Daniel Greene

Tag: blogging

Blogging, Web authoring, Web publishing, Web design…

  • Blog 2014: The Lifestyle category

    Blog 2014: The Lifestyle category

    Me, hiking
    Me, hiking by the North Mountain Visitor Center in Phoenix, Arizona

    I was looking for a category for my blog posts about accessibility, ethics, politics, human rights, love, relationships, and family, so I Googled some of those terms together, and the top result was lifestyle. A very nice definition I found on Wikipedia was:

    Lifestyle may include views on politics, religion, health, intimacy, and more.

    This sociological definition helped overcome my reservations about using the term lifestyle. You have to understand that there is a historical tension between straights and gays about lifestyle. You may have heard the expression “the homosexual lifestyle,” as if there were just one lifestyle for all gay people, and as if everything that made up a person’s sexual orientation and entire way of life outside of the bedroom could be reduced to the a lifestyle. I remember a gay activist saying, “so they [straight people who condemn “the homosexual lifestyle”] have a life, and we get a lifestyle” (as if a lifestyle were somehow cheaper than a life). Well, maybe it’s time to let go of those old connotations and embrace the definition of lifestyle as simply a way of living, minus the judgment.

    Another reason I picked the word lifestyle for this category is that some people classify blogs as either lifestyle or niche. Since my blog is a combination of niche and lifestyle, I chose lifestyle for those posts that do not fit a niche (like interpreting), but instead are about, well, “life.”

    I might change the name of this category, but for now, that’s why I’m calling it Lifestyle.

  • Blog 2014: Changing taxonomies

    Blog 2014: Changing taxonomies

    A couple of years ago, I split my multi-topic blog into five blogs, and decided to make my main one about Interpreting and Translation. Since those were the only topics, I decided to make my categories Articles, Editorials, Essays, and Vlogs. This year, however, I decided to reel it all back into this one blog. Since once again my blog would be about several topics, I needed to return to a more topical taxonomy. I changed the old categories to tags, and created new categories to fit my topics: American Sign Language & Deaf Culture, Business, Communications & Media Studies, Creative & Performing Arts, Photography, Education, Interpreting, Linguistics, Food, Lifestyle, and Travel. This taxonomy is a work-in-progress (especially Lifestyle).

    I looked to the blogosphere to see how other bloggers were naming their categories and tags because I wanted to make it easier for people to find my stuff. One of the sources I found was this Popular Blog Categories infographic:

    most-popular-blog-categories-chart

    That got me wondering what other WordPress bloggers were calling their tags and categories, so I went to the WordPress Reader to explore Tags:

    WordPress Tags Feb 9 2014

    Some of these tags are ephemeral, like Blackhistorymonth; however, most of them are perennial words for what I’ve written about under different headings. I compared them with my tags and decided to go with the majority of bloggers on some of them: I changed essays to musings, editorials to opinion, and I split off posts tagged articles to either research or stories.

    Taxonomy is a balancing act between what I want to call things and what others want to call things. I like to have my style, but if most people are using different words for the same things, I am willing to use their words so they understand me… within reason. I still won’t say presently for currently, but I like musings, opinion, research, and stories. Thanks, bloggers!

  • Too busy to blog

    Somehow I feel obliged to post something, but really I’ve been so busy prepping for classes and teaching that I really haven’t felt the need to blog or even post much of anything on social media. I finally understand why some people are not into it at all. It seems to have lost its luster for me. Anyway, perhaps I will resume blogging, but for now I am busy doing other things.

  • A social media presence that reflects the present

    My new focus is on being who I am on social media today, not securing my brand for tomorrow. Rather than creating a social media presence for the Daniel Greene I might someday be, I’m being socially present as the Daniel Greene I am now.

  • Found another blogger writing about vague language (VL)

    I found a couple of blog posts on vague language (VL) just published the past three weeks. Good to see other interpreting / translation bloggers writing about VL! CCJK Blog: Vague Language