Only three people have responded to the poll, so I’ll give it until Wednesday, then delete it and do what I think.
If you click View Results it’ll currently say five people voted, but two of those were me: once to express my actual preference, and once to test the Other option and find out how to view what people enter for it.
Update: I’ve taken the poll down now, and if you’re interested you can see the results in this post.
Once you’ve given something a name, you’re generally stuck with it. Does that apply to blogs, too?
Here’s how this one got its name.
As an Opera Mini user, I wanted to participate in the Opera Mini forums at my.opera.com—initially simply in order to sort out some bugs I was experiencing with Opera Mini.
This entailed creating an account there, in order to could post. That had the effect of creating a place to blog. That reminded me that I’d been thinking for a while about trying out blogging.
I didn’t yet know what I would want to write about, so what should I call it? I remembered there was a song called A horse with no name, so the blog became A blog with no name.
Then I realised I needed to continue the blog elsewhere. But it seemed a bad idea to have two identically-named blogs. So this one became The other blog without a name.
That was meant to be a temporary title: once the posts were transferred, I’d rename the original one The old blog with no name and this one would revert to A blog with no name.
It irritated me a bit that I inadvertently got a word “wrong” in the change: with no name became without a name. But the rhythm of the words woould be spoilt by “correcting” it.
So far, I’ve not persuaded myself to change it. Is it a good idea for websites, even ones without a name, to change their names? And it’s quite a nice non-name . . . On the other hand, I think of a certain orchestra which named itself after some biscuits, and I don’t want to be stuck forever with a name I find I dislike . . . Any thoughts?More seriously, people who searched for “no name” to find articles on the old blog won’t get sent to the new one. But if I change the name of the new one, people who are used to that will use the wrong search, tiny handful that they are.
Maybe I’ll just leave it as it is for now.
You probably know that so far, I’ve mostly not been able to post easily to the blog. My web access at home has been restricted to what can be done in Opera Mini on a Sony Ericsson k750i phone. (In case you’re wondering, that’s still quite a lot, but there are restrictions; see my post about mobile access.)
Well, now I’m trying out (maybe temporarily) access via a PAYG mobile broadband dongle. So far I’m liking it, but having to keep an eye on the data usage. £10 for 1GB lasting 30 days: that comes to just over 34 MB per day. The antivirus software used up most of today’s “average allowance” simply by updating itself, and some people put a lot of graphics on their blogs, and a lot of graphics-filled posts per page too, so I’ve got to be a bit careful.
Hopefully though, I’ll now find it easier to post short things I want to share as they occur to me, and might update the blog more regularly rather than making special trips to the library to post things I’ve written at home.
One interesting realisation though: now that I’ve got easy access from the PC, there are still Web things I find much more comfortable to do on my little phone screen in Opera Mini. One is reading mainly-text blogs: I don’t need to sit at the PC, or sit the PC on me, but can relax and read on the phone. It’s easier on the eyes, to: shorter lines of text which take less concentration to stay focused on, and only a square inch or so of screen shining in my eyes.
And that’s helpful, because it means I can use my unlimited web access on the phone for those things, instead of using up my Dongle Allowance.
The good news is that posting here seems not to use up too much data.
Let’s see what happens.
By the way, I once read somewhere that a recommended line length for readability in a given font is 1½ times the length of the alphabet. That’s about
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmn
and I’m expecting that these lines will turn out to be a bit on the long side . . .
Edit: I’m confused now—was it 1½ times the length of the alphabet, or double? I’ve got a nasty feeling I’ll want to look it up now, because not being able to remember properly will niggle me.
Tagged accessibility, blogs, broadband, computers, dongle, k750i, mobile access, mobile phones, Opera Mini
I’d like you to press the button. The button is there for you. I mean the one in the sidebar that says vote. It’s there for a reason . . .
The idea is that I get an idea of the preference of people who visit the site.
Er, obviously. So far, four people pressed the button, and one of them was me. So please feel free to join this select group! Or not. But if you do, it will help.
Sadly you don’t win a prize, other than maybe seeing your preference implemented if it’s the most popular one and I decide to heed it.
I think I’ll leave it there for another week or so, then remove it so it’s no longer cluttering up the sidebar.
Thanks.
OK, I’ve finally updated my About page so that it does, in fact, say something about me. Read it if you must. It’s here. It mostly says that I’m interested in lots of things, and what some of them are.
Hopefully, WordPress will now stop nagging me about it, and people who go to that page will now get some actual information . . .
The Other Blog Without A Name 