Sitting in the back corner of many people’s minds is a picture. A large oak desk, a green tinted desk light, and a word processor. Sitting near by, another picture with an accurate portrait of  fear in a blank page. Yet there is still the allure that writing conjures up. I certainly have had the image cross my mind. This is a blog after-all, so I am getting past the fear to some limited extent. But writing for a living, that is perhaps another order of magnitude entirly. 

I was twittering earlier about a quote that I came across on TWIT - 149  , which contained a very interesting discussion with Jerry Pournelle amongst others. I cannot say that I am at all familiar with Mr. Pournelle’s work, be it fiction or otherwise, aside from his appearances on TWIT in the past. I had to go back and re-listen to the some of the podcast to be sure I got the quote down correctly and figured I might as well find out a little more about him. His home page looks like something designed circa 1990. Admittedly that scared me a little. But after a few minutes of scrolling, came across many articles that I will have to go back and visit on a wide range of topics. Not the least of which was “How to Get My Job”. 

The article itself has seen many revisions and addendums through the years. The basic messages still seems to hold true

“The secret of becoming a writer is that you have to write. You have to write a lot. You also have to finish what you write, even though no one wants it yet.”‘

I read the article through twice and was inspired to point the article out. I am not sure if a life of writing is for me, but I will take inspiration where I can get it. 

Twitter may be ruining my ability to compile a witty post. Seriously, I have had a terrible time coming up with anything the last couple of weeks. I haven’t had all that much time to search out the curiosities on the internet that always bring comment

I decided to take this weekend off from anything that might resemble productivity.

Went out to see Wall.e on Friday nite. The folks at Pixar have really out done themselves. The art is amazing, the story rocks and that is all I have to say about that. Kind of makes me want to get my own autonomous robot though. For that matter I might even settle for a remote control version if something of the sort were being sold at a reasonable price. 

You might have noticed the change in site Theme. I couldn’t take the default any longer, so off to the theme repository I went. AjaxBerlee is what I finally decided on. I say finally because I was beginning to wonder if I was going to get RSD first, clicking through the selection.

I really like some of the positioned elements that it offers and the clean overall look. I am still trying to get used to the offset “New Posting” window. But as I said, this is temporary.

I was amazed at the number of themes there are out there. Some I found quite interesting, but alot need to break away from the horizontal bands of color. At a glance they really do start to look the same.

Projects other than this blog have consumed alot of time recently. You might have noticed, the default theme and the utter lack of new posts for the last couple of weeks. All of that being said, you might be thinking that the projects are over and time is once more free. This is sadly not the case.

I am going to try and squeeze some changes in anyway. Which means some short-cuts and rule breaking. Wouldn’t be the first time a site was designed without so much as a quick sketch on a napkin by someone with blurry eyes in the dim hours of morning.

Or How to Jump into the Deep End

I might have started working with wordpress on the weekend, perhaps even first thing Saturday morning. This would have left ample time to look into all of the features with care. Better still, this blog would now have something other than the default theme.

Things don’t often work out in the best way possible, and quickly floundering can be an effective learning tool if don’t get swept under in the first 10 minutes. This brings us to Tuesday night. I have half a dozen browser windows open, spread across 2 screens, all of them trying to teach me the basics of wordpress. 

Compared to Moveable Type, I am very impressed at the quality and quantity of documentation available, both from wordpress the company and third party sites. Some diligent reading should put me on the curve in no time. Look for this site to