Selling Ourselves on the Web.


I know this is true. I do it, especially with the pencil blog, which now has it’s own active Facebook page (though an inactive Twitter, er, feed?):

” Maybe you’re sending around a resume on LinkedIn, describing yourself on a dating site, or (ahem) posting a link back to your blog post on Twitter. But these are just the concrete examples. You might be selling an opinion, or a joke, a political ideology, a favorite television show or even a photo of your kids at the top of a ski slope.”

This blog turned seven freakin years old last week. Seven. I’ve officially been blogging for most of the entire time I’ve been online, which is since about April 2000. I wasn’t always so damned techy. I used a typewriter through half of college, and I didn’t graduate THAT long ago. I resisted professors who REQUIRED us to check our email daily (how dare they force me to adopt a technology that I didn’t want any part of!). I managed to use a computer (when my parents took my typewriter and when my father gave me his nice laptop to use) for most of an academic year without going online with it. But then I caved, and I spend more time online and “publish” more stuff than I’m really proud of. I’m not alone in giving into technology:

“I know plenty of former Luddites who have been forced onto Twitter and Facebook by their employers or PR people. And they’re all here now, for one reason and one reason only.”

I don’t want to, but I’ll admit that I check the stats on my websites more than my mailbox that gets letters and packages.

Read more.

The bizarre urge to document everything.


Before Charlotte was born, we bought her a new Moleskine (sized A4) for a first-year journal, and I bought a new camera with the cash I was planning on buying an acoustic bass with. My better half is a talented historian, and I’m a little obsessive and compulsive. We planned on recording everything. Everything.

I didn’t mean to, but I’ve found myself watching important moments through my camera’s LCD screen, and I’m so behind in journaling (and I haven’t cracked Charlotte’s volume open) that I can’t stand to sit down and begin to write anything at all. Today, I noticed a nice red stuck pixel in the middle of my camera’s pictures. Great. I know that bad pixels are a fact of digital photography, but a red one right in the middle is disconcerting. I spent the night trying out CHDK, but their website and download pages have been down all night. And the firmware version is conflicting with what it’s supposed to be. Canon said to send it back to them. Okay, that’s like $15-$20 in shipping and a week or two (or three) without my camera.

In itself, that’s not the end of the world. I could do something scummy, like buy my camera over again and return the one I have now, since my return period is over. Aside from being scummy, I’m sentimental, and I don’t want to do that. This camera took Charlotte’s first picture ever. But I find myself hoping that she doesn’t do anything too memorable in the meantime. And this is stupid.

For another thing, if it were me, I’d rather hear the story from my parents than see the photos. My parents took tons and tons of photos of their boys as children. But my own memory and hearing my parents tell me things that I don’t remember serve me better for my nostalgic needs than photo albums. In fact, there are some I’ve probably never even bothered to look through.

I’ve developed a strange “I’m getting older” and “important things are happening now” penchant for writing everything down and recording everything (that sounds like it’s own blog post) over the last few years. I worked all day and spent half the time Charlotte was awake messing with my camera like her childhood depended on it. But worrying more about some photos and posting them on Facebook seems like a waste of energy to me these days.

But, you know. Tell me that.

While I’m away, tending to the birth of our child.


There are some excellent sites you should check out while I’m gone!

Armand, the founder of Moleskinerie, is back with a re-vamped Notebookism! I, for one, have missed a site devoted to all things stationery and the writing life, as Moleskinerie used to be. Stay tuned for what I’m sure will be one of your favorite blogs.

Joachim is travelling around the world between his 25th and 26th Birthdays and blogging about it all on 360 in 365.  I’m reminded  that all I did then was to worry about a car I didn’t like owning, jump through academic hoops and start a pencil blog.  Instead of regret, however, I’m just enjoying the stories.

And, of course, you should check out North Baltimore Bike Brigade, which I co-run with my good pal Dan.  There’s a blogroll of bike blogs on there of which we’re proud, and a nice community of cyclists, largely from Charm City.

Dear Baltimore Sun, Re: Commenters.

