repositories for the rest of us

2007/02/10: my return to blogging

It's been awhile since I've blogged. The day gig got really busy for me as I mentioned on my former blog. I was reassigned from cataloging to repository work due to my background and interests. It was a strategic decision. MPOW is moving system-wide to have all the libraries working with IR.

I'm beginning to catch my breath, kind of, so I'm getting back into blogging. At libraryrfid.net I used WordPress, on my own personal server space (shout-outs to LIShost!). I wanted to teach WP to myself so I installed it with a whole bunch of help from Blake. Too bloody complicated. I have a bad habit of wanting to know exactly what goes on under the hood. I've also got a bad habit of wanting to do everything myself so I can learn exactly what goes on under the hood.

Good for learning, yes. For launching production level services? Not so much. Let me explain about the day gig -- I love my job. This is not a place where I whine about the challenges I face. It's where I muck about and try to solve the puzzles.

Today I overcame my mechanic's impulse to do it all myself and configured blogger to drive my new blog. I'm tickled that I managed to get it to (a) post on my own domain (b) apply some open source css courtesy of OSWD. Thanks and a big shout out go out to Andreas Viklund for the simple design. I need to tweak a few things, but I should have it completely standards compliant and universally accessible soon. That's the goal anyway.

I don't believe in beta. I just throw my stuff up on the web and keep refining as I go. No waiting to release a perfect product. It's what I'm doing with my day-gig project. With that I rely on the general obscurity of being unlinked. As long as I don't make too much noise, maybe nobody will find the project web site and blog until it's a bit more polished. If they do find the website, well they can become pilot partners because they are obviously intrepid.

posted by Laura @ 5:58 PM