Couple of bits of feedback from last night’s post on weblog ontologies. Bill Seitz points out that his Wikilog does in fact have a hierarchical view, the user has to enable it though (via their user settings when they visit Bill’s site). For example the post of his I used as an example yesterday has … Read more

I’ve been jotting down re-design ideas in my trusty paper notebook. On the Web there is an unwritten maxim: learn (steal?) from the best. So I decided to review some of the weblog ontologies/taxonomies on the Web that I admire. My method of review is informal and non-judgmental. I try to illustrate my findings with … Read more

Morality in art has always been a fascination of mine. And by art I mean literature, music, movies – the works. Some weblogs even. A favourite artist of mine is the great Canadian pianist Glenn Gould. One of Gould’s theories was that music should be judged on moral considerations rather than aesthetic ones. In an … Read more

I had written a long post describing my motivations for writing my novel, but on reflection I won’t publish it because it belongs more to my personal journal than on a public website. That is to say, it’s probably only relevant to me. But to sum up in a sentence: my main reasons for writing a … Read more

In November 2003 I embarked on a new adventure: writing a novel. I took part in Nanowrimo, an annual novel-writing challenge that takes place every November. Nanowrimo stands for ‘National Novel Writing Month’ and the task is to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days. I first discovered Nanowrimo just 3 days before the 2003 … Read more

What’s your primary content? I felt a bit guilty about dissing Jason Kottke’s new design yesterday. I didn’t mean to be negative, actually I admire that he’s put all his content in one feed. It has its merits – for example readers only need to subscribe to the one RSS feed. The drawback though is … Read more

I’m thinking about re-designing my weblog. While I was busy writing my novel in November, others were exploring the boundaries of the weblog form. Dave Winerre-designed his hugely influential blog, Mark Pilgrim did a re-design (and curiously, Dave and Mark’s blogs have ended up looking pretty similar – or maybe it’s just me!). Dave is … Read more

I’ve released the 0.9 version of my Nanowrimo novel, which I wrote in 27 days during November 2003. Apparently there were 3680 people all over the world crazy enough to successfully complete the Nanowrimo contest in 2003. So here’s my effort: Dirtside to Spaceside (PDF – 344KB) Shortly I will begin to write some thoughts … Read more

The world premiere of the Lord of the Rings was held in Wellington, New Zealand today – my hometown. Peter Jackson, the New Zealand director of the Rings trilogy, is from Wellington. He’s the King of Wellington as far as I’m concerned. And NZ’s capital city turned on a beautiful sunny day today for the … Read more

I’ve published my Nanowrimo novel on Read/Write Web as an HTML file. The PDF version will have to wait till Monday. I tried to use the Adobe Online Conversion service, but I couldn’t get the file size under 600KB for some reason (which is odd because the Word file is only 350KB). So I’ll use … Read more

50,060 words. Completed in 27 days. The new name of my novel is: Dirt-side to Space-side. This is a NASA term for the Interplanetary Internet. I’ll post a PDF version of my novel in the next day or two (once I correct the spelling mistakes). Looks like I’m the second Nanowrimo winner from Wellington, New … Read more

The penultimate day. 48,011 words (ch. 54 onwards). One more night’s writing to go. I think I’m bringing together all the threads in time. I can’t wait to finish now, although I’ll probably miss it once I am finished. But I won’t miss the late nights and early mornings. It’s 1am as I write this. … Read more

November 25, 2003 46,253 words. Here’s the latest (chapter 49 onwards). Two more nights to go and I’ll be finished. Yesterday was quite difficult and I wasn’t satisfied with my writing. I couldn’t get in The Zone. No flow mojo. Thankfully today was easier and I was back in rhythm. I even went back and … Read more

42,448 words – nearly 85% done. The end of chapter 46 is here, then I started a new page for chapter 47 onwards. While walking in the local park today, feeding the ducks on a lovely sunny breezy Sunday with my wife and two-year old daughter, I had some ideas for the ending of my … Read more

Saturday morning as I write this. I will have more words to contribute later this weekend, but for now I’m at 39,564 words. Here’s the latest (ch. 44 onwards). Originally published on ReadWriteWeb (archived copy)