Blogger vs. WordPress

Having just joined the Aussie Bloggers Forum I’m amazed at the level of anti-Blogger/Blogspot sentiment there is in the blogosphere. I must admit I’m pretty naive there, as I don’t have any major loyalties one way or the other.

I’ve gone with Blogger for the last 2.5 years partly because I’ve found the tool to be the most agreeable for my modus operandi, but also because the amount of time and energy required to switch is monumental when you factor in interface customisation, post/taxonomic management, and ensuring everyone is aware of the move.

Nonetheless, the arguments against Blogger (and Google in particular) are growing. Concurrently the advantages of WordPress, which seems to be Blogger’s greatest competitor, are growing as well – as are the number of WordPress proponents I’ve run into lately.

Kelly from No Regrets is one of my favourite WordPress users and she’s always sworn by it as a far better application to Blogger. Just this afternoon in fact she asked me when I’ll be making the switch.

With this in mind I’ve posted a question in the forum to find out more information on why people have chosen one app over the other, and particularly why they may have switched.

I’ve already received a well-considered and compelling response from one of the many who have joined the exodus from Blogger and will be very interested in seeing what other responses I get.

In the meantime I would also like to gather the thoughts of anyone who may have opinions to share here. In the right menu you will now see a poll called “Blogging Engine: Your preference?“. If you have an opinion on this topic please complete the poll. I value your opinions and will take the final results into consideration for my final decision.

If you have more to add to this discussion please consider posting a comment here as well.

Finally, I’d like to reiterate the fact I now have a personalised domain for this blog – http://revoltingpeasants.net. In the event I switch from Blogger to WordPress I will point this URL to the new location – so I encourage you to update your blogrolls to the new URL as opposed to my Blogspot/Blogger URL http://acousticdad.blogspot.com.

Aussie Bloggers Unite!

Aussiebloggers
Uploaded by aussiebloggers

This just in: I’ve spent a great deal of time the last 36 hours hanging about the new Aussie Bloggers Forum. This site is the first wave of a wider web presence that seeks to:

“gather a range of Aussie bloggers who have skills over different blogging platforms and social media sites to help provide information and advice to other Aussies who are not as experienced.”

In a very short time I’ve met some lovely people and had a great deal of fun in the process.

I’m still working my way through the forum posts, which are appearing quicker than I can read them (which is a good thing as it indicates a passionate community); but my initial reaction is extremely positive and inspired. You really must check this site out – especially you Aussies.

To those of you outside the sunburnt country, fear not: “you don’t have to be an Aussie to join the forums”

The wider Aussie Bloggers website is scheduled to launch 21 January 2008.

Christmas Elf

Christmas Elf
Originally uploaded by acousticdad

How Lis managed to convince me to put this bloody thing on is beyond me. Nonetheless, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from the Head Elf.

Oh yes and one more thing. Didn’t want to see a huge image of my arse adorned with scarlet boxers and HO HO HO plastered cheek to cheek?

Too Late…

Webcasting Reality Check

I’m very frustrated tonight. My ongoing problem with our dodgy Blue Mountains web connection has reared its ugly head again and now risks sinking my whole webcasting project altogether. I’ve spent the last couple of nights testing Ustream.tv to see what sort of audio and video quality I’m looking at and it’s been really bad – as in so bad there’s no point having video at all.

I need to stress this has nothing to do with a failing or shortcoming of Ustream.tv; it has everything to do with my geographic location (e.g. out in the sticks), and the fact that for some ODD reason, even our high-speed connection (1.5 mbps down / 256 up) has proven insufficient for similar applications I’ve used at work (Macromedia Breeze for example). I just don’t seem to have the capacity to support this level of streaming quality.

I’m no stranger to webcasting, VOIP, web conferencing or instant messaging – in fact I really know what I’m doing (I’ve organised and facilitated a hundred or more web conferences at work via similar technologies (namely Macromedia Breeze)]. I’ve tried everything I can think of to improve the situation but just can’t seem to come up with streaming quality that is even remotely acceptable.

