Program One : 5 February 2001

Jocasta: Hey there, punters! I'm Jocasta Burrumbuttock!

Guido: And I'm Guido Atriedes.

Jocasta: And you're watching the inaugural Weblog Clinic.

Guido: yes, the show where you give us your questions and we give you answers. Not neceesarily good ones, but still...

Jocasta: of course, primarily about weblogs, the internet, and the culture that surrounds it.

Guido: But of course we'll be talking about other things as well, like macrame.

Jocasta: yes, that, or the role of the nation-state in today's increasingly corporatised world.

Guido: but usually about weblogs.

Jocasta: OK, on with the show; It's been a rather interesting week in the world of weblogs hasn't it? A couple of big events, of course, the announcement of the Bloggie winners, and Evan Williams' announcement that Pyra, the concern behind Blogger is out of cash and has had to lay off its staff.

Guido: Well, we'll deal with the Bloggies in a moment, but I've got to comment on the Pyra thing; I can't help thinking that Blogger might've supported some kinda of advertising, that wouldn't be invasive...

Jocasta: well, advertising is by it's nature invasive; I don't really see how it could be done, as people usually ignore them these days.

Guido: I suppose, but there must've been some way of bringing in cashflow for Pyra; evidentally, from Ev's letter, they've had a few ideas, but most of them have fallen through.

Jocasta: Yes, of course. As it is, we are not privy to the machinations going on behind this, and I suppose we shouldn't speculate on them.

Guido: Yes, you're right of course; but as I was about to say, there must've been some kind of way to support Blogger in a way that takes advantage of the goodwill the service has, without "selling out" as such. Mergers can be good for a company, I don't think Slashdot's appeal has been compromised by their deal with Andover.

Jocasta: yes, that's worked well for Slashdot, but Blogger isn't quite the same thing, it's an web application rather than just a news and discussion site; there are subtle but important differences to how users, ahem, experience them. And thus differences how, ahem, revenue, can be, ahem, leveraged, from the, ahem, clients.

Guido: Have you got the hiccups or something? There's a glass of water here, you know.

Jocasta: No, it's just that I'm allergic to buzzwords.

Guido: Oh yes. Well, if you don't like them, don't use them.

Jocasta: Of course. On to something less serious: The Bloggies.

Guido: Well, some people took them seriously. Did you read our executive producer's reaction to not winning the Best Tagline award?

Jocasta: Yes, rather less than gracious, I should think. Anyway, some interesting winners; Zannah took out the biggie, of course, without a Tom Hanks in sight!

Guido: I suppose because she filches half her links from Grouse!

Jocasta: Hmm. Well, she links to an awful lot of interesting places...

Guido: Yep. Most of the winners were ho-hum tho; But a few goodies got up. Plasticbag snagged a couple, though not the biggie of course.

Jocasta: I guess Tom can stop worrying about recognition; also, the underdog categories. Wockerjabby for best kept secret, Little Yellow Difference for best new weblog.

Guido: Feh! Wockerjabby is fine, but I reckon Follow Me Here woz robbed.

Jocasta: Perhaps. Loobylu got in with a couple, best design and best Australian/NZ blog.

Guido: Well, yes. Her design certainly exudes personality, unlike, say, Kottke's. And it doesn't make my box groan like Jack Saturn's.

Jocasta: I agree. Fixed backgrounds are so passè.

Guido: Big losers, of course Neale and Heather. Eleven nominations between them, no wins.

Jocasta: That's gotta hurt, especially for a publicity whore like Neale.

Guido: Well, there's always the Anti-Bloggies for that element of reactionary bitchiness.

Jocasta: How dull. By the way, I noticed that Nikolai censored the word "bitch" from Kitschbitch in the European category. What's with that?

Guido: Buggered if I know. You don't have a problem with being called a bitch, do you?

Jocasta: Hell no.

Guido: I guess it's to accommodate all those prudish United Statesians out there.

Jocasta: Bloody oath.

Guido: Well, enough crapping about the bloggies, let's get stuck into those questions.

Jocasta: Our first query is from a certain JC.

Guido: Jesus Christ!

Jocasta: Err, no. We're done with the swearing riff, Guido. But he has the same initials, like Jarvis Cocker. Anyway, he asks:

JC: "I am" is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that "I do" is the longest sentence?

Guido: What the heck does that have to do with weblogging?

Jocasta: I think it's one of those classic humourous questions. Just to see if we're genuine.

