Category: Weblogs

Work is not making me as stressful these days.

I’ve taken to using the Web to dispel tension. When I find my head in a non-productive loop, I take a couple minutes and visit favorite weblogs (PyrAlert, Evhead, Megnut, Onfocus, Peterme, Justin!) or check email. There is something really satisfying about clearing out the piles of stuff in your emailbox to give you a sensation of lightening your load. Illusory perhaps, but it is as if each of those undeleted messages is a string going to your head and it feels so delightful to cut some of them. I find my blog is a good way to deal with things that I don’t yet want to delete; by sharing the link, mentioning the thing I want to read but haven’t yet, or voicing an idea, I can transfer that pending item into a place where I can find it again if I need to and then delete the mail. Ahhhh. So relaxing.

The Slippery Slope

There is a danger when you get a cool new tool to use it even when you don’t need to. Because it is so dang easy now for me to create an entry, I find I just want to open my trap and say something even when I have nothing to say. Hmmm. Does that make weblogs even more like holding a conversation where you don’t let anyone else get a word in edgewise?

First Blogger post

Look out! I'm bloggin'!

[Most posts prior to this one are actually "time of day unknown" unless it was stated in the hand-coded post or written material. I've guessed or just used the time at which I entered the post into TypePad. – Dinah, January 2004]

[Ev says on the occasion of Blogger's 10th birthday that it launched 8/23/1999, I think that may be when they started using it in-house, given that I had Blogger blog #11 and would have posted immediately upon getting it I'd think.]

Satire is painful and useful

An insanely busy week. I’m moving this weekend and that’s always exhausting. There won’t be much happening here this week.

My small news and daily trivia has been satirized by some guy with an eBay banner ad on his personal site. Talk about glass houses…

Still, as much as I hate being teased, I have to admit I have been writing a web journal and not a web log. I have hoped to do more with this site to turn it into more of a resource and less of a diary. Now that I have someone handy to talk to about the minutae of daily life (lucky Edmond), I’ll try to spare you here.

The Origin of the Term ‘Blog’

You know you’re a real web geek when your mother gives you a hard time for not keeping your web journal up to date. (Message to Mum: Just you wait until all that construction is over and I get you a site. I’ll be expecting daily news, the bird tally, the garden update, the frog log, and a weekly column about world affairs and human nature). Actually, I welcomed the nudge. I had been neglecting this site terribly and have ever so much to tell you about.

Once again Peter Merholz is giving me ideas. He’ll be happy to give you ideas too. Just visit peterme.com. According to Peter, this sort of meandering commentary with links attached is properly pronounced “we-blog” .

OK, yes, I saw it . (Thanks, Nathan!). It was astounding. The best, most seamless effects I’ve ever seen. BUT it’s been 22 years and Lucas still can’t manage more than three female characters (window-dressing and a token silent Jedi don’t count). And how hard would it have been to give a little more depth to that villain? He was a cardboard cutout, albeit gorgeous to watch in motion. My biggest complaint, though, is that escapee from a minstrel show, Jar Jar Binks.
So, great, Mr. Lucas. The future does have beautiful cities that look like Maxfield Parrish fantasies and kind-hearted folk who fight the good fight, but must we also expect that racism will change to species-ism and that any culture which remains in close harmony with nature will be treated as clowns? [I am reminded by the ever-observant Paul FitzPablo McKimoto that, according to that famous crawling text, this all takes place in the past. Oh, well that’s all right then. Never mind.]