Between pre-holiday work deadlines and the characteristic frenzy of activities (some authentically delightful, others perhaps less so) that makes the holidays so great, it’s likely to continue to be quiet here for at least another week. I very much look forward to posting more when I can; there’s a lot that I still want to get around to writing about. Meanwhile, you can find me on Twitter, where I hope to continue to manage at least a few potentially interesting thoughts a day.
Happy Holidays, all, and thanks for stopping by!
A bit late to the party, perhaps, but I’ve created a Twitter account. My feed, for any who may be interested in taking a peek or following it, is at http://twitter.com/kulak76
I’m thinking I’ll give Twitter a serious try for at least a good month or so — posting at least one “tweet” a day (if not a few more) about what I’m up to or what’s on my mind as I go about the business of life. I’ll continue blogging here as usual when I find the time and inclination to point out interesting articles, or to write more substantive stuff, but I’m intrigued by the idea of supplementing blogging with a more immediate way to toss out casual thoughts, and maybe even (with any luck?) connect more effectively with others who have similar interests.
My blog-reading habit, together with the occasional posting I do here, has provided a priceless gateway to deeper thinking about issues that weigh on my mind, as well as a certain much-appreciated sense of loose-knit community and just plain “not-alone-ness”, in discovering that there are others who share similar feelings and concerns. I’d hate to have to life life without a place to write about such things, or without my periodic visits to the neighborhoods of the blogosphere that I frequent. But even during times when I’m keeping up relatively well with all of that, I feel a remaining distance at the end of the day between me and others of my kind. Can tweeting help close that gap a bit? It will be interesting to see. I imagine much will depend on finding some intersection between the Twitter-sphere and people I’ve started to get to know in glorious Blog-ville (since blithering alone into a vacuum can only hold its interest for so long — even for me), and/or discovering other interesting feeds to follow.
One intriguing aspect of the Twitter format is that gathering together a group of people who follow one another’s Twitter feeds is a bit like creating a long-lived, slow-motion/casual-turnaround chatroom of sorts. The participants don’t all have to be online at the same time, which could otherwise present a problem for those in different time zones (the reason I’ve been such a stranger at The Chase Lounge, though I don’t mean to be). You can show up now and again, catch up on what others are up to, post, and either stay logged in for a bit of back-and-forth if others are online at the same time, or come back later without missing the conversation.
Anyhow … all the above is probably way too much thinking for something meant to be fun and casual. Consider this an invitation to follow my Twitter feed if the fancy strikes you.
Don’t have a Twitter account? Create one; they’re free! (No, I don’t work for Twitter, and I have no part whatsoever in the Vast Twitter Conspiracy, no matter what anyone tells you to the contrary. I have merely drunk the Kool Aid flavor of the month and found it satisfactory.)
Incidentally, I’ve been using the Iconfactory’s excellent “Twitterific” app on my iPhone to read and post, and am liking it greatly so far.
The free version does just about everything that the ad-free, theme-enhanced $9.99 version does, but I expect I’ll soon move up to being a paying customer if I continue to find Twitterific useful. One of its nifty features is a Javascript bookmarklet that sends the URL of any page you’re looking at in Safari to Twitterific for inclusion in a tweet. (Twitter then replaces it with a space-saving TinyURL.) Posting pictures is fully supported too (from your existing photo library, or taken on-the-fly). I’ve taken much advantage of both of these features already.
OK … ‘Nuff said. Everybody in the pool! (What’s that? I’m the last one to find the pool? Heh.)
As very nearly promised last August, I’ve decided to make a break with the standard Blogger stylesheet that I’ve been relying on for the past 3+ years and give this site a new design of its own. What you should see now, if all went reasonably well, is a tentative first iteration of the re-design.
In taking this makeover leap I’ve risked revealing the very humble, limited nature of my graphic design “skills”. It seemed worth venturing, though, as I’ve really wanted to try to give this space a unique look and feel appropriate to the spirit of its purpose: a place to illuminate and celebrate the ideas and culture — nay, Civilization — that move me and are dear to my heart. I expect to continue making adjustments as I attempt to converge on that desired feel, but hopefully this first version is most of the way there (and reasonably legible!).
