revjim.net

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Feedback

Sep 25th, 2009
by Jim Reverend.
21 comments

First of all, I’d like to point out the fact that, I love comments. Even if just a “me too” or an “I like this” or a “I disagree” or a “stop being a douche”. Just knowing that someone cared enough to read through something I’ve written makes me day.

Secondly, I’d prefer that you comment HERE on this site. When I write, a little stub get sent to LiveJournal. A notification also gets Tweeted. Friendfeed also picks it up. Facebook republishes my Friendfeed, but I also make it a point to “share” the link on my Facebook page too, so if there’s a photo you all get to see a snippet of it. Some of you subscribe via email, so you read it that way. Most importantly I want comments. And if that means you write it on a cocktail napkin and mail it to me, then so be it. But, if you can be troubled to leave them HERE then I benefit from the fact that other people will read what you’ve written and maybe have something to say about it too.

Thirdly, I’ve integrated lots of ways to login to leave a comment so that it’s easy. You can log in with Twitter, Facebook, Livejournal, Disqus, Yahoo, Google, or any OpenID provider.

Finally, I think my comments are broke right now, and this is a test to see if that is true.

Update: I figured out what was wrong with the comments. Feel free to leave one and test.

revjim RSS feeds

Dec 18th, 2008
by Jim Reverend.
No comments yet

All the cool kids use RSS Readers. I prefer Google Reader, but there are lots of others out there including Bloglines, Feedreader, and even LiveJournal. And, if you prefer a desktop application there are even more to choose from.

Whatever your feed reader of choice maybe, you’re going to need some feeds to stuff into it. So, I thought I’d take this moment to tell you about the Feeds offered here at revjim.net.

I write in a lot of places.

  • LiveJournal (life, micro blogging, one line updates announcing posts elsewhere)
  • Tumblr (links to thinks I like or find interesting)
  • Arranging Light (one daily (ha ha ha) photo of either experimental or portfolio quality work)
  • Flickr (all of my published photos regardless of quality or usage intent)
  • Twitter (micro blogging)
  • revjim.net (everything else)

If you subscribe to any of those services, then you probably just want to subscribe to me in that service. However, to make life easier on the rest of you, I’ve created special RSS feeds. They are powered by FeedBurner and they will be updated to follow the particular content being presented regardless of where I happen to be writing it or what tool I happen to be using that week to do so.

Isn’t that nice of me? So, without further delay I offer you, 100% free, unabridged, unrated, and with the directors cut included with every purchase, the following feeds.

revjim world
[feed]
This is for the true revjim fan. If you need all the revjim you can get and you need it now, this is the feed for you. It’s non-stop revjim action. It has all of my entries from revjim.net, as well as my entries on life from LiveJournal. It also includes my daily (ha ha ha) photo from Arranging Light as well as all the links I post on Things Jim Likes. I do all the work to make sure you don’t get double posts and that you are presented with links to the most appropriate location. Yeah, I’m a nice guy like that. Additionally, for the RSS feeder challenged, this feed can be subscribed to via email so you get an email once a day with my postings from the previous 24 hours.

revjim site
[feed]
This contains the entries from this site. This site is basically used to house anything I don’t put somewhere else. Make sense, right. As it stands today, this means everything except photographs, random links to interesting sites, and more personal or local entries about my life. It is currently powered by WordPress and self hosted. If this should change the feed will change with it.

revjim links
[feed]
This contains all of my random links to interesting sites. It’s currently powered by Tumblr. If this should change, the feed will change with it.

revjim life
[feed]
This contains all of my posts about my life. It is currently powered by LiveJournal. This feed contains a filter of the posts on LiveJournal to ensure that you don’t get all of the little updates that I post there to tell you that I’ve posted in other places. It currently does NOT contain the secured posts I make, though I hope that will change in the future. It also does not currently contain the Life posts that I sometimes make on revjim.net. As soon as I get a few things straightened out, I will make sure that it does. If I should change my publishing location, this feed will change with it.

arranging light
[feed]
This is actually the feed from my Arranging Light site. It contains a daily (ha ha ha) photo of either portfolio quality work or something new and experimental. It is powered by WordPress and is self hosted. If this should change, the feed with change with it.

tell me where I can put it

Dec 12th, 2008
by Jim Reverend.
No comments yet

In the long, drawn out battle of where to put what when it comes to my online writing, it seems the dust has begun to settle with the exception of one remaining factor: life.

