Blog Archives
Upcoming Appearances 2014
This spring and summer is lining up to have a wildly eclectic set of public appearances for me! So far, I have things scheduled all across my areas of expertise: book signings, a TED talk about captioning, and a tea blogger’s panel at World Tea Expo.
TEDxBozeman
Join me at TEDxBozeman on Friday, March 21 for a day of celebrating Pioneer Spirit with an amazing lineup of speakers. My talk is entitled “Does Closed Captioning Still Serve Deaf People?” I’ll be exploring the history and roots of closed captioning and look at the progress it has made, the pitfalls it has encountered, and where it might be going. As of this writing, tickets are still available, but they’ve sold out pretty quickly the last few years, so if you want to be at the talks in Bozeman, Montana, you’ll want to snag those tickets quickly. It will, of course, be streamed as well, and the talks will be available as individual videos on the TED website.
I wrote a while ago on this blog about my talk and included links to some of my favorite TED talks. I’ll add a link here when I post more details about the talk.
Tea Bloggers Roundtable @ World Tea Expo
If you have any interest in tea, head for Long Beach on Friday, May 30. I will be joining a group of other tea bloggers for a panel discussion about the world of tea. There is more detail on my other blog, Tea With Gary.
Book Signings in Yellowstone
I will be signing “Who Pooped in the Park?” books at Yellowstone Stage (the Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone National Park) Sunday July 6 from 1:00 to 6:00 and Monday July 7 from 11:00 to 6:00.
Schedules and meta-blogging
Deadlines and horror. What a marvelous combination!
Ever since I split my blog in two, creating this blog and Tea With Gary, I have tried to keep the writing-related items here and the tea-related items there. Yesterday, however, I wrote a post on Tea With Gary about blogging on a schedule. Blogging is, of course, writing, which means that it belongs here as much as it belongs there. I will settle, however, for writing a blog post here about that blog post, and directing readers over there to read it.
Blogging on a Schedule actually begins with a discussion of blogging tips, most of which are found on blogs. That means that right now I am blogging about a blog post about people who blog about blogging. That hurts my head.
In that post, I make my point using a quote from Douglas Adams, an xkcd cartoon, a Princess Bride reference, a nod to Robert Godden, and the cover of a book entitled Deadlines: An Anthology of Horror and Dark Fiction (see right). Rather than try to reproduce all of that here, let me just tell you how it applies to this blog.
I write about all sorts of things here, from cattle to kilts; from cancer to meddling neighbors; medical marijuana to atheists in the Elks. Mostly, however, it’s about writing and books. Most of my writing posts are inspired by events in my own writing career or by events in my bookstore. That means that they tend to happen in the summertime. That means I have a devil of a time keeping to a schedule on this blog.
On the bright side, there’s a lot going on in the next few months, so you’ll see more activity here than usual. If you don’t want to have to check in regularly, please subscribe so you’ll get notifications automatically.
Mitosis complete, cytokinesis in progress
Once upon a time, I had a blog. I talked about all kinds of stuff on that blog, but mostly books, writing, and tea. Over time, I found that the people who read the tea posts really didn’t have that much interest in my writing. What to do?
Well, like a sexually-ripe amoeba, I realized it was time to split. I created the new blog “Tea With Gary,” and moved all of my tea posts over to it. With the content in place, I just need to unpack everything, hang the curtains, throw on a fresh coat of paint, and it will be ready for the world.
This post, in slightly different versions, is going in both blogs, explaining the process and guiding my friends and followers to the one most appropriate for them. If you wish to follow both, by all means do! Otherwise, enjoy the lack of distraction. Make a nice cup of tea, relax, and do a bit of reading.
The Split
The split itself was an interesting process. After creating the new blog, I brought up a post in the old one and searched for a way to move it. No “move” command. There’s a “copy,” which allows you to use one blog post as a template for another, but it won’t cross from one blog to another. I brought up the list of posts and checked all of the possible bulk actions. No luck. After a half hour of monkeying around, I went to the WordPress help files. Searching for “copy posts between blogs” and “split a blog” didn’t help much, nor did variants of those phrases and keywords.
Finally, I turned to the forums. That, my friends, was a positive and pleasant experience. A fine fellow by the name of Captn Mike responded in less than ten minutes with instructions and links to help files. It was an easy process once he pointed me the right way. Just “export” all of the tea posts from the main blog, “import” them into the new blog, and clean up all of the links.
The reproduction of the chromosomes (the posts) is complete. Once I trim out the unnecessary stuff and clean it up, the blogs will be cleanly divided.
