Meta: snowball effect

meta

Why do projects, which seem so simple at first, always seem to snowball into larger and larger projects?

So, as mentioned, I’m elbows-deep into redesigning this site. Basically from the ground up. It’s fun, being all design-y and stuff. I’m digging it.

But I’ve realized that I’m going to have to go back over my previous posts on this blog and add the appropriate CSS tags to make the styles all work correctly. I wish I was better at using grep or awk – would make it so much easier.

But then, I also had a realization about domain names and blog names (those are two different things to me – I’ve caused confusion in others by mixing-and-matching). For instance, here are the domains I own:

And here’s the thing. The Lie Factory blog is on liefactory.com. Run, Moon, Run! is on runmoonrun.com.

But Lunar Obverse, this blog you’re reading now, isn’t on lunarobverse.com. I got to thinkin’ it should be.

But Lunar Obverse, the blog, is my personal blog. However, Lunar Obverse Consulting is my DBA and business name.

The reason I’ve been holding off putting something up at lunarobverse.com is because I meant for that to be my professional site. Now I’m thinking that maybe I should move this personal blog that you’re reading now to lunarobverse.com, and make bamoon.com or brian-moon.com my professional site.

Decisions, decisions. The more I thought about it (and was gently prodded about it by my friends) I realized that, if I was really super-cool, I could make one page the jumping-off point, and aggregate all the new content in one place for your reading pleasure. That would probably be kinda easy to do, although I don’t know how much strain that would put on dante. I’ve been making a lot of requests of Caleb lately and he’s been very supportive but I don’t want to push it…

For now I’m just going to finish the re-design. Then update the back posts, fix broken image tags and links. Finally I’ll figure out what to do with all the domains I now own. It’s an ownership society, they tell me, so I guess I’m doing pretty well in virtual estate.

As a side note, this will mark my 933rd post on Lunar Obverse. I might have a celebration or contest or something for my 1000th post. I’ve got a lot of garbage swag I could give away… Just an idea. Maybe it’ll boost my readership!

Look closely

General

Nice. Look closely… image not safe for work (if you’re managed by small-minded children):

Not sure if same

General

I got an anonymous comment tonight, in response to this post, as follows:

is this the same jann brown that managed the johnson oil company in astoria oregon a few years back. there was talk then that she left with more cash than was hers. – 4/12/2006 05:53:44 PM

I’m answering here, as well as in the comments for that post, in the hopes that our anonymous commenter might show up and drop a few more details, or shoot me an email, or something.

Others would know better than I, but the Jann O. Brown I’m referring to has worked at Multnomah County for at least as long as I have – I started in September 1999, and Jann had worked there for at least a year or two prior to that, I believe. I know that she also worked for the Army Corps of Engineers at one point, though I don’t know exactly when.

The Jann I’m talking about is about 5’7″, light brown hair, tanned, thin, in her 50s. That’s all the details I can pull out of my brain right now but I have been drinking tonight.

If anyone knows any more, or if this is just an unfounded accusation, let me know. When I’m seeing straighter I’ll try to google around and see what I come up with. In the meantime I’m just passing this along.

Meta: site redesign

meta

Update on the internets shenanigans and goings-on.

First, my site redesign. I’ve been wanting to do a site redesign for a while. I even teased about it a while ago, but I can’t find the post, so no linkie. Just know that it’s been on my back-burner for a long time.

I really like the moon background picture, and the three-column look, but it’s not standards-compliant and it really sucks for folks on dial-up. Yes, there are still people who have dial-up internets. I know, I know, you thought it was an urban legend like Budwiser not selling beer to Arabs or Bill Gates sending you $5, but it’s true.

I also wanted to somewhat simplify the overall graphic design. I’m pretty sure I’ll just have two columns, for instance. I’ll still have a moon theme but it will be subtler – moon bullets on my posts, for example, and a moon banner picture across the top.

