Recently in Blogging Category

As I look back at my last entry it occurs to me that I use two distinct approaches to citing and referencing ideas, works, etc. Specifically, I use a mixture of hyperlinks and APA referencing.

My habit seems to be that for non-academic works, I tend to use hyperlinks that go to appropriate sources. This seems consistent with normal practice of web-based publishing.

For scholarly works I follow APA conventions for citing and referencing. This seems more consistent with the academic expectations and practices. In acknowledgement of the fact this is electronic or web-based publishing I use COinS to ensure there is enough information so that programmes such as Zotero or LibX can scrape/find all the information they need to quickly locate an electronic copy/source of the document.

However, I feel mildly uneasy about this situation. Should I use only APA (albeit with COinS); afterall it does have citation styles for blogs etc? Or should I only use hyperlinks; after all, this is the web? For some things, such as blog entries, APA seems entirely sensible for paper-based writings. However, for this (and other e-media), APA feels out of place. I am use to clicking hyperlinks to take to "more information". I think I can live with the mixed method of referencing. At the end of the day, I do try and acknowledge my sources, and perhaps it doesn't matter what means I do that by, providing most people recognise that I am doing it; i.e., most people recognise the practices that I am using.

Sometimes, it is really necessary to display a complex formula; such as this:

I use MathTran to achieve this, rather than doing a complex server-side install of Latex. Then I can use a URL like the one below to dynamically display the equation above:

That reminds me, there is a Google API for doing charts on the fly. The simple example they give is:

Although much more complex graphs¹ are possible:

¹ Thanks to http://www.felipebarone.com/plot-function-google.php [now defunct] for this example.

It seems that I don't really understand the way that Movable Type handles styles and templates. I've (yet again) made a total mess of this site in the process of setting up my academic journalling.

No doubt this will take me sometime (over the weekend) to sort out ... but I might wait until after the 8th December 2009, when Movable Type version 5 comes out.

I do like the approach taken by the Ministry of Type. When I redo my own style sheet, I'll have to bear in mind some of the principles that are evident on that elegant site.

I've set up a new blog for those activities related to my academic life. This blog will continue, but the focus will be on less academically related items.

Talking with Andrew about hosting providers, I thought I'd put in a good word for the folks at A2 hosting

Over the past couple of years, they've provided me with darn good service (and a really good price). Try them; you might like them.

It's been suggested that I should allow comments again ... now, let's see if I can find the right button to push.

(and so far, the button eludes me)

Having spent a lot of the weekend sorting out the styles and templates for the blog, I think it's about time to get back to work; i.e., the PhD.

However. before I abandon this 'diversion' I thought I'd make a few notes about what still might need to be done on the site:

• The main page of the blog just lists the ten, or so, most recent posts. At the bottom of the page there is a link to the site's archives. I wonder if I need something upfront, such as a search box, to allow people to find old material more easily.

• I've done away entirely with the sidebar. That gives the page a cleaner look, but it doesn't invite people to explore more of the site.

• Finally, I've started using the hierarchical categories. I had planned to do this earlier. But, having now installed the latest version of the software, it's been so easy to do. Now I'm wondering if I should use tags as well as categories.

I'm amazed at my capacity to get distracted by something. Such as fixing these templates and styles. I could easily spend much more time doing this. But at the end of the day, I wouldn't be moving forwards on what is really important; my teaching and my research.

Actually, it has taken me less time than I expected to do the changes I needed wanted to make. That's all down to Google's new web browser Chrome. It's a slick and tidy piece of software. I would make it my main browser except that it doesn't (yet) support ad blocking, and two essential Firefox add-ins ( Zotero and libx) aren't available for it (Oh, and it isn't yet available for FreeBSD).

Anyway, Chrome has this really neat feature that allows you to inspect elements of a web page to see which parts of your stylesheet are 'active'. Without this, I would have spent a lot more time tweaking the site's CSS.

And now, back to the salt mine.

Update
Andrew pointed me towards CSSViewer. This neat add-on for Firefox shows what the CSS is for a particular element on the screen. Google's Chrome inspector shows which parts of the style sheet is being used (or overridden) so it is easier to tweak one's style sheet.

Well I'm making some progress on writing more here. I'm now using ScribeFire as my publishing tool. Hopefully, the fact that it is easier to 'write' will encourage me to do more writing.

I chose ScribeFire because it is often mentioned when Zotero is mentioned.

It actually took me several attempts to get ScribeFire to work. What I didn't realize was that Movable Type actually has a separate password that is used for remote (xmlrpc) access.

In moving this site to its new host at A2, I set up Movable Type slightly differently. This meant that many of my old links into and out of the site didn't work any more.

So, I've spent a little time setting up some mod_rewrite rules (Thanks Mike) and tweaking the configuration.

So, hopefully there will be no more 404 Page Not Found errors.

I had lunch at Khao Thai yesterday with David Thomas and Yunyeong Kim. Both berated my lack of blogging. They're right and so I will (particularly with the film festival coming up).