I've been a bit lax about posting to my weblog, but I haven't given up and I haven't lost interest. OK -- against the grain of my A+ personality I did try and relax over a long July 4th holiday. Despite my best efforts to take it easy, I've been quite busy researching and experimenting with a number of things that are sure to be the source of many future posts here. Before I return to my regular blogging habits here is a little bit about what I've been working on:
> I've been studying the latest version of MovableType (MT) and considering the potential utility for a number of plugins that the latest version supports. Yesterday's announcement of MT-Meta is just the beginning (I hope) of many more. I still remain intrigued by the notion of applying blogging tools and techniques to other realms such a knowledge management.
> In my quest to develop an "outboard brain" be more efficient and organized in my own personal knowledge management, I've been experimenting with MovableType and Jon Udell's Quick and Dirty Topic Mapping scripts, but neither are exactly what I need. I'm an "infovore" that tends to collect a lot of knowledge in the form of bookmarks to interesting editorials and weblog entries in addition to how-to articles. Much to my dismay, my virtual desktop is litered with a labrnyth of directories and URI shortcuts. I also have reams of printed content from when I maintained 2 desks that is sitting in piles and boxes around my home. Ideally a need a hybrid of browser bookmarks and a weblog where I can keep a list of links with meaningful titles, categorize them in a topic map and optionally attach an entry of my own if warranted. (Incidentally developing MT-Meta came out of this endeavor.)
> To this same point, I've also been experimenting with different news aggregators. I've gone through several in my test (see Jon Udell's article on the topic for a sampling) and haven't found one that suits me. Currently am experimenting with Rael Dornfest's blagg with blosxom because its server-based and I can control the organization of newsfeeds -- albeit it more manually then I'd like. Recently Robert Rainwater released an RSSFeeds plugin for MT that my has some promise also.
> I've been working to revive a 6+ year old IBM Thinkpad 365X laptop to serve as a portable Internet access terminal. (My current employment status has left me without a laptop and the means to drop the ~$2k for a new one.) I've made good progress, but didn't finish the job in time for said holiday. The modem failed on me and only having a floppy and parallel port Iomega ZIP 100 drive (No CD-ROM) has added to the challenge.
Its been quite insightful to recall how much faster and easier setting up a system used to be. I also estimate that 50-75% of what I do on a daily basis with my desktop workstation can be achieved on this revived ancient laptop. I tend towards server-based solutions through a browser or lightweight client which makes this possible. Its not that I don't believe the power on our desktops should be better leverage -- I just believe that generally speaking our desktops are overpowered for what is really needed. Without I can say I miss the high-resolution of my 19" 1600x1200 display of my workstation and that memory is going to be an issue. (The 365X is already maxed out at 40MBs.)
