Inspirations and Salutations

So I have taken to checking on the comments box about as obsessively as a person can without feeling like a fool. I’m also still getting used to the whole Word Press user experience. It’s not quite as flexible as I would like, but then again it’s not like they want me to pay for posting my thoughts and ideas out where the general public can read them. I’m going to do some more research and just tinker around with the Word Press UI until I find something that I’m really happy with. Since I started this whole project on a whim last night at about 10:30 I feel pretty proud of what I was able to accomplish in such a short amount of time.

That said, I looked at the first post in Shades of Mediocrity, and I feel that I may have just compounded my tendency to ramble. Granted it was the first post and I was, and still am, trying to figure out the space, but I can see where this would put off some of my readers. Not that there are any out there. Oh well I will endeavor for brevity and some semblance of a point starting now.

Well what inspired me to move to this new medium of communication? I would have to say that it was the success of some of the “professional” bloggers and their attitudes about what was once a hobby and has now become some kind of a combination between a blessing and a curse. First and foremost I would have to say that John Gruber’s Daringfireballwas the most helpful in regard to the style of both content and presentation. A look at DF shows me that there is great power in simply presenting something. Gruber can be a bit technical and obtuse to a reader like me (read: one with little technical experience), but he is almost always interesting to read. Other than a few minor blogs I would have to bow to Ze Frank’s website and specifically The Show for humor, interactivity, and the general democratization of user-made content. It was Ze Frank that really made me think to myself that “Hey I could do something like this”. Not that Shades will be anything like Ze’s site for a looong time, but it’s worth crediting your influences.

I honestly don’t know where to go from here though. The blog is up and running, I have sort of configured things the way I want to with in WordPress’ limited framework. Thus it becomes finishing the setup and moving into the meat of story as it were. I think that I shall stay true to the nature of blogs and just post whatever comes to mind. Blogging in it’s purest form I would say. Not that it’s particularly entertaining or earth-shattering, but honest nonetheless.

Day 1 – “To Contribute”

8/10/2006
12:23 AM CST

So this is it. I finally take the plunge. I realize that people like me are, quite literally, everywhere on the so-called “blogosphere”. Every pompous blowhard and bleeding heart liberal has his own web log that chronicles the nature of his opinions in excruciating detail. Either that or there is the personal blog that also contains excruciating details about things that you’d rather not know. This is both the beauty and the curse of the internet. Anyone can log on and use the services and products with little screening out the flotsam and jetsam of the burgeoning society that is. There are enormously successful and high profile successes of this kind of openness in an environment, Wikipedia for example, where the openness turns out to be a tremendous boon. Wikipedia has articles from ranging from the obscure like CATS in ZeroWing to the rise of Bolshevism in Russia. Then there is the wonderful community that is the internet web-bulletin-boards. There is little way to weed out the jackasses and the fools that so plague these areas. I have at points been a member of several web-boards and have decided to cease posting in them for this reason. Arguments carried out over the inter-web are pointless, and I find that more often than not the web-boards are not the place for interesting or intelligent discourse. The anonymity afforded allows people to be very condescending and rude without giving even the slightest amount of credence to the other side. Don’t get me wrong there are many boards that I read (mostly on the technical side) and I love them, but even in the better ones there is always someone who is out to make someone else’s completely legitimate topic worthless with needless trolling and flaming.

As I said earlier though, the do-it-yourself mentality of many of the things on the internet has always appealed to me. For many years now I suppose I have fancied my self a writer and have always been interested in fiction as a genre. A good, well-thought-out character story will always have place on my bookshelf. However, it was always the task of getting myself published that was the daunting task. Starting the ball rolling was always the thing that seemed the most out of reach, and plus there was always something new and something that kept me from that goal. Also for many years I have been a collaborator, a sounding-board, and the improvement man. Kick your ideas my way and we’ll talk about them. Don’t get me wrong I like be a collaborator and working with someone else on various projects is often times much better that way, the end product is hopefully a result of the two strengths of the people involved and not an exacerbation of the weakness of those people. Yet during this all I have had the desire to strike out on my own and create my own content, and work on my own projects. With the recent popularity of the web-log in the desktop publishing arena, I have decided to be the attention whore and publish a kind of on-line journal of thoughts ideas and essays about the current state and the future improvements in many areas from sports to technology to politics to cooking. It is then my goal to try this whole web-blog phenomenon out; to finally get my feet wet in this whole experience of exposing myself to the English speaking world at large.

Before I made this rather momentous, for me at least, decision to move out into the blog world, I had always chalked up as an excuse was the technical barrier. I didn’t have the expertise to move in to the field. I know a little HTML, thought not as much as I would like, I can do some moderately advanced things in Photoshop, as well as some pretty cool things in iMovie. I had always tried to learn more about my options, but I have large problem, I can’t read manuals. They are dull and boring and often take more time to read the manual than to actually get the product up and running. But on those more complicated measures like HTML and Photoshop the guides and manuals are almost a necessity for one who knows almost nothing about them. Oh sure I can impress the layman with the little things and strings of letters which are meaningless to them, but underneath I would consider myself a techno-fraud. I always feel that I’m having to show up friends and relatives in the whole “smart-guy” framework. But I have found that there are some remarkable easy tools for getting into this whole movement.

So I’m sure at this point you’re asking yourself, “Why am I going to read this blog? What will make this different from every other blog on the net? What’s so special about you?” To be honest, Gentle Reader, I don’t know why you’re here. Odds are you’re not here. There are sure to be better blogs with more content, stronger and more articulate content, and cool features that surpass this one. I admit I have no appreciable talent at web design, but I do know what I like and what looks good, at least to me (always remember there is no accounting for taste), and I hope that someone will care about what I have to say, but then isn’t that the whole frickin’ point of the web-log experience?

To pre-empt some of these questions and perhaps to generate some intrigue, I’m going to play it like Carmen San Diego and make you guess where I am. And just to nip these problems in the bud I will not be giving you my address, phone number , or other personal information. I’m not interested in anything that you have to sell me, even if the deal expires real soon now. I’m not going to meet up/hook up/snog/have coffee with/have sex with any of you. You’re all icky anyway.

I am a man in my early 20’s living in a city in the midwest. I attend a large American university and am currently involved with a beautiful young lady who will become my wifey someday. As you may have guessed, I’m a Mac user and have been for nearly 15 years, though I suppose you could be picky and not count the IIgs as a Mac, but using Apple computers for that long definitely. I like hockey as a sport and play it whenever I can get the chance. Will play anything, though forward is my favorite spot at the moment. As I said before writing is a passion of mine and I have been doing that since before I could learn to type. I have a passion for science fiction and fantasy and enjoy reading and watching them both in various media. Cooking is another one of my passions and I love a good satisfying meal with a good satisfying bottle of beer.

So I know that this post has been long, but the first one has got to hook you’re audience. I will try to update as often as possible, though when the fall semester comes rolling around I’m sure posts will become shorter or possibly less frequent. I also welcome comments about anything, please refrain from just using the comments box to call me a poopy-head for 13 lines though. Do include criticisms, compliments, and questions, though I do reserve the right not to answer any question I choose. As I’m new to this whole experience, I welcome the opportunity to improve content, writing styles, and my accessibility.

So welcome aboard and I hope that I can really accomplish something here. Not necessarily something really profound, just something meaningful.