Six years ago I started this blog and it’s been my online home for that time as everything changed around it. Now everything is spread out much more and overall it’s a lot easier to do this stuff and you don’t need to get your hands very dirty with HTML and SQL and CSS to have a blog. As I write this, I’m not even using my own laptop and not having my laptop with all of the files also gives me the opportunity to reflect on how things have changed over the past few years with the technology that I use to communicate with you and how everything ties together.
There was a lot of configuration required when I started out and I needed to get a lot of things ready on my computer (which was a G3 PowerBook). After thinking about it for a long time and having a domain registered for almost a year, I finally took the plunge and launched the site in a blog format with Blosxom which has a beautiful simplicity. I switched to WordPress, but the tiny script and the old version of the site is still running to make sure that old links don’t break. But I figured that after about 5 years of very little changes to my site it was time to move away from the text files and code and to also add comments.
Without my laptop and all of the tools that I’ve been using I can still do just about everything. I’m writing this using the built-in editor in WordPress instead of my preferred blogging client MarsEdit (which lets me have a consistent way to write and post to the other blogs that I use) and it makes me realize how it’s a lot easier to move around and not need a computer with all of the tools installed on it. But it is a bit slower, and the big thing that I realize is that having the right tools can speed things up and allow you to do more in the time available.
While I do miss my MacBook Pro a lot, as long as I remember my usernames and passwords, I can do a remarkable amount of work on any computer. My images are stored on Flickr and all of the posts are online so anything I need I can get quickly. I can even send photos and updates from my phone and edit and write stuff on the tiny screen as well. So while I don’t really need a computer, it’s still great to have and for doing stuff like editing video and audio it’s still the best way to do it as the files are large and processing power does make a difference.
With the proliferation of other sites and tools such as 43 Things and Twitter and with my tumblelog for small things, it seems that I spent less and less time here and haven’t been writing much in the blog format even though I’m a lot more present online than I’ve ever been. One of my goals in using WordPress was to reduce the friction to posting and to have more of a conversation with you and the other people who read the site. If I had comments earlier I think that I would have written more because I realize that a conversation is always more interesting than a monologue.
Hopefully this will be one of the last posts about the site and about blogging and I’ll be writing more here about films, technology, books and all sorts of other things big and small. I still have to clean up the archives and play around with the widgets and themes and other stuff, but now I’m here at least once a week walking around and checking the settings. With my summer break beginning soon I will have a lot more free time which will hopefully translate into more writing. This site is a home that I’ve grown accustomed to and now with a new coat of paint and with renovations it’s time for me to spend more time here. Thanks for being here and I’ll talk to you soon!
This thing has 4 Comments
I’m glad that you are writing more on here. I enjoy reading your posts and seeing what you’ve been up to in blog form. I like 43T, but the entries are so short that I find it difficult to really piece together people’s lives. I guess I’m just a lazy reader, when it comes down to it.
It’s funny that you like Wordpress for the comment features when I really find it not to be handled so well. There’s no reply button on the blog. I’m used to blogs that allow you to reply via a link that will both post it to your blog and also email the original commenter. I’ve been doing double-duty since switching to WP and posting replies and also emailing the person through my account. Turns out that I miss a lot of comment replies since not many other people go through the motions of replying this way. Oh well… I guess one day all the services will have better comment handling, but for now I just come back and check to see if someone replied.
Thanks Reese!
It’s hard to fit all of the online parts together to construct someone’s identity.
I think that I can configure things a bit differently with the comments and you can subscribe to a feed of a comment that you’ve left, but it’s not the same as getting email when it’s updated. But it’s a lot better for me since I didn’t haven’t any comments on the site before.
I haven’t really spent a lot of time diving deep into WordPress yet, but I want to balance out the time I spend in the back room of the site and the time I spent out in public!
Ha… the whole reason for why I blog is to initiate a conversation between people, either between myself and a reader, or between readers. Comments are the way to get this done, and handy features like comment-reply emails and such are the best way to get it started.
It’s funny… I do the same thing on Flickr, but recently discovered that other people did not see Flickr for that use. I’m not sure if that’s what Flickr’s initial intention was, but a lot of people use it as a way to record ongoing comment conversations. I always tend to keep an eye out for people who reply to their comments and give them a little more of a chance, even if I don’t initially like their site. A little human contact goes a long way, right!! After all, I suppose that we’re all just people looking to connect with someone else out there in some way, whether through online or in real life.
One of these days, we’ll connect in real life and grab a beer at a pub, share camera dorkiness, and talk films.
The conversation is great and I do like the flexibility of comment-reply emails.
Flickr originally was supposed to be a multiplayer online gaming system called “Game Neverending” which is why the extension they use is .gne and there was a chat system that didn’t continue when the focus shifted to photos. Human contact is great and that’s what it’s all about.
We’ll definitely have a beer, share camera dorkiness and talk films one of these days!