As I see it, there are really only 2 options.

  1. My own website powered by WordPress
  2. LiveJournal

The big deciding factor between the two is whether I want to write in public or private, and how much I want to cater to lazy people.

First, the lazy factor.

I’ve found that, for entries about Life, I get far more comments in LiveJournal than I do on the same entry posted on my website. It seems that LiveJournal users are either too lazy to click the link and read at my site, or are too lazy to bother to comment once they do.

Question 1:
Do I want to cater to this? Do I care?

Secondly, there is security.

If I’m going to really get deep into the “locked entry” writing, LiveJournal makes the most sense because it has tons of features in this arena. It means that some people will be excluded if they don’t have a LiveJournal account or know how to use OpenID. It also means I’d lost a lot of control over the look, layout, and functionality.

If i just intend to write something locked once in a great while, I can find some other means for distribution or use WordPress password protection and not really worry about it. In which case, I could just write on my own website like I’ve been doing and call it good.

Question 2:
So I ask you, do you think I write enough about my personal life? Am I candid enough in public? So you think I’m too candid in public? Should many of my life entries have a lot more filter on them?

I’m really twisted over which way to go on this. Your comments are appreciated.

containment issues

Sep 17th, 2008
by Jim Reverend.
3 comments

Yes, it’s that time again. That time where I bitch about my web presence and how it annoys me.

I want this website to die. I should elaborate “this website” since I have no idea where you’re reading this from. I want revjim.net to die.

The name is nice. I’ve had it forever. It ties my past with my present even if it often gets confused with the singer of the Reverend Horton Heat or some character in a TV Show, Taxi, which I’ve never seen. I guess I just want the content to die.

No. That isn’t it. There is some really good content here. There is also some real crap that I’d like to keep for historical purposes but, that I don’t really have any desire to showcase. So I guess I want the content to live, I just want the container to die.

Yeah. That’s it. I want the container to die. I want all of the content to be spread out and sorted and placed into nice neat little stacks.

I’m well on my way to building that first stack: Photography. I’ve got my photoblog, Arranging Light, and I’ve got my professional site, DJamesPhoto.com, should I ever choose to use it for anything useful.

There are other buckets of Daniel I’d like to have.

1) Photos (as mentioned above)
2) Friends: things only my friends will care about. Memes and surveys, party announcements, etc. The social side of an online presence.
3) Technical Matters: I’ve really slacked here lately, with so many other things going on. I want to write about programming, and software, and gadgets, and mobile technology, and all of these things. You know, just like everyone else. I want to do so with my name on it proudly so that, in looking for a job, I could point someone there.
4) Life, Love, Art: I want to write poetry, record songs, share photos, and talk about my troubles and joys as a 30-something male. I want to talk about fatherhood and married life. I want to provide insight into my own life in a touching way that is meaningful to others, and maybe meet some new people through that.

#1 is cared for.

#2 is difficult because there are so many social sites and I have friends scattered amongst them all. I’m inclined to either just use LiveJournal, just use Facebook, or have my own website that syndicates in full to these websites.

#3 is simple enough. Make a website. If you build it they will come. This is complicated, however, by the fact that the majority of my existing work in this category is buried somewhere in the cruft of revjim.net. At one point in the past I moved everything from LiveJournal into revjim.net and that was a mistake. If I could undo that, I’d be headed in the right direction.

#4 is simple enough too. Make a website. If you build it they will come. The tough part is deciding where to make it. Should it part of revjim.net or should it be it’s own thing. It makes the most sense to put it all out on the line in one place (maybe with different categories). But, at the same time, do I really want a prospective employer reading about diaper changes, nudity with wreckless abandon, and sappy poetry about the shadow of a tree in the moonlight?

I know. I’ve been here before. But, if you have any thoughts, I’d love to hear them. Even you, Justin, when you say “Just Write”.

