Tagged: meta

Changing Theme

(Hopefully the last naval gazing post of the year...)

I asked if using a WordPress theme to emulate the Svbtle theme was unethical.

The results were mixed - you can see some of the discussion on HackerNews and AppDotNet (visual view).

Broadly speaking, people fell into four categories.

  • People who had never heard of Svbtle and didn't see a problem with using a similar theme.
  • People who had heard of Svbtle and didn't like the ethos behind the platform, so didn't like the theme.
  • People who were vociferous in their hatred of anyone who tried to impinge on a design classic sent from the gods themselves.
  • People who just couldn't give a shit.

As I said before, I didn't realise that Svbtle was such a big deal in certain circles. Some online communities tend towards the perpetual drama of high-school. I can't be bothered with that - it's the same reason I don't get involved in Wikipedia and other cliques.

So over the next few days, I'll be changing my theme to something that keeps the simplicity of Svbtle, adds some features that I felt were missing (like archive), and - hopefully - prevents anyone from having a hissy-fit online that I'm betraying the brotherhood and that they've been deeply mislead by my style-sheet.

Is It Wrong To Use A Svbtle Theme?

For the last few months, I've been using the WordPress theme wp-svbtle. Even with my limited design sense, I think it looks rather spiffy.

Recently though, I've had a few people on HackerNews and Twitter criticising me of "ripping off" Svbtle and accusing me of trying to defraud readers into thinking I was part of the Svbtle network.

While nothing could be further from the truth, I think an explanation is in order.

For those who don't know, Svbtle.com is a "curated collection of great people who have things to say." It was created by Dustin Curtis as a self-written blogging platform, which then morphed into a network of bloggers.

I had no idea of this when I first stumbled upon the Svbtle look and feel. As far as I was aware, the various blogs I were seeing were all just using a common theme - Svbtle.

So, I searched Alta Vista for "Wordpress svbtle" and found GravityOnMars' Svbtle theme along with several other clones.

As long time readers of my blog know, it's gone through many reincarnations - but its most recent designs have leant towards simplicity. Svbtle almost makes a fetish out of simplicity. As a devotee of de Bono's book on the subject I decided to use the theme.

It was only after I received some complaints, that I took a better look at the original Svbtle blog post. It says:

The goal is simple: when you see the Svbtle design, you should know that the content is guaranteed to be great. Network bloggers are encouraged to keep quality high at the expense of everything else.

Some people think that an invite only network for bloggers is somehow an evil conspiracy, I don't. It's perfectly acceptable to restrict access to you network - I don't have a problem with that.

A lot of words have been spilled on the issue of whether it's right to so blatantly copy another person's design. See, for example:

I don't count myself part of the Silicon Valley "scene" or blogging "set" - so I don't feel that I'm well qualified to talk about the culture of building upon others' work and how it relates to the hacker/blogger ethos.

There are three broad points I want to make.

  1. I am not trying to make it look like I'm part of the exclusive Svble group. For a starter, I had no idea that it existed as an entity when I first used this theme. Furthermore, I doubt most people - except the most obsessive blog followers - are aware of the Svbtle "brand". I do accept, of course, that to those people it may look like I'm trying to pass myself off (despite the obvious differences and the large wp-svbtle banner on the page).
  2. Svbtle as a design builds on lots of other blog designs. There are hundreds of simple WordPress themes which strip out all extraneous fripperies for a distraction-free experience - nanos gigantum humeris insidentes.
  3. All that said, the Svbtle design is evidently recognisable and - while I would never want to be part of a club which would have me as a member - some people obviously think I'm up to something fishy.

So, here's my quandary. Do I continue with wp-svbtle (to which I've provided some minor contributions) and ignore the critics - or should I take it on the chin and find another radically simple WordPress theme?

You thoughts, dear reader?

What I've Learned From A Crazy Month of Blogging

Well. That was an intense NaBloPoMo! I published a blog post every day in November - as I have for the last few years - but this was unlike anything that went before. I had over 50,000 viewers in a single day due to one of my posts, got hit by reddit and HackerNews, and even got asked to do some paid blogging!

I started this month hoping to average 1,000 page views per day. This was so I could hit the (pretty arbitrary) milestone of half a million page views.

This is what my November looked like...

Which means my total stats since 2009 are...

So, let me take you through what I learned.

When You Help Others - You're Really Only Helping Yourself

I've been badgering my wife constantly to write on her blog. I managed to convince her to partake in NaNoBloMo and she has done marvellously. I've been seriously impressed with her writing and her dedication. It has been great seeing her struggle with the challenge and having it pay off so magnificently.