In my latest test tonight I bumped up the audio quality to the maximum available (44 kHz). The good news is I found this improved the quality a fair degree. The bad news is I had to drop the video quality to a measly 60% to accommodate the additional strain on my bandwidth brought on by the increased amount of data from the better audio.

The result of that was a pixelated flip book with better (yet still thin) audio quality. Being the good technology research person I am I’ve preserved all of the recordings for reference, and unfortunately I’m not improving much in the broad scheme of things.

Even if I were just aiming for a general straight-to-camera discussion channel the quality would still be inferior. The fact I’m trying to present musical performances demands a wide audio spectrum, and that just doesn’t seem to be possible under my current technical constraints. Gaining a decent video image on top of that increases the bandwidth and hardware requirements even more.

At work I’ve always resorted to Skype as a work around for people who can’t handle the more data-intensive programs like Breeze, but unfortunately Skype doesn’t offer users the ability to create unique video channels in the way Ustream.tv does. They do have something called Skypecasts, but these are audio only and not really what I’m after. So I seem to be stuck for the moment, barring the discovery of a much more lightweight real-time video streaming service provider.

At this point just to be thorough I should mention there are several other issues aside from bandwidth that might be contributing to the overall quality problems I’ve been experiencing – primarily the fact I’ve been connecting to our web connection via a wireless router (which tends to reduce your available bandwidth relative to wired connections) and have also been using the internal laptop mic and camera (which will limit the audio and video quality you’re able to capture).

With that said, given I’ve used the same equipment in other areas with far superior results I feel confident in ruling them out as the primary culprits.

The end result of all this is at least for the moment I’m feeling defeated. I don’t see how I can implement webcasting to the extent I’d hoped without access to substantially greater bandwidth.

Boo hoo

Now we’re cooking with gas

Chef Maddie
Originally uploaded by acousticdad

Maddie’s discovered the culinary arts recently. After helping mummy cook waffles this morning she went solo to come up with quite a unique concoction consisting of:

- water
- 2 eggs
- more than 40 pinches of pepper
- a whole lemon
- 3 slices of capsicum
- 10 pinches of sugar
- 5 pinches of salt
- 1 large piece of mango
- 9 grapes

She offered to cook it in the oven and serve it up with juice, but I’d eaten brekkie already and declined.

Firefox 3 Beta 2 Now Available

Via Mashable (“Firefox 3 Beta 2 Now Available :

“The holy grail of all us people who work in Firefox day in, day out (and, unfortunately, often endure slowdowns and lockups) – Firefox version 3 – seems to be near completion. As of today, Firefox 3 beta 2 is available for download and testing purposes; however, don’t get your hopes up just yet. As the folks of Mozilla say, ‘with this second beta, you’ll get a taste of what’s coming in Firefox 3, but there’s still more to come, and much of what you’ll see is still a bit rough around the edges.’”

Watch this space for more updates. I love Firefox and will been keen to discover what more emerges from their development.

Mike TV

Video upload sites like YouTube and Google Video are useful, but their currency is in the past. They rely on events that have already occurred, been captured, edited and prepared for the moment when it’s finally viewed. Furthermore, the viewer will most likely be someone you’ll never meet.

In many cases this will be totally acceptable, but not with performing.

In the context of my musical escapades, uploading a video to YouTube is equivalent to releasing a CD or MP3. You focus on the recording until it’s finished, release it, and then never look back. You move on to the next goal.

This has been the missing link for me in online video up until now. By the time you discover my YouTube clip of “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright“, I’ve forgotten the moment when I played it and my mind is elsewhere. The fact it’s been streamed nearly 14,000 times to date is nice, but it’s more of a footnote. True or not, the sharing of music in this way feels somehow less powerful than live performances, as our relative locations in the creative journey are not in sync.

The advent of real-time streaming applications such as Ustream.tv are a great leap forward towards bridging this gap. They enable content creators to connect with their audience in the same moment. The art is both created and imbibed instantaneously.