Here are a couple of sites that I like and that are inspiring me:

There might be more but those are the ones I can think of (and link to) off the top of my head.

Second, my political posts will be on a separate domain and a separate blog. After going to Powell’s last weekend to see Markos Moulitsas Zuniga and Jerome Armstrong talk about their new book, Crashing The Gate (about which event I have a post I need to finish up), I thought I’d work on blogging local and national politics a bit more extensively – and I had a domain I registered a year ago and hadn’t been using that would comment on my cynical view of politics.

Say “hello” to The Lie Factory.

Likewise, I’m moving my running-related posts to a brand-new domain and separate blog. For now anything to do with training or racing will be there. Right now I only have one post, since I just bought the domain this morning (from GANDI, a French company that only charges 12 Euros per year. I forget the exchange rate but it’s cheap, believe me).

Introducing Run, Moon, Run!.

Once the site re-design is done here, I’ll add some bells and whistles to TLF and RMR. For right now I’m just using some default Blogger templates.

Meta: sorry

meta

Sorry for the lack of posts ’round here. I’ve got (yet another) a new project I’m working on, and a couple of posts in draft form that I’ll try to toss up here when they’re good and ready and not one minute before.

In the meantime, let me just say “ow.”

Impact

Politics

Markos Moulitsas Zuniga and Jerome Armstrong at Powell’s

Surprisingly contentious crowd – “third party” questions come up a lot

Markos is asked about building blog traffic – “You, blogging to your immediate friends and family have a much larger impact then I do, blogging to millions.”

I’d never thought of it before in that way. My family all reads my blog, but probably only my dad has ever heard of DailyKos or MyDD. My sister and brother-in-law have never heard of Kos at all. Out of my friends, only Ken really reads political blogs – OK, he rarely reads my blog, too, but since we agree on politics that’s OK. 🙂 I can motivate my friends to participate when needed, especially my non-political friends because I know the issues they care about, and I only ask them to participate when it’s something that they would see as important. So there’s trust – I’m not just blindly asking them to send money or call all the time, like they’re an ATM or robo-caller.

Bedtime

General

Wow! Sure, I’ve wondered if my union was in bed with management.

But I always assumed it was metaphorical. Not literal.

Copies of the relevant articles archived here and here.

Boot Camp

Tech

I’m totally stealing this from John Gruber, but I think he’s being really really eloquent when he says:

“Holy shit!”

Apple has released a public beta of a utility to let you dual-boot Windows XP on your Intel-based Mac, called Boot Camp.

And the bestbestbest part: this technology is going to be included in the next version of Mac OS X, 10.5, Leopard.

This totally looks like a surprise strike at a target of opportunity. What’s that? Oh, haven’t you heard? Windows Vista isn’t going to ship until 2007. But IT OK, Microsoft is going to put stickers on any PC even barely capable of having Vista installed on it, thus guaranteeing that anyone who actually upgrades in ’07 has a really really shitty experience. Nice one, Microsoft! Go, Apple!

Once people get used to running Mac OS, and can compare it side-by-side with XP on the same hardware… I’m betting that some folks eventually just get rid of XP altogether. Not all, mind you; I’m sure some will continue to use both, and some will actually prefer XP for many reasons. But there will be at least some switchers, and that only works to Apple’s advantage, since the bulk of their income still comes from sales of hardware, not software.

Knowledge Base article with all your FAQs about Boot Camp found here.

OK, that does it. I’m totally dual-booting my new sexy thing this weekend.

Bug Man gone

Politics

Holy crab!

An article about the corrupt management at the county in the local paper

AND

Tom DeLay weaseling out of facing the voters?

Good things are supposed to come in threes.

If I get any more good news today I might…

Damn, I got nothin’. I just can’t be that lucky.

Update 4:14 PM – I’m adding this (image stolen from Duncan Black, who probably stole it from someone else found it somewhere else), mainly for Tracy, who actually made me do the Snoopy dance earlier today when she didn’t know what I was talking about: