Throughout 2011 though, I have written a paragraph each and every day in my iPhone. Kind of a mini-diary. It's been the longest period of regular writing that I have ever had. The factor that's made me write regularly for so long is that I put a repeating reminder in my iPhone. At 4:45pm each day my phone rings a bell, which reminds me that I need to write down my Momento for the day.

Now I'm trying to apply this same technique to my blogging - setting aside a time to write, and writing a blog post each day.

Capturing Information

I use Evernote to capture information throughout the day, especially interesting articles I read online. Within Safari, I can highlight the text I want to capture, press Cmd-C to copy it, and then press Ctrl-Cmd-V to paste it to a new note in Evernote. It's fast, and it also saves the URL for attribution

Emacs - org-mode and markdown

When I'm ready to write, I start off by creating a directory to write in. In fact, I have an Emacs function that creates the directory for me, along with an org-mode file, and a markdown file. The org-mode file is where I write the skeleton of the post, and the markdown file is where I write the prose. Here is the emacs lisp code that sets me up for blogging:

 
(defvar bh-blog-article-dir (expand-file-name "~/Dropbox/docs/blog-posts"))
 
(defun bh-blog-article-start ()
  (interactive)
  (let ((topic-name (read-string "Topic: "))
        (post-dir nil)
        )
    (setq base-post-topic (mapconcat (function (lambda (x) x))  (split-string topic-name) "-"))
    (setq post-dir  (concat bh-blog-article-dir "/" (format-time-string "%Y%m%d") "-" base-post-topic))
    (make-directory post-dir)
    (find-file (concat post-dir "/" base-post-topic ".org"))
    (find-file-other-window (concat post-dir "/" base-post-topic ".md"))
    )
  )
 

Uploading

When a post is ready to be uploaded, I have a Python script that converts the markdown file to HTML format, extracts the first H1 heading in the HTML to use as the post title, and then uploads the post to my blog.

Related posts:

1. Integrating Emacs and XCode
2. Opening a header file in Emacs
3. Emacs and Kanban

I want to start treating my blog as though I was a gardner tending his garden. Regularly adding new posts. Replying quickly to any comments. Upgrading and improving my blogging environment as I can. I would like to minister to a site that will encourage people to stroll around and smell the flowers.

Related posts:

1. Blogging Process
2. Blogging and SEO talk by Matt Cutts

Obviously these are two examples that illustrate both the good and bad sides of citizen journalism. The good being closer interaction with the audience, potentially closer exposure to events as they are unfolding and the speed at which events are reported. The bad being that there is no controls over the quality of the information being reported - it may be true, it may not. Also, citizen journalists may unwittingly or deliberately trample over the rights of the people being reported on.

I think that reputation is the panacea for the problems described above. Journalists have a reputation to consider when they are reporting. This keeps them focused on reporting the facts and ethically constrained (obviously something has gone horribly wrong at Fox News). As online reputation becomes more of a consideration for Joe or Jill Plumber, hopefully it will mean they too will be more concerned with "getting it right", as far as their tweets, blog posts, and Facebook updates go.

Related posts:

1. Social Collapse – Best Practices
2. The Death of Blogging
3. Rewiring the Brain

Related posts:

1. Blogging as Gardening
2. Blogging Process
3. Dr Jill Bolte Taylor’s stroke experience