Posted on

Adding TrackBack and Related Entries to this blog

I’ve been spending the last few days fooling around with various technical aspects of this blog and Movable Type, the application it runs on.

I’ve been vaguely interested in the TrackBack feature since MT 2.21 came out, but have sort of been stumped as to exactly why I would have it on my blog. Honestly, I’m still at somewhat of a loss, but wanting to be an early adopter I thought I’d add the feature and see what, if anything, comes of it. So, if I’ve configured this right, there should be a “TrackBack” link at the bottom of this post.

I also added a “Related Entries” section to individual post pages, courtesy of a Movable Type plug-in from Kalsey Consulting Group. An example can be seen here.

I’ve also implemented some other tips and tweaks, most of them found at this post at andersja’s blog (see his Movable Type category for others), as well as accessibility tips from Dive Into Accessibility, such as adding acronym tool tips and title tags to obscure link text.

Posted on

Apologies for the paucity

I apologize for the paucity of posts lately, I’ve been trying to kick up my Japanese language studies up a notch and this and work and some good ol’ offline reading has put the blog on the temporary back-burner.

In the meantime, you could do a lot worse for yourself than to check out the gaijin stylings of a Scot in Kanazawa who publishes Gaijinworld. Some great, humorous writing here. E.g., this dandy from his archives (scroll down to April 20th) on one of the banes of my existence, the levels of politeness in the Japanese language (called keigo):

[…] finally they are teaching us about “futsu-kei” or “ordinary form.” Which is the manner in which 96% of conversations here are conducted. For the first year or two, they teach us how to say things whose English equivalent would be something like “forsooth, my fine gentleman, sorry as I am to have to trouble your peace, wouldn’t you be so kind as to assist me in my travails as I attempt to run aground an ordinary mercantile in which one may purchase books?”