3 posts tagged “me”
This picture of S. and me is surprisingly decent, as posed photos go. It was taken while we were visiting S.'s parents over Thanksgiving, a weekend that produced many many photos of us both, most of which were frankly hideous, and which I would rather never have seen. Oh well! I'm happy to have this one, though. I like that we have both produced expressions that go only a single shade above neutral, as if to say, "This meets our federally mandated smile minimum. Take it or leave it."
...with headphones on. I think they look rather charming and like to imagine that this could be a shot of me taking a moment away from doing something cool and recording-engineer-ish. Also, the window mirror shot is pleasantly flattering, as it hides how tired I look this week. In sum, thumbs up.
My first webloggish project was called "Your Pocket Guide." This was in 2000, before any blogging software (that I knew of, at least) had categories or other organizational options other than date. This was inconvenient, because I liked automated archiving and all those other handy Blogger features, but I wanted to organize Your Pocket Guide into chapters. Eventually I forced my then-boyfriend, now-husband Snark to write a quick and dirty script for posting and archiving in this format. I'm not sure it was actually any less trouble than doing it all by hand, but it made it feel more like a real live weblog, just like all the cool kids were writing.
The idea was that each chapter would have a title adhering to the form [X and Y], and then each post would provide a little survey of some topic that one way or another was an example of X or Y. The first one was "Your Pocket Guide to Fits and Starts" and had pieces on pipe fitters, tailors, clove cigarettes ("nic fit"), boll weevils and their role in the start of the USDA, and the startle reaction. Other chapters were Your Pocket Guide to guns and butter, smoke and mirrors, sweetness and light, proceedings and papers, and hooks and eyes. All very clever! Also, all very tiny. When I go back and look at it now, I'm shocked by how itsy I made the text. I think that's actually even bigger than I had it at first -- or at least more generous linespacing. Your Pocket Guide to Losing Your Eyesight!
I kind of wish I'd kept up with it, but it was a lot of work, and I'm lazy. Fortunately, Snark writes much better and more cohesive little essays on arcana (with more readable text, too), and he's been much more faithful about keeping up with it.
Later I'd start a food blog, which I still post to occasionally, and a work blog, which I used while I was preparing for my PhD exams. I've never had an online journal as such, though, mostly because I can't really imagine that anyone would find it interesting. But, of course, that never stopped the rest of the Internet, so here I am. At the moment I'm planning to use this space to blather about my experiments with learning Inform, among other things. I think I'll also post some pictures of squirrels.
