About My Blog

Organization and Navigation

Categories

My weblog is divided into categories, which are displayed on the category outline (probably on the left side of your browser window, unless I've restyled the site). The outline displays how many total entries are contained in that particular category. However, when browsing a particular category, you see the category's own blog entries, and those of the categories below it.

For example, when first you enter the main weblog page, you're at the "top" category. Because the top category contains all other categories, it shows entries from all the others. If you click on one of the categories, say Creations, in the category outline, you'll see entries only from Creations and its subcategories: Art, and Photos.

Each weblog entry displays the category under which it is filed. The category is displayed as a link, so you can navigate directly to the category and see the other entries it contains.

A category only shows a certain number of blog entries (it's up to me how many). Eventually, I'll get around to archiving entries so that they're still available even after they've "fallen off" the bottom of the list.

Date Filters

You can choose to browse the blog by date, too, even within a category. For example, if you want to see only entries in 'Miscellany' from 2004, then add '2004' to the end of the URL:

http://www.samoht.com/weblog/gemcast.rb/Miscellany/2004

Eventually, I'll incorporate this feature into an archive page or sidebar entry.

RSS

RSS URLs for my blog are formatted as follows (using the above URL as an example):

http://www.samoht.com/weblog/gemcast.rb/Miscellany/index.rss

Of course, you don't have to type in the URL. There is an "RSS" link next to "Top" in the category tree, which subscribes you to the entire blog. When you're looking at a given category, the "RSS" link you see near the "breadcrumbs" (at the top left of the page -- it tells you what category you're browsing) syndicates just that category. For example, if you only want to get feeds for new Motorcycling-oriented blog entries, browse to the Motorcycling category, then hit the "RSS" link near the breadcrumb. If you're looking at an individual article, then clicking the RSS link subscribes you to the category for that article.

You can get a feed even for a date filter, but that wouldn't make much sense if the date was in the past, because the feed would never change.

Other Details

More details about the weblog, and the entire site, are available on the colophon page.

Technical Stuff

My blog is currently served up by a custom weblog engine called gemcast, which I wrote in the Ruby programming language. I run the entire site from my house on an old Mac G4 Cube running OS X.

More technical blog details.