Blogging is not dead.
Though it’s hard to tell by looking at this nearly abandoned site. Well, abandoned no more. For those of you that have been around a while, thanks for sticking by and here’s a brief explanation.
The old, old site (Man Bytes Hollywood): A good record of my journey in film school, but didn’t really reflect who I had become after three years. Reboot.
The old site (Screenwriting Manifesto): Since I began working full time, I no longer had the time to post like I used to. Nor did I have as much to report. The new design was inspired by magazine-type blogs. My vision for the new blog was to write longer, more in-depth posts but less frequently.
FAIL.
Creating a new post was a just a pain. It required finding photos and editing thumbnails, not to mention writing the post itself. Reboot.
Welcome to what I hope is the last refresh for a while. The new blog is as yet unnamed. It is tumblelog inspired. Meant to be nimble, and allow for quick, very frequent posts. There’s good and bad in that.
I’ve linked my Flickr, Twitter, and Delicious accounts to the blog, and more will be added soon. So whatever gets posted there, gets posted here. This is Dave Central after all. For those of you looking for strictly screenwriting-related posts, you may be a bit put-out.
Tough.
This is my personal blog, and it’s all about me. That said, since my life is mostly about writing and geekery, well, stick around and you’ll see. I’ll be posting short bits about screenwriting and other adventures I hope to be embarking on. If you really can’t stand all the extraneous stuff that makes up my life, I promise to get the tags and archives working and create a feed that’s just writing-related. So now we’re all happy.
And if you are still around, please leave a brief comment. Prize goes to a randomly selected commenter!
Dave, you know I’m an old school Man Bytes Hollywood fan and I’m sure I’ll be following *The As-yet Unnamed Anaxagoras Blog Project* on a daily basis as well.
Can’t tell you how happy I am that you’re getting back in the bloggin’ saddle. Your posts on both writing and life (and the “writing life”) always proved insightful and, at times, downright inspirational.
Onwards and upwards!
Blogging might not be dead, but it sure ain’t as healthy as it was 12-18 months ago, at least not in the scriptwriting corner. There used to be a dozen blogs I’d make a point to look at first thing every day, but that number is down to… one? Two? None?
Something changed, that’s for sure.
True. There was definitely a wave that crested and crashed. I don’t know if that reflects more on screenwriting or blogging. Or perhaps it’s a bad combination — two things that require time and persistent effort.
Still reading, Dave. I was pleasantly surprised to see new posts pop up in my Google Reader today.
Dave- Welcome back! But, what WordPress plugin did you use to generate an earthquake to mark the occasion?
It was a custom hack :)
I’ve been so on the fence to just taking the whole thing down myself. Then I realized my host was on auto-renew so I’m paying for another year whether I post anything or not. In this Twitter/Facebook world the long post while entertaining and educational is a dying breed. That is such a ridiculous statement isn’t it? In a year we’ll probably have some Frankenstein version of the two that will waste our time and divert our attention just as much maybe even more.
Yeah, for the most part, blogging is dead. Maybe I’ll do an abbreviated, pared down version of mine just to have some sort of presence. If I ever get the time. If.
Whooooaa. I just realized I misread that comment in your post “blogging ISN’T dead.” I felt that for me it has been for a while now.
I do enjoy your insights and you know I’ve been a fan so keep doing your thing. I’ll be reading either way.
I guess you see what you want to see! You’re probably right either way. The least we can say is that the blogging landscape has changed. There are more options now for folks who want to be online, options that take a lot less effort than establishing and maintaining your own website. Like most any other kind of writing, if you don’t have a particular passion for blogging, it’s tough to maintain the effort.
I guess you see what you want to see!
This is definitely a case of that.
For me it’s more of a time issue. Right now there’s little time for writing up a well thought out post on a screenwriting issue or a film I saw. Maybe that’s a good thing. I’m more focused on screenwriting when I’m not dealing with other aspects of my life because I have to be. I have a period of time to myself in the afternoon and that is it.
I do like the idea of a main hub that represents you on the internets. I’ve been thinking about that for a while now. A year ago I would have spent hours hammering out code (you remember) to get my site to look just right. I just can’t do that anymore.
It was cool to see this pop up in Google reader. I know I have trouble keeping a regular blog schedule. It was much easier the two months I was out of work! Looking forward to reading you again.
Dave, looks great!
I’m really fond of the tumbleblog layout; I’m sure it’ll work out for you.
Hey, if you get the change, maybe one of these days post screenshots of all the old website reiterations? It’d be like a trip down nostalgia lane!
I’m curious, did you break the site and rebuild it to have all the feeds come here? Lot of work?
I’m wondering if there is some preexisting WP theme that does this.
Wish I could take credit for the feeds magic, but the credit belongs to, as usual, a plug-in — WP-o-matic.
I did do some major reworking of the theme to give me some flexibility when it comes to displaying each type of post — video, audio, tweets, photos, quotes, etc. I have the wordpress loop check to see what category the post is in, then call up the relevant code to render it accordingly. That’s not all necessary, you can write a one-size fits-all loop, but I like the flexibility.
I found that wp-o-matic was too much of a blunt instrument for some feeds, and use Alex King’sTwitter Tools to create a daily digest of tweets. But the damned tweets were still taking over the blog, so I’ve disabled it for now, and will probably have to relegate tweets to the sidebar or something, and archive the digests.
I still can’t get my Facebook feed to work — if anyone has had any success let me know.
But to answer your question, yeah — there are tumble-blog type WP themes out there that I’m sure would do most of the heavy lifting for you.
Thanks Dave. I only steal from the best.
Why don’t you start making You Tube videos? Talk about screenwriting and your experiences with it so far.
First, I’m a writer, not an actor. Second, there’s some truely haneous crap on YouTube and I don’t want to add to it.
That said, I have a webisode series in the pipeline (that’s next after I’m done with my neverending screenplay) and an idea for a screenwriting podcast unlike any other, but that’s even further down the line.
Of course, nothing could come of either of those ideas, and this blog could be abandoned again at any moment. In fact, it may already have been.
I’m like your crack-smoking mama that loved her drug dealer more than you.