This weekend I searched unsuccessfully for a Movable Type plug-in that would create a PDF version of Contact Sheet. We know full well that The Web Is Not Print, and even more that Print Is Not the Web (thanks to Dave S. for the reminder). With that in mind, I hacked together my own PHP script bringing you the short history of Contact Sheet in PDF.

The links are gone, the graphics are gone, every bit of formatting is gone making it one bland robotic document. I’m not in the business of creating an HTML to PDF converter, so I threw the CSS out with the bathwater. This is pure text and line breaks, baby.

So does this have any useful purpose? It’s good for saving a simple copy of your weblog, or packaging your blog into one portable file. It’s great for printing out your blog in one fell swoop to save for the year when harddrives are obsolete. I’ve come across great sites wishing there was one PDF that I could grab, saving me the pain of motion-sickness reading that much text on screen.

(Interestingly, two proponents of web standards that I’ve read recently each relate their standardization concerns to current technology becoming obsolete.

In the above Owen Brigg’s design rant:

Just like much of NASA’s 1976 Viking data. NASA can no longer read the format those tapes are in. Researchers are having to review that Mars data by digging through paper print-outs that older scientist hadn’t thrown away.

Jeffrey Zeldman says:

My studio was built around an Akai 12-track, an excellent machine, but with a proprietary format… A year into it, Akai changed their tape format. My master tapes became museum pieces. Then the machine broke down and I couldn’t easily arrange repairs or get parts. This experience would later make me highly receptive to the advantages of common technological standards, as in Web standards.

…but what we really need are less standards and more paper printouts!)

Formatting aside, the main stink is that links don’t work (at least in the printed version, of course), severely limiting the context of many blogs.

I used the R&OS PDF classes, but there are a lot more free PHP-PDF tools available, some with XML capabilities that might be a better way to retain more of the styles and formatting. For this example, I created a new MT template, stripped out all the HTML, and fed it to the PHP script which was an altered version of the sample that came with the package.

If others are interested I’ll make it available, once I peel away the duct tape and rubber bands holding it together. But I said it before and I’ll say it again: it ain’t pretty.

John Gruber writes an excellent article on the Trackback system and why a system of referrals (in place at his site) or a centrally located link collector like Technorati is a better solution. I don’t use any of the methods listed above. Usually when I respond to something that a person has written, I find the easiest, lo-tech method to be a quick e-mail letting them know.

One problem with the referral system (assuming that it was used everywhere): when Contact Sheet refers to Daring Fireball’s Trackback article (as done so above), Contact Sheet will show up in Daring Fireball’s referral logs. So then a Daring Fireball visitor clicks on the reference to Contact Sheet, and now Daring Fireball has referred back to Contact Sheet when making no mention of the site (other than simply appearing in the referral logs).

Another: it’s time-sensitive. Since the original referral from Contact Sheet likely came from my home page (and not the permalink), you will click on Daring Fireball’s referral to Contact Sheet and see no mention of it if you arrive after it’s scrolled off the home page.

There is a lot of cross-fire and extra noise without any context or control.

Technorati is great, but as John mentions, it’s centrally located and I rarely go to the trouble of typing in an article’s URL to see its reach. Someday I may employ a method of referrals out of interest, with the noted limitations.

In the meantime, I will continue to write e-mails when I mention you here.

So here’s what it looks like when a page from your brand new measly weblog that normally receives six or seven or zero visits per day is mentioned in a widely visited newsfeed:

Our analysts are still tracking this trend and will report back with any concrete findings. Preliminary reports indicate an increase in traffic.

Now back to those regular 4 visitors from Fargo..

Last night I was checking domain names (a habit I can’t kick) and lo and behold, contactsheet.org was available. Contact Sheet is an appropriate name for the site because, in addition to the obvoius photo reference which will become more apparent in coming weeks, the writing and image logging is unfiltered and in a very unrefined (pure?) state. Grab-everything and make sense of it later. Blogs are just that—the raw materials that others can mine, examine, organize, reshape, harvest, etc. Contact Sheet is born.

That, and the site’s previous name, what i know, is too close to the popular, nice looking and well-written blog site What do i know.

I have a weblog. I’m calling it “what i know” which was inspired by the following quote.

“There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.”

— Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, clarifying US policy on the war on terror at a Pentagon briefing.