I think I’m the last one to blog about this, but I’ve been working with John Hawbaker and Joe Lance (along with a few amazing other people) on Chattarati. It’s got such great potential and talent going in, and we have a lot of big plans. Go visit and enjoy!

Very Cool, and much appreciated!

Adjusting… rapidly: Via Snail Mail for the Interim

I saw the inital post and have been thinking about things to send Al, while he spend his time in a cell. It appears he can only receive letters, so I’m working on one…..

I can only imagine that he’d like to hear from some of y’all.

“Most people aren’t blogging to connect to the world”, was one of Meg’s quotes and fits very well. My blog was originally set to talk about computer stuff and let my friends know what was going on. I hated sending email out and most of my friends scattered and weren’t local anymore. Then I saw it, almost as public access and my own little opinion column. So more of my opinions came in.

Pogue, starts toward the negative and talks about “blog attacks”. People, a stock market manipulator for instance, and some of the anonymous attacks people have received. And here is where the “someone has to manage free speech” part comes in. But why does someone have to “manage free speech”?

David Pogue did the segment’s beginning and end in pajamas, trying to make it a bit cutesy, talking about blogging about cats. It’s almost making me feel a bit embarrassed to say I’m a blogger. It trivializes a lot of what we do, when it’s become cutesy like that. Sure we all blog about cats or dogs, it makes what we do seem like a diary entry.

He interviewed Anna Marie Cox and discussed the snarky, cynical posts people make. Pogue may blog, but I’m beginning to really not like where professionals are taking what originally was an amateur space. People of his ilk have been trivalizing what amatures did for years, when mainstream media (yes MSM (sic)) ignored what we did. Now finally they couldn’t ignore bloggers and they come in and fuck it all up.

Yes, I’m feeling jaded and very cynical about blogging. The amature voice is slowly being obscured….not saying everyone has to post about politics or news or be on CNN, but we need a better way to navigate and find what people are saying…because in some cases, bloggers are saying it better with better research.

Over the past week, I’ve changed our (work’s) 5 year-old tabbed menu into a css, javascriptless, wonder. The new boss has a good grasp of CSS, but I kinda shocked him when I showed what all I could do by handcoding. Took me most of a day, but instead of 12 graphics, we’re down to 4. 88k to 3k.

I’ve also been going through a vendor’s code, more and more, as I keep finding code that disgusts me. Again, the new site will be tableless and (according to them) all web standards. So my question today was, “with all of this talk about standards, why do we have javascript rendering images and text?”. So, like I did with the menu mentioned above, I tore into their little widget and recreated it with more accessible version of javascript and css. I seriously, feel more sure of myself, as I work with these huge company’s coders and see how much CSS knowledge most of these people use just through Dreamweaver. I have a strong feeling, that if I just opened up the code-side, they would be absolutely lost.

The Sacred Cow Tipping redesign is still upcoming. I have some ideas based on what I showed off about three weeks ago. More based on what I’m doing at work…although I’m on Movable Type and not Teamsite. I’m also looking at redesigning the personal site and even keeping a tiny blog over there for more design-y things….don’t know yet.

I’m doing a bit of blog consulting and wish I could do this full-time. I can’t really be anything but vague about it, but it’s an interesting project. It won’t be “mine” but it will be nice laying the groundwork for someone to have a killer blog. I’m still hashing out details, but it’s nice being an old-school blogger who no one knows. Being on the C-List (hell D-List) has it’s advantages.

I’m still trying to find “my place”. A mindset or a grouping of thoughts. But I have so little time to think about anything but work, that off time is just veg time. I miss music, don’t know if I actually want to play again, honestly. I’m just so burned out on that aspect of it. I’d almost consider being a manager for a band or an artist. I’m *that* much of an asshole and might be actually good in that role.

Ok, enough of this ramblings…..