Contra on LiveJournal

[jeff_duntemann]

Some of you knew this already, but for a few weeks now I have been posting Contra entries to my account on LiveJournal, perhaps the most sophisticated bloghosting service out there. I wasn't sure for awhile that I would stick with it, but the more I probe the details of LiveJournal, the more I like it.

So what I'm going to do for

Comments

[alicebentley]

Put me on the list of people who read ContraPositive, and had no idea you have joined LiveJournal. I look forward to reading your posts even more conveniently.

[jeff_duntemann]

I didn't really go public with it until yesterday. I wanted to spend a couple of weeks flexing my muscles on the LiveJournal technology before deciding whether to press on or to quietly pack my tent and go elsewhere. Nice to see your face again, by the way, even if only in a picture.

[beamjockey]

alicebentley writes:

Put me on the list of people who read ContraPositive, and had no idea you have joined LiveJournal.

Me, too.

I look forward to reading your posts even more conveniently.

LJ ain't perfect, but a lot of people I want to read have settled here, or fled here from Usenet (a forum I prefer).

I will enjoy the capacity to add comments to your remarks.

[jeff_duntemann]

At some point I'mn going to publically propose a sort of reverse-Blogjet utility, which goes up to LiveJournal (or Blogger, or whatever) and brings down entries and comments and stores them in an XML database so that they could (conceivably) be posted elsewhere in the event that the blogging service goes belly up. It shouldn't be too hard, but I'm trying to resurrect my career as an SF writer and don't have time to do it myself.

[whl]

Ah, Contrapositive Diary on something that supports RSS!

This will save me seconds a day, so I'm being selfish here, but thank you!

As for the namespace issue, I'd already gotten in the habit of just using initals, and Live Journal is one of the services I got on fast enough to get just "whl", before the ubiquitous fans (or lawyers) of the World Hockey League grabbed it. In fact, since then, if an online service seems likely to make it big, I proactively jump in and grab the account (provided it is free.) Limited rollouts, like gmail, tend to make me miss the boat, so there my account name is much longer...

[jeff_duntemann]

At least a dozen people have told me that they won't read me regularly until I get an RSS button. So it pays off in ways other than seconds.

Future-proofing the death of LiveJournal

[anonymous]

Jeff - actually, I think an option would be to grab an RSS reader that supports archiving and keeping content and subscribe to yourself.

(jkaczor)

about the look & feel...

[anonymous]

You might want to look at this: http://www.livejournal.com/users/moonitic/. It's a friend of Alana's (who is artiephesus in Livejournal Land). It's not exactly like Contra, but has some of the elements.

Jen R