Tweet Digests Suspended

May 10th, 2008
by Jim Reverend.
23 comments

It seems that more people hated them than there were people who liked them. So, at least for now, the tweet digests being sent by LoudTwitter (my posts titled “yesterday, in brief”) have been suspended. If this pleases you, please feel free to sound your cheers in the comments below. If you would prefer to see them still, let me know. If there is enough interest, I’ll set up a special feed for it.

revjim.net at WordPress 2.5

Apr 1st, 2008
by Jim Reverend.
4 comments

The software running this blog has been upgraded to WordPress 2.5. If you are a wordpress user, you should do the same. The new admin interface is very nice.

Tweeting

Mar 12th, 2008
by Jim Reverend.
4 comments

Twitter doesn’t allow alteration of its privacy settings on a one-by-one basis so, for now, my entire Twitter is set to Private. Additionally, LoudTwitter, the service I use to get my Tweets to show up here once a day, doesn’t support Private Twitters so you won’t be seeing them here any more either. This means that if you were secretly following me before, you’re going to have to step up and admit it so I can approve you or just stop reading for the time being.

I’m going to have to find some convoluted way to handle this eventually. I like Twitter for the mass SMS nature of it, but, for real microblogging, it’s not quite the best of breed. And since I know very few people using it the way I do, it sort of defeats the purpose for me. Regardless of where I end up, I intend to make sure Twitter gets a copy of it so if you prefer to use it you won’t be left out. See how nice I am?

contact info

Feb 24th, 2008
by Jim Reverend.
No comments yet

There are a million ways to contact me, but sometimes, it helps to go over them again. Other than the usual phone, SMS, and email, there are the following methods in order of preference.

Video/Audio Chat:
Skype Me: jimreverend
MSN Messenger: jim@revjim.net
Yahoo Messenger: jim_reverend
Gizmo: jimreverend

Text Chat:
GTalk: revjim
Yahoo Messenger: jim_reverend
MSN Messenger: jim@revjim.net
AIM: reverendjim78

See ya ’round.

poll revelations

Feb 21st, 2008
by Jim Reverend.
3 comments

A special thanks to those of you who took yesterday’s Poll on your revjim.net reading desires as well as those of you who took my LiveJournal poll regarding content separation from the day before. I don’t have much to offer except my thanks and my art. So… THANK YOU. I will be emailing the revjim.net readers and making a locked post for you LJ people in the near future with a coupon code that will allow you to get some prints from my online gallery at cost.  It’s not a huge savings since they are already dirt cheap, but it’s the best I can do right now.

Now to interpret the results.

The vast majority of respondents to the revjim.net poll were LiveJournal users. This means that either most of my revjim.net readers are actually LiveJournal users, or that the non-LiveJournal users are either less vocal, or just don’t care.

Additionally, ALL respondents indicated that there were interested in my life. And at least half of them indicated that they were interested in my photography. This means that the majority of my programming minded, technical readers from days of yore have either gone away due to lack of content, or are less vocal, or just don’t care.

The remaining respondents that don’t use LiveJournal are either VERY special cases and represent a statistical anomaly or they use RSS readers. This formulates the answer to the first question.

The vast majority of the readers that are interested in my personal life are on LiveJournal.

This means I can very easily either move my personal life content directly over to LiveJournal, convert revjim.net to a personal life ONLY type blog, or create another domain entirely to host the writings about my personal life, as long as they can be fed into LiveJournal. Of course I still have to figure out how I want it, but at least it’s just a matter of personal taste.

Now, moving on to the LiveJournal poll I learn that everyone wants something different. Only a handful of people responded there but I’m pretty sure I didn’t get the same answer twice. So, that allows me to formulate the answer to the second question.

The vast majority of people who read my writing want it in different ways. 

This means no matter what I do someone isn’t going to like it, so I can basically do whatever I want.

So there you have it. After all that time, effort, thought, and two user polls, I’ve reached this grand conclusion:

I should do whatever I want.

Man.. I’m a genius.

Expect some changes. I just don’t know what yet. Maybe I need to register a new domain… or 10.

revjim.net reading survey

Feb 20th, 2008
by Jim Reverend.
3 comments

As you may have noticed, revjim.net, and my entire online presence is having a makeover. While, ultimately, I’m going to do what suits me best, with some information from you regarding how and why you read this site, I can make much more informed decisions.

Please take a moment to take this quick survey  and provide me with a little information. There are only two questions and I promise it won’t take long.

revjim.net reading survey

Thank you!

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