- Better.
- A sign of addiction.
- A serious distraction.
- An entertaining introduction to juggling.
- A chance to compare Movable Type to Wordpress.
- Not that much additional effort, really.
- All of the above.
I think the correct answer is #7, with the added clarification for #3 that it’s a welcome distraction and blogging is a serious pursuit (but never stuffy). Whatever the case may be, I’m guest blogging once or twice a week at Vu d’ici, Marie-Chantale Turgeon’s blog.
I haven’t yet decided if I’ll be systematically cross-posting; not sure whether I particularly like the practice. Perhaps only when it makes sense to do so.
People start sending you reminders by fax!
(Hey, at least now I know somebody reads this thing, right?)
Nicolas Ritoux, un ami journaliste artisan de phrases bien apprêtés, vient de répondre à l’appel (irrésistible ?) du carnétisme. Son discours inaugural m’a fait éclater de rires :
Il fut un temps où je collaborais à plusieurs sites Web, où j’écrivais de longs discours sur les listes de discussion, et où je poussais l’effort jusqu’à écrire à des jeunes filles sur Réseau Contact. Je viens seulement récemment de retrouver cette fibre de l’écriture bénévole.
Cette réconciliation est peut-être le fruit des trente ans que je viens de me prendre en pleine face. Je me sens soudainement investi d’un paquet de responsabilités : avoir des enfants, m’engager sérieusement avec une femme, devenir sobre, sain et non fumeur, et toutes ces choses qu’on attend d’un homme adulte.
Quoique Nicolas écrivais des textes sur le Web bien avant que les blogues existaient, il ironise sur son sort en disant que « À première vue, créer mon blogue après tout le monde en 2006, c’est pas fort pour un journaliste techno qui se veut à la pointe du progrès. » Je me suis dit un peu près la même chose ce printemps : pour un rédacteur-traducteur qui est sollicité par des agences Web experts en expérience utilisateur afin de réviser leur rapports et gérer la création de textes adaptées à la lecture sur l’écran, c’est drôle que je n’avais pas de blogue.
Ceci dit, je ne crois pas qu’on devrait faire un truc simplement parce que c’est nouveau ou parce que c’est à la mode. Je lis des blogues depuis que ça existe ; je n’avais pas envie d’en avoir un jusqu’à tout dernièrement. Sommes-nous arrivés tard à cette fête carnétiste ? Peut-être. Mais ce n’est pas le premier arrivé qui compte. L’important est d’être encore debout (et intéressant) quand la fête poursuit et bat son plein. Pour ça, c’est jamais trop tard de se joindre à la fiesta.
My good friend and netlabel honcho, Jean-Patrice Rémillard–aka Pheek–has got a blog going.
I bumped into him at the b-day party of a mutual friend last Saturday. We got to talking about blogging. I don’t, ahem, remember the conversation all that well, but apparently I pointed out how blogging about whatever subject is related to one’s work/interests is a sure-fire way to boost your rank in search engines. (Yes, I will be starting a second, work-related blog soon in case you were wondering…)
Anyhow, a couple of days after our chat, Pheek started reviewing tracks from around the world and across the Net. He tells me that traffic to his site practically doubled overnight. This is great news for the Pheekster, but you and I are the real winners: the man has good taste.
So if you like minimal electronic music, and want to get pointed towards quality tracks (many of which are available for free by self-published artists), add this one to your favourites…
Has it been a whole month since I last posted?! Yikes. I punished myself by not going to the picnic gathering of Montreal bloggers today. “I’m not woooooorthyyyyyyy!!!!” (Exaggerated wail.)
Time is an anaconda and Montreal is the sadistic zookeeper that starves that anaconda, then drapes it around your neck. It’s been squeezing me tight from the moment I got back. An endless stream of invitations, late nights, early mornings (one must work to support a fabulous lifestyle) and four weekly cultural newspapers crammed with interesting things to do. It took all of 48 hours for me to undo 3 weeks of healthy living and tranquility. So much for that healthy West-coast glow my skin had begun to acquire.
Yes, friends and family: I still have a lot of pics to share from my time out West. Look for a posthumous post as soon as the anaconda gives me a breather…
So, you may be wondering where all the vacation updates are. Well, I had a few loose ends to tie up with work my first week away, in between seeing friends and the sights. So, for example, instead of blogging whilst taking ferries to and from Vancouver Island and riding the bus up to Whistler and down to Seattle, I was polishing off various writing and translation jobs.
I honestly wonder whether self-employed people who work solo can ever truly be on vacation. On the other hand, I’ve had some pretty spectacular temporary offices while on the road…
Anyhow, now that all the loose ends are taken care of and I’m really on vacation for the next 10 days, expect to see what I’ve been up to for the last week.
Certains d’entre vous me taquinent (avec raison, j’avoue, le temps que j’en parle) en se demandant si cet élan poursuivra au rhythme actuel. Je vous assure que je viens de découvrir un nouveau drogue. Je ne serai pas arrêtable. Attachez donc vos toques les zamis, c’est parti!
I’ve been fooling around with a few different WP layout themes. I really like the design of Blix. I also like the airy feel of Gentle Calm which you can see in action at Alex King’s Theme Browser.
But the winner so far is K2. I haven’t done more than pop the hood for a quick peek at the mechanics, but it seems to have a lot going for it: powerful, sleek, and feature-rich. And it can only get better because it’s still in beta.
Most of all, it’s designed for WP 2.0 so my mileage should be good. I haven’t run across any other themes that claim that, but it’s still relatively early in the game, I guess.
That said, I’m sure I’ll end up tweaking the look of the standard interface as I work my way up the PHP/CSS learning curve that is beginning to look like K2’s namesake.
After a stalled debut earlier this year, Voices in the Fog finally emerges. The reason for the delay is pretty silly, really: I wanted to post thumbnails from flickr and first needed to adjust the Cascading Style Sheets so that there would be a border around them. Up until now, I’ve never had to tinker with CSS, so I kept putting it off thinking it would be more complicated that it actually is…
So what, exactly, is a “blurry blog”? Quite simply, it’s a blog without a focus. Sacrilegious, I know. The blog seers maintain that you should have some sort of angle, some kind of unique approach, a taxonomic territory you lay sole claim to.
You’ll find none of that here. I am deliberately ignoring the accepted wisdom of blogdom. This will be an experiment in unfocused frivolity, errant musings, and loosely-connected observations.
So damn the CSS and full steam ahead!