Posts (page 2)

Caution Sick Raccoon On Deck!

At home (in the country) we have to worry about the dog catching a skunk in the backyard, hitting deer on the morning commute, running over rabbits on the way home, and rescuing chipmunks from the pool.

But in the city you have to worry about sick raccoons in the office!

This sign was pinned up on the door to our second floor BBQ/Smoking Area deck.  Note that smokers still went out for a ciggie break despite the warning.

I finally got around to seeing what uploading to YouTube was like.  I took the huge storm front that moved through a few days ago as a chance to catch some ominous cloud formations that my daughter said looked like they were from War of The Worlds. 

I think she was right.

Judge for yourself.

One of the things I've found interesting about trying out Vox is that I'm okay with the pre-built templates.  Having blogged for about five years from now I have to admit that I'm a bit "old school" - I'm used to coding templates by hand in Blogger or having a brilliant friend do a great design for me or my lovely wife.

Here at Vox I don't have any of those options - I just pick a look and be done with it.

And I'm totally okay with that.

In fact, I was a bit excited when I saw that Vox had new designs to try out.  A couple of clicks later my cute doggy motif blog has a gritty urban feel.

This post by The Ninth triggered an old memory I thought I'd share here as well...

The LP version of the first Durutti Column album on Factory Records (called interestingly enough "The Return of the Durutti Column") had a sleeve that was completely made of sandpaper.

The album is all this spacey ambient guitar - very peaceful in a mildly unsettling way - so wrapping it in something so harsh was polar opposite to the impact of the music itself.

Of course the album was DEADLY.  You couldn't slide the album into your record collection or you'd hopelessly scratch up the cover of your Duran Duran album on one side and your Ian Dury on the other.  Failing that you might want to rest it on something but what?  The speaker cabinet? The coffee table?  Good God that thing was deadly.

Return of the Durutti Column Album Art

That image is from Cerysmatic Factory an unofficial archive of all things Factory Records.  They've got a very detailed page with loads of pics of this album.

Best album cover evar.

Or?

What would you say is the best album art ever, and why?

Man, this is hilarious.

I was talking to Adam here at work and we hit on something I'd experienced before, but hadn't quite formalized into a structured idea.

The issue at hand was "what is the proper way to 'test' a new blogging platform - or blogging in general for that matter?"

To me the biggest benefit of having a blog is not "publishing a personal diary" but "sharing thoughts with the world".  The impact of blogging on your ability to share with others only happens if others can in fact share - otherwise you are just talking to yourself.And

therein lies the problem.  If you are "just testing" blogging, or a new platform like vox, you don't really want to tell people it's only a test and you might not keep it going.

In a nutshell, without committing to blogging it is very hard to get the benefits of blogging. My guess is the blogosphere is strewn with "hello world" blog posts that are the first and last post because it is impossible to see the benefit of post number two.

BTW, for those counting this is post number two on vox. We'll see if I can get to post number three without an  audience and without committing to vox as a platform.

I don't think there is any other way to start a new blog than to simply say "Hello World".

So, "hello world"!