Yesterday this blog turned seven. Today I updated my wordpress install. The lesson of the past 365 days? Stop being so afraid about blogging personal stuff.
I’m planning for their to be an uptick in content quality this year. Go 2009!
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A quick note — I’ve moved from my old Textdrive server to the new Textdrive-absorbing Joyent server. So there will be some outages as I move stuff over from one server to the other but on the positive side: MUCH faster load times.
I’ve updated the “things I’ve written”:http://alex.golub.name/log/things-ive-written/ page to include two new articles that have appeared recently. Just FYI.
I’ve updated the look of my website. This is my way of giving up on keeping web design one of my main skills and relegating it to something I used to do in my glory days. The theme looks fantastic because it’s Ben Eastaugh and Chris Johnson’s superb “Tarski”:http://ionfish.co.uk/tarski/ theme. I may try to tweak it a little but it looks great the way it is now — or it will when I get all the divs to behave.
As it turned out posting “Lightsaber Without A Key” on someone else’s server didn’t work out too well and alwaysblack and I decided it would be best if I ran the remainder of the story here on alex.golub.name. Nothing traumatic, just quicker updates this way. There is now a “Lightsaber Without A Key”:http://alex.golub.name/log/the-lightsaber-without-a-key/ page that has the entire story from beginning to end, and I’ve just added “the sixth installment”:http://alex.golub.name/log/the-lightsaber-without-a-key#VI — hopefully if I get back to posting every 10 days or so then I should have it done by early July!
Heh. I just upgraded to Wordpress 2.0 and the backend is VERY pretty. Also: yeah instant category adds!
Today my blog turns four. On previous anniversaries I was able to reflect back on the blog’s history and its twists and turns over time. After four years, however, these begin to fade into the background. Come to think of it — what did I do this year? A year ago I had just moved to Hawaii and finished my first semester teaching fulltime, and was struggling to finish my dissertation. In the 365 days since then I’ve defended my dissertation, gained experience and confidence teaching, started Savage Minds, released the paper version of AHATPOLS, started the digital version of its sequel, got on the AnthroSource Steering Committee, and sent off a couple of pieces for publication which are _still_ not in print.
Hey, that sounded pretty impressive. But the best part of all: I got engaged. Huzzah!
It’s been a full year for me and I have two more pieces to send off to publishers before break is over, so I’m afraid I don’t have time to wax philosophical even though this is definitely the time to do so. So good luck and keep going and… happy new years everyone!
Huzzah! That wasn’t hard at all.
Some weirdness may happen to the website as I switch over to my new server. Then again it may not. Hold on a sec.
The rest of the month will be a particularly busy time for me as a number of due dates, publications, applications, and courses all align into a crunch time of cosmic proportions. This means I will either not blog at all because I will be too busy, or else I will blog a lot in a desperate attempt to avoid work. Just letting you know.
I just updated to “Wordpress 1.5.1″:http://wordpress.org/development/2005/05/one-five-one/. Since this is a minor upgrade if anything is broken it is definitely my fault. You can upgrade too if you like.
I’ll be in Portland for the next couple of days. Posts to resume thereafter. Be good to each other while I’m gone.
Brand new sidebar — same great taste! Let me know of additions changes, comments etc. I’ve added links to my outboard brain sites (delicious, citeulike, bloglines) as well as archives by category and date, as well as a blogroll of all the anthropologists I could find. This last is a dump of my anthropology folder from bloglines. It includes people who are teaching anthro or who have a Ph.D. in it _and_ talk a lot about it on their blog. Guys with ‘Greek racial purity’ calculators on their site aren’t included. The problem with drawing a bead on the anthropology blogosphere is that there is a lot of bleed around the edges — so much so that it makes the center hard to find. I want to locate the chewy caramel center before I begin adding on the delicious layers of nugat.
… That is the question. Should I include one on this site? Academic believe information should be free — unless it should be a deep, dark secret. I know people who hand out off prints left and right to all comers but then stonewall mightily when asked for CVs or even — secret of secret! — _syllabi_. Partially this is a reflex from the bad old days when all we had was treeware and information circulated differently. However, I sometimes feel it’s also the result of an astute appreciation of the Ivory Tower’s business model: publish stuff as wide as possible to drive up demand for teaching, which is what you actually make a living on. We’re kinda like Wilco that way — we give up the CD for free, but please _please_ come to our shows.
