Monday, 23rd July, 2007

Meta

tranniefesto metablogging

Over the course of time, things change. The flow of HTTP requests through my humble ADSL line have a considerably different set of agendas than they might have had five years ago — the sources and interests of the people behind each GET has shifted in response to the things that I stick my nose into. And as a result, I'm always very much aware that any core readership the I have is a very different kettle of fish than when it was just me blathering on about What I Said In The Chatroom Last Night™

In (perhaps) response to that, this blog has changed as well — in structure as well as style. And with a similar intent as my little "Let's Recap" post from the other day, I wanted to explain a few of the things that I do here, and how a couple of them work.

(Just as a quick aside, you might have missed my 4th anniversary stunt, where I pulled my entire content offline, and replaced it with my original content. If you'd like to have a laugh at my expense and cringe at some of (a) the pictures, and (b) my writing style back then, I've saved it in it's unaltered embarassingness. One thing that's only just struck me, BTW, is the little cartoon of 'me' on the front page, and how much it suddenly reminds me of a certain expression of myself...)

Anyways. Basically, this is a "Hello new(ish) people, my blog works a bit different to other people's, so I thought I'd better explain"-type post. I'll try to keep it on the right side of the Geeky Line™, because apparently I'm boring when I switch into fixed-width type...

You see, I think it's important to explain, from the start, that this isn't a Wordpress install, or a Blogger-powered site. It's a collection of scripts and code that I've developed over time to address partcular needs, as and when they arose. From the very first "Hmm, if I held the entry for each day in a database, I wouldn't have to write entire HTML pages and reconfigure links every day" back in October 2002, through to the more recent "Hmm, I'd quite like to have my twitter feeds interspersed as comments throughout my source code", the software that drives this collection of Vain Shite™ has evolved, rather than being written in one go, with a specific intent.

And becuase of this, I tend to do things a little differently. I mean, obviously, for a start, I don't have different 'entries' as such — everything is based around a "post-per-day" kinda concept. And my stuff isn't in that well-established "reverse chronological order" that defines blogging. I don't seperate things into "posts" — even though they each have a big fat <h1> — it's all just a large stream of consciousness that mangles itself together and refers back to itself.

There are advantages and disadvantages to this, of course. On the plus side, it allows me to link things together, and not categorise them into little 'compartments'. So a rant about design might morph into something that references visual presentations of self, and end up talking about frocks, which is perfect for me, because it all blends into one bit topic in my head anyway.

It also means that it's a lot more 'freeflowing' than if it was 'segmented', meaning that I can just talk, rather than feel like I'm preaching or something. It facilitates randomness and triviality, mixed in with specific intentions — it's just one great big (sometimes drunken) conversation. And I like to feel that that's why I'm (perhaps) one of the more "prolific" bloggers.

(Which, of course, some people regard as a disadvantage )

But, it does mean that sometimes I'm loathe to post something on a new day, for fear of destroying the conversation from the night before. And equally, just posting a tiny quip can cull any engagement. Which is why I'm posting this (I guess) — just to say that a new chunk of #6D202A 22px Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif doesn't mean that I've moved on, it just means I've thought of something new

...

One of the reasons why I'm writing this today, is because of a reference Carolyn Ann made to me in a post about blogging and community a few days ago...

Siobhan actively discards the entire concept of "community" with the lack of blogroll

As I pointed out in a comment I left, I do have a blogroll — it's just not in the place where everyone else's is.

I've had this site design in place for about 16 months now, and when I was designing it (which took me forever) the very specific intention was to reduce everything down to just the content. I used to have all sorts of links and widgety-things on the front page (how apt that the last page of the MySQL-driven old site was talking almost exactly about what I'm talking about today ) and I decided that I didn't want all that.

I felt that this blog should just be about the stream, so I tried to pull as many of the extraneous things (Flickr photos, del.icio.us links, the blogroll itself...) into the content rather than having them strewn around the edges. Anything else, I shunted onto the About page — the web-equivalent of cramming stuff in drawers to keep a room tidy, perhaps.

...

Anyways, before this gets all too rambly, and takes over my day completely (which would be a Bad Thing™, because there's a shit-load of stuff to sort out here), I just wanted to highlight some of the 'hidden features' of this weblog — just in case it's not immediately obvious that they exist.

Blogroll

It's here. It's too small though, and I need to update it. I integrate it into the main content with a bit of regex so that all I have to type is "> Miss K" and it appears as Miss K .

