Sleep And Water

I’ve been promising this for a while, and I finally came through. Not with a battle-ready megafortress, but more a little teepee sitting in the desert. It’s missing more than it has, but at least it’s here. First off, let’s get something clear:

I will be posting once a day for at least the first year of this site.

While certain areas of my life have been flourishing and outright exploding over the past year, many have languished and stagnated. Of all of these areas, the most troubling one is creative output. Maintaining a blog does not alone sustain and grow the right half of the human brain, just as taking walks doesn’t constitute a full regimen of exercise. But for many people, a walk each day is all it takes to avoid getting fat, thus giving you more energy for other things. As you can see, I’ve languished long enough that this is the height of my analogistic powers.

I’ve designed this site to emphasize more than just written posts, but also songs, videos, images, quotes, whatever, all tumblelog style. It’s not like I’m all business. But I’ve written some good blog posts over the last few years, ones I’d be proud to use as writing samples or develop into essays. That’s really valuable stuff. The kind of backbone my brain could use.

And that’s alongside continuing development, especially in this first month, where I’ll be adding new features almost every day as well. A list of things to come would be way large, but the most imminent things are Textile support (for you and me both), comment previews, and IE/general visual improvements.

My CSS skills have heightened from my last two incarnations, and I think my aesthetic is a little more in line with the times now. I’m not ashamed to send people here anymore, which is nice. I’m actually planning on importing all of the data from my last site (not too hard), and my first site (like really hard). But once it’s done it’s done forever, and I can pick it up and carry it around with me like a lunchbox.

Some technical details: this site is written in Python, using Django. It was a real big change from working in my most common language (Ruby), and I experienced a lot of frustrations along the way, some that made me want to start the whole thing over in a more comfortable setting. But I persevered, and along the way have begun developing a grudging respect for Python and substantial respect for Django.

Everything here is still very fluid, permeable. You could probably break the site pretty easily if you tried. But don’t. Instead, tell me what you think! And be honest!