by Brian Gilham on September 8, 2006
After discussing the development of both Pink for October and my supplementary mini-site Men in Pink, Matthew Oliphant and I have decided our time would be better spent working together toward a common goal, rather than (unintentionally) potentially sabotaging each other’s work and damaging a worthwhile project.
To that end, I am the newest member of the P4O team, tasked with creating a page specifically for men. I’m working on turning MIP into something that can be integrated into Matthew’s newly re-designed site. Most of the elements will likely stay the same, but some tweaks and changes will be required.
I also plan on re-writing much of the content. Since MIP will now be a part of P4O, there’s no need to promote the project as such. Instead, I plan on including more information designed to educate men about breast cancer and, hopefully, point them toward resources which can help them deal with their own diagnosis, or someone else’s. There’s also been some brief talk about setting up a user forum, so the discussion can continue well past October. However, nothing has come of it thus far. Keep an eye out for more from the P4O camp. It’s a great project and one I’m extremely proud to helping out with.
Moving along, I would also like to draw attention to some recent work by Rich, over at nostrich.net. I’ll let him explain it best:
I’ve already stated my intent regarding Pink for October, but merely changing the colour of my blog will do little in the way of raising the awareness of breast cancer. So I’m going one step further and I hope you’ll help me.
I’ve made a guest account for this blog - I’ll tell you the details at the end - that I invite you all to log in to and write something. But not just anything. I’m looking for people with a story to tell. If you have anything to say about breast cancer, I want you to write about it. Be it an account of your own or someone dear to you’s experience, a sales pitch for donations, just your opinion about something relevant or even a fictional story that involves breast cancer in some way.
This is an idea both Matthew and I had separately for our respective sites (I even implemented it, sort of) but Rich has just gone ahead and done it. Go check it out and, if you feel so inclined, participate. It’s a great idea on his part and a great way to contribute to a worthy cause.
by Brian Gilham on July 15, 2006
Recently, Paul Stamatiou (Try to pronounce that three times fast!) was interviewed by Minic Rivera of The Blogging Times. Rivera has been asking a number of prominent bloggers the same question: Why do they blog?
After reading about the interview at Paul’s site, I began to consider the question myself. Like Paul, and many other writers, I find myself blogging for a number of different reasons.
The primary reason I blog is to keep my writing skills in shape. I have fancied myself a writer since an early age and have always kept a journal in one form or another. After spending two years learning about print journalism and writing for a variety of publications, I now find myself without a professional outlet for my craft. What better way to keep writing than to self-publish?
Of course, I also find blogging to be an excellent personal outlet. It gives me the opportunity to share my experiences and thoughts with an extremely large group of people. They say there is an audience for anything, as long as you make it worth people’s time.
Finally, I blog because I enjoy the connections it allows me to make with other people, online or otherwise. I have had some extremely interesting conversations and met some incredible people as a result of my exploits online and I value each of them. Getting a comment from a reader makes my day and I’m already becoming a stats-addict.
That’s where I’m coming from, but now I’m interested in what you guys have to say. For those of you with weblogs, why do you do it?
by Brian Gilham on July 10, 2006
Long-time readers of Ekonoline know that I have, in the past, had a tendency to take the site down and delete all of the old content. On a whim, usually predicated by a desire to move the site in a new direction or work with a new design, I would willingly delete weeks or months worth of content.
What was I thinking?
Thankfully, I have mended my ways, but not after having to suffer through some particularly moronic moments. The scary thing is, I suspect I’m not alone in this neurosis. I have seen many a site suffering from “delete-itis” and it makes me shake my head every time. We have permalinks for a reason, people.
Over the last couple of weeks, I have noticed a large number of the visitors coming to my site through portals like Technorati and Google have done so looking for old, archived posts. Unfortunately, much to their behest I’m sure, those posts no longer exist. A Technorati search for ‘ekonoline’ comes up with a number of results from my site. There’s only one problem, none of the results are current. Even worse, none of them even exist.
To my fellow bloggers, I implore you. Leave your content up, for the world to see. No matter what changes you make to your site, no matter how poorly-written your old posts may be, you never know when someone is going to come through, looking for something long-forgotten.