Pedro Assunção » blogging

Trying out the android app

Pedro Assuncao — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 01:39:17 +0000

So I come back from the road trip and what’s they’d first thing I do? Install the wordpress android app so I can blog anywhere, hehe. I kind of decided to use my blog as it was intended (as a web log), not necessarily as people see them these days (as places to write longer pieces of text that cannot be tweeted).

Peace

Good blogging desktop client for mac (osx)

Pedro Assuncao — Wed, 26 May 2010 08:13:47 +0000

When i think about my mind’s typical excuses not to write on this blog, the one that pops up the fastest is usually the lack of a good blogging desktop client for mac.

I know, i know, i should just shut the hell up, use WordPress’ web admin interface, and quit whining. But i have a big problem when it comes to writing: i’m lazy. Anything that takes more than a few clicks in order to start writing will make me want to fire up my desktop PC and play something. I once bought a desktop blogging client called Ecto (which i still use, from times to times), but i think it’s no longer maintained properly since illumineX acquired it from it’s maker – Adriaaan Tijsseling – in the spring of 2008. And to be honest it never felt quite awesome, complaining all the time about the malformed-ness of my youtube embedded code.

So i was wondering if any of you – the 2 people that actually read my blog – know about a nicer (WP) desktop client for the mac.

In other – completely unrelated – news: I have my own parachute rig now. Here are some pics:

DSCF0866 by nocivus

DSCF0867 by nocivus

Irony of searches and one iPad visit to my blog

Pedro Assuncao — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 10:47:46 +0000

Just a couple of pictures this time.

The first one is about something i noticed i was doing, while searching for a code fragment. One could call it ironic, trying to find “find”

The other is proof of my amazement by the fact that there was one person who visited my blog using an iPad

UPDATE: Turns out i was looking at a 2 day period only. This month there have been actually 4 iPad visits, hehe

Other (probably intelligent) wordpress plugins to install

Pedro Assuncao — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 11:24:36 +0000

Following up on my post about RAM (or lack of it), i decided to install a proper wordpress plugin to cache most of the stuff in static HTML files. It’s called WP-SuperCache and i’m hoping it’s really super

But now i cannot but wonder if i shouldn’t – somehow – find a way to have nginx serving these static files instead of passing the request to apache. I’m already caching static JS, CSS, and image files with nginx, so that would probably make sense.

In other news, installed a plugin that serves a different WordPress theme for mobile phones. It’s called wordpress-mobile-edition, in case you are interested.

Almost time to return

Pedro Assuncao — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:23:07 +0000

With less than 20 days until my return to the country where the sun does shine (Portugal), i can’t help but thinking more and more about these 3 years in Holland. With that in mind, i decided to write a really long post on my experiences here in the Netherlands during this time. For the time that i have left i will be gathering thoughts and ideas on what to write but you can bet it will potentially offend a lot of people.

In the meantime i want to express my sympathy towards Fanta lovers. I feel your pain when it comes to Fanta Lemon

Stay tuned.

I really hate intensedebate right now

Pedro Assuncao — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 07:26:57 +0000

For those who happen to have a blog (and who doesn’t these days?) you are probably aware of intensedebate. It’s basically a system of threaded comments that you can plug into your site and take advantage of… well, now that I look back after uninstalling it I really don’t see an advantage, but I’m sure there are some.

In any case, one of the things I was hopping for – when I installed it as a plugin for wordpress here on Sugus – was that it would allow me to have open comments (i.e. no captcha) but still protect me from spam. I mean, they do deal with a lot of comments, so they are probably good against spam also, right?. Not really. This morning I checked my comments area and found 120+ spam comments, most in Russian. I am an international kind of guy but I’m pretty sure I don’t know that many Russian speaking people.

Also, for the past month, I have been getting a lot of these spam comments to moderate. It seems that no matter how many I mark as spam there will always be new ones (again, Russian mostly).

But I digress, so my point is: If you are going to make a system to manage comments, make damn sure you figure out clever ways of dealing with spam or no one will ever use them. At least, to be a little constructive here, give the proper tools to the site owners who will moderate the comments, like allowing certain domains from posting comments (for instance, I noticed a lot of these comments came from different accounts at the same Russian email domain).

And this is just my small blog, I can only imagine what bigger blog owners go through. Maybe they don’t use intense debate and rely on captcha like I will once again…

Blog usability tips

Blog usability tips

Pedro Assuncao — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:00:03 +0000

I recently came across a really useful article about blog usability tips. I still think the best tip for any blogger is to write about things he/she is passionate about, but these can give you a bit of a boost presenting your content.

Here’s my take on some of their tips:

Pick a topic for your blog. Yes, if you write about one topic only. If, like me, you write about a wide variety of subjects then I don’t think it’s so relevant. What I would add is to categorize/tag your posts very well; That will make them easier to find and subscribe to only certain aspects of your writing.
Encourage comments. Absolutely. Discussion will keep your readers engaged, so that’s something you definitely should allow and push for.
Make it easy to subscribe. An RSS link in a visible location is definitely a plus to help people follow you. The subscribe by email thing, I’m not so sure. I don’t think that many people read blogs by email, but feel free to disagree
Keep posts short and to the point. This is important. No one likes to read long chunks of text. If you really have a lot to say then…
- …Use subheadings for long posts.
Link abundantly. Now, this is one I am tempted to disagree with. Depending on the appearance of your blog (CSS styles) this can make it unreadable (a lot of different text colors and styles, changing every other word). Also, too many links will just make for people to get tired of it and only following the first two or three, when the last one could be much more interesting. I would say: Link wisely.
Make headlines descriptive. Important but – again – don’t exaggerate. If you do, your readers will be disappointed that you are not “advertising what you are selling”.
Include a list of related posts beneath each post. It will suggest other things your users might find interesting. For the same reason, you should also…
- …Include a Top Posts section and…
- …Include a Recent Posts section in your sidebar.
Present your real viewpoint. Share your opinions on the things you write about. That will make your blog more personal, hence more interesting than plain raw facts/theories.
Reward commentators for commenting. Everyone has an ego. And every ego likes to be fed. Enough said
Post often. But make sure you don’t trade quality for quantity. It’s better to write less stuff that is really good, than crappy things more often. Think about how many people read Paul Graham’s essays? And how often does he come out with a new one?

You can read the full article here. It includes links to popular wordpress plugins (if your blog, like mine, happens to use wordpress), more tips, and a lot more comments on each of them.

I have also found this post by Tim Ferriss to be very interesting. He talks not only about design aspects, but also blogging tools, post frequency, best practices, and a lot more.

Using the Posterous Bookmarklet – Posterous Help

Pedro Assuncao — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 13:57:22 +0000

via posterous.com

Posterous now has a cool bookmarklet to ease the posting of websites, videos, photos (etc.) that you come across on the web.

Just drag it to your bookmarks toolbar and start posting what you find

Cool stuff, guys. I love posterous more and more

Posted via web from nocivus’ ramblings