The Stunt
Well, then, my children.
I imagine a few of you have prepared Things for today.
So here's what we're going to do.
First:
You post your Thing on your LiveJournal.
You might want one of these when you do -- the STRANGE MACHINE Stamp:
If you want one of these, all you have to do is copy
into the end of the entry. The < and > are going to go a little weird when you copy and paste the above, so replace them.
Once it's posted, go back and get the specific URL of the entry. The URL will look something like this:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/mistersleepless/36442.html
With your handle in there instead of mine, obviously. Clip off anything past the "html" at the end, that's extraneous.
Copy your URL. You'll need that.
Second:
Open an email client. Ideally, you want one that sends plain text. AOL doesn't, unless you open http://www.aol.com and post from there, so be aware of that.
You are sending your email to smachine.beam@blogger.com
In the Subject line, put the title of your piece.
In the body of the mail, put in your name or preferred handle, and, optionally, a line or two about the piece. Even if you can just indicate what form it takes -- writing, art, whatever -- that'd be good.
If you have to post off AOL or some other email client that won't produce plain text, then just put in the URL of your entry.
If you have access to plain text, you can make a live link to your piece by writing this:
some words here
Where the URL, obviously, is the one you copied down.
Still with me?
So you email that off. Then what? Well, I figure most of you have figured that out. It was Hepkitten who put the idea in my head, when she started talking about teamblogging in a comments thread the other day. All of your emails are going to the same place:
http://www.strangemachine.com
Now, the blog-by-mail is a little slow. It could take an hour for your piece to cycle through, especially with the load we're going to be putting on it. But, eventually, every email you send will publish through on to that site, leaving a link to your piece of creation. And Strange Machine will remain as a permanent archive of these twenty-four hours of your work.
The smachine.beam@blogger.com email address will be switched off early on Saturday afternoon GMT. And that'll be that.
Off you go.
-- W
I imagine a few of you have prepared Things for today.
So here's what we're going to do.
First:
You post your Thing on your LiveJournal.
You might want one of these when you do -- the STRANGE MACHINE Stamp:
If you want one of these, all you have to do is copy
into the end of the entry. The < and > are going to go a little weird when you copy and paste the above, so replace them.
Once it's posted, go back and get the specific URL of the entry. The URL will look something like this:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/mistersleepless/36442.html
With your handle in there instead of mine, obviously. Clip off anything past the "html" at the end, that's extraneous.
Copy your URL. You'll need that.
Second:
Open an email client. Ideally, you want one that sends plain text. AOL doesn't, unless you open http://www.aol.com and post from there, so be aware of that.
You are sending your email to smachine.beam@blogger.com
In the Subject line, put the title of your piece.
In the body of the mail, put in your name or preferred handle, and, optionally, a line or two about the piece. Even if you can just indicate what form it takes -- writing, art, whatever -- that'd be good.
If you have to post off AOL or some other email client that won't produce plain text, then just put in the URL of your entry.
If you have access to plain text, you can make a live link to your piece by writing this:
some words here
Where the URL, obviously, is the one you copied down.
Still with me?
So you email that off. Then what? Well, I figure most of you have figured that out. It was Hepkitten who put the idea in my head, when she started talking about teamblogging in a comments thread the other day. All of your emails are going to the same place:
http://www.strangemachine.com
Now, the blog-by-mail is a little slow. It could take an hour for your piece to cycle through, especially with the load we're going to be putting on it. But, eventually, every email you send will publish through on to that site, leaving a link to your piece of creation. And Strange Machine will remain as a permanent archive of these twenty-four hours of your work.
The smachine.beam@blogger.com email address will be switched off early on Saturday afternoon GMT. And that'll be that.
Off you go.
-- W