All this time I thought I was putting together an online
magazine when in reality I was creating a "BLOG" - weblogs
seem to be all the rage now.
For the past couple of years we have been using a WIKI for our internal
thoughts. It has made an incredible difference to our geographically
spread people - first with Lineo (and the spread was literally worldwide)
and more recently with Belcarra and the fact that we all work from home
and live a couple of miles apart at least.
Since July 1994 (p.s. - I
hate frames, but the use in this case is necessary) I've been creating a mostly monthly archive (with some embarrassing
gaps of many months) of what has gone on in my business life. Some have sidebars on personal items and some
have interjections by others I've
encouraged to speak in the same forum - the Digital Rag. In reality, it
seems that it pretty much qualifies as a BLOG - since I've always made it a
point to edit my text online (I've just saved the above text to the site
and linked it in as the October Digital Rag) and solicit feedback while
writing it (and afterwards too) albeit by e-mail instead of online
comments.
It may be that, despite the fact that I have not used or created
special software, I was one of the first to engage in this most public of
diaries.
In fact, only yesterday (Oct 1, 2002) did I actually look up the word
weblog and take a look at others' works in this area or the selection of
software that has grown up to make the process easier (or at least more
consistent).
As far as software is concerned, I started out using "vi" the
most typical text editor on the UNIX (or Linux) operating systems for
those of us who program close to the bare metal. I won't claim to have
invented any particular construct, but you'll find the use of the
<^>v symbols for "previous, up, next, down" in the menu
structure as the issues evolve - a prelude to the text and graphic menu
items you'll find in today's Digital Rag.
In case it has not become obvious from my writings, I freely admit that
I'm lazy. Creating HTML pages using a text editor was not much different
from creating books and documentation using TeX, except that the post
processor for TeX would do things like pagenation and chapterization and
tables of contents and all the other things that were really drudge work.
Doing this by hand grew wearing quickly. In late 1997 I went over to the
dark side and started using Microsoft's FrontPage, mostly due to its
ability to create a menu structure with a simple drag-drop interface. I'm
writing this using FrontPage 2000 (on Windows 2000 running under VMWare on
RedHat 7.2 - I'm not all that far into the dark side ;)
Many of my first web writings are about the goings on around our ISP,
Wimsey(.com), the first Canadian commercial ISP. Along with some items
drawn from my readings (web and print) and a few articles by people who
were customers (and friends), the Digital Rag of the time really formed a
diary of the travails of the early days of the commercial Internet in
Canada. We dealt with phone number changes, billing errors, new people,
and all manner of minutiae. Since then they have given insight into our
new business as well as some more "basic Internet" pieces and
other "thoughts of the day".
Most recently I have branched things out to two different arenas -
this, the continuation of the original Digital Rag, my personal diary
area; and the Digital
Rag Too under my Pacific Data Capture web site - now aimed at the
business side of things.
I'm going to look at some of the BLOGs out there and think about
putting up different software to do the dirty deed of getting my writing
demon satiated. In the mean time I'm also going to continue writing - but
might put a date at the point where I pick up an article after going to
bed or a meeting or something...
happy reading! In the mean time I'm going to do things my way - posting
new stuff at the bottom, not the top - at least in this month anyway.
October 4, 2002
I'm on a mail list to do
with Copyright reform in Canada. Today I received a pointer to a newly
published Canadian government report at: http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/SSG/rp00880e.html
This is to me, a follow-on to the official objection I've been working
on for the Blank Media Levy proposal. See my page
for more details and links. I've been called by a number of people about
the effects this new copyright reform proposal will cause. I'll keep you
informed. In the mean time, you might check out this
report and any of the other links from here.
October 15, 2002
We (objectors to the media levy proposal) have all received copies of
the CPCC case documents. The problem is that it seems CPCC has put in
stuff that they received under a non disclosure from some of the objectors
- such NDA that should/could/would prohibit them (CPCC) from sending it
out to us, despite the fact that some (I for one) have signed our own NDAs
with CPCC and the Board. At this point I don't know whether I'm
allowed to read a couple of the myriad of documents I have (79 Megs of PDF
files!!!) or not.
Whatever the outcome, I've got a ton of reading to do before putting my
own case files together for November 22 - then have to make 10 paper
copies of everything and forward it to the Copyright Board - and make sure
all the other objectors and the CPCC in particular get a copy
electronically. Lots of fun, and things are just getting busy around here
as far as business is concerned - wish the levy stuff had gone on its
original schedule and we'd be over by now :(
I just received an inquiry about what an individual can do about the
Media Levy at this late date. Following is the reply - reproduced here
because the subject is near and dear to my heart and I really think more
people should get involved with what is going on:
