adventures in alternate economies
So, now that people are actually paying attention to what I do here, I think it's time I work on making it more pleasant to look at. I like this look, but it looks like fifty hojillion other blogs out there, and the fact is, I don't have the tech savvy to do much else with it, nor the money to properly pay someone else to.
So here's my proposition: I have a lot of strange and wonderful stuff kicking around in my basement from when I did salvage work. If anyone's willing to give me a hand with site design and redecorating, I will be happy to send them stuff they might want, shipping paid--there's a DVD player, a dentist's overhead lamp, a two-foot-tall statue of Doctor Doom, an ornate Go board, all sorts of stuff. Anyone who sends me an email, to the address listed in my profile, with a genuine offer of help, I'd love to chat with about interesting barters. I cannot really be certain of the monetary value of a bunch of this stuff, there's a huge variety, and it's getting garage-saled or pawned anyway, since I'm also not savvy enough to work eBay.
Let me know.
UPDATE: Frigging Blogger.
Okay, so I've been doing some fiddling, trying to make things a little smoother, experimenting with tags on posts, that sort of thing. What this has resulted in is every single one of them being reposted a couple of times on Taking Steps' livejournal feed, including some incomplete, drafted posts and notes on posts that won't go away even though they're not posted here. This is kind of a pain. For those of you reading my feed, I apologize for the mess. Please extend the courtesy of not judging unfinished work till it's finished, as well; it'll be posted in due time and be much more interesting then. I'll figure this-all out eventually.
So here's my proposition: I have a lot of strange and wonderful stuff kicking around in my basement from when I did salvage work. If anyone's willing to give me a hand with site design and redecorating, I will be happy to send them stuff they might want, shipping paid--there's a DVD player, a dentist's overhead lamp, a two-foot-tall statue of Doctor Doom, an ornate Go board, all sorts of stuff. Anyone who sends me an email, to the address listed in my profile, with a genuine offer of help, I'd love to chat with about interesting barters. I cannot really be certain of the monetary value of a bunch of this stuff, there's a huge variety, and it's getting garage-saled or pawned anyway, since I'm also not savvy enough to work eBay.
Let me know.
UPDATE: Frigging Blogger.
Okay, so I've been doing some fiddling, trying to make things a little smoother, experimenting with tags on posts, that sort of thing. What this has resulted in is every single one of them being reposted a couple of times on Taking Steps' livejournal feed, including some incomplete, drafted posts and notes on posts that won't go away even though they're not posted here. This is kind of a pain. For those of you reading my feed, I apologize for the mess. Please extend the courtesy of not judging unfinished work till it's finished, as well; it'll be posted in due time and be much more interesting then. I'll figure this-all out eventually.
Labels: metablogging, rogue econ
posted by little light | 6:54 PM
20 Comments:
I too wish I could work whatever blogger uses for blog design (CSS?) I'd recommend talking to Q|D/B|L.
I'm crap at computers and relatively new to personal blogging, sorry. But I know someone who's great at it and most likely will help, provided it's the weekend. (Goes to college otherwise) I'll ask him if I can ship his email address off to you.
If you can't find anyone, Megan may be up for it. It would also be worth asking my old coworkers. Then again, I don't know how you feel about handing it off to people you know in real life.
You don't happen to have a Scrabble board in that cast-off pile, do you?
--Jess
I'd like to redecorate myself. I have no excuse really. QD and Amber and all kinds of people keep giving me tips for how to do this or that or change to another server. and i'll be all like, thanks!!! and then, several months later, having done nothing, so, does anyone know how...?
meh.
i tried on my own, once, with my micron of html understanding, to change the color of the background. it came out this horrifying two-tone, and i was like, okay, never mind, back to square one, i'll be happy if the goddam thing could just stop freezing and giving me "error" messages every five minutes really...
LL --
if things work out, i may be able to swing helping you out in my spare time. The dentist's lamp sounds cool. I don't know if I should show R your list, though, b/c R is an incorrigible packrat who likes anything. my email address is bitch AT pulpculture DOT org -- since i can't find yours. email me when you get a chance.
I so recommend wordpress over anything else that's out there. You can easily integrate previous posts from blogger, lj, etc., choose from a pretty decent range of sample templates, and from what I can tell, probably design your own if you're tech savvy. Post-wise it's also much nicer than blogger, thanks to the preview features and the side-by-side overview and html windows.
I second that WordPress is the blogging platform. You can get a free blog at WordPress.com. I don't know how much you can customize it if you opt for their hosting as opposed to self-hosting.
The other thing is, when I migrated a blog a little while back from Blogger to WordPress, the migration tool didn't work with Blogger beta. (Is it just regular Blogger now?) I had to jump through some database hoops to make it happen. Check out whether you will be able to easily migrate from the current Blogger platform to the new one before you change.
Well, at least the stuff on LJ will go away in a couple of weeks or so. In any case, when something like that happens, I usually blame LJ for it. :)
I'd love to make you a simple header, you can use it with a standard blogger template. (see http://beacuseitspersonal.blogspot.com )
Sorry, I can't help with the tech stuff. You can add me to the list of people who are "actually paying attention" tho.
Cheers.
I am a Madeline you know. Me and some other people from the ol' stomping grounds are starting up a group blog on these topics. Should be good times. We were going to invite you to guestblog, in fact, once we were a bit more settled... right now, even the name of our blog is up in the air.
O I am find out, o.
I'm a little nervous to ask how many of those stomping-grounds folk actually read here.
That said, I'm glad y'all are around. Please keep in mind, by the by, that I appreciate discretion on this project? There are folk who would not cotton to the sort of stuff I write, and I am, as they say, "employed." Also, I try and keep my given name out of this, for my parents' sake. There's a reason I don't link here from the other place I write things on the Interwebs.
Good luck with the blogging, anyhow. As you can see, it's sort of wild business, in these circles.
Have you found someone yet? If not, I can help.
Just a thank you, LL.
I hope you don't mind that I quoted you as giving me the courage for my "Out of the Cage" post.
If so, let me know and I'll remove you.
I am a friend of Madeline's and an old workmate of Jess'. I wandered over here after she mentioned the big argument going on down the page, and plan to hang around because I like you and your writing is really eloquent. I dig discretion though.
I didn't read through the comments (sorry, this was a quick read and post moment), but if it hasn't been mentioned yet, I'd recommend contacting either Queer Dewd (formerly Bitch|Lab) or Vegankid. Both of them are bad asses and good people and you wouldn't go wrong with either. I know they're both busy these days, but maybe they can squeeze out a little spare time or know of someone else that may be able to help you out.
little light, if you want to start small, my blog design was free and the designer charged me $15 to install it (or whatever the term is).
http://www.zootsdesigns.com/freebloggertemplates.html
I third the recommendation of WordPress. I had no idea it was so awesome when I started my blog there, but upon reading the woes of those who've stuck with Blogger (and my continued fight with Squarespace to let me post at Aunt B's) has made me quite convinced that I made a good choice.
They have tons of help availble for those at all levels of understanding, and you can pick their pre-done themes for free (like I did), or buy the upgrade that lets you fuss with your CSS and do it yourself, or buy the upgrade and install a pre-made one that someone else did. There are bazillions of those floating around, some of which are positively gorgeous. If I wasn't so lazy, I'd probably have gotten one of those and done something neat with it.
yahbut, how hard is it to move all your old shit over there? particularly when you o i dunno have like 600 posts, many with length comment threads?
Thanks for all the suggestions and offers, everyone! I didn't expect this much help at all.
For those of you really interested in some design stuff, or whatever, drop me an email with some ideas, so I can get you a list of possible weird barters?
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