Chair Blog | Tumblr

Last edited August 24, 2010 [Main Issue solved on June 23 - 25, 2010, see 11 below, uhm almost, see 12 and 13 below.]

1) General
This page used to be a work in progress.

As a two finger typist I’m too slow in producing a post to my own liking, even if there is only one photo and one sentence in a post. So I have been looking for a way to quicken this process continuously. Here I will share several experiments with you.

2) Tumblr
On Februari 23, 2008 I had discovered Tumblr and started Chair Blog | Tumblr, with the general idea of using that as a scrapbook to collect items that I could flesh out for this blog. However after a couple of months copying and pasting I came to the conclusion that I would prefer the content rather here on Chair Blog.

From the start I believed that in one way or another it should be possible to integrate Tumblr into your own Blog, be it via an RSS import or not. However the only quick and dirty possibility I found I could work with is a Java script that automatically inserts the last 10 posts of your Tumblr account where you want it.  See for the result  below.

I also had the intention to go back to Chair Blog | Tumblr from time to time to take out scraps and move them into this blog on a regular basis, but I became sort of addicted to Tumblr for a while and didn’t pay much attention to the blog itself.

Then I became more focused on the blog again because I had discovered Quickpress, a WordPress plugin that could do almost the same as Tumblr, but the resulting posts would be on this blog rather than on a separate server belonging to somebody else’s realm.

On June 12, 2008 I decided to discontinue Chair Blog | Tumblr entirely,  still with the aim to fold it back into this blog.

3) Posterous was the next Experiment:
In September 2009 I came across Posterous. It was possible to import Chair Blog | Tumblr into Chairblog | Posterous. From then on I was looking into a possibility to import the same content into this blog from Posterous rather than from Tumblr.

The first experiment was creating and downloading an RSS file from my last 20 Posterous posts and uploading them here…strange things happening: Original Photo is now hosted on Posterous. No Titles etcetera.  Looking if I can Clipmark the stuff. At least i got the original data…

So this experiment failed entirely and I’m bound to move Tumblr posts manually over here….

4) Clipmarks
At approximately the same time, in September, 2009 I found Clipmarks which enables you to quickly and paste items into the blog.

However Clipmarks has the same principal setbacks as Tumblr and Posterous and Quickpress: It takes the material you copy and paste to their own server. You can’t control if you would wish to control them as I would like to control them.

In addition if there is a hiccup with their servers or internet connections, you get half empty posts. Moreover when you use Google’s Webmaster help tools like me, you are getting errors reported back due to those hiccups.

5) Some disadvantages of Quickpress are now outweighed by Press it
Quickpress also has as main disadvantage that it leaves the photos that you copy and paste on the sites you copy and paste them from. The photo stays at its original site. That has as disadvantage that you are borrowing server time from the site it is published on. Some call that leeching. Others call that hotlinking. As I see several sites doing the same with Chair Blog and after I discovered my hosting company changed it policy into charging me for traffic and for the use of disk space Chair Blog is using on their servers, I am starting to find that a bit annoying.

So my provisional conclusion is after all those experiments that I have decided to gradually change all posts so that all content is contained in one place: My hosting companies servers and not spread out all over the internet.

6) Various WordPress and Theme updates later
After experimenting with the Mystery theme for WordPress and various others I put the blog back on the standard WP theme for some time in 2008 and the first half of 2009, after it became too cumbersome to change sizes of published photos each time when there was a change in a theme (at a certain stage I was operating three themes with a theme switcher so that the reader could pick his favorite theme). I also discovered that the blog was getting more and more attention.

Using the standard WordPress theme, albeit not so nice for the look and feel of a blog and cumbersome to maintain through various WordPress updates, has certain advances over other themes in the field of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). When I explored further into SEO I decided upon buying the Thesis theme for this blog in May, 2009.

7) Change of Server
In October of 2009, all of a sudden I was forced to move the blog from one server to another server at the same hosting company.

The clumsy way of me doing that proved disastrous. All content ended up as a huge spaghetti mountain of loose ends.

This forced me to manually edit each and every post even before I got further with putting Tumblrd posts back where they belong.

The re editing took between November 2009 and March 2010. In the meantime Poley came on board and I installed a FaceBook Fan Page and a Weekly News letter.

In April 2010 I’m back to manually folding Tumblr posts into the blog here.

8) From here you can see the Tumblr Java script reproducing some of my Chair Blog | Tumblr posts until I have folded them back into this blog: [Update: I'll leave the first and the last post for posterity].

9) Another clipping experiment is Kwout:

10) Sad Conclusions
So I’m bound to manually fold my old Tumblr posts from Chair Blog | Tumblr back and post them here… I’ll be working backward and it will take considerable time for nearly 1,000 posts.

After the migration hiccups have been solved mid March 2010, I’m at that again, folding back. I’ll let you know here when that is finished.

Anyone a better Idea? Please use the contact page.

11) Update: Hurray!!!
Today, June 23, 2010. I’ve finally managed to import all my (today 920) prior Tumblr posts that I later converted into Posterous posts into this blog in one go. I will be deleting the two and am really happy.

Update June 25, 2010: I’ve now removed all prior posts from Chair Blog | Tumblr and from Chair Blog Posterous

The only thing that rests is to adjust the posts that are mainly untitled yet….. I’ll put a note here when that undertaking is finished satisfactorily. While deleting posts I’ve seen that there are many duplicates.

12) Sniff [update August 14, 2010]
It takes much much longer to redress all the 920 newly imported “untitled” posts than I anticipated. I now have done some 300 since June 23…still 600 something to go. But I don’t mind, because wading through all those old posts gives me something to reflect on:

1. I discover new material for future publications
2. I discover new connections between chairs, sofas and their designers and studios
3. I even consider to reintroduce fast copying and pasting here in one way or another, as it gives a much better overview of what is happening in chair world
4. Old memories of what I thought when I posted some stuff come up again

13) Yay! [update August 20, 2010]
Yay! Done! At least all (as far as I can see now) posts that had no other header than “Untitled” have a proper header now. There are still areas where the category is not correct yet. But that will come. In the meantime I’ve erased some 260 posts as either duplicates or not interesting enough. Specifically when going through old Tumblr posts imported here, I could see the disadvantage of Tumblr once more very clearly in that it doesn’t have a proper tagging system or proper navigation. And I do love the pagination slider on top of the blog because its navigation is so super fast and intend to keep it.