I’ve taken the plunge tonight and have created a Ustream.tv channel called “Mike Bogle’s Acoustic Webcast” (embedded above), which seeks to do just that.

The channel will provide me with a virtual venue to house live webcasts of my guitar practices & performances to anyone who cares to watch. To me there is both tremendous joy and apprehension in this opportunity, because unlike uploaded video which can be edited, redone, and generally fixed up, the way the song comes out in a live webcast is the way it’s seen by everyone – warts and all.

And yet there is something so invigorating in that, which can’t be duplicated under any other circumstances. And oh how I miss it.

Several years ago I used to regularly run the gamut of open mics and floor spots in the local folk and acoustic music scenes. Then due to the changing priorities of parenthood and a professional career path these activities fell along the wayside and I never found a replacement for them – or even a partial substitute.

This isn’t to say that virtual environments are “live gigs” for the 21st century – because nothing can replace the face-to-face connection – but it will succeed in bringing performer and audience together in a much greater sense of synchronicity.

An added benefit of Ustream.tv in particular is webcasts can also be recorded for later playback and even downloaded locally.

With this being my first foray into webcasting, perhaps not surprisingly I’ve got quite a few kinks to work out – specifically with regards to video and audio compression. Simply put, the recordings I did tonight (available here) were of absolutely hideous quality at the end of the process – as though they’ve been run over by a steamroller. I sound like an old monophonic recording from the 1920s that’s deteriorated over time.

In the scheme of things it’s just details to be ironed out, and I’m confident I can get it sorted with a bit more investigation.

All that being said, this is still early days for Mike Bogle’s Acoustic Webcast, and I’m not sure whether there will be a regular webcast schedule or not – which of course introduces the issue of timezones and such since I’ve got family and friends all over the place.

If anyone is interested in updates in this area please let me know and I’ll come up with a way to keep you all informed of news and announcements.

Links:

• Channel: Click here
• Profile: http://www.ustream.tv/mbogle
• Today’s webcast: 19 December 2007

The Hobbit

Via SMH (“Peter Jackson to produce The Hobbit“):

“Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema have reached agreement to make J R R Tolkien’s The Hobbit, a planned prequel to the blockbuster trilogy The Lord of the Rings.”

Awesome! In typical Jacksonian style the two Hobbit films are being shot simultaneously. Apparently sleep is overrated.

Now all we have to do is wait for the 2010 and 2011 releases…

Trashing the Twitter Feed

Twitter’s maintenance outage is wreaking havoc with my right nav load time – nearly a minute or more at present – so I’ve removed the API until further notice. It’s a nice feature to have as it enables you to read my recent Tweets without visiting my Twitter page but it’s preventing all subsequent content in the nav from loading, and that’s just not cricket.

If you found this feature particularly useful or informative and would like to see it reactivated please post a comment. Otherwise you can still access my Twitter page directly via a link in the header of this blog.

Rodent Relocation Program

Via SMH (“Monster rat found in ‘lost world’ jungle“):

“Researchers in a remote jungle in Indonesia have discovered a giant rat – five times the size of a typical city rat – and a tiny possum that are apparently new to science.”

Good Lord! I don’t feel so bad about the miscellaneous rodent population we’ve got living in our place (walls, ceiling, attic, under the house, in the shed, in the pantry, in the chook pen…). The photo in the article depicts a rat the size of a moderate sized house cat.

In our case Lisa was lucky enough to stumble upon what she described as a “bush rat sized” intruder in our bedroom the other day – making itself comfy on our bed, as you do. Said rodent then tore through the house and into a GIANT hole in the kitchen, which I’d actually heard being excavated earlier that day and couldn’t find. I promptly sealed it shut with a thick board, but the fact remains we’ve got creatures stuck in our walls again.

I say stuck because the tradesmen who have been working on our house have cobbed shut most (if not all) of the entry points into the upper portions of the house where animals could have gained access from the outside area into the attic. I’d naively hoped this would mean all animals were kept out and not that some would be trapped in – but given the greyhound race track for rats we’ve got running through the lounge room currently it seems I’ve got more rodent relocation work to do.