Top 10 UK blogs
I am still in shock at not being shortlisted for the 'Best UK Blog' but I decided to swallow my pride and enjoy a few hours enjoying the high quality content of the 10 finalists:
- Ian Dale's Diary - A tagline of 'Commentary, analysis and gossip from the heart of Westminster' completely turned me off and I closed the Firefox tab before I was subjected to any more torture.
- Guy Fawkes - Hoping for top tips to blow up the Houses of Parliament but just got more politics. Yawn.
- Neil Clark - The winner apparently. Anti-war hack with a lot of posts urging readers to vote for him.
- EU Referendum - Simply couldn't summon up the enthusiasm to click through.
- Pub Philosopher - Promising title but yet more (right wing) politics. May as well buy the Daily Mail.
- The Devil's Kitchen - Considered outpourings on the wit and wisdom of David Cameron. No thanks.
- Baggage Reclaim - Much better. A blog recording amusing anecdotes from an anonymous baggage handler at LHR. Oh no - wait a minute - it's just a blog about dating and 'relationships'.
- Nourishing Obscurity - Promising title but this excerpt completely lost me: 'I see that the current crop of parents lost their moral compass long ago and this is the first generation to grow up "moral-code-lite".
- Bright Meadow - Soft porn alert 'She loved how the amber glinted off his bones'. I daren't read any more. Particularly as I am on a formal warning from my employer.
- Kickette - At last. A discerning blog all about football. Only this one is about celebrity footballers (Fat Frank), their tiresome girlfriends and pictures of Ronaldo with his shirt off.
I was so depressed that I decided to kill myself compile my own list of the definitive, real, undisputed 'Top 10 UK (and Irish) blogs' in strict alphabetic order:
- BlogStorm - Internet Marketing/SEO but, refreshingly, from a UK blogger.
- Caroline Middlebrook - a lady who took the brave step of quitting her IT job in favour of blogging.
- Donncha - WordPress employee #2 and aspiring photographer.
- Doug Burns - Scottish DBA with wicked sense of humour.
- Modern Life is Rubbish - Quality not quantity.
- Pete Ashton - Brummie blogger with varied mixture of music, photos and tech with no signposts or self-importance. Pure blogging.
- Random Acts of Reality - I help people read books. This guy saves people's lives for £10 an hour. Deserves first prize for the blog name alone.
- Tim Hall - Oracle DBA, film critic and Karate Kid. Another Brummie.
- Tom Raftery - Irish slant on IT, tech and all that Web 2.0 stuff.
- Who Ate All The Pies - Genuinely funny football blog.
Tumblr V3
Tumblr update is imminent. First impressions are excellent.
Timestamps. Archives. Tags. Channels. Markdown. No comments though.
Disqus powered comments
I was rather hoping Disqus would be a 100% plug-in replacement for the woefully inadequate coComment so I could simply track all the comments I leave on assorted blogs and easily monitor other comment threads of interest.
An RSS feed of such comment activity would be an ideal element to feed into the Tumble dryer.
Disqus launched yesterday and as it was written in Django, looks OK and isn't too invasive or distracting (c.f BlogRush), I have enabled the WordPress plugin on this blog.
Comments can now be threaded (just like serendipity) and (thankfully) you don't need to register with Disqus to leave a comment.
Comments can be rated and the comments are hosted on Disqus forums.
Paul Stamatiou wrote a excellent review about the features in Disqus and Techcrunch also reviewed the software.
I have some minor concerns:
- I currently use Spam Karma to handle comment spam on this blog. SK2 is unbelievably efficient and far superior than Akismet. I can count on the fingers of one hand, the number of comments and trackback spam that got past SK2 so I have some concerns about reverting to an inferior spam filtering solution.
- Until every blog in the world integrates Disqus, I still won't be able to track all of my comments. Still, I am still waiting for the world to universally adopt Emacs and Supercite so email works properly so I guess I can live with that.
- Although you are supposed to be able to quickly and easily import Disqus comments back into WordPress, I need to check how this is implemented.
- It is not clear whether Disqus will currently work on hosted WordPress.
I'll try Disqus out for a while as an experiment but I guess the most important and valuable feedback will be from readers of this blog. Without you, I am nothing, a lone voice in the darkness, a blog in isolation.
So if you have any thoughts, just leave a comment.
world's first blogger dies
Sadly, the world's first and most prolific blogger, the Reverend Robert Shields has passed away in America aged 89. Shields was the author of the world's longest diary consisting of a staggering 37 million words.
Shields was truly the world's first blogger with his first recorded entry in April 1927 beating Dave Winer by 3 months. Nor was Robert Shields afraid of including trivia and useless information in his journals. For example, how many blogs (or Tumblelogs for that matter) record blood pressure readings (Shields despised silly mood emoticons), make any effort to fastidiously record every single visit to the lavatory (Shields had dozens of imaginative ways to describe the act of urination) or have the thoughtfulness to detail every single piece of junk mail ever received.
Lazy, modern bloggers (with the possible exception of Robert Scoble who, coincidentally, was named after Shields) everywhere should hang their heads in shame when they learn of Shield's commitment to the blogging cause; Shields never slept for more than 2 hours to ensure he could capture his dreams.
Here is just one example of his exceptional writing:
'9.35-9.40 I cleaned the cerumen from both my ears and from both hearing aids.'Unfortunately, although Shields has left the 91 boxes containing his life's work to a university, he has stipulated that the full contents can not be published until 2049.
I will leave the final words to the great man himself.
'It is an uninhibited diary, It is spontaneous. I type it as it comes, I don’t correct it and I don’t edit it.'
Rowche Rumble
I am bored of tormenting myself, conjuring up full blown blog posts, pouring over non-existent Adsense revenues and analyzing traffic statistics so I have started a Tumblelog.
There is something very appealing about Kottke's definition of a Tumblelog as 'a quick and dirty stream of consciousness.'
A Tumblelog can be a short, snappy blog and can also aggregate different RSS feeds (Google Shared Stuff and Items, del.icio.us, last.fm, Flickr and even this blog). Why, Tumblr even has built-in support for quotes.
However, undoubtedly the best feature is the endless scope for puns in the non rotating taglines:
- Rowche Tumble
- Are you ready to Tumble ?
- Tumble Dryer
- Tumble in the jungle
- A bit of rough and Tumble
- Don't mumble, Tumble !
I have already contacted Davidville to enquire about any openings in sales and marketing.