When I looked at my stats, I saw that very few people appeared to be coming from RSS. I know that RSS readers are hard to track down (that’s why Feedburner sold for $100 million), so I just used Google Reader as a proxy. There were about 6 people per day coming from there, and I wondered why it was so low, considering that thousands of people have seen my blog through various social news hits. Then I looked at my page and saw there was only the lame RSS link in the WordPress footer.

I looked for a different theme that included RSS in the sidebars. I did this for a (n embarassingly long) while until I realized that WordPress is just PHP, and as a typical elitist hacker, I could make a minor change to PHP code (even if I had to wash my hands afterwards :). So, now it’s done, and the RSS links and icons are now in the sidebar.

So, what are you waiting for? Subscribe!!

After spending a (very) long time on the Reference for the SLIME/Lisp/Emacs Screencast and getting lots of good reviews of it, I’ve taken a little pause from writing to actually do some coding! A few months ago, I started going through Practical Common Lisp, but found it too painful to work in Emacs. I believed in Emacs, I just need to invest the time and practice in getting more comfortable with it. The SLIME movie was part of it, and I’ve been working on the Ultimate Noob Emacs/SLIME Cheat Sheet. I’m beta testing it right now and I’ll post it when I feel more comfortable with it. (EDIT: A beta version is up now) I’m going through Practical Common Lisp again and this time it’s much better. I’ve read the book and I’m following along in the Practical chapters, coding alongside the text and testing, running, debugging, etc. Right now I’m a little hung up on the magic of how asdf knows where to find the files. I’ll have some more later this week. Probably a startup or business article – I’ve got a couple ideas ready to burst from my head.

In the meantime, I’ve received some glowing praise. First, my Lisp: The Golden Age… article was nominated for the first ever Battle of the Technorati Challenged, a little contest for excellent writing from little-known bloggers (I certainly qualify there!). I ended up winning, since 6 out of 14 voters chose me! So thanks to Caffeinated Coder for nominating me, and thanks to his dozens of readers for participating in the contest.

Second, I got some nice feedback from some of the people on comp.lang.lisp about the SLIME screencast reference. Here a few of my favorites:

“er, Hip hip hooray? This is my dream come true, fresh blood invigorating the CL landscape. We get a /lot/ of noobs who whine about the tools learning curve, and I understand that it is hard, but I also understand that the situation will not change until folks like you make the climb and before charging off to create the next Viaweb take a moment or week to make things easier for the next bloke.” – Ken Tilton

“Seconded. This is really cool! I hope you’ll stick around a create more resources like this.” – Peter Hildebrandt

“Very impressive! Good work. Next step, make another screencast that add to what Marco covered! 🙂 ” – Andreas Davour

Thanks everyone, I appreciate everyone that has read and commented, and there’s more good stuff to come!

There are two blogs I’ve recently begun reading (and they’ve recently begun writing). Most of the time I read a new blog, I found it because one of the posts was on Hacker News. If I like the post, I’ll look at the recent and archive posts on that same blog to see if I’d like to continue reading that author, or if they just had one good post on a topic I enjoy. If while reading the other posts I find that I find a high percentage of the posts interesting, I will subscribe to it in Google Reader so I can get the newest as it comes out. If I really, really enjoy it, I’ll go back and read through the archives. When I find someone whose writing, insights and topics I really enjoy, I try to read as much as I can from them because it gives me a more complete picture of the identity they’ve chosen to reveal. I want to get to know then, and reading their words is the best way available.

For these two, I went all the way back to their very first posts. (granted, they both started writing recently)

First, Danielle Fong from Berkely, CA. I discovered her during a recent discussion about female hackers on Hacker News. There were a lot of insightful (and a few ugly) comments in that discussion, and she was the first to come forward. Some people wondered if, since they were few in number, the female readers were valuable contributors. I went and looked at her comments were certainly valuable. She immediately jumped on my list of “comments I’ll take more seriously because they’re written by X”, and her blog is well written and thoughtful too. I recommend Third Places and Outliers: Why the Central Limit Theorem Is Typically Off. In just a month, she has talked about physics, computability, statistics, creativity and social interaction, and writing. If you enjoy quality writing about a variety of intelligent topics, don’t wait, just go subscribe to Danielle’s blog.

The other blog is by Hank Williams from NYC. He’s every bit as insightful but with a completely different flavor. His blog, Why Does Everything Suck? is a rapid fire attack on conventional wisdom, poor usability, and outdated or incorrect business models. He gives a hard reality check to the hype spouted in other parts of the internet. My list of draft blog posts is full of posts of his that I wanted to point out or comment on. I’ve come to realize that I’ll never keep with him because he keeps cranking out quality post after quality post. So here’s a rapid fire summary of some of my favorites:

Does it matter that New York is less techie than Silicon Valley? – Silicon Valley is good at making products, which he defines as solving a hard problem and making it really easy. New York is less interested (capable?) in solving hard problems, so there’s nothing to make easy. His solution is to make his startup as location agnostic as possible so he can work with the best possible people, regardless of where they are.

The Psychology of User Interface, Part I and Part II, and Part III – He outlines the concepts of spatial visualization, direct manipulation (as opposed to action at a distance), and there is no freedom without boundaries. It’s worth reading the whole series for a primer on the theories behind effective user interfaces.

Teaching Computer Science the Old Fashioned Way – in contrast to other opinions, Hank defends the traditional way of teaching computer science because it teaches students how to think, how to reason, as opposed just how to use the latest tools.

