Saturday, April 21, 2007

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.

15 Comments:

Blogger David Nickle said...

Two words, Watts:

Don't. Jump.

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

April 21, 2007 1:32 PM  
Blogger razorsmile said...

We certainly wouldn't want that soooo ...

... Comment +2 :D

April 21, 2007 6:59 PM  
Blogger Mac said...

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!

April 21, 2007 7:00 PM  
Blogger Mary said...

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

April 21, 2007 7:26 PM  
Blogger Jena said...

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.)

April 22, 2007 11:54 AM  
Blogger TheBrummell said...

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.

April 22, 2007 12:07 PM  
Anonymous Scott C. said...

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 !!***

www.phalmaxcreditcounselling.com

April 22, 2007 7:32 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

And we're proud of you, there, P.

Ray

April 22, 2007 7:54 PM  
Blogger Peter Watts said...

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...

April 23, 2007 9:31 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

RSS! YAY! Instant gratification!

April 25, 2007 1:55 PM  
Blogger Ronaldo Ferraz said...

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.

April 26, 2007 7:11 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

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/

April 30, 2007 10:11 PM  
Blogger Peter Watts said...

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.

May 1, 2007 10:50 AM  
Blogger Brian Dunbar said...

'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.

May 12, 2007 12:18 PM  
Anonymous Chris Gerrib said...

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

May 22, 2007 12:37 PM  

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