Backdoor Tech          

Your daily helping of technology

Wednesday, July 30, 2003

 

Outlining, Writing and Exploration

I have been doing a lot of writing recently at work -- policies, procedures, conceptual pieces, new initiatives, instructions for using software. I find myself falling back on using an outliner, specifically Inspiration 7.5. The new version has proven to an surprisingly enhanced product over 5.0, which I had since 2000. I push the material as far as I can in outline format, and then switch over to Word or a webpage editor for the final draft. The new writing environment helps me apply a new eye to the material and adjust the formating in a way that's not confined by a tree hierarchy or I - A - 1 - a. It's really been a couple of fulfilling weeks of intellectual exploration.

I am now kicking myself for not having used Inspiration during my Master's studies. In the 18 months of writing papers, I never once opened it up. I did use some of the outlining features in Word, but I was always behind the eightball, schedulewise. I wanted to get things down on paper so that I could hand it in, and I was concerned about the formalities of referencing the document so that I met the academic obligations.

But now I realize that I should have been using the outline format throughout the writing process. It provides structure and channels through which you can flow your ideas, facts, quotes, and other pieces. For research papers, structure and organization are just as important as the research content. You still -- especially -- need structure when brainstorming.

My fascination with outlining goes back to my first PC, when I purchased a program called Ready and then switched to Grandview, a really sophisticated piece of software for DOS. I still have it installed on my old computer and have book and research notes in that format. At Outliners.com you can trace some of the history of outliner applications. Back in the late 1980s, they were a hot item. The site is actually one of the few places where you can find out what outlining products are still available. Now, it's mainly shareware and small companies that develop products. It's definitely a niche market. John Redmond has an interesting summary of the genre. Faughan focuses on MORE and Grandview, and also has an interesting critique of MS Word for writers.

The other realm where outlining still holds sway is in PDAs. I use Shadow Plan for task organization and planning, hooked into my Outlook. Since I work with many people on multiple projects, I need a way of keeping track of all the balls being juggled. Although I'm not as on-top-of-things as I should be, it still is a useful discipline.

Tuesday, July 15, 2003

 

House cleaning after the bust

I spent part of the evening cleaning up my online research page. I put the list together about three years ago. Then, got distracted with my graduate studies. Tonight I ran a checklink to make sure the resources still existed. The "send me a message when the page changes" services have disappeared, probably in part because they were free. In part, because the Internet has changed. RSS is used to track changes in weblogs and news sites. Just see my web page on the syndication for beginners.

The category that has not changed are the research sites, many backed by librarians or journalism organizations. Just goes to show that the Web is still about information.

I did a check on the web development page as well. I am still playing around with ideas for organizing the site so bear with me for a while.

Sunday, July 13, 2003

 

Making the leap

I have completed the setup of my new site, Backdoor Tech, under its own domain name. This will be the last blog entry that I make to the old address at gci275. Once this item is posted, I'll switch my blogging to the new site, to the front page. That gesture itself is indicative of how blogging has taken center stage in my web activities.

I have transferred all the computer- and Internet-related pages to the new site. I will keep all the pages on the old site for a couple of weeks, but I will not be updating them. Then I will insert an automatic redirect to the new pages. In about six weeks, I will remove the pages all together.

I had wanted to do a major redesign of the new site, but just getting all the files and images to fit together under the new, semi-permanent structure took a lot more time than I anticipated. So I decided to keep it simple.

Rumblings There are some strange things happening wtih my updating through BloggerPro. Hopefully this will not be a recurring problem, but the increased flakiness makes me wonder if the Google takeover is yielding any effective improvements. I most concerned that customer service has not picked up -- even freeware and shareware products have a sponsored forum where you can get some official feedback. In Blogger's case, there's practically nothing.

I've notice that other weblogs have switched over to other hosting services or software applications. Most recently, Shirley Kaiser's Raves and Brainstorms. I've got three years of postings in my Peruvian weblog that I really don't want to convert over to another format, but it might be smart to experiment some with this one that does not have much baggage. Perhaps, there's a technical justification too because I may be recommending weblogging to clients and I may want something that is hosted on the client's server, rather than farmed out to a hosting service like Blogger.