Dear Baltimore Sun,

You should really moderate the comments on your website.  They are threatening, poorly written, evenly more poorly reasoned, often racist and usually unrelated to the article they’re attached to.  I understand their purpose: to give people a chance to respond and start a conversation.  This is a good purpose.  This is the best part of this Web 2.0 stuff.  And if you moderated them and kept out the irrelevant, threatening, racist ones, this might happen.

But as it stands:

1) You’re paying for webspace and bandwidth for idiots to pontificate and then never come back, which is hardly a conversation.  You’re paying for people to generalize about black people, to attack politicians in stupid ways, etc.  You’re a newspaper!  You’re supposed to edit what you publish!
2) People leave blatantly threatening comments; other people report them (multiple times); you never do anything about it. I assume you have a certain level of editorial integrity, yes? Why publish comments by people who can barely type legible sentences when all that clearly comes across is hate/racism/assholery?
3) There are people like me who refuse to read your website and paper because you seem to endorse this kind of behavior.  There are other sources to read the same stories sans mean comments at the end about the kid who got assaulted by a cop, the man killed by an irresponsible truck driver, etc.
4) You lose money.
5) You lose readers and don’t get the news out.
6) 4 and/or 5 mean(s) that your purpose fails.
7) You’re contributing to the climate of idiocy that seems to sweep over Maryland whenever the state’s Republicans don’t get their way in elections.

Please don’t tell me about your belief in Freedom of Speech. Print the F word tomorrow morning if that’s what you’re about. Right there on the front page. And address it to JOHNNY so I know it’s for me. This has nothing to do with Freedom of Speech.  It requires accountability, and there is none.

This is really and actually because you either:

1) Think this bullshit is Okay, in which case, I hope your paper fails, personally.
2) You don’t care what people write on your site, in which case, you should hire some bloggers (like me!) to run it for you.
3) You don’t pay any attention at all to what goes up on your own website. That’s just irresponsible to a terrible degree and doesn’t lend you much in the way of credibility and really means your paper should fail.

I look forward to some integrity and discretion from you in the future. And, seriously, thanks for being the only official news outlet to show up for the Ghost Bike last month (and I’m not being sarcastic; no stations came at all, only you).

Thank you,

This Dude

A lot of blogs I like are gone.

I’ve been blogging for a long time.  Five and a half years.  In that time, I’ve come across a lot of blogs that I read.  A very large proportion of them are gone.  I can’t even link to show where.  They’re that gone.  This makes me said for some reason.

Also, on the CBS morning show today, they talked about turning thirty (which I did Sunday) and the sun.  (Not the crappy Baltimore newspaper.)  A scientist mentioned that the sun is about halfway through its “life.”  I’m well aware that we’ll probably kill each other and/or destroy the planet long before that.  But it’s depressing if you’re a glass half empty kind of person.  This time in five billion years, no more sun.

I enjoyed Sol yesterday with family.  Fitting.

With apologies for absence.

It’s been a nutty few weeks.  (If you’re my “friend” on Facebook, sorry for the  repetitions.)  Work is busy and full of meetings.  Family fun.  Bike research and bike purchase.  New glasses!  Large (VERY) decisions and a lot of fortuitous events.  More later.  I am not gone.  Typing is still slow and hard, but it’s getting better.  More soon.  Very soon.

Voter related comment policy.

I would propose a new policy for bloggers to adopt.  While controling free speech is shaky ground, and I would not advocate controling speech in public, one’s private website is another matter.  What I mean is that, non-voters should not get comments published on other people’s sites.  They don’t want “their voices to be heard.”  So they won’t.  Shouldn’t whatever. I don’t know.  I’m tired from not sleeping.  With excitement!  If you don’t vote, at least blog or write or something.  Someting.  But, honestly, I have to say that, you know, ahem, if you don’t vote (for someone), you suck.  I mean, even if you don’t like the two biggies, there are third party candidates.  And if you don’t like them, there are local elections.  And if  you don’t like them, there are ballot questions.  And if you don’t care about any of that, well, I’d be surprised you’ve read this far.

Moss on a wet rock
Not helping or anything
Non-voters suck hard