It's Official

Yes, it is: this blog is quite content with itself, for the first time since its genesis some months ago. When I first decided on giving this blog a go, I wanted it (eventually) to be a kind of usable notebook-slash-scrapbook of things: musings, observations, rantings and ravings, 'newspaper' clippings, poems, prose pieces, whatever happened to strike me as 'worth recording' or worth sharing with others. Now that I've set up the archive page as I have, it now has a greater sense of functionality: thanks to the archives page, it's now easier for me to find things that I compiled earlier without having to search, what often seemed endlessly, through weekly archives-- and considering that I very often have trouble remembering what happened yesterday or the day before, remembering weeks back was more than a tad frustrating. The archive page now seems, at least from its compositor's perspective, something like a personal anthology of materials that I at least found of interest, and now finding that poem that I was looking at a few weeks ago is just a mouse-click away. Yeah! :-) And, pardon me if this sounds unnecessarily self-congratulatory, I'm pleased with how the blog looks-- and those of you who know me well know that I do not say such things easily. The design is clear and legibile and direct-- and considering it uses no frames and involved nothing more than having the patience to learn how to code HTML and to sort through my own junk-heap of material, it may not be the best looking page on the internet, but it's also not the worst looking, either. **grin.**

So, yeah, all considered, this blog is at long last something like what I first conceived of it being: personally useful, and not just a personal staging ground. By the way, I've now modified things so it shouldn't be so obvious that the blog is composed on an 800X600 display resolution: those of you working with higher resolutions should now see things in a much more organized fashion, that is, without the vast blank spaces on the right hand side of your screen. Let me know, anyone, if there are any display problems.

All in all, this blog is finally about where I want it to be, and now, with infrastructure in place, maintaining it should be much easier and much more doable. I've always wanted this blog to be something different than most blogs, most of which seem to me little more than exercises in ritual exhibitionism, desperate attempts at personal validation, and elaborate versions of answering-machine messages ("Hey, everyone, sorry I can't talk to you right now, but read this about me instead, and leave a comment at the beep"). Yes, I confess, it's taken me a bit to get past those stages, mainly while I gathered materials and learned how the hell to deal with HTML (Grrr aaargh), but I can say pretty confidently that I'm now past them. *crosses fingers* This bloody thing now looks and acts something like a journal, albeit a public one, that for me at last serves a tangible purpose, at least for me: it no longer feels like I'm typing into an abyss. Ahhh, utility-- such a novel concept. :-)

It's nice to feel I've actually got thinking starting to work as I wanted them to work. It's a feeling I've not had in quite a while. So, my apologies if this entry seems vomitously self-laudatory, but I'm indulging myself. To paraphrase Sir Alec Guinness upon receiving an Honorary Academy Award for his lifetime contributions to film acting, I may not deserve this moment of self-satisfaction, but I'm going to take it while the getting is good.

Dr J issues a cheeky grin and darts off, stage right. A loud thud is no doubt heard shortly after.