I am not certain if this is a good idea or not, but I decided to set up a "work blog" as I set off on my new path as a digital library architect. The lines between this blog and that blog are fuzzy — most lines are, in my eyes — so bear with me. I've never been a prolific writer — it's always a chore, an activity I simultaneously want to do more of, and do better, and also struggle mightily with. (It's the public school education? HAR HAR!) But even so, the posts here may slow yet more. Or maybe that will be true of the new blog. We shall see.

I've found that microblogging has largely filled the blogging gap for me; I'm more comfortable, somehow, posting smaller, more easily digestible "thoughtlets" via Twitter/identi.ca/Facebook. Perhaps I've succumbed to attention deficit disorder, flitting from one tiny undeveloped idea to the next. It's probable but I digress.

If you're interested, you can follow along as I grapple with questions about digital library architecture. Comments are most welcome, both here and there, as always.

On Monday I woke up with a very mild and very annoying bronchial infection. Doctor Me prescribed two days of rest, relaxation, and chicken soup. Where "chicken soup" is "finally dropping the unreasonably expensive and embarrassingly outdated web hosting package at Speakeasy and transferring all of my domains and content to Dreamhost," that is. I am now paying less than a third of what I had been for a hell of a lot more features. And, I must say, administering DNS records, transferring files, and upgrading long-neglected software is rather amusing when you're loopy and feverish.

My experiences thus far with Dreamhost are very promising. I'm impressed but perhaps that's because I've been in the web hosting ghetto for so long. I understand there will very likely be downtime and sluggishness — that I can deal with. Being shackled to 1999 technologies for $30/mth, while my e-mails go unanswered, not so much.

I upgraded both Technosophia and my wife's blog to the latest WordPress release (2.3) from something ridiculous like 2.0.3. In doing so, I also switched to the svn upgrade configuration Ryan Eby detailed a while back.

I crossed my fingers and it turns out the unAPI server plug-in still works in WP2.3. Huzzah! Not sure if it works in the 2.1 or 2.2 branches, but I suspect it does.

A number of folks have responded to the Liminal Librarian's original meme asking for a sampling of five non-library blogs folks read.

Here are some of mine:

1. dmiessler's "grep understanding knowledge" – He writes about society, programming, UNIX administration, and his personal life. I enjoy both his writing style and the diversity of topics he covers. His recent piece about the passing of his grandfather resonated strongly with me, as I've been struggling with having lost my own, one and only, grandfather in December.
2. Slow Leadership – Gosh, this is sort of a dirty secret, but I am ridiculously interested in management. It mystifies me, and it's a skill I'd like to gain and hone someday. Effective management and leadership are tasks I never expected to have an interest in, but I've been drawn more and more to them the past few years. Slow Leadership contains a number of insights that I have found quite useful in making sense of how (good) administrators do what they do, and I try to take some of their advice to heart.
3. The Rails Way – I'm a programmer by day, and most of my web application work is in the Rails framework. The Rails Way is written by two Rails committers who know the conventions and good patterns inside and out. Here's how it works: folks submit Rails applications they are working on, and these two rip them apart (in a very constructive and nice way), giving code samples along the way. It's very instructive. To wit, I've taken more notes on their suggestions than I can shake a stick at.
4. The Seattle Times – Okay, it's not really a blog, but I do read it in my aggregator. And what can I say? I can't let go. I still feel like Seattle is my home.
5. Slog (NSFW) – The Slog is the blog of Seattle's alternative weekly newspaper, The Stranger. It's an odd combination of gutter humor, satire, social commentary, political rants, and philosophical bombast. Where else can you read about deep-fried, beer-battered, bacon-wrapped, spray-cheese-filled hotdogs, analysis of the Alaskan Way viaduct vote, the recent Garrison Keillor flap, and the latest eating establishments in Capitol Hill (Seattle, not D.C.)?

I've finally gotten around to updating the unAPI plugin for WordPress so that it fits into the WordPress plugin architecture, making it simple to install and maintain. I'm calling it version 1.0 since it's the first substantial release of the plugin since I got involved. Just unzip that sucker (or check the code out) to wp-content/plugins/unapi and do the rest via the administration pages, including activation and identifier configuration.

I updated the plugin page and imported it into the svn repo hosted at wp-plugins.org.

This was my first WP plugin, so I would appreciate any feedback. All you folks that are using it should try stripping out the old version (which requires hacking some theme files) and plugging this in.

I've decided to use this blog partly to write about work-related points of interest but also to futz around with blogging technologies and such. 

Thanks to a couple of very helpful posts and some neat WordPress hacks

http://www.wallandbinkley.com/quaedam/?p=59 
http://www.wallandbinkley.com/quaedam/?p=50 

Technosophia is now unAPI-1.0- and COinS-PMH-compliant!  Under each post there are shortcut links to view the Dublin Core, MODS, and other unAPI formats (should I add them in at a later date).

It started dawning on me today just how useful unAPI might turn out to be, mostly because I re-read Dan Chudnov's slides for the first time seeing his talk live at code4libCon '06.

Addendum the first: This is also OpenSearch 1.1-compliant, thanks to: http://www.williamsburger.com/wb/archives/opensearch-v-1-1.  Excellent.

Addendum the second: I'm also PURL-friendly – http://purl.org/maint/linkpurl.html.  Well, at least if you have a friendly client (read: not IE).