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Category Archives: Technical Difficulties

Navel-gazing if you’re a computer or know one. Boring but included for sense of completion.

A 21st-century blog

This should start things off. Brick began in December 2003, part of

Excuse 7.5, 7.23

Excuse 7.5 Thursday, Jan. 26, 2006. Below I fibbed. I’m not procrastinating. I’m changing my Web host to one that for the same monthly fee as the current one also has doodads that will allow me a fully functioning blog. I didn’t want the near-former contractor to know until some of the paperwork was signed. [...]

Excuse 7.1

Friday, Dec. 2, 2005. Can you get by with writing or saying whatever you want because you’re sick, and you’re lightheaded from clogged sinuses or fever or some-such thing? It’d be nice. So later if what is written makes no sense, or even worse, it does make sense but it offends people you don’t want [...]

Really Simple Syndication Isn’t

Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Wednesday, November 2, 2005. There is nothing simple about Really Simple Syndication. RSS makes little sense. I finally understand that with it I can create a personal Internet connection for all of my favorite sites to let me know when they update; I think I get a phone call. But [...]

Excuse 7.08

Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Sunday, Oct. 30, 2005. At some point toward the end of every month, I the Brick layer consider its worth. Blogs, especially those using services and their templates (e.g. Blogger etc.), seem to be one long Internet page then at some point weeks months earlier a cutoff is determined for [...]

Introduction or transition?

Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2005. News item: Not now. “News item” is a decades-old method to prepare the reader for an essay or column, especially a humorous one, whose subject, or just an allusion used in it, may be borderline obscure. If it truly is obscure, we wouldn’t use it, would [...]

Non-post

Do you really care? Thursday, Aug. 4, 2005: Just to get the month rolling with a freshly laid Brick, let’s note the delay was due to family coming to visit the first of the month. Details such as the visitor was one brother and not a flock of kin, and that the stay was 26 [...]

A block is not a brick

Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Wednesday, July 13, 2005. So what I do is just admit my fear. Look at this gap in time: days since the last Brick, feels like a month. Why? A lack of topics as well as a lack of opinions? No. It was the feeling of a block. It came [...]

Voices gone wild

Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Tuesday, May 3, 2005. It is far too easy for executives of media to pigeonhole columns into commentary. Or analysis. It then needs to be consistent, which is why humor and certain other person viewpoint columns are out these days. You can’t have your toothpaste be peppermint one day and [...]

The 60-second blogger

Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Sunday, May 1, 2005. Can there be a 60-second blogger or columnist or essayist, in the manner of Dan Hurley’s “60-Second Novelist”? Yes. Why else pose the question? I just reviewed Hurley’s Web site, including listening to a seven-minute NPR interview — serious for public radio (not as big as [...]