Guido: Of course. Concerning the bounds of holy matrimony, a realm which I as an immoral ex-Catholic Gen-Xer will never enter into.

Jocasta: Why not?

Guido: Because I couldn't be bothered. And because I like being in charge on what I watch on television. Mind you, perhaps you should get married, just to get rid of that hideous surname.

Jocasta: What the hell is wrong with my surname?

Guido: "Burrumbuttock"? What's that supposed to mean? It sounds like the name of a town in the Australian bush.

Jocasta: Actually it _is_ the name of a town in the Australian bush. Anyway, at least I didn't get my name from a dodgy sci-fi novel, Mr Atriedes.

Guido: Yes. By the way, if anyone's actually bothered read this far down, these aren't our real names. We don't particularly want to be stalked, hunted down, and murdered execution style, just because we offended someone's blogging style.

Jocasta: Yeah right. The question, Guido.

Guido: Oh yes. Is "I do" the longest sentence in the english language?

Jocasta: No, I reckon it'd be "I'll be just a minute".

Guido: Oh, whatever. So we don't know. What I do know, however, is that One Is The Loneliest Number.

Jocasta: A horrible thought just filled my head.

Guido: What's that, Jo?

Jocasta: Umm. Never mind, I was just having an acid flashback.

Guido: We didn't really answer that question satisfactorally, did we?

Jocasta: Well, we're not experts on marriage, I suppose.

Guido: Oh well. Time for the next question, which comes from someonewho requested that he/she be referred to as Tibbles.

Tibbles: Is purple a suitable background color for a blog?

Jocasta: An easy one; as long as it's dark or light. In the midrange with full saturation, like #FF00FF, will just make people's eyes bleed no matter what the text colour is. Like all things, you need to experiment. If you're after the deep purple look...

Guido: (to the tune of "Smoke on the Water":) Do Do Doooo, Do Do Do-Dooooo...

Jocasta: Shuddup. As I was saying, a good deep purple colour is #660066, if you use white text and yellowish link colours. For light purple or mauve, #ffccff with a dark text combination works great. All these are Netscape-safe, of course.

Guido: Does anyone care about Netscape-safe anymore?

Jocasta: Well, quite a few people still have to use relatively primitive terminals at work or school which can accommodate only 256 colours. Often this is because the system configs are just left at the factory settings, which are often conservative, and the users may not know, or may not have permission to change the display settings to something more civilised.

Guido: Some seemingly nice light colours dither on these almost-dumb terminals with horrible moire effects on their monitors, though it can be improved through the settings. If you're at all concerned with catering to a not-so-bleeding-edge readership, you should take account of this. Reference sites, which may well be accessed from library terminals and the like, should take particular heed. But most of you should know that already.

Jocasta: I'm not suggesting that we dumb the web down to the lowest common denominator, as certain, ahem, usability experts would like, but it behoves well to just keep it in mind. People still surf with images off, people still use Lynx, people override style sheets because they're vision impaired or they have an attitude problem regarding people who they see as abusing style sheets.

Guido: Besides, the website you are designing is likely to look quite different on each slightly different configuration, no matter how much allowance you give. However, most people won't really notice, as long as they can read the content comfortably, and the design looks nice. If you want to go for outlandish designs, do so, just as long as you don't mind cutting out some of the readership. But in fact, if you're willing to be a little conservative in your use of style sheets, as we still have to be in this age of non-standards, you won't be cutting anyone out.

Jocasta: Whoo. That turned out to be a bit more than just the colour purple.

Guido: Any more correspondance?

Jocasta: I'm afraid not. But it's early days yet, and people have yet to grok what we're about. As always, people can mail us at clinic@grudnuk.com.

Guido: OK, just one more thing; you know that "Just Like Kottke But Interesting" thing we mentioned earlier?

Jocasta: Yes?

Guido: Well, it appears that he's not Robinson Crusoe on that sentiment. Some guy sent Jason Kottke an email message which was less than charitable about Kottke's output. Here's an excerpt:

"I can tell that you used to love writing the daily posts, but now you only write them because you have readers (hits) who you think love you, but your writing everyday is becoming a struggle because you are busy at work."

Jocasta: Hmmm. I'm almost starting to feel sorry for Jason.

Guido: I think you might be Robinson Crusoe on that sentiment.

Jocasta: I wonder if Robinson Crusoe ever talked to volleyballs...

Weblog Clinic