Wednesday, February 05, 2003
Spoiler: this post will be one big noodle about my blogging habit, so if you're not interested, please scroll down or visit the archives! It's amazing how quickly one can get addicted: back in January of last year, I started keeping a 'blog' of sorts on my personal webpage, called Unzen Koans. All told, I posted about 30 items - averaging out to a little less than one a week - but when you consider that they were made by the laborious process of building individual web pages in Microsoft Word(TM) and ftp'ing them through a secure SSH server, well, that puts it into perspective. Image-heavy, my Unzen Koans pages took ages to load and looked pretty schitzy (a word stolen from my boss) in Netscape. I'll chalk it up to youthful indiscretion.
Just last month I opened up my Blogger(TM) account, and a few abortive attempts at "Unzen Koans - the blog" later, a word flashed into my head: farkleberries. Mm. Catchy. I like that. No sense having a blog if no one remembers the name, right? The account finally "took", and I made my first stabs at true blogging. Then came the next step: customizing my template. You're looking at the finished results now, but the starting code was a Blogger pre-fab special called "Color Blocks"; at least blogging has forced me to learn some HTML!
If you've checked out this blog before, you may have noticed some changes recently - there are a lot more banners and links on the sidebar, and it's starting to look like a NASCAR special. I suppose the millenium's version of lunchbox decals or bumperstickers is having a lot of banners on your site...at least here, they have an actual function. Can I tell you about some of my recent acquisitions?
- Chicago Blogs. Open to blogs in, around, or about Chicago.
- Blog Philes. A ring for people who "really really love their blogs!"
- Blogs by Women. Speaks for itself, no?
- Blogrolling. This is a very handy code tool that lets you add a "favorites" sidebar to your blog.
- Wanderlust. A creative way of letting other bloggers know about your site - click on their logo, and you'll be sent to another member site.
- BlogHop. Rate a member blog, and find thousands of others by search terms.
- BlogSnob. Generates a little Java code with a plug for another member site, and you get one somwhere else in return. Give a little, get a little!
- Blogdex. Based at MIT; I'm still trying to figure this one out!