People Are Stupid

I just wasn't able to put this adequately into words until my wife blogged, but some people really are stupid. I've been told that my arguments are invalid because (in no particular order)...

  • I haven't calculated something to N decimal places
  • I have an obvious anti-Apple bias
  • I have an obvious anti-Android bias
  • I used hyperbole
  • I mistakenly claimed something took X months, when it actually took X+1 months

In short, people seem to ignore the bigger picture, find the smallest and most inconsequential mistake, and then use that to hang an entire argument. Predictable, I guess, but a little depressing.

I could try to write everything in formal language, perhaps written in pure predicate logic, and illustrated with examples backed up by no less than 9 separate sources - but I have the feeling that would be a little dull to read. There must be a middle ground somewhere.

You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk

I hate being told I'm wrong. Especially by anonymous commentators. By contrast, I love being told I'm right. Especially by anonymous commentators.

It's a weird experience to see strangers praising and damning you in - so it seems - equal measure. Bad reviews stick around in your brain far more than the good ones.

Interestingly, when I've tackled the anonymous people saying I'm an idiot, they've either apologised straight away - or run away.

Bandwidth

May 12, 2012 held the record for the busiest day - 17,186 views thanks to this article about the SIM-less Phone.

My ecosystem blogpost got 37,776 views on November 23rd. The 24th of November saw it get 51,928 views!

Which was nice.

Luckily, my blog is heavily cached and has gzip compression turned on - but even still, I started getting alerts from my host that I was edging close to the limits of my agreed bandwith. So, I bought some more.

My hosting provider - Vidahost (affiliate link) - stayed rock solid even at the height of the traffic. They were incredibly quick to respond to my questions and even gave me some free bandwidth while I was waiting to see if the traffic would continue growing.
You can use the discount code "edent" to get 10% off your order with them.

Tomorrow Never Knows

I was completely stunned by the posts which "made it" and those which fizzled into obscurity. I thought both the one about the HackerNews Effect and Why Don't Amazon Sell ePubs would do rather better than they did.

I don't know if they contained poor ideas, weren't well written, or just didn't get promoted properly. But, there we are.

Don't Hold Back

The majority of posts were written over the last two years. One was even three years old! They'd all been sat in the draft state waiting for me to be happy with them.

The Smuggling USB sticks post was my first big "hit" of this NaloPoMo - it got 22,553 views in a single day! Yet it was first written in 2010 after the BPI threatened to sue me. I'm not really sure why I sat on it for so long...

So, the moral is either "publish those posts before they get too old" or, alternatively, "Let those old posts mature like a fine wine."

Forward, Never Backward

I'm not sure if I can keep up with Richard Herring in blogging every day - although I do have a few posts lined up for December. It's been a fun - and slightly stressful - November, so perhaps it's time to take a short break.

Thanks for reading!

Should you edit old blog posts?

The fifth anniversary of my blog went by without me noticing. I don't know if I'm a narcissist, but I quite often find myself re-reading old entries. Sometimes it's because I've Googled for the solution to a problem, only to find I helpfully blogged about it yonks ago - other times I'll read an article and think "Hmmm, I wrote on that subject a while ago," and go off to find what I used to think.

With over 560 entries - ranging from single images to thousand word screeds - it's tempting to leave everything which I've written preserved in aspic. But I can't do that. I'm an inveterate tinkerer.

One of the big challenges of any webmaster is preventing "link rot". Old sites die, change their structure, or edit their content - which means links from this blog get broken or point to things which they shouldn't. To help counter this, I use the WordPress Broken Link Checker Plugin. Every so often it emails me to say a link is down. I'm then faced with the decision of whether to leave it pointing where it was, redirecting it to a cache, or finding a new source of information.

I have to admit, most of the time I just leave the link marked as broken. This isn't just laziness - some sites (especially personal ones) have no duplicate.

As I fiddle with old posts, I notice other things wrong with them. I fix spelling errors or grammer what is clumsy. I fix issues caused with blogging plugins which I've long since deleted.

But I never change my opinion. I already feel that I'm playing too close to the memory hole. Although WordPress tracks the changes I make, the post doesn't reflect past versions unless I explicitly call attention to a change.

Is this odd? Film-makers go back to re-edit their works, musicians remix their tracks, books are reprinted free of errata, newspapers publish corrections, and software writers publish updates.

But in all those instances, the original remains. You can listen to your mono-mix of The Beatles without ever having to even know about the surround-sound remix. But with this blog only exists here on this server, and it is only read when you dial up a specific page, and then - if I have willed it - it may all be Newspeak.

I Have A Bacon Number of 3

This is a very hard post for me to write.