In accounting for the image that I’ve chosen for the top of the page, I should clarify that I am not a pilot — just an appreciator of aircraft in all their wonderful variety, who nurses hopes of learning to fly those beautiful machines someday. (If and when I do, I will certainly write about the experience here.) As for the fair ladies of relative antiquity who grace the sidebar with their presence (I’ve added one more since the previous design), they are meant to embody the virtues of this free society that I love so dearly, and serve as a reminder that it must be both stridently defended and gently and wisely nurtured. I hope my choices of imagery succeed in conveying that this is a celebration.
Anyhow, enough meta-blogging for now… In short: Pardon our dust, thank you for your patience, and please resist the urge to adjust your V-HOLD. A few links and image references might not quite be working yet, but I’m working to find and fix the loose ends and get everything running smoothly again as soon as possible, in preparation for more on-topic blogging to come. Hope you’ll drop by again soon.
Regards,
The Management
I’ve got plans for this space, my friends. It’s likely to be a bit longer before hard evidence of that begins to appear on these pages, but I’ve been making gradual but real progress behind the scenes lately on gathering my years of accumulated ideas and notes together into a semi-organized basis from which to work, and I can feel my thoughts and motivation converging … “gel-ing” … synergizing even!
Prompted in part by a recent trip to New York, I’ve made a good start on finally writing an account of my own peripheral but deeply felt experience of September 11th, 2001, and plan to have a finished piece ready to post in time for the fast approaching seventh anniversary of that terrible, clear-skied day. I’ve also managed to extract from NetNewsWire the accumulated flagged web article and blog post links that constitute a virtual paper trail of much of the most noteworthy and relevant reading I’ve done in the years since — material from which I know I’ll want to draw, and to which I’ll want to refer readers, as I delve into various topics. Lastly, though of lesser priority, a site redesign may soon be in the works, so please don’t be alarmed if you come back one day to find that the proprietor has rearranged the familiar furniture. (I promise to keep the Comfy Chair.) Douglas Bowman’s Rounders 4 has served me well and faithfully these past three-plus years since my first post, but I think it may be time to strike out into new and uncharted territory, and try my hand at a creating a custom design of my own that can more closely suit the feel and spirit of the space I’ve wanted to create here.
Blog promises are a risky thing, I know full well, and are surely worth far less than the virtual paper they’re printed on. But on the flip side of that, the prospect of being humiliated by one’s own empty promises has a certain tendency to focus the mind. i.e. Risk acknowledged and deemed worth taking.
Hope to have more for you soon! Management out.
To accommodate an improvement in the way I write and submit my posts, I’ve had to republish all my old entries. I seem to have succeeded in doing so without causing those entries to appear as new in the blog’s Atom feed. But in cases where I didn’t get the necessary accompanying markup adjustments quite right, you may see some formatting oddities in archived posts — blockquotes with missing line breaks, paragraphs concatenated together, etc. — that I will hopefully notice and fix soon. (Blogger’s “Convert line breaks” setting is retroactive in its effect, so changing it for the benefit of my new posts requires me to adjust all the old ones to look right with the new setting.)
The expected payoff for all the trouble is a faster, easier process that I hope will lead me to do more writing and post here more often. (A-ha! I said it! I committed!)
So, per this post’s title and the usual signage convention, please “Pardon Our Dust” during renovations. We are improving our facilities to better serve you, our valued customers…
Thank You for your patience during this transition,
The Management
Things finally having let up a bit in my work life, it looks like I may actually be able to set aside some time to start blogging here again. — I certainly hope so! After starting this project a little over a year ago, I’ve still got plenty of ideas queued up and ready to write about, and have been looking forward to getting back to it. I don’t have a particular schedule in mind yet, but will try to start writing and posting again as I can find moments in which to do so. I’ve been enjoying lots of good reading and listening material lately, so may start with a bit of “linkblogging”. Stay tuned!
