Category Archives: Meta

Tumblelog

Another new experiment! Those who have been playing along at home know that the main recurring theme there has always been the lack of and/or sporadic posts. I find it inconvenient to write blog posts, and I can’t seem to get over the mental hump of allowing myself to post short entries.

The result is a tumblelog. I’ve been keeping an eye on this for sometime, and although I could have gone out and signed up for one, on tumblr.com, for example, I’m too much of a DIYer. A while back, I’d come across an open source software package called gelato cms, which was a PHP/MySQL-based tumblelog. Back then, it was in the early stages of development, and mostly unusable. I’m happy to report that it is now mostly usable (it’s still in development, there are bugs, and there are still features missing), and I’ve got it going on my site!

It’s going to be very stream-of-consiousness, covering everything from humour, photography and quotes to geek-stuff, technology, music and system administration!

You can find it here. So click, subscribe to the RSS feed, add it to your favorite Technorati blogs, and enjoy!

Here Comes the Flood…

No, not the Peter Gabriel song (which I love), but blog posts! Those of you who read my blog (all 3 of you!), know that it tends to be bursty: a flurry of posts, usually after a protracted silence. And this last one has been rather lengthy, so it’s time to break it. The silence, I mean, not the pattern – I’m not sure that’s going to happen any time soon.

The Story So Far (a.k.a. My Poor, Sadly Neglected Blog)

OK, so I noticed that it’s been the end of September since I’ve written anything in my blog. Oops. And that’s not for lack of trying – there’s 5 half-written posts in my drafts section, which I never completed for some-reason-or-other. And that’s not because nothing has been happening – quite the contrary. Part of the problem is that I tend to get caught up in a (mostly, I suspect) irrational need to ensure that posts are chronological (“I can write about the thing that just happened, because I haven’t posted anything about the other thing that happened just before it!”). And the snowball just gets bigger, until, like now, I decide I’m going to do something about it, there’s a flurry of 3 or 4 posts, maybe 1 or 2 after that, and the vicious cycle repeats.

This would be the part where I mumble something about it being the beginning of the year, and resolutions, and making an attempt to do better, but I’m not going to do that. Actions speak louder than words, and all that (which means you’ll probably soon be deafened by the silence resulting from the aforementioned cycle beginning another turn).

Anyway, the story so far, in particular order (that chronology thing):

* reverential bought a new sound system: a Bose Cylindrical Radiator Loudspeaker, and a JBL subwoofer, which sound amazing.

* I got a piano: a Yamaha Clavinova CLP-230. An excellent practice instrument for the lessons I started back in September.

* I attended the USENIX LISA conference in December in Washington, DC. At the conference, I was able to meet Cory Doctorow and have him sign one of his books for us.

Oscar* We lost our cat, Oscar, as due to a series of problems that came on pretty suddenly, we had to put him to sleep.

* We saw Thomas Dolby (with BT) in concert at the World Live Cafe in Philadelphia, and got to meet them afterwards.

* We went down to Little Rock, Arkansas for Christmas to visit Michelle’s parents. As they’re looking to retire in the next year or two (back to Canada), this could have been the last Christmas at their AR house.

Well, I think that hits the major highlights for last year. reverential has 4 or 5 gigs already lined up for this year, so there’ll be lots more news there, along with live photos of venues we play and gear! And there’s a few other things that I’m saving for separate posts. Enjoy!

This Blog Thing:

OK, so I’ve been a little delinquent putting up stuff here (and it always seems to come down to a boring meta-post like this one!), and I think there’s two reasons for this: one, it’s not a natural thing for me to put thoughts into words in a venue where just anyone can read them, and two, subconciously, I feel like I have to be a) somehow profound, and b) lengthy.  And it’s just not working (I have two posts in the works right now where I’m trying to be both of these, and they’ve been in draft mode for some time).

So to that end, I think it’s time to try to break out of that mode, and start posting shorter stuff more often, and not worry about the level of profoundity (it that even a word?).

Hmmm…just saying that feels liberating.  We’ll see how long it lasts…

Update Stymied By Lack of Access

Well, I really wanted to post entries last weekend, during the gig, but the place we were at had only spotty cellular signal. Oh, well. We had an amazing weekend: we were happy with the way the music went (a couple of minor glitches, but hey, that’s live music, right?), the speaker was great, a bunch of kids were really impacted by the whole weekend, the location was beautiful, and we had a blast. What more could you want?

Oh, yeah, my new keyboard worked wonderfully. More on that next.