On the Fifth Day of Christmas...

Well, I'd like to receive five golden rings, if anyone wants to offer them to me. I'm not a ring wearer myself, but I'm sure my mom and my cousin would both like one, and I could pawn off the other three for a tidy profit. That has a nice ring to it. But, barring that, we return to the Fourth Blog of Christmas, which it seems is Jason Franklin's the Book of Confusion.

Jason is a newcomer to my blogroll (I just added him about two weeks ago), although I've been following his blog somewhat for a good while now. I know him better for his participation over at SCF and on Kevin's blog. I appreciate his wide ranging blog entries, be they short little ones posted from his T-Mobile Sidekick (such as the one today on the foundation of our faith) or slightly longer ones posted in a more traditional manner. He is observant and I certainly thank him for his contribution to my daily reading of the blogosphere and (like Kevin before and Ed sometime in the next six days) also to the fellowship at SCF.

On the Fourth Day of Christmas...

Well, let's forget the calling birds. Today, we have the third blog of Christmas: Kevin's emergentpdx. It has gone through more names than I can probably recall now, but I've been following his blog in some iteration since the summer of 2002. Kevin's blog was the second blog I started reading and the first to really get me connected to the blogosphere (I followed his links to the Cranium Leakage gang, starting with WIT, especially). I've known Kevin a bit longer; I first “met” him on the customer forums of our mutual old web host back in the summer of 2001 — he actually had to put up with me as a customer for awhile, when he took a position at that company and was often the tech that answered my questions and complaints.

At any rate, Kevin has a tendency to make me think. He's usually one step ahead of me on whatever path I might be heading down (such as the conversion to seeing the light amidst the darkness and chaos). Usually, I've found I disagree with him, try to formulate an argument and sooner or later defeat myself and end up agreeing with him. But, contrary to what some people tell me, I'm don't think I'm going to be making my own RomeComing just now. Thanks, Kevin for the always thought provoking posts.

Hmm… so who will be the Fifth Blog of Christmas?

PS: To my first two Blogs of Christmas, I'm sorry your posts were a bit shorter, on the third time I actually remembered to start early enough that I could still write coherently half-intelligible ramblings.

On the Third Day of Christmas

I haven't even had a chance to read the comments on the last entry yet (nor fix some new bugs in SAFARI), but I didn't want to miss the next Blog of Christmas.

We started out with Michael, and now we move to the co-creator of the Cranium Leakage family of sites to which Michael's site is a member: Christopher and What in Tarnation. Christopher is one of two bloggers that really helped me get started in the blogosphere. He always has amusing stories from his adventures as a third grade teacher, among other interesting things. Plus, as of a few days ago, he added a theme to his site that features the beloved logo of yesteryear that I've so often bugged him about. Christopher is the second of three blogging friends from Missouri among my stroll through the blogroll (the first, chronologically). Check out his site — it'll make you say “inside cheke and cimble” in five seconds flat. Thanks for sharing your stories, Christopher.

Anonymous Posting

Sometimes I wish blogging was a bit more like a forum. There's a few posts I might write if I could post them under a pseudonym or anonymously that I won't or can't post under my real name (yes, in case anyone ever suspected otherwise, I really am Tim Butler). I could start up a second blog, but that wouldn't have the same readers and blogging isn't anything, in my estimation, without the community of other bloggers and readers that comment.

When I use to be on some forums, on occasion I would create an alter ego to ask questions I couldn't have tied to my name. (For instance, I use to post on several web hosting forums and when I went to shop for a new web host, I didn't want my old one to know that I was asking about other hosts.)

For now, I'm stockpiling these entries in case I get a good idea what to do with them. Hmm.

Still Here

It occurs to me that the last week was probably the biggest gap in my blog that has existed in over a year. I'll be back to full speed soon. I have something new to post about tomorrow.

Thanks again to all of you for your prayers and support with regard to my grandmother's passing.

Michael Makes a Move

I mentioned Christopher's blog-in-exile (BiE) yesterday; another one of my blogging buddies from Cranium Leakage, Michael Morgan, has also started a BiE, which you can find here. Tell 'im Tim sent ya, so I get my referral fees.

Psssst: Christopher, you said you were paying me $20 per person referred, right?

What the Freak!?!?!

It seems the Cranium Leakage gang is having a bit of trouble at the moment. I talked to Christopher, and he pointed me to a Spare Change entry he posted, which links to his blog in exile, What the Freak. I'm hoping this gets resolved quickly for them.

To Cast a Pod?

I'm pondering if I should dip my toes in the Podcasting waters. Tonight I worked up an entire 20 minute podcast and put it all together in GarageBand — including music — in about an hour. It was rather fun. But I'm not sure if I can commit to regularly taking out the time to do a podcast; unlike a text entry like this, podcasting requires a larger block of uninterrupted time (even if it might not require more time as a whole). When I'm writing a blog entry, I might be interrupted every few minutes, but if I'm recording myself, I cannot be interrupted as easily.

For that matter, I've listened to a few podcasts, and beyond the enjoyment I've gotten at putting voices to the words of the bloggers who are podcasting, I have not found myself becoming a regular listener. It is not a matter of whether the podcast was good, but I've found I simply do not have a lot of periods of time in which listening to a podcast is convenient (unlike text blogging).

Those two reasons make me think perhaps I won't publish my first (and perhaps only) stab at podcasting.

Tomorrow

I wrote up a nice post tonight, but I did not get it quite done, so I guess you'll just have to wait until tomorrow for it. Sorry. I'm refunding a portion of your monthly subscription fees in exchange.

Trip Down Memory Lane

Perhaps it was the fact that, despite forgetting to write about it, my blog turned two on March 4. Maybe it was something else. But, I spent a little while tonight browsing the Internet Archive's WayBackMachine looking at some of my favorite blogs back when I first discovered them. In particular, I was looking at the two blogs I've been reading the longest that still exist: Sakamuyo and What in Tarnation!?!?!?.

It was interesting to look back into what Kevin and Christopher were saying in 2002. It was interesting to see what the respective sites looked like at the time. Sakamuyo was still in its green theme with Kevin talking about his new hard disk on which he was going to install two or three GNU/Linux distributions (Kevin has since betrayed the PC world and switched to Mac). On the other hand, I took a look at WIT as of November 2002, when I first started reading it, and Christopher was answering a Friday Five about thanksgiving (incidentally, that post was the first one I commented on at his site).

That's definitely one of the great things about WayBackMachine — it's really neat to get a snapshot of the way things were a few years back. Maybe reminiscing about web sites is a geeky thing to do, but when you've come to think of the people behind the sites as friends, maybe its not. It is sort of like a blending together of a photo album and old news paper clippings. Or something like that. A nice thing to do on a Saturday afternoon when nothing else terribly urgent had to be done.

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