About this site, and a bit about me
This is a personal web site. I resisted calling it a blog for the longest time, preferring instead the term “journal,” but these days it really isn’t as personal as to be able to warrant that particular term. I still don’t really think of it as a blog, and the new layout isn’t particularly blog-y, but I did finally move over to start using real blogging software, so it’s probably more blog than not these days.
I have been writing on the web for just over a decade. In March of 1996 I was sitting in the computer lab in college and wrote about the sounds of the keyboards around me, about how they sounded like typewriters. I like typewriters a lot, though my Olympus doesn’t have a ribbon and the keys stick these days. I think I have to buy a new one. I remember typing out college applications and I remember a report written about anacondas written for my second grade class, though I don’t remember if I actually typed that or if one of my parents helped me with it.
I also take photographs. Actually, most of my creative energies have gone into the taking of these photographs over the past several years, and my writing has suffered for it. The photographs themselves are quite lovely, I think, so overall I think that my overall body of artistic works has been enhanced by this shifting of priorities. But I still miss the words.
This site has always been about words. The tag line is (though perhaps not apparently so) “words for sale. cheap.” It’s a bit tongue in cheek. After all, these words are going for free, and I’m not actually selling them, but I liked the way the words slid off my tongue the first time I said it, and I like they way the fit together on screen, so I’m going to keep them.
Oh, and about the design of this site. I’ve always had this grey thing going on with this domain. If you peek back into history you’ll see that the first site I had up here sported what I called the “no-design design,” which was just a pile of text on a grey background. Then, when I moved over to this blogging software, I used a canned template that was very nice, but it wasn’t mine, right? I mean, every other site out there used the theme that I had chosen, so late one night I sat down and pounded out what I’ve been calling the “big font design.” I am quite pleased with it; I think that it’s my favorite site design to date.
I hope you enjoy the words.
Oh, also, since people seem to like buying me things:
