2020 Hindsight

Julie of Julie/Julia pulls the blog plug

Sad, that. And after I'd gotten my hands on an old copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, too. I only hope that the archives stay up for some time to come (then again, she paid up for another year of hosting at Salon, so the site's archives should be up at least until next August something. That'll give me some time to cook a few more recipes out of MTAoFC and compare my experiences with Julie's.

Another blog plug pulled: Dave Rogers of Time's Shadow called it quits, too. Best wishes as the door closes on the blog-time-sink, opening up an opportunity for doing something else.

Go visit Nettle

Go visit Nettle, now that I'm about to remove it from my blogroll.

Is doing so a non-endorsement? Far from it! I like reading Brian Dear's occasional accounts documenting user experience with large websites. He's had an interesting series on Netflix, and he successfully urged the ACLU to change their site to be more user friendly (opt out of snail mails). Goodo on Brian.

But.

After he dropped off the first page of Google for Nettle, he changed a few things. One of those changes makes his site name take over the left side of my page, as my blogroll expands to get the whole name on one line.

Ouch. Talk about unintended consequences. For some reason, the whole area containing my blogroll won't allow line breaks (maybe it's my fault; heck I don't know).

But blogs with long names go bye-bye. (I wanted to blogroll California Authors, too, but their name was prohibitibely long, so I removed it. UPDATE: They shortened the name, so back on the blogroll it goes.)

I wrote Brian Dear and told him about this unintended consequence. After all, if he documents and writes other people about their sites, he'd welcome input about Nettle, too, right? Yes. He wrote me back, told me he shortened something (title tag on home page?), but my blogroll name thing is still too long. He's got a Moveable Type blog. Does anyone know where in Moveable Type you set the item that eventually becomes the name that's in the blogroll list?

(note: I'll keep him in my blogroll for now, so you can see what I mean, and remove it in a day or so if I can't find a fix. Who knows, maybe it's time to change the blogroll to blogrolling.com because I've seen people with those links able to do more thinks with it than blo.gs does.)

Four years? Already?

I see from various posts that today begins the slew of Editthispage.com birthdays for people, including me: (trust Andrea to have the most comprehensive list!) Jeff Al Mike and Scott

I was thinking that John of View from an Iowa Homestead had an anniversary, but his began Dec 22 from what I can tell. For that matter, so did Garrett

To see others that got an early start, check out the Scripting News archive for December 1999 (Scroll down to news on the 5th and 6th). Congrats to Dave Winer and the present and former people of UserLand for getting things rolling, and to other Blog-tool makers and add-on technology that's come down the pike in the last 4 years.

Four years? Wow. The first thing that comes to mind for me is January of 2000, when I got my blog-writing muscles started, writing A Lake George Diary about my visit with my then-99-year old grandfather. That was nearly 4 years ago? The time, it do fly.

Just last night, I asked my boyfriend something about Wolfgang Pauli (of the Pauli Exclusion Principle, where no two things can occupy the same space at the same time, a law of physics that pertains to my messy house and organizational dystopia. I actually did a public reading about that last night through a writing/performance workshop that has itself celebrated a 4-year anniversary. But I digress.) I said, "Is Wolfgang Pauli a Deutscher?" He said "yes" and then I thought about how I picked up that phrasing from Grandpa.

The day before my grandpa died, the occupational therapist handed him her name tag and asked him to read it. (It was, I assume a name of German extraction). He did so and asked, "Are you a Deutscher?" She said, "I'm not Dutch!" They proceeded to have a conversation about how he was feeling, which led to an exchange over adjectives and adverbs (good is an adjective, well is an adverb), with Grandpa doing all the instruction.

Well, how this post meandered from noting a 4-year blogiversary to me telling (wistfully) stories about Grandpa is, I suppose, a prime example of the meandering nature of blogdom. Or not.

Grrl gets confessional about her SUV

My deep dark confession: I drive an SUV. No, I do not fit the profile of people who drive SUVs. I am a deeply practical person, hence I drive an SUV for the following reasons:

You'll have to go there to find out what they are, though...

