Only one good thing came out of today’s Buzz ugliness with Rob Scoble (note to self: don’t feed the trolls) I discovered some good comedy. Anyway, apparently he’s got deep seated enmity for a video blogger named Loren Feldman – who, from my nobody perspective seems to have a much better handle on how to entertain than Mr. Scoble. If you’re into technology and like a sarcastic NY wit in your comedy check him out on his website at:
http://www.1938media.com/author/admin/

I opened one of my old journals this morning and this loose typewritten sheet fell out. There are a bunch of errors and misspellings, but I’m pretty sure that fact only adds to the charm of this particular piece. There’s nothing otherwise particularly notable about the entry, but it might inspire some of you to drag out that old typewriter from the closet. I still have the typewriter this entry was composed on. It was given to me by my grandmother, a mid 1950′s era Remington Quiet-Riter with the Miracle Tab feature (mine is green). Typewriters like these were considered “portable” models at the time, they were a little smaller and could be used while still in the case with the top open. Mine still works perfectly and I occasionally let the kids work on it (with supervision!).
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One of the problems with maintaining this blog is that I have so many other online things I like to do that taking time to write here every day robs time from these other pursuits. I try to take pictures of my real-world projects and post them either in my private galleries (not all are public), or on Flickr. When I post stuff on Flickr, I always try to add some text description to the images and they really become blog entries of their own. This is pretty time consuming, so I try to only post stuff there when I’m willing to take the time to comment on them. Not to mention taking time to contribute a couple stories on Non_Prophet while he was away. I also spend a goodly amount of time on the care and feeding of several other websites – each having it’s own unique focus. Some are sites I maintain for clients (mostly small business ventures), but they don’t require much time except once in a while. The Celtic re-enactment site I maintain is a massive beast with over 85 members and I’ve been spending a lot more blogging time there lately. Also, I’ve been doing a lot of software development at home for my employer’s website as we’ve been planning to add some new features and haven’t decided which direction to go in yet. I haven’t made any new Youtube videos available in months, though I’m still getting lots of views and comments on them. To try to make it easier to publish stuff I tried using Bloxsom and have a directory where I stash little text files I copy (or compose) and sync that to the web on my notes page. I even posted a page for a simple dice game some friends and I made up to play when hiking around many years ago called KtOG (Kill the Other Guy). Not to mention posting on Facebook which I use mainly to share links to videos or articles I find interesting, or creating the constant stream of links which get compiled on Delicious.

I’d really like to commit to writing here again every day because keeping a journal is something I’ve been doing since 1980 and it’s rewarding in a narcissistic way. I’m just virtually out of time!

My New Years resolution, now nearly abandoned, wasn’t to lose weight (already did that last year!) or to exercise more (I’ve got the serious mountain biking jones now), or eat better (not difficult when your wife is a great cook). Rather, for this year I decided I was going to pimp my website and spend this year writing something every day, submitting comments on other sites, making contacts, etc. in order increase traffic on my main site with the goal of eventually starting to advertise, or sell through the site. Gah! This made running my blog so much like a day job I quickly tired of it all. January was pretty successful in that I wrote some interesting stories, had some good conversations on other sites and drew lots more eyeballs on my pages. But I can’t seriously keep up that amount of output for the rest of the year! Since this site is only one of about 12 that I maintain, it’s just too crazy. For those of you who lurkers out there (and bless my logs I know you’re out there!) who have been following my posts over the last 5 years – I’m not giving up, but I’m going to have to find some kind of more realistic balance here More on this as I decide what I’m going to do.