TheoBlogical Community

Radio Software has driven me away

Tue, 30 Dec 2003 15:48:06 GMT

One of the major reasons for my exodus from Radio is the maddening tendency for Radio to refresh my page while I am typing. It does it on nearly half my attempts to post, effectively making me start over. It did it on my previous post while I was attempting to remind people to change their links to my RSS, which I have changed largely because of this problem (ironic isn't it?).

I am amxiously awaiting MT 3.0, as well as enhancements to dotText. I blog using both of these (My main blog at http://theoblogical.org and my dottext blog at http://theoblogical.org/dt/blog

Please change OLD RSS references!

Tue, 30 Dec 2003 15:42:43 GMT

I just noticed that several people who have my RSS on their lists are still using the OLD RSS. Thatis to myRadio blog, and I no longer post there (except for thisand other periodic reminders). Please change all RSS links to http://theoblogical.org/dlature/rss.xml to http://theoblogical.org/movtyp/index.rdf

Please change your RSS URLs for this Weblog

Sun, 14 Dec 2003 15:10:57 GMT

Another post to inform subscribers that I am now posting at http://theoblogical.org (which I have redirected to my MT blog). The RSS feed needs to be changed to this (http://theoblogical.org/movtyp/index.rdf)

I have stopped using Radio for posting (except for this post, of course)

I am also posting at a dotText blog (dotNet based) at http://theoblogical.org/dt/blog with RSS feed of

this: (http://theoblogical.org/dt/blog/Rss.aspx)

Change your subscriptions to my MT blog

Thu, 06 Nov 2003 14:56:08 GMT

A reminder to go to my movable type blog and re-subscribe there

Movable Type Blog will be my main home

Thu, 30 Oct 2003 16:55:14 GMT

One of the major reasons why I'm abandoning Radio is what just happened for the Nth number of times:
before I'm done writing my post, the window closes and refreshes, killing my post. I was writing to say I have posted in my Movable Type blog at Movable Theoblogical, and will rarely post here anymore, except for a few reminders of those who still subscribe here to change their RSS listing for me over to my MT feed.

Another Cluetrain-like Rant

Sat, 18 Oct 2003 19:41:55 GMT

A fairly substantial and important rant , if I can say so myself. I did it over on my MT blog , entitled Cluetrain and Theoblogical

Lessig in Wired 11.11: The New Road to the White House

Sat, 18 Oct 2003 19:17:17 GMT

Great piece in WIRED by Lessig on blogs and poliics

A managed community works about as well as a managed economy. So the challenge is to find a way to build community without the community feeling built.

The article's message is that Open Source is what works. It seems the Church can learn here from the power of the movement in the software world.

...you will absolutely suffocate anything that you're trying to do on the Internet by trying to command and control it...

Part of how the Church, mostly in it's traditonal and established , denominational forms, does "command and control" is in systematically ignoring the open source nature of community. They have Web sites and web developers, but the conversations are lacking becuase they want to control them. The publishers avoid allowing the customers to "talk" about their products because they're afraid someone will trash them. Well, if the shoe fits.......On the otherhand, if the product is worthwhile, wouldn't we WANT to know how people are using it? Wouldn't this be the BEST endorsement, replacing the theological/marketing hype of resources with the stories of how these are actually being used successfully? There has yet to emerge an expectation among the resource producers that this content can become immersed in community, and even, as a result, partly if not largely produced by that community. But this would challenge, seemingly, the leadership.

community can't be broadcast. It gets built not from slick commercials squeezed onto a Web page, but from tools that enable, and thus inspire, hundreds of thousands of people to something that American politics has not seen in many years: hundreds of thousands of people actually doing something.

This again says something to the Church and her institutions. People actually DOING SOMETHING. Linking to efforts being created to address the common causes --- the "breadth" of which was not previously known until previously geographically and socially dispersed "pockets" of individuals discover each other's activities and conversations via Google and such, and then end up working together FTF.

Weblogsky - Reflections on Our Present Discontents

Sat, 18 Oct 2003 17:38:29 GMT

Weblogsky points to:

The Internet: Reflections on Our Present Discontents

In NetFuture, Stephen L. Talbott explores the impact of our thinking about the Internet, or perhaps our lack of the kind of thinking that puts it into the right perspective relative to our communal, social context. He argues that the supposed efficiency of the Internet should not be seen as a goal in itself, apart from our values, concluding that the Internet can be the expression of a healthy society – or society can become an unhealthy expression of the Internet. [Link] Discuss

"...we will have so easily and casually invited young people around the world into this new activity -- and no actual community will have done anything at all of the sort that was once required to create a place, the conditions, the cultural surroundings, the human context within which the activity occurs. The young people will have been lifted out of their communities and into this new recreation, not because some sort of rooted and coherent evolution of the communities is taking place, but simply because a worldless world is now at our fingertips and someone sitting alone in front of a screen came up with a workable combination of digital bits. The levity of it all -- the ease and thoughtlessness and disconnection and vapidity and grave cultural consequence -- these are what worry me. We have gotten ourselves into a situation where a teenager, with no real sense for what he is doing, can to one degree or another reprogram every community in our society."

