Category Archives: meta

Tumblr Revisited

I find it hard to use tumblr with a blog. Sure tumblr is a great way to find random pics (as I said back in September), but the lack of context is driving me insane. Also every time something is rebloged on tumblr, all the existing tags are lost, thus either encouraging less context or encouraging posts to be recontextualized. (Ha!) I feel compelled to track down the sources to the pictures, to tag them correctly with who drew what, who built that, sometimes even comment on them. However, you it seem very difficult to combine separate posts posts together into a single worthwhile post.

Then again, maybe that’s not the point. Tumblr is for random stuff. It’s for short comments if any. Blogs are for “big” things (where “big” is defined as anything over 120 characters.) Maybe I should just start collecting tumblr stuff together and reblog it here in the vein of Dark Roasted Blend.

tumblr

I have a tumblr.

Yes, tumblr is annoying in how it’s basically just photos removed from context, but it is great source for, and an easy way to share random photos from the web. I’m not cross-posting between there and here, but there’s the little widget on the side that give you a flavor of whatever it is I’m into at the moment.

Efficiency

I have 12 posts sitting in the drafts folder.
I have 2241 links flagged in NetNewsWire waiting to be posted.
I have an unknown number of links sitting on my desktops and browser tabs, waiting to be turned into posts.

Clearly, I need to be more efficient.

Recolonizing Detroit

Zeroth in the series of indeterminate length, Recolonizing Detroit

Two months ago, I began thinking about how economic growth could be promoted in depressed areas. The catalyst for this was reading two ostensibly unrelated articles. The first explicitly referred to Detroit, the second was a more oblique reference. Both of these articles did discuss how immigration, investment, and governments interact to promote or discourage growth.

Originally I was going to put these thoughts down in a single post, but as I wrote it, it grew so large and meandering that it became unwieldy for a simple blog post. Instead decided to break it up into a series of smaller and medium sized posts.

I’m doing this for two reasons. First, trying to write something long in the WordPress editor just doesn’t work. A word processor may just be a glorified text box, but somehow writing in WordPress just feels awkward. Maybe it’s due to a unconscious bias using a web browser elicits. I don’t know, but it’s not working for me. Second, I don’t feel like I have the time to devote to a single long and well organized writing. Even if I did have the time, part of me doubts that it would be any good. This isn’t an essay, since I’m not arguing for anything. I don’t know what this would be. It’s just a collection of thoughts, some more thought out than others. By breaking my thoughts into smaller pieces, perhaps will disguise these failings.

Don’t worry. I’m not going to have this blog careen over the hill and into the chasm of lefty political blog. I still have plenty of electronic plants to post about, so art will always remain the focus. Think of this as logical extension of the infrastructure posts.

Memes

Since I deactivated my Facebook account, (I’m debating about actually deleting it.) I’ve been wanting a way to share (and by “share,” I mean “post to a blog that no one reads anymore”) useless memes. So I created the meme category. It’s hidden from the main page, but it should still show up in the RSS feeds.

Now you are properly prepared for one half of the battle.

Update: Fri May 21 23:20:39 PDT 2010
I’ve had some content-free posts before. I’m killing the meme section. I’m going to reconsider using del.icio.us for links sharing though. Everything should appear on the main page now.

Relaunch

Last December, I realized that the majority of the websites I read tend to be art/design sites. I decided I wanted to share these links in a relatively nonintrusive way so obviously I thought about (re)blogging them. Originally, I was going to create a whole other site just for this, but I could never come up with a decent name for it. Also, I realized what I had here was incredibly boring hodgepodge of stuff. So I swept it all away.

At some point I should go back and add everything back again, but maybe not. I have 450 items I flagged in my newsreader since I decided to make a design blog. That’s more than enough to keep me busy for quite a while.