Category: Blogging

A broken habit

No, this doesn’t relate to a tragic and unlikely accident involving damage to a nuns wimple (although that sounds like it would make a most excellent story). 
It’s about me being blank. 
Vacant. 
Uninspired.
I have lost my mojo.
I am without the wherewithal for blogging.
This may, or may not, be a tragic state of affairs, depending on how much or little joy my erratic posts bring into your life.
I have also yet to finalise a blog name change.
It’s all gone a bit Pete Tong.
Meh.

Bear with me, while I try and gather my meandering thoughts again on an occasional basis, and throw them into a blog post.

Another year, another blogday

Yes, I feel all proud, because it’s coming up to birthday-time for the UK Library Bloggers Wiki...it’s toddling along nicely all by itself (with just the occasional spammer attack – it’s really quite satisfying to get to ban and block people!), with people generally seeming quite happy with the process of adding their blogs themselves.

Since I last looked in July 2010, there have continued to be additions in various categories.

                                          July 2010                                        March 2011
Institutional bloggers              135                                                     152
Individual bloggers                 90                                                       107
Chartership blogs                    5                                                         6
Information professionals         8                                                         8
Suppliers                                 8                                                         8

Total:                                      281 blogs

So, a growth in institutional/workplace bloggers, and individual/personal bloggers too, and a solitary, brave Chartership blog.

I wonder if the 2 years without any change, then last years small growth in Chartership blogs is because people are already blogging, and then decide to Charter, and incorporate that aspect of professional development into their existing blog? Or are fewer people Chartering? Or are those who are Chartering using other methods to log their progress?

I’ve also decided to remove the Yahoo Pipes combines RSS feed link for Institutional and Individual blogs from the front page of the wiki – it was initially done as an experiment, and now that people are able to add their own blogs, unless I then go in each time after I get the wiki has been edited alert”, get their RSS feed, and go edit the Yahoo Pipe, it’s never going to be current/accurate. And I’m afraid I just don’t have the time to be fiddling like that constantly!

Of course, I haven’t clicked on each of those 281 blog links, so I’m quite sure that at least some of them are now defunct – my plan to go through them, and remove the dead blogs to another section has definitely slipped to the bottom of my to-do list. Maybe I’ll be more inspired to do it if I get a prize. Can I get a prize?

What’s in a name?

In the case of this blog, it’s a name that had no particular thought or planning behind it – I had no idea whether I would actually want to keep it going, what I would blog about, or that anyone would ever read it.

Well, it’s almost 4 years later (17th June 2007 is blog birthday, if we’re counting), and the blog’s still here, so I think we can now safely assume that it’s probably going to be sticking around. And the name’s been getting on my nerves a bit…you have no idea the amount of people who have found this blog looking for ladies called Jennie Law or Jenny Law. Personally, I’m not actually called Jennie Law, so I’m no help to these poor searchers, although for the right fee I could maybe consider pretending to be…
I also don’t blog a huge amount about law: I’m not a lawyer, I just have the job of finding stuff for lawyers. Sometimes that process amuses me, sometimes it annoys me, and I blog about it. Sometimes I write about library issues, or technology stuff. Sometimes I post about entirely pointless things that entertain me. Zombies have also appeared in some posts. Lets just say I have eclectic tastes…

So, I have decided…the blog needs renamed. But I’m not altogether sure what I’d call it. Do any responsible growneded-ups out there have any good suggestions?

I believe I know the name of this defence

It’s called “A Big Boy did it, and ran away”, aka “It wisnae us, Guv”

This is the text of the (to give them credit, admittedly fast) response I got from the website that was using my blog post, as mentioned previously: 

Dear Sir,
  
 
  
Apologies for the issue.
 
Thanks for your information. we will remove the same. It was happened 
by our operators who has posted about long back. We got permissions from the authors
that time. Some of the posts they have put like this.

 
Best Regards
  
Venkat Sure

So, according to them, it was posted on their site a while ago (I’m assuming in 2008, as that’s when the posts lifted from me and others were created), and they got permission from the authors at that time?
Well, unless I have changed personality since 2008*, I never gave that permission, so that’s no real excuse.
And…as of now, my content is still there. How long exactly should it take to remove my content? How long should I give them, before moving from Slightly Irritated into Quite Irate?
* Admittedly, this is a faint possibility – maybe I had a psychotic break, gave them that permission, and forgot about it, and neither I nor anyone else realised I’d been temporarily mad, and randomly giving away my intellectual property rights…