I first heard about blogging listening to Chris Lydon a bunch of years ago. In fact, here is a link to the very show, from May of 2000! I was definitely fascinated by that show and actually signed up for a blog on blogger.com that day (which I only ever put two posts in as I recall). It was a few years later that Scott Watermasysk asked me if I wanted to blog about INETA on his newish blog site (now weblogs.asp.net) to which I replied “ummm, nah, but thanks for asking”. A few months after that it was I who emailed Scott asking if it was too late to take him up on his offer but that I’d like to blog about other things in addition to INETA. No problem, says he…

So, anyway, Chris Lydon….yes. I heard a promo on VPR today (which I only really listen to in the car – that is when Rich isn’t in the car – which is not frequent these days. I can’t listen to people talking when I’m trying to work, so I don’t hear it at home) for a newish show that Chris Lydon is doing called Open Source and the promo said “blogs, podcasts, etc”! That definitely caught my ear.

Of course, I realize that I’ve just missed the show as it is 8:15! But it looks interesting:

Open Source is a lively, hour-long on-air conversation designed to capture “the sound of the Web,” with the popular Christopher Lydon engaging callers, e-mailers and bloggers from around the world in a range of fascinating topics. It is the first radio program to embrace bloggers, Web enthusiasts and the Internet transformation of media.

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Thanks to Scott Hanselman for hunting down and fixing what he referred to as a “latent and **HORRIBLE** bug” 🙂 that surfaced in the latest version of dasBlog. It was mucking up the RSS feeds when you were filtering on a category. For example, my VTdotNETFeed RSS was randomly selecting a handful of posts from the past, with nothing newer than April showing.

So that code ahs been fixed. It will be in the versoin 1.8 which has not yet been released. If you want the fix now, you can go to the SourceForge dasBlog workspace, into the CVS Repository (bottom of the page), and then drill into the source folder, then newtelligence.dasBlog.Web.Services folder. The fix is to the SyndicationServiceBase.cs file.

To fix this now, it requires downloading the entire current dasBlog source, updating the contents of that one file, and rebuilding and redeploying the newtelligence.dasBlog.Web.Services project.

Thanks again, Scott!

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If this was near me (NYC or Boston) I would definitely make the effort to attend the one day BlogHer Conference. Even though I am not very political, I am very interested in the voices of women in the blogging world – especially technical women. How we represent ourselves? Do we just be a techie or can we women techies? Do we blend in or show our ti**ies (tee hee). (shut up, Sahil – I’m just making a point). And how does what we do today affect young women coming into the world of tech (and blogging). But it’s in California – all the way across the country. No can do. Bummer.

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my website is broken and I am testing again

of course, my last 3 posts were there for a while and then disappeared into thin air, so we will see what happens!

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I finally figured out why the category RSS Feed that I feed to the VTdotNET site doesn’t have anything recent on it. If you look at the VTdotNETFeed category on my blog, you can see all of those posts. But if you look at the RSS output, there is a huge hole of missing posts. I’m not sure if it’s something wrong with dasBlog or with my files. Anyone else having this problem with the 1.7 version?

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Speaking of Markus, I just subscribed to his travel blog and it’s great reading! Markus and I end up in the same place quite often. In the past year alone: Montreal for DevTeach, Redmond for Tablet DevLab, San Franciso for Windows Anywhere, Orlando for TechEd, DevConnections in Las Vegas and SysCon in Boston.  So it’s fun to read in his blog about some of his travels since I can connect! He’s a great writer – its a fun read.

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Scott & Omar want to include more themes in the next dasBlog update. More here….

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Scott Hanselman & Omar Shahine continue to work diligently on dasBlog. Scott reports that there is an update on the horizon.

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I was just cruising around Leon’s blog to get a link to one of my favorite posts (“You are not Inadequate“) and started realizing something. I started reading his blog because it was (and still is) hilarious. But there are also so many really deep, thoughtful, interesting posts on there. For example, one where he analyzed the famous Spolsky API Wars article. I also noticed he had grouped his archives in a way that reflects what he was writing about. It would be interesting to look at our own blogs that way. I definitely go thorugh periods for example, where I was working on ADO.NET 2.0 heavily, making so many interesting discoveries. I was writing gobs of technical posts. Right now, the focus of my work is a little different and my blog is a little less technical and probably a little boring (sorry). I consider about Scott Hanselman’s blog and how heavily it is read and why.

In a time of blog overload, it’s that much more important to think about what you are writing about – but on the other hand, by doing that, I worry that I am losing the sponteneity that I think has made my blog stand out in the past. With hundreds of posts pouring into my feed every day, I am very selective about which I actually read. Generally I check out the post titles and anything that interests me I’ll look at, maybe read, maybe not. Then I go by who wrote the posts (a big chore in the msdn feed or weblogs.asp.net feed) and pick out ones by people who I definitely want to “check in with”. But I’m not reading as much. And I know for sure that not as many people are reading my own blog – for the same reason. Just too much to read overall and a post has got to be really worth anyone’s time to be read.

Then it gets back to the most important thing. Why are we blogging? To be read? To get lots of comments or referrals? To get famous? No. I don’t think any one of these should be the driving force (though I know a few people who do blog for that reason…and now you are all twitching in your boots wondering if I am referring to YOU heh heh). I think just saying what’s on your mind and what you feel like when it strikes you (with some reservations obviously – like not ranting every time GWB opens his mouth because he makes me crazy – yes, I’ve learned NOT to do that Andrew, James and Avonelle! 🙂 ) is what the whole point of blogging is. So if I am so excited about a new discovery in .NET that I just had to tell SOMEONE (and my dog just isn’t interested), I’ll blog it. If I’m looking out the window at the tree that makes my heart skip a beat every time I look at it,  and I just want to share it with the world, I’ll blog it.

Anyway, I should be outside getting my kayak on the car roof rather than rambling away. But Leon’s blog is really great and I decided that thought was worthy of mention.

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This is a side benefit of having blogger friends from around the world. Once in a blue moon, Malek Kemmou, writes his blog posts in his own language and I get this beautiful artwork in my feedreader:

I have no idea what it says, but that’s okay. Another thing I love about his blog (besides all the usual stuff) is that he has an entire category called: “don’t read if you’re not Stephen Forte“. If you know Stephen, you can only imagine the content of those posts! 🙂

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