Somewhere along the way, I think when I moved from Moveable Type to WordPress, I thought it would be an awesome idea to sign up with Feedburner to handle my RSS feed. The idea, as I recall, was I could somehow keep the same feed regardless of where my blog lived so that anyone subscribed to my old feed would remain subscribed to my new feed. Magic. Awesome. Great.

Except… not, because now it doesn’t seem to work and I’m really not sure what to do. Feedburner’s troubleshootize page is not really helping me. Any other suggestions?

Oh, also, this may have to do with how my WordPress template describes the feed, but, well, what should I change?

I’m getting too old for this stuff. Playing around with the guts of a website/blog was just much more fun 10 years ago when I started a blog. Things were so much simpler then! And yes, I know I sound like an old grump, but, well, grr….

Or not.

Talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth. One might think that Kathy Kelly, of the Capital Post-Conviction Project of Louisiana, jumped for joy upon discovering this blog post by Patrick Frey, a Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney who writes an off-the-clock blog, Patterico’s Pontifications. Not only did Frey build a case for witness misconduct and evidence tampering by two prosecution witnesses in a Louisiana murder trial that landed Kelly’s client, Jimmy Duncan, on death row, but he even conducted an interview with another prosecution expert witness. Given that a post like this one — coming from a prosecutor — could potentially provide grounds for appeal, you’d have expected Kelly to get on the phone with Frey ASAP.

Kelly did indeed contact Frey — to threaten him with an ethics complaint!

It’s kind of a crazy story. Apparently the misunderstanding has since been resolved with an apology from the defense attorney. Still, it’s a good reminder of just why it’s often better to say nothing about your work than to risk saying the wrong thing.

Now, if only I could find work to say nothing about…

The solution I’m considering at the moment would be to promote two feeds — one would be for substantive content and would be updated relatively infrequently, while the other would be more stream-of-consciousness and random. You could subscribe or pay attention to either, both, or neither. Thoughts? Suggestions?

A few resources that might be helpful in this project (mostly for my own benefit):
DIY WordPress Tumblog
WordPress plugins for tumbling
T1, a WP Tumbletheme
Tumble-hybrid Deuce theme

And yes, I’m talking to myself here.

BTW: I’m still trying to figure out what to do with this blog. Patly because it’s so dormant, I sometimes feel official retirement is the way to go. And then I think, no, it just needs to be changed up. And then I think: Quit distracting yourself from studying for the bar, you idiot!

Oh, and trying to figure out what to do with this blog. I’m pretty sure it’s going to be under construction in the next few weeks, not that it should matter to most readers (the two of you) — I will try not to break the RSS feed. The rough idea is to try to integrate the tumbroglio with the imbroglio, so that everything in my flickr, del.icio.us, twitter, and Google Reader shared items will all appear here seamlessly. No more “bits” in the right column, no more separate place for tweets, just a regular flow of whatever I’m posting wherever it may be. That’s the idea, anyway. Who knows if it’s possible, or rather, if I’m capable of making it so. We’ll see.

But first, it’s gluttony week! Perfect for a nation whose economy is in the toilet because of too much credit, too much borrowing, and basically overconsumption. But that’s a crap way to look at it. Forget I said that and if I don’t get back for a bit, Happy Turkey!

But and so, what the heck has happened to Public Defender Stuff? It’s been silent for a month and while that’s pretty normal on this here blog, it’s very not normal for PD Stuff. Gideon is still posting regularly on his main blog, which is good, but… I miss PD Stuff. Anyone know what’s going on?

So imagine my dismay when I visit today to find Blogger saying, “Sorry, the blog at womanwearingblack.blogspot.com has been removed.” What!? Google shows that her last post on Nov. 5 suggests that she has decided not to be a woman wearing black any longer:

One of the heaviest things, mentally and emotionally, about the job is that I am responsible for my clients in so many ways. Yeah, we all know we are supposed to “counsel” and “advise” and “assist” in decision-making, but that’s really bullshit when you are talking about our clients. How many times a week do you get asked, “What should I do?” or told “If that’s what you think, I’ll do it.” or even “Tell me what to do.” But then there is the segment of clients you simply can’t tell ANYTHING to, or at least they won’t hear what you are telling them. So, my poorly-drawn analogy is that America is like the public defender client base. And now Obama is responsible.

So I wore black just about every day for the last eight years and now I don’t have to. It is oddly liberating.

That’s cool (and a good example of her style—frank, smart, always w/an edge of humor), but this doesn’t mean she has to stop blogging! Please Woman In Black, come back!

I wish I’d never gotten involved w/the feedburner monster, but as long as it’s working, well, cool.