I've recently finished reading two autobiographies. Both cover the same story. A boy - a nerd - has success in the fickle world of acting. Both stories tell of series of choices made. In one, the boy soars to great heights. In the other, the boy is bought back to Earth with a thump - seemingly never to succeed again.

The first is by Simon Pegg, the second by Wil Wheaton.

What's so hard is that both stories feel like they could have been written about me. Both make me question the choices I've made. Both leave me wondering if I am where I want to be in the world and - if not - how I get there.

Some Background

Before the Internet, before mobile, before girls, before all the things which make me who I am today - I was an actor. I trained to be an actor. I was in shows, I went to classes, I passed examinations, I did interviews on the radio, I was a happy kid following in my parents' acting footsteps.

After one summer show, my brother and I were both picked up by Hobsons International - a leading voice-over agency. We were over the moon! This was it! The chance to free ourselves from the shackles of amateur dramatics and into the big leagues!

So, every few months I would race up to a studio in London and record a voice-over. Usually for a commercial, sometimes for an audio book, the occasional training video. Nothing tremendously glamorous - but oh so exciting. Being able to skip school because I had a gig! Payment - sometimes £300 for an afternoon's work - was a fortune for a kid. I was on my way to becoming a star.

The Scottish Play

One Friday in 1996 I got the phone call that would change my life. Or so I thought.
Earlier that week I'd auditioned at BBC to play a part in their upcoming adaptation of MacBeth. They said yes. THEY SAID YES! I was to start on Monday.

I don't know if you can imagine it. Only fifteen and off to play Shakespeare for the BBC. To have my name immortalised next to Ian McKellen & Judi Dench. To be working as an actor. I was dizzy.

That Monday, I made my way to the rehearsal rooms. As I walked down the escalator at Waterloo, I noticed the giant poster for the just-released film "Twin Town". I only remember, because every day I passed that poster - and every day I got to work with Rhys Ifans.

Rhys FUCKING Ifans!

We spent a few days rehearsing - fancifully I imagined that it was where they used to rehearse Doctor Who. Then we went to film in the abandoned Grand Hotel above St Pancras - where the Spice Girls had recently shot the video for Wannabe. I managed a sneaky zig-a-zig-ah on the staircase in between takes.

And then it was over. A heady week of seeing Rhys Ifans act everyone else off the screen, watching the crew complain about the actors, listening to the actors complaining about the food, wearing Alexander McQueen designed clothes and shoes. And then.... Nothing.

I have a fading VHS of the resultant show. I have an angsty teenage diary that I kept during the rehearsals and filming. I won't show you either.

The truth is, I wanted to be an actor - but I just wasn't very good. All of the happy memories that I might have had from filming are erased by a single sentence.

I happened to glance over the producer's notes after one rehearsal. It was there in black and white:

"Older boy needs work."

That killed me. I had no objective idea of how good I was as an actor. I knew that I was quick, funny, had the technique and the desire - but I was obviously lacking the ability.

I bunked off school one morning when the show was broadcast - I don't think I told my friends it was on. I watched in abject terror. The producer was right; I did need work. My diction was sloppy, my timing was off, my body language was wrong. In short, I was unconvincing.

I decided to take a break. To regroup. To find out what it was which made me such a bad actor. I don't remember if it was a conscious choice - but I never acted professionally again. My confidence was gone.

And that's the story behind my sole entry in the IMDB.

Aftermath

I didn't quit acting. I performed once or twice more at school. I did an A-Level in performing arts.

Rather than use that as the springboard onto a drama course at university, I took the safe option. I went for a fall-back career in IT.

Cannily, I chose a University with a great Drama school and pedigree - UEA.

I was active in the drama society - I was in a few plays which seemed to be roaring successes. I wooed my future wife by convincing her to audition for a role in The Royal Hunt of the Sun, in which I played Old Martin.

But, since university, I've not learned a line, recited a poem, or - to use the clichéd phrase - trodden the boards.

I, An Actor

I still consider myself an actor. When I stand in front of a MobileMonday or BarCamp crowd, I am performing. I am timing the laughs, craving the applause.

Before a big presentation at work, or a job interview, I do vocal warm ups and practice tongue twisters.

When I host an event and feel that I have no confidence, I put on a character and let that do the work for me.

If I need to convince someone of an argument in a meeting, I look them in the eye, stay engaged with their character, modulate my tone of voice, and whisper the actors' prayer: "Let them find me convincing."

I miss it. I don't want to be famous. I don't even want to be a jobbing actor any more. I just want to be on a stage - any stage.

Today is my 33rd birthday. I wonder how much longer I'll be stuck playing this particular character...