The Joys of Blogging

I've got tons and tons of tips on blogging for you today - from Pajamas Media, Sister Toldjah, (can't get La Shawn Barber's to link), and Simon World.

When I started, I was lucky to find a cool and patient freelance computer guy who came to my flat every Tuesday evening for a number of weeks. We learned to blog together. I showed him Michael Yon's old blog and he clicked on "I power blogger" - that's how we chose the blogging software.

We looked things up in "Publishing a Blog with Blogger" by Elizabeth Castro and I still refer to it when there are things I don't understand.

He would "type code" and push the keyboard towards me, "now you do it". I'm not quite as fearful of techie stuff now.





I have so many plans for the future:

- sticking to one theme - account planning - always meant to do this but the 7/7 bombs went off right when I started and I got a bit (ahem) sidetracked
- figuring out pings and trackbacks and comments
- moving to movable press or typepad, or some other "cool" blogger software
- figuring out how to add other digital stuff like podcasts and my own original film footage
- getting a really cool main page design
- applying everything interesting outlined in "Don't Make Me Think!", 2nd edition, by Steve Krug.




I'm working my way through "An Army of Davids" by Glenn Reynolds this week.




A few edited highlights:

"bloggers have accomplished a lot in independent journalism: bringing down Trent Lott and Dan Rather (and executive editor for news, Albert Scardino at the Guardian last July after 'Sassygate'); reporting on events in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Ukraine that Big Media have ignored; and even playing a major role in defeating ratification of the European Constitution in France and the Netherlands."

This was published early in 2006 so there's more to add to the list, like the fact that Bush is responsible for kidnapping that Israeli soldier - so total war can be waged throughout the Middle East, keep up would you!

Tons of bloggers are reporting on the escalation of hostilities in Lebanon. The 'Guns of July' indeed.

Update:

From Normblog:

"Girls out of school

"In the first three years there were a lot of girl students - everyone wanted to send their daughters to school. For example, in Argandob district [a conservative area], girls were ready; women teachers were ready. But when two or three schools were burned, then nobody wanted to send their girls to school after that."- Female representative on Kandahar's provincial council, December 11, 2005.

"The Taliban 'went to each class, took out their long knives... locked the children in two rooms, [where they] were severely beaten with sticks and asked, 'will you come to school now?'' The teachers said that they were taken out of school. The Taliban asked them individually, 'Why are you working for Bush and Karzai?'

They said, 'We are educating our children with books - we know nothing about Bush or Karzai, we are just educating our children.' After that, they were cruelly beaten and let go."- Education official from Maruf district, Kandahar province, describing how the Taliban shut down his school in June 2004, speaking to Human Rights Watch on December 9, 2005.

All schools in the district closed down that year.These are two testimonies from 'Lessons in Terror', a Human Rights Watch Report on the assault on education in Afghanistan.

Escalating attacks by the Taliban and other armed groups on teachers, students and schools in Afghanistan are shutting down schools and depriving another generation of an education, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today.

Schools for girls have been hit particularly hard, threatening to undo advances in education since the Taliban's ouster in 2001.

In the 142-page report, "Lessons in Terror: Attacks on Education in Afghanistan," Human Rights Watch documented 204 incidents of attacks on teachers, students and schools since January 2005.

See, in the same connection, this from David Aaronovitch:

Who are we, after all, to try to force upon a reluctant culture our own superficial norms, such as the right to an education if you are born female.

Oh yes, and you might bear it in mind, also, when you next hear about grievances rooted in oppressions for which the 'the west' is responsible."