John Dilbeck Musings

I want to thank my friend, Jerry Chautin, for alerting me to an article in the New York Times, A Basket Case in North Carolina, written by David Rakoff, and published on May 20, 2007.

In this article, the author talks about taking a week-long class at the John C Campbell Folk School, in Brasstown, NC.

Originally, like most men, he wanted to experience the thrill of blacksmithing, of smiting hot steel and shaping it into new forms with fire, hammer, and anvil, but (for reasons he details in the article) he changed to taking a basket weaving class.

As a true lover of the Folk School and all that goes on there, I felt the resonance of reading what I know to be true about the Folk School experience, not just what happens when taking a class and learning a new skill, or improving your ability to create pieces of art in your chosen craft.

Mr. Rakoff talks about the unexpected moments of silence and “getting into the zone” that artists strive for while transforming the vision in our minds into the item in our hands.

This is one of the best articles I’ve read about the Folk School, and I recommend it to you. I don’t know how long the New York Times keeps these articles archived, so maybe you should read A Basket Case in North Carolina, now.

(For more information about the John C. Campbell Folk School, its classes, crafts, and events, call 828-837-2775 or 1-800-FOLK-SCH (800-365-5724) or visit www.folkschool.org.)

Over the last six months, I’ve been doing a lot of work to learn more about blogging and syndication, using a variety of tools.

One of the things I wanted to do was to create multiple blogs on specific topics. I’m interested in, and do, a lot of different things, and I didn’t want to confuse someone who was reading a story about marketing in one message and then one about nonprofits in another and making customized t-shirts in a third.

How can you build a readership when your blog has no focus?

So, I decided to use the easiest tool I could find: Blogger.

I built about two dozen blogs and learned how to syndicate them on multiple sites using javascript, iframes, and php. Things were going great, and I was getting ready to turn my attention away from building the infrastructure to writing more about the topics to which each blog was devoted.

However, about a month ago, Blogger installed new software, apparently, and I started going through a round of being blocked, then whitelisted, then blocked again, and so forth. Finally a couple of days ago, I had had enough of it and decided to move all my marketing, affiliate marketing, and network marketing blogs off Blogger. But, I didn’t want to lose what I’d written.

So, I registered Blog Feed Syndication and archived over 20 of those blogs there. Since they’ll no longer be powered by Blogger, they are suspended until I find a new way to do what I want without having to do a lot of extra work in the process.

I’m testing WordPress for this, but really don’t know enough about it to make a determination if that’s the way I want to go or not.

Ideally, I’ll find a way to blog in one place, choose separate categories for each posting — as I can do here with Radio Userland — and generate a separate RSS feed for each category that can be syndicated as I want. So, I have some learning to do over the next few days.

I did decide to leave my Cherokee County, NC Blog and Murphy, NC 28906 Blog on Blogger for now. Since they do not have the marketing characteristics of some of my other blogs, perhaps they won’t trip the new algorithms that have caused me so much trouble over the last few weeks.

(Update: September, 2006 - I’ve restarted both those blogs using WordPress and I’ll be reloading the old postings from the archives to the new blogs as I have time.)

In the meantime, I believe I have archived my test postings from my blogs so I can access that information and use it again, if I need to do so.

One lesson I’ve learned, again, is not to trust a free service enough to try to build a business around it, especially when their terms of service tell me my only recourse is to stop using the service if I don’t like what’s happening.

I’m old enough to have learned that lesson decades ago, but I keep making the mistake that I can trust people I don’t know, systems over which I have no control nor influence, and the inevitable gremlins that find new places to live.

Back to the drawing board, one more time.

A few months from now, I’ll probably laugh about this new opportunity to have a learning experience.