How to Create Great Ideas – generate, discuss, filter, internalize, repeat. Read it.

700 MHz Spectrum: Not so great for internet – low frequency = less data = few customers per tower. Strong signal = more interference = towers spaced out more. Two conflicting problems that make it seem like not such a great replacement for wifi. If what he says is true, this is a huge issue that has been completely overlooked by the media too busy fawning over Google’s openness requirements.

Will Technology Yield an Automated Economy? – many jobs that people used to do have been replaced by technology. Many jobs that people do will be replaced by technology. Are we running out of opportunities for profit and employment? I have a good answer in me that will take more than a few minutes to write. Look for it in the future (oh, dang, just when I cleared out my Hank backlog, I just put something back on it).

So, if what I think is reflected in what I write, and you like what I write, then you’ll probably like what Danielle and Hank write. If I could splice their posts into my feed I would, but for now, you can subscribe yourself.

Jeff Atwood gave the best possible advice for people who want to make a successful blog:

When people ask me for advice on blogging, I always respond with yet another form of the same advice: pick a schedule you can live with, and stick to it. Until you do that, none of the other advice I could give you will matter. I don’t care if you suck at writing. I don’t care if nobody reads your blog. I don’t care if you have nothing interesting to say. If you can demonstrate a willingness to write, and a desire to keep continually improving your writing, you will eventually be successful.

But success takes time– a lot of time. I’d say a year at minimum. That’s the element that weeds out so many impatient people. I wrote this blog for a year in utter obscurity, but I kept at it because I enjoyed it. I made a commitment to myself, under the banner of personal development, and I planned to meet that goal. My schedule was six posts per week, and I kept jabbing, kept shipping, kept firing. Not every post was that great, but I invested a reasonable effort in each one. Every time I wrote, I got a little better at writing. Every time I wrote, I learned a little more about the topic, how to research topics effectively, where the best sources of information were. Every time I wrote, I was slightly more plugged in to the rich software development community all around me. Every time I wrote, I’d get a morsel of feedback or comments that I kept rolling up into future posts. Every time I wrote, I tried to write something just the tiniest bit better than I did last time.

Now before you dismiss this advice, two points to consider:

1. Take a closer look at the end of the url: blog/archives/000983.html. 983! In 2006 after I really got into reading blogs, I dove back and read through Jeff’s archives, among others, and the post numbers are almost entirely sequential. Near as I can tell, he either has written or is approaching over 1,000 posts, so he knows what he’s talking about.
2. Take a look at the Technorati Top 100. He’s #73 and #85. (I think because you can get it at either / or /blog)

Other top computer bloggers have done the same thing: hundreds of posts over several years on a variety of topics.

Now, I don’t need to be as big as Reg, Joel, or Jeff, but I’m sort of tired of being invisible. I’ve decided to throw my hat in the ring and create an online persona, and here was my strategy:

• Like Jeff said, write a lot. I’m shooting for 2-3 posts a week (dang mental math made me realize that I need to write over 100 this year)
• Read and respond to comments. Just like it’s nice to eat a restaurant where they owner gives a crap that you’re there, it’s nice to read a blog where the author cares about your reaction. This is especially important when beginning, and I’m going to put extra effort into it. Just like the Cluetrain Manifesto said, the internet is just a big conversation, so if you can keep the conversation going, you get more out of it.
• Cover a breadth of topics. A lot of my writing so far (aside from my early forays into polyphasic sleep and the building of my house) have been commentary on Lisp. That’s just because that’s what I’ve had most on my mind recently. Upcoming topics include general software principles, notes on setups/configurations I make, book reviews, entrepreneur/family balance, collections of resources, education, updates on my startup, and whatever else.
• Cover topics deeply. If I do a better job explaining or consolidating knowledge than anyone else, more people will find it beneficial and more people will read my stuff. In a Googlified “I’m Feeling Lucky” world, being the 3rd or 4th best resource doesn’t get you very far.
• Use social news sites effectively. I’ve submitted a couple of the things I’ve written to Hacker News and programming.reddit.com and had good experiences. I put two of them up before I installed a stats package on WordPress so I don’t know the effect, but there’s more below about the stats I’ve collected so far

I’ve been a heavy internet consumer for a long time and a big blog reader for the last 18 months, but this is the first time I’ve really produced stuff that people have read. I got full stats on the article I submitted yesterday, Lisp: The Golden Age Isn\’t Coming Back, Let\’s Welcome a Bright Future and here’s what I’ve found:

• As of this writing, exactly 2500 people had read the article
• Of the 1500 or referrers, about 800 were from Reddit and close to 500 from Hacker News
• Over 200 people that came from Google Reader. At first I thought that all of those people subscribed to my blog, but I realized that they’re reading someone else who linked to me (for instance, I made Raganwald’s del.icio.us feed – Thanks Reg!). Hopefully people will subscribe, but I’m not sure how to track that without using FeedBurner. Any tips? [Note: I just found the Syndicated views in WordPress Stats. There were 0] Any comments from someone who has subscribed?

2500 page views might not be much to some people, but since I consistently joke about the dozens of people that enjoy my writing, 2500 is a big deal. I’m curious to see how traffic goes in the days after the Reddit/Hacker News traffic dies down. I’m trying to keep writing to make sure people that found me then continue to find good things. Late this week or early next week I’ll have another social-news-worthy post, and this one might not even be about Lisp!