posted by jon lebkowsky on 10/18/2003 07:39:13 AM | ~permalink~ | ~wiki~

Another inportant consideration for the Church. Net Community doesn't usually just happen. I've seen it treated that way. Stick up a bulletin board. I never got much traffic when I did that. It was only when I posted a good bit of ME (via Weblogs) that the comments and comradery came. People "found" me via Google and other Webloggers (as I mentioned earlier today). There is a definite value in having a real live group of people who are hospitable in the Net-sense; they have a welcoming, encouraging, exploration-encouraging sense of "dialogical tendency" to them; much in the same way that Churches practice in-person hospitality to make people feel welcome when they visit their services. And much in the same manner that visitors return when they experience a sense and air of excitement and care, the online sojourner will return to the places where there is BUZZ; and "place" seems alive and rip with expectation.

Resistance to Change Leads to Irrelevance

Sat, 18 Oct 2003 15:28:52 GMT

If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less --- General Eric Shinseki, Chief of Staff, U. S. Army

This is one of the quotes from a Tom Peters book shown in an ad I saw in WIRED yesterday. I thought it hit dead on the Church's technology problem.

Read it over on my MT blog

Check me out over in my MT Blog

Fri, 17 Oct 2003 16:37:11 GMT

Last night I added an entry here, and as has happened with increasingly regularity using Radio Userland, the window closed and I lost my post. So I did the entry over in my Movable Type blog. I'll be doing that as my regular routine until (and if) this ever gets resolved. Radio is about to lose me forever. If I hadn't done so much in Radio that I just can't find time to "convert" (ie. all the links to my internal articles using Radio's shortcut procedure --- enclosing the entry name in quotation marks), I'd have been long gone from Radio.

I'll be blogging this week over on my MT Blog

Sat, 11 Oct 2003 15:51:06 GMT

Starting today and for the next several days I'll be blogging in my MT Blog (Movable Theoblogical). RSS subscribers may want to add that change (Syndicate it). I may well just end up leaving it that way, I've been having so many wierd problems. So head on over (there's always a link here to the right)

The Right Christians

Fri, 10 Oct 2003 22:15:38 GMT

The sub-title of this site is a quote from Al Sharpton (who is unaffiliated with this site, but they liked what he said), which is this:

"It's time for the Chritian Right to meet the right Christians."

I like it as well. I found The Right Christians via Mike James' Tread Lightly on the Things of Earth blog, which I have added to my RSS feed and Blogroll.

Starting to understand Flash MX 2004 Actionscripting

Fri, 10 Oct 2003 16:14:18 GMT

The Flash books I mention below are 7, as follows:

2 O'Reilly books: Actionscript for Flash MX Second edition, and ActionsScript Cookbook.
Peachpit Press: Macromedia Flash MX Advanced
Flash MX Savvy (Sybex)
Flash MX Actionscript Bible (Wiley)
MaranGraphics/Hungry Minds "Visual" series: Flash Actionscript (just noticed it uses Flash 5 Actionscripting)
I also bought another O'reilly book, Amazon Hacks

I was in a hurry to find some immediate help on some MovieClip code I need to load a single frame from a movie into my "Placeholder Clip" that I put in my movie to hold the other swf files I am loading for each of the main sections of my site application. What I end up doing quite often is "borrowing" books from Amazon and/or Barnes and Noble, and if they turn out to be a "must have", I order them via Amazon and then return the copy (usually full price purchase) to the store. I figure that I support those stores well via coffee purchases (a usual step in the bookstore visit) and the books I end up keeping (like the WIRED: A Romance) I bought, or DreamweaverMX/FireworksMX Savvy, or Fireworks MX: From Zero to Hero, etc.

I also expect that soon I'll be set up at OSG to get some stuff via their Bookstore, and perhaps eventually get a Dev resource Budget to get useful reference and/or training books. I'm looking eagerly forward to getting my hands on the new Macromedia Training From The Source Books on Flash MX 2004 Pro and Flash MX ---one of the authors of Macromedia Flash MX 2004 ActionScript : Training from the Source, Derek Franklin, has a blog where he is planning to do some "preview" of some of that content in that book. (Right now he's working on the Macromedia/Microsoft browser change workaround made neccessary by the insane negotiations about the permissions of IE to "auto-load" embedded content (read bout that from Derek here

Flash Actionscript books

Fri, 10 Oct 2003 15:54:17 GMT

	I just picked up a whole slew of Flash books, specifically on Actioncript. In taking an online Lynda.com course on Flash MX 2004, I learned much, not the least of which was how powerful Actionscripting is. The new 2004 interface promises to be a good way to learn a bunch of Actionscript, with its "Forms Based" Flash app editor, and the components panel.

Radio new post text box refreshes before I'm done

Fri, 10 Oct 2003 15:51:37 GMT

Arghhhh! I just lost a post AGAIN! What's up with this? This is getting to be an epidemic. Radio userland's Editor seems to be going haywire. I may be becoming a MT blog only if this keeps up.