Anyway, there is really an art to the CV. You have the really, _really_ long one sitting on your hard drive, and then you appropriately edit for your audience depending on the occasion. So once again we encounter the old problem with living a world-readable life on the intarweb: the positive side is that you reach a huge audience because literally _everyone_ reads about your life. The negative side is that you reach a huge audience because literally _everyone_ reads about your life.
I suppose my feeling is putting a CV on the website would give people a chance to evaluate my writing (for instance, in the recent spate of postings on race) in the context of my career and professional authority. To the extent I’m proud of what I’ve done, this seems like a good idea. To the extent that I feel like I could be a harder worker and more successful person, then it seems like a bad idea.
What do you think, is the bio on my “about page”:http://alex.golub.name/log/?page_id=355 enough?
The never ending struggle of the comments appears to be over, at least for now. Please let me know immediately what your “twenty minute acoustic set in heaven”:http://alex.golub.name/log/?p=347#comments would be. If I am wrong in re: comments then drop me a line.
I think when I added the search box to the left hand column of the log I broke the comments. Sorry for that — especially when the ‘20 minute acoustic set’ post and the ‘race’ post have been popular enough that people have been emailing me personally with suggestions, etc. It’ll be fixed soon.
For the record, most of the ‘briefly noted’ posts that used to appear on my sidebar have exaporated to “my CiteULike library”:http://www.citeulike.org/user/rex or (more rarely) “my del.icio.us tags”:http://del.icio.us/ajgolub. These are all culled from “the RSS feeds I read”:http://www.bloglines.com/public/AlexGolub. Let he who has ears hear.
I recently upgraded to 1.5 and for some reason comments are turned off at the moment. Strange, 1.5 is very nice indeed, and the upgrade went so smoothly. I think it is my custom theme that is causing the problem. They should be back soon.
Here is one (potential) redesign. The motto will have a different and better font eventually. Feedback welcome
It is now three years since I’ve been blogging, and four months since I’ve lived in Hawai’i. When I concentrate on the ‘three’ in three years, this blogging thing seems a lark, but when I focus on the ‘years’ I’m a little proud that I’ve been able to keep on going this long. The blog has changed over time, from a personal journal to an intellectual outlet to a soapbox and now to a more occasional, lived in thing. As for O’ahu, the more I learn about it the more I love it. Over New Years the Scarily Erudite Beloved, ADM (Super Market to the World) and The Shambler took in Waianae and walked up Kaena point. Even as I grow more familiar with the city and the island I realize how much more there is to check out here. I’m hopeful I’ll end up staying.
In past annual reviews I’ve looked over this blog’s past. In this one I thought I’d point to the future. I’d be tempted to call these ‘plans’ but given the state of things I think it would make more sense to call them ‘predictions’. So here it is – my top ten predictions of things that will happen to my blog:
1. Sidebar blog moved to main are of blog. Frequent, shorter posts. Like boing boing, but with more stuff on kula.
2. Redesign to be ‘less gloomy’. More color and light.
3. More posting on my research on MMOGs, which I’ve been mum about so far.
4. Coming in February/March: “Thor Grendahl and the Entrance to the Underdark” (name still pending).
5. A ‘the dissertation is finished’ post.
6. Possible DGI renascence and/or group blog.
7. Publications in left hand sidebar.
8. Proper blogroll etc. in other sidebar.
9. The birth of Poreke Press
10. MP3s of me and the SEB singing.
If any of this seems like a terrible, terrible idea let me know. Happy new year everyone!
“A new body, at last…” these immortal words ended “The Keeper of Traken”, one of the final episodes of Tom Baker’s tenure on Dr. Who. Spoken by Anthony Ainsley in his first lines playing The Master, they signal the return of the Doctor’s greatest nemesis in a plot-arc that would provide the hinge between the Baker and Davidson eras, as well as the most extensive presence of the Master since the Pertwee-era season devoted exclusively to their ancient enmity.