Saturday, July 05, 2003

 

Changes in the Making

I've spent the past two days working on the backend of my website. I upgraded by account with Interland so that I can have more disk space and bandwidth at the same price. This meant that I had to switches servers and IP addresses. That process is more time consuming than you might think because it means making sure that the new server works the same way as the old. I had to make sure that my server-side includes worked correctly. I also had problems getting my weblogs from BloggerPro to switch over. It took me a couple of hours of fiddling with the settings to get the update to work. Probably an issue with DNS replication. There were also issues with my e-mail. Luckily, Interland has 24/7 support so I was able to get plenty of patient assistance.

I also purchased a new domain (BackdoorTech.com) to which I will transfer all my technology content. I just felt it would be easier to start from scratch in terms of architecture and design. As I mentioned in my other blog, I've had a split personality as to the character of this website -- it started out concentrating on my experience in Peru, holding the news reporting, Peruvian poetry translations and research writing and other material. Over the past four years, I've added more information technology and web design pages, reflecting my professional career change and my graduate studies at the UMUC. This weblog is the latest addition.

Now I need to concentrate on redesigning the BackdoorTech site so that it can get up and operating quickly. Although the current design works with cascading style sheets, I'm not completely happy because I took some shortcuts originally to get it up. For one, it does not degrade adequately in Netscape 4 and other CSS impaired browsers. When it was focused on just my class work and classmates, it was not much of an issue. Now I'm aiming at a broader audience.

Why BackdoorTech? Well, I wanted something catchy, quirky and available as a domain name. Just look at some of the names of other tech related websites and weblogs -- gizmodo, boingboing, etc. Of course, I can't pretend to be a geek guru. My approach to technology comes from a different angle. At work, I am a generalist and synthesizer. I'm interested in how technology and the Internet seep into our world and affect social organizations and people. It's kind of a socially-oriented focus. It comes through the backdoor, not through a main entrance. I work at an organization where money is scarce and technology is an afterthought, and you have to sneak new tricks in through the service entrance, almost without anyone noticing. Cutting edge may be fine for headlines and venture capitalists, but the trailing edge is where you see technology having broader impact.

Case in point is blogging. Web pages have been around for 10 years. Back in the late 1990s, everyone was putting up their personal home pages on Geocities and other free hosting sites. But the web did not become an effective, user-friendly medium for the average joe until weblog hosting services began making it easy to put up chronological postings of joe's thoughts.

Tuesday, July 01, 2003

 

Harnassing IT for different kinds of goals

Is Google God?: "We, America, 'have to work even harder to build bridges,' argues Mr. [authori Robert] Wright, because info-tech, left to its own devices, will make it so much easier for small groups to build their own little island kingdoms. And their island kingdoms, which may not seem important or potent now, will be able to touch us more, not less." This NYTimes article by Thomas Friedman explains how IT will impact the world in the future, for the better and for the worse. That's precisely why I'm interested in it. IT, and especially the Internet, can change the "fabric of our lives," to quote a cotton industry ad.

Friedman also underlines that we have yet to feel the full impact of the phenomenon as it ripples out through the world -- and bounced back in our direction as a tidal wave.


Where We're Coming From

In October 2001, I was a member of a group of 17 IT professionals that took their first tentative steps together towards a graduate degree in information technology. Over this period, we learned together, we griped together and we ate stirred-fried vegetales together for lunch until fast food started looking good. Our classes took place at the Shady Grove campus of the Maryland University System.

In April 2003, we finished our course work and we graduated on May 17. But our professional journey does not end with that ceremony. This site is meant to be a landmark for the classmates who shared 18 months. I also intend to use this site as a learning area. It's part of my mental makeup to register things on the Web as part of my continuing learning process. After all, the technologies that we studied are in constant evolution and flux.

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