Here Goes Something

I’ve set up this WordPress.com blog to serve as my all-things-Comic-Con writing space. I want to be able to share all manner of thoughts and news during this trip, from straight reports on news from Comic-Con events and panels to where I’m having dinner. Jen and I have never been to Comic-Con, and we’ve never traveled as a couple since becoming parents over a decade ago. I hope to be bursting with stories and observations to tell.

As with everything, of course, I’m overthinking it. And burned most of my braincells today pondering whether a separate blog made sense… considering I’ve already got a bazillion websites out there. But friends and followers on Twitter seemed to think this would work, so I’m giving it a shot.

What about Twitter? True, I have my Twitter account to collect stray thoughts, but I might want to share a little more than 140 characters… and Twitter has a poor track record of uptime, especially surrounding big events. (Not that Comic-Con is the iPhone launch, but still.) Also, I’d love to include more than words: photos, or videos, or audio reports.

What about “The Transmission” or “Hawaii Blog“? Our “LOST” podcast and blog is the main reason we’re going to Comic-Con… but I don’t want to clutter that space with the other stuff we see or do at Comic-Con or in San Diego. I figure “LOST” fans want “LOST” scoops and not too much else. Of course, I will be posting to “The Transmission” when I have something “LOST” specific to share. As for my Hawaii blog? True, it’s supposedly as much about me as about Hawaii, but Hawaii is the underlying theme, and secondly, I post quite infrequently there. (Don’t even ask about my old online journal.) It’d be a heck of a change for some readers to suddenly see several posts a day turn up from San Diego.

What about Flickr? I’ll be posting plenty of photos to Flickr. Most from my iPhone, but some from my “real” digital camera, too. And there’ll probably be a lot more photos posted to Flickr than will show up as part of an entry here. But when I’m in the mood to share more than a few words about something I’ve seen, I’ll have a good space to do it.

In short, I’m hoping to be posting all kinds of things, from Twitter posts to Flickr photos to YouTube videos to Utterz calls. You could probably visit all of those places to get it all. But a blog (and its allmighty sidebar widgets) seems like the perfect place to bring it all together.

Now to see if this entry is posted to Twitter by Twitterfeed.

WordPress for iPhone

Right on the eve of Comic-Con, the folks at WordPress have released the “WordPress for iPhone” native app. The timing couldn’t be more perfect. Of course I should be able to post entries to this blog directly via the web, but the native app makes things a little more elegant and simple. Or so I hope.

I posted a couple of entries via the iPhone app earlier today. The biggest problem is that it doesn’t fail gracefully. A timeout error during publishing or getting interrupted and switching apps seems to mangle things. I get an “invalid post ID” error, or find (in both cases) an uploaded photo eaten. Then I or the app get confused as to whether I want to edit an “existing” post or an unpublished local draft. I feared either doubleposting or losing the post altogether.

Still, the “WordPress for iPhone” app speaks iPhone and WordPress.com (i.e. hosted WordPress), so that’s why I’ve set up this blog here. Here’s hoping this app and I get comfortable with each other over the next few crazy days.