Endings and Exigencies

Important endings in the blogosphere:

• A Good Life, observed: Doc Searls tells stories and remembers his mother, who died after 90 years of a life fully lived. Condolences and hugs, Doc.

• Julie of Julie/Julia just finished her year-long project to cook every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Congratulations and thanks for the laughter for those of us who caught on at the end.
• Lt. Smash is now stateside after 8 months in Kuwait. Welcome back!

Another big event today:

• Tonight, the planet Mars is closest to earth than it has been in over 60,000 years. (technically the 27th, but in Pacific Time Zone, it's 9pm the 26th.
  UPDATE: My bad, in reality it's 2:51 Pacific Time the 27th. See this article at Sky & Telescope for more. Cool that our hemisphere can actually see it at the closest moment. I'll be outside in the wee hours, just knowing that I'm witnessing a once-in-a-60,000 year event)

Well, and yesterday was an ending for me: My car's radiator blew. This the week after I got it back from the shop with a brand-new clutch. I don't go on and on here about money matters, but tho I've been working tons, I've projects in the "we paid up the budget on this job but there's still a leeeeetle more work for you to do on it", "Yes, this is barter, but the client's deadline is this week, so hop to it with extra effort and then it'll be done for a while", and "I can't have you work more on this project until we get the big check from the big client" variety. Sheesh. I really don't want to resort to putting up a Paypal button, not that I'd expect anything to come in from it. But after my car pissed greencoolant all over itself and the ground beneath, it's tempting.

I declare the word for today to be exigency (The state or quality of requiring much effort or immediate action.)

The Coulter Classic

Tony Pierce had a great time out with bachelor-partying friends at the Coulter Classic at the race track. Definitely worth a look-see.

suppose in a way we're all winners

in this game called life.

whether we're big or small, clean or muddy.

if we're billionaires or bloggers.

John Robb: He's baaaaaack!

After a sudden and unexplained disappearance of his website on the same day that his departure from Userland was announced, John Robb is back, with a very telling comment:

NEVER (under any circumstances) publish a weblog to a domain that you don't control.

The statement comes from someone who was a COO of a company that makes weblog tools, including Manila, a centralized tool which I use, and Radio, a decentralized tool (which can publish to a centralized location). What's the saying? "Trust no one."? Ouch. It also proves the good part about Radio--you have a local copy of your site, which means that you can put all the contents up to a new home. Inconvenient about those broken links, but the information is out there, and not gone for good.

There was a time where I had a personal experimental site on RadioPossibility.com, and one day it all disappeared. Point taken, John Robb. Point very well taken.

a helping hand, and a virtual hug

Ouch! Andrea says that André fell and broke both arms! ouch ouch ouch! Thanks for the updates, Andrea, and best wishes to both of you.

I met André at Manilapalooza a few years ago. Here he is with both arms very intact.

Amen, Foto!

Adrian Mendoza, photojournalist for the Modesto Bee, and digital imager extraordinaire, launched his photo gallery site. ...with a weblog. Way cool. Now I find out he's a writer, too!!

A coupla excerpts (alas, no permalinks [yet?]) of early days working at a movie theatre and beginning photography

In December 1974, we received word that Mel Brooks was going to be attending a sneak preview of a new film on a weeknight, and Gary, fearing that we might not be able to fill the 900 seat theater had me out all day drumming up bodies to fill the seats ...

But the first time we heard, "That's FRONK-en-steen," we were hooked. Yes, it was probably the very first public showing of "Young Frankenstein" ANYWHERE, and we watched it with the great Brooks and Bancroft.

and this...

Lesson #1: if you ever get a chance to get inside, UNRESTRICTED access to the world's most famous actors and actresses, bring more than ONE ROLL of black and white film. Hey, I was a beginner!

Yes, I make an appearance in one of the foto galleries, back in the day when I'd successfully done the Atkins thing....before carbs (and less activity) crept back into my life. Inspiration for me, that.

Birthday bloggers

Happy birthday to Sheila and to Andrea!