Tags

I'm rather proud of my tagcloud, not just because I Wrote It Myself™, but because as well as making the size of the tags relative to their frequency, I make their colour relative too. And their vertical offset. I have no idea why more people don't do that — it just seems to make it more 'pretty' to me

Archives/Favourites

I've made (about) two and a half thousand posts over the years. Most of them are shit, but there's a few nuggets of goodness mixed in with all the ephemeral crud. I have tried, over the past few months, to try and organise them into some kind of order, based on how chuffed I am with them. But I decided that I should try and take into account the tastes of others as well.

Which is what the little stars are, next to the titles. If you've ever left a comment here, and you've checked the "remember me" box, then you should see a little outlined star next to each title. If you click them, they go solid, and mark that post as a 'favourite'.

And the archives appear in order of how many people have favourited them

OK, so it's weighted in my favour (I Am A Princess™, after all ), but I just thought I'd try it as a bit of an experiment.

...

So yeah, um, sorry — bit rambly. I just wanted to highlight some of the stuff here, in case it seemed confusing at all.

There is one other thing that everyone seems to ask me all the time — and that's how to make links in comments ... the text-formatting on this site is done through Markdown — with some post-regex from myself (which kills some of the linking-techniques ).

Safest bet is to either use the []() technique ([Siobhan](http://www.tranniefesto.co.uk) == Siobhan), or just wrap a full url in angle brackets (<http://www.tranniefesto.co.uk> == http://www.tranniefesto.co.uk)

Anyways, hope that helps

the drunken ramblings of "someone Becky knows". But now you've started writing interesting stuff

/me quietly *fumes* in the background

If yous are interested at all as to the slightly more geeky side of how this site works, here's some links...

• http://www.tranniefesto.co.uk/2005/07/26/a-weblog-anatomy.html#1

• http://www.tranniefesto.co.uk/2006/07/01/white-rabbits.html#2

• http://www.tranniefesto.co.uk/2006/04/03/delicious-links.html#1

• http://www.tranniefesto.co.uk/2005/06/30/favicon-geekery.html#1

And, especially for Pandora (), if yous are interested in hard evidence that my blog is considerably older than Becky's (meaning that technically, she is "someone Siobhan knows"), I thoroughly recommend...

• http://www.tranniefesto.co.uk/2005/06/07/staking-a-claim.html#1

• http://www.beckysweb.co.uk/beckysblog/2005/06/staking-better-claim.asp

Scarey

photo househunting

A reluctant first step.

*tsk tsk*

Tranniefesto very serious blog. No room for flippancy whatsoever. Absolutely no straying from heavy, weighty topics and deep philosophical discussion allowed...

Ooooh! K! Tell me! I wanna laugh at James from history!

Knocking Back

photo redwine suit

An almost perfect fragment of a moment

Ha!

Just out of interest BTW, is everyone bored of me posting shots of me in men's clothing? Only I have a few more I've been playing with...

Oh go on then .. just the one...

Prep

photo tranny fetish

I think that (and this one) are probably the lot from the other night. Most of the others are just slight variations on the general theme.

I'm really chuffed with what came out of that little sesh. I know they're all pretty-much the same shot, with only slight differences in hair/outfit/smile, but I really have been trying to take photographs like them for twenty years.

OK, maybe not twenty years — but at least 18

There's also a slight bit of end-of-era-thing going on with these — but for reasons that are far too geeky and Mac-based to warrant any attention other than mentioning that I'm pretty determined to take most of my kit to Leeds tomorrow.

Ha! — No, in a "shit, I'm about to become one" kind of way

Oooh. Thank you! More like that please.

There's a load more in my iPhoto Library — it's just that they're all incredibly samey. Same pose, same facial expression (almost), same 'props'. I'm a little bit annoyed that even the ones I've posted are all from the same angle as each other (except for the wine glass one and the cigarette smoke one).

But, on the up side, I've proved to myself that I can do it, so I'll probably¹ do it again

There must be some niche fetish thing in there somewhere

Heh. You mean specifically of trannies wearing men's clothing? Or women? I used (Curran Fact Fans™) to run the largest Yahoo Group devoted to just that very subject², with more members in it than there are in trannyflickr, until I decided to give it over to someone else and spend more time doing this blogging malarky.

¹ By "probably", I mean "definately". Or at least until everyone gets so sick of me doing so

² Women, not trannies, although every once in a while someone would (and still does) post a picture of a guy not realising. Oh how we laugh.

Wet Floor

photo

Somewhere, on his hard disk, but not online where it should be, is a photograph I took of himself the day I brought him home from the Apple store in Leeds — all bright and spangly new.

In an attempt to get around to sorting my house out so I can rent it, I'm dismantling my studio and temporarily setting up in my office at work.

I anthropomorphisise my Macs too much, and there's a slight sadness in me that he's leaving 'home' and the rest of the family.

But it's not for ever

You people are weird