Tinkering

If you’ve visited the site in the last two days, you might have noticed an “Index of Verbosity” at the bottom of the left sidebar listing the total numbers of posts, words, and comments for Via Negativa, together with some text explaining that the comments date back only to April 1, 2006. This afternoon I decided that the sidebar looked entirely too cluttered, so I moved most of that information into the footer instead. The numbers will be automatically updated everytime I post with the help of a software plugin called GeneralStats. And this evening I figured out the proper lines of PHP to use so I could put the Akismet spam-comment counter down there, too — a fun but frightening figure that grows by about 1500 a day. It didn’t seem fair to carry a free ad for Akismet and none for the many other fine plugins deployed here, though I did like that pale blue button as a visual element anchoring the sidebar. I’ll have to keep my eye out for a suitable replacement.

There’s a special joy that comes from making very minor changes to one’s blog, especially when it involves the successful deployment of complex tools and procedures that one barely understands. If you’re a blogger, I suspect you know what I’m talking about. Blogging is, above all, a superior form of procrastination. But what do you do when you want to procrastinate on blogging? Simple: you tinker with the blog.

3 Replies to “Tinkering”

  1. This cracked me up…..you’re such a geek, Dave(in the nicest possible way) and I’m such a luddite. I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about which is why my blog is so dull…..funnily enough blogger was blogging for idiots, I could manage to do stuff there (though I’m not sure I ever did much) wordpress caters for geeks and I’m out of my league…….shame you can’t give me a tutorial. Anyways, the procrastination remark made me laugh.

  2. I’m not a real geek, but I play one on the internet. I’m like the guy who manages to replace the engine on his old jalopy with a rebuilt one, with a lot of cursing and sweating – not the guy who actually rebuilds engines.

    And needless to say, your blog isn’t dull, because it has great content. Go browse the blogs at the 9rules network if you want to see examples of great-looking, tricked-out blogs that make you go ooh and ah but rarely make you click the subscribe button.

    Anyway, if you ever need assistance on anything bloggish, don’t hesitate to ask. I’m always happy to help anyone on my blogroll, to the extent of my fairly limited abilities.

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