A fitting motto, then, for the recent changes that have been going on under the hood of the blog. Thanks to the good folks at evil wire, I am finally running on a proper virtual host with proper name resolutoin. The ugly URL framing and weirdo permalinks are hopefully gone forever, and alex.golub.name now becomes more cannonical than ever before. Huzzah!
Ok the permalinks go to alex.golub.name now and the sidebar links actually function. Also my house guest has now left so I have some free time to blog.
Well the shields are down, and the photon torpedos inoperational, but the dilithium crystal chamber is still intact. I’ll be spending the rest of this week bringing the warpdrive back up to speed, but as you can see the life support systems are still holding together. We’re in rough shape right now but things will get better soon. Hang in there.
I was locked off of Word Press for the last two days for a stupid reason. Now I am back on Word Press and will start blogging again. Huzzah!
It was the same old url-forwarding frame problem. Now all is well. Comment away!!
Comments on the site are not working since I switched servers. Working on it now.
I’ve updated my links page. It will continue to change a little bit. Not very exciting.
Here are some 2 year anniversary questions:
1. WordPress has a nifty feature that asks you to put in a password if you want to see certain restricted blog posts. As the job search progresses, I want to share some of the pieces I’ve worked so hard on with people other than the twelve people who will decide that I Am Not The One. But obviously I am not about to post this world-readably. How would some of you feel about going through the trouble to sign up for a mailing list to get passwords to sensitive entries? I know, I know, it seems INCREDIBLY self-important, but its either that or y’all will be getting two paragraph “I’m really too busy to write” entries for the next three months. You have to promise not to share the password.
2. Please respond to the following characters with either A) Angel of Light or B) Angel of Darkness: Cinnamon, Kathy, Bjork, Lessig (Lawrence), Sammy Davis Jr., Lessig (Willem).
3. Do you think a smaller font size would make this blog read better? Different font or line-spacing?
4. How do you think it’s going?
Let me know,
-A
Hang in there… updating blogging software…. ignore the man behind the curtan…
The blog is two years old today. This time last year it was a much bigger deal for me – I was excited and proud that I had managed to keep the thing going for three hundred and sixty five days. Today, however, the blog seems as much a part of my life as drinking coffee or not doing my laundry. Today it seems so much a normal part of my routine that knocking back another twelve months seems almost pedestrian. My shifts of attention and focus both within and without the blog no longer seem like dealbreakers, and my online presence seems has settled into an happy coexistence with my increasingly active career writing in real life. And so it turns out there’s not much to do, really, except to keep writing and thank you all for reading. Thanks – it’s been great.
I continue to putter. The permalinks are now gendered correctly. Old MT archives are now available, so you can read Leuschke.org fan fic to your heart’s content. Just click the archive link at the top of the page. Also, Golublog patrons actively interested in having fan fiction written about them can now view my amazon wishlist by clicking on the line about the title of the blog where it used to say ‘it doesn’t just look good on lynx – it looks like lynx‘ and where it now says ‘if you buy me things I will write fan fiction about you‘. I figured I’d cut to the chase. Any of the items on this list will make a much better present than soap or pictures of my face on cereal boxes. Not that I dislike soap or pictures. I just like hottie coloraturas better. Although please send only audio recordings – I’m currently all booked up in the flesh-and-blood hottie coloratura department.
Just a quick note for those who may have missed it – you can get to the permalink for a blog entry by clicking on its title. You can veiw all of the entries in the same category by clicking on the subject of the blog entry (this appears just under the date). I considered this an extremely elegant way to set up the website – unfortunately, it left no affordances for users to move through the site. Elegance over affordances – that’s me in a nutshell. I’ve also added a more mundane ‘permalink’ entry at the end of each entry. Also the blogroll link is back, and will soon be followed by RSS and archive info. Sorry it took so long to get around to this. Also, I’ve finally gotten around to adding analog to the site so beware – you’re being watched.
Cheers,
-A
I think I’m back up and stabilized. Finally. Blech. What an unpleasant upgrade.
Ok. Naptime.
Well right after I got everything as I liked WP .72 was released – like literally the next day. Guess how the upgrade went? Grrrr……