment now, too. This should be worth dragging my old Blogger account out of mothballs.

Jena
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Jena
16 years ago

My suggestion re comments — use word verification, otherwise you could end up with comment spam up the yin-yang. (And if you want comment threading, well, you probably have to go with LJ instead.)

TheBrummell
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TheBrummell
16 years ago

use word verification, otherwise you could end up with comment spam up the yin-yang.

Please no. Blogger’s word verification serves only to annoy. I cannot count how many comments got swallowed by the either and destroyed because I read the whole commment thread and then thought carefully (even proofread) my own comment. The word-verification has a time-out, so my dawdling led to a new non-word to verify that I couldn’t see until I hit “publish”. Then POOF and me angry.

I don’t run word-verification on my blog, and I’ve accumulated approximately THREE spam-comments in just under a year of operation. Spam-bots don’t seem to be a problem.

Scott C.
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Scott C.
16 years ago

Peter, I really dont think you want to know what people on the internets are thinking. I’m curious why you chose this exercise to fuel your self-loathing rather than any of the more traditional ones. I mean, at least with an alcohol or drug habbit, you could look forward to a number of shallow sexual encounters in the eventual downward spiral. I also hear self-mutilation and body modification are in right now.

In any event, in honor of the new blog, alllow me to give you your first spam:

***100%Natural Male Enahancement & Free Credit Report !!***

http://www.phalmaxcreditcounselling.com

Anonymous
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Anonymous
16 years ago

And we’re proud of you, there, P.

Ray

Peter Watts
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16 years ago

Hey, Mac, looks like you were right. Check out this Scott C. dude. There goes the neighborhood.

OTOH, maybe I should keep him around for comic relief. It’s hard not to feel a pang of sympathy for anyone who thinks that only the self-loathing can score drugs and shallow sex. Nor can it be easy waking up each morning in the knowledge that the self is the only thing that doesn’t loathe you…

Anonymous
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Anonymous
16 years ago

RSS! YAY! Instant gratification!

Ronaldo Ferraz
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Ronaldo Ferraz
16 years ago

Comments are probably a poor indicator of a blog’s value considering how lazy people are. 🙂 Anyway, good to read you via RSS, although the yellow is playing havoc with Bloglines and Google Reader.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
16 years ago

These are actually lots of little comments in one single comment block.

I agree with Ronaldo Ferraz on the yellow text thingie. Black on white is better than yellow on white, which is what I get on google reader.

Thank you, Dr. Watts for writing this awesome book. It truly deserves this status.
I had a lecturer in biochemistry to which I’m going to send a link.

I’m curious about the voice in the vampires flash presentation. Was it you who was the presenter?

Right now I’m immersed in the Rifters trilogy, somewhere in the beginning of Behemoth, but all the stuff that happened during Starfish still haunt me.

Oh, and here’s something about micropayments:
http://krazykimchi.com/comic/2003/05/13/micropayment/

Peter Watts
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16 years ago

I agree with Ronaldo Ferraz on the yellow text thingie. Black on white is better than yellow on white, which is what I get on google reader.

OK, I’ll lose the yellow text. I was trying to use color to easily distinguish between science and writing posts, but I guess tags do that well enough. Or if they don’t, I can just change the color of the title or something. To not-yellow.

Thank you, Dr. Watts for writing this awesome book. It truly deserves this status.

You’re welcome. Now go hence, into the world, and convert it in my name. Bring me back money and women and RTS computer games with really cool graphics. I shall be pleased.

I’m curious about the voice in the vampires flash presentation. Was it you who was the presenter?

That was me. Well, that was me in my pharmawhore role.

Oh, and here’s something about micropayments:
http://krazykimchi.com/comic/2003/05/13/micropayment/

Hah. Like I’m going to be satisfied with five dollars. You know what I want.

Brian Dunbar
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Brian Dunbar
16 years ago

‘no comments’ don’t mean that no one is reading, just that no one is commenting.

Sure, some of those blogs with no comments look lonely, and if you’re after a lot of conversation with readers it’s a bust. Some people blog ’cause they are looking for daily journal or day book. Some to get the word our about a project or biz.

Sign up with google analytics, do some tracking on your RSS feeds that’s a better way to know how many people are reading.

Chris Gerrib
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Chris Gerrib
16 years ago

Coming late to the party, but glad to see that you got your web site into the 21st Century.