Monday, October 06, 2003

The Blog Goes Ever On And On



A pretty good day, all things considered. Got into the office at dawn, accomplished real work on a new project that suddenly manifested in my area at the end of last week, got some playtesting notes that were promising, and got home early enough to sit on my back porch as the rains started moving in.

Its been still too dry our here, even with fogs in the morning, and I could go for at least a week of rain. What most people don't tell you about Seattle is that most of the rain is in the evening and overnight, so that sleeping with your windows open (we have wide eaves out in our architecture out here) is a viable option. In any event, I had the chance to sit on my back porch as low dark clouds swept up from the south, and the early breeze pushed out before the stormfront stirred the treetops, rattled the windchimes and brought down the first dead leaves of fall down onto the recovering lawn. The sky gets darker still, then the first heavy drops of rain, moving across the backyard, south to north, away from me. I stayed on the porch, dry under the eaves, until enough puddles gathered on the deck to splash back from the falling drops.

This is a reason I like it out here. Really.

Its been an interesting blogging experience so far. Pretty much its been the "target audience" of a) family far away from here b) distant friends wondering what I'm up to, and c) more nearby friends who want some cheap entertainment. I have found that blogs are a good way of getting communications out - I have a friend who was in a car accident a few weeks back, and I only found out via her husband's weblog (I mean, its not like you send out Hallmark Cards - "I'm OK but the car was totaled").

And I'm pretty happy with Blogspot, the service that handles this, so far. A lot of the gang I know are on Livejournal, (for example here, here, and here), but I'm comfortable with the ease of use. There are several additional features on Livejournal, but I really don't need them.

One such feature is the "friends" section that lets you catch the most recent updates of other LiveJournal friends. That's nice, but getting a chunk of someone else's blog is sort of pulling it out of context. A lot of my blogging stuff is tied in one way or another with earlier entries, and if someone is interested, they can just follow my thinking back to its source. I may put in links here, when I get the chance, but I feel no rush yet.

Another Livejournal feature, which again I could enable here with a little work, is a "Comments" section. I'm pretty comfortable with this being a one-way medium as far as updates and great thoughts, and if you have any updates and/or great thoughts, you can always email me. Or you could get your own blog, I suppose. And if you don't have my email address, how the heck did you get here?

That's about it - I'm a little dry on great thoughts at the moment. In part its the weather - the coolness of the evening, the sound of rain in the backyard, the low hum of the computer fan. Its pretty pleasant, all in all. A pretty good day, all things considered.

More later,