I blog, therefore I am.
Andrew Denny
blogging boater. I've not found any others yet. It seems the ideal
way of keeping a cruising log online, of keeping it updated, and of
showing pictures.
I would be very interested to hear of any boaters who blog, and would
be pleased to add them to my blogroll – or as I call it, my boatroll.
You might be on it already (!) if you have a website dedicated to your
boat or travels, but as soon as I find some fellow blogboaters I'll be
putting their sites to the top of the list and dropping some of the
sparser and less-updated conventional sites.
So stop laboriously updating your websites once every couple of
months, and *get blogging*! Forget newsgroups, blogging's where it's
at for news-style websites, trust me. More info below my sig, if you
need it..
My blog is www.grannybuttons.com
Tell me about yours.
Cheers,
Andrew Denny
--------------
My own quick homespun FAQ:
Q: What's a blog?
A: A diary-oriented website that is easy to update every day, and can
contain links to other sites, and especially other blogs.
For examples see http://www.guardian.co.uk/weblog/special/0,10627,752813,00.html
One of the problems with conventional website maintenance is it is so
labour intensive and this is reflected in the number of websites
‘under construction', or only updated every few weeks or months (or
‘last updated May 2001'). Blogging is fantastically easy to update in
comparison, and you can make a daily, diary-style post in moments,
with the most recent post at the top, and older posts archived
regularly to a calendar – but always available.
With a blog, you don't have to remind people that you've updated your
website. Because you can post to it almost every day, there's almost
always something new for them to see.
You can start blogging for free with something like www.blogger.com,
although you will have to put up with a banner ad at the top for the
free versions.
I use www.typepad.com, a hosted version of Movable Type, one of the
most powerful systems. Once you get it up and running it's
fantastically powerful, and you can change the look, feel, layout and
content in moments, as well as posting daily direct from your web
browser. And it looks the business! You can also allow people to add
comments to your post, giving a sort of ‘personal newsgroup', with
some powerful features like ‘trackback', which allows your own posts
to reference those of others, and for the other posts to know this
automatically, so a community of bloggers can quickly build up –
because everyone who makes a post of interest can track responses
through posts on other blogs.
Typepad's not free, but it's $5/month for the basic version. (mine is
$9/month and allows me up to 100mb space, and five photo albums which
are very easy to caption and annotate). You get what you pay for.
But there are many other systems – no doubt I'll be told Typepad is
pants!
------------------
Ken Fairhurst
"Andrew Denny" <ne...@grannybuttons.com> wrote in message
news:b2289f64.03100...@posting.google.com...
> I started to blog recently, and I'm wondering if I'm the first
> blogging boater. I've not found any others yet. It seems the ideal
> way of keeping a cruising log online, of keeping it updated, and of
> showing pictures.
>
> I would be very interested to hear of any boaters who blog, and would
> be pleased to add them to my blogroll - or as I call it, my boatroll.
> You might be on it already (!) if you have a website dedicated to your
> boat or travels, but as soon as I find some fellow blogboaters I'll be
> putting their sites to the top of the list and dropping some of the
> sparser and less-updated conventional sites.
>
> So stop laboriously updating your websites once every couple of
> months, and *get blogging*! Forget newsgroups, blogging's where it's
> at for news-style websites, trust me. More info below my sig, if you
> need it..
>
> My blog is www.grannybuttons.com
> Tell me about yours.
>
> Cheers,
> Andrew Denny
>
Nice photos Andrew, thanks for the mention. Hope to see you again sometime.
--
ATB Ken NB Magic
www.ukcanals.net
www.mmbc.biz
Su/Cutworks
> I started to blog recently, and I'm wondering if I'm the first
> blogging boater. I've not found any others yet. It seems the ideal
> way of keeping a cruising log online, of keeping it updated, and of
> showing pictures.
I put up the first rough drafts of our boating blog yesterday! Since I do a
needlework blog with a group of other friends I thought a boating one would
be a handy way to keep a log of our trips. Wonder if BW would accept a blog
as proof of cruising?
It's just a jumble of old trip reports in no particular order that I've
culled from Google but I hope to get it in order this week. We have a blog
at blogger.com but I've signed up for the TypePad version since it has a
30-day free trial. Thanks for mentioning it.
It won't be worth viewing for a few days yet but the link for the TypePad
blog is:
http://avastbehind.typepad.com/avast_behind/
I hope to get the pics from our website put in some kind of order, along
with the files of pics from the last few years, put in along with the trip
reports already done and some that need doing shortly. I find that if you
make a point of using a blog daily, it becomes a habit and is very easy to
use after a while.
-Su
Andrew Denny
My pleasure. But I'm still fumbling with Typepad. It's very easy to
insert photos into the main body of the text, as opposed to the photo
albums, but I only got around to learning it last night (see the pic
of Camberwell Covers). Where a blog post mentions something (e.g. Ken
at Lydiate!) it's often better to put the pic in the body of the post.
Andrew
brian
news:b2289f64.03100...@posting.google.com...
--
___
Brian from sunny Suffolk by the river Hundred
Andrew Denny
There's only one jpeg in the body of my blog at the moment, and that's
150 pixels across, and about 5.5kb in size. Between four and ten
seconds, I guess. But one doesn't have to use pictures in a blog, any
more than in a normal web page. All you need is a browser link. Best
to compose the post beforehand, then past it into the onscreen web
page form.
When configuring the blog in the first place it would be best to go to
an internet cafe or other place/friend with a fast link, especially if
stuck with a 9.6k mobile link, although I'm still using a 56k
connection in a rural area that rarely peaks over 42k.
Once it's set up, though, the blog's your oyster.
Andrew Denny
set up a 'moblog', and send pictures from your mobile phone camera to
the photo album, and your text in by txt msg or by standard pop3 email
from your mobile (if you can master that pesky predictive messaging).
In real English it means that once you've set up your blog (1 hour in
an Easy cafe) you don't even need a computer aboard - you can do it
all from the shiny new camera cellphone you got for Christmas.
Mnd U, fncy rdng blgs fll of all ths txt cr8p! I'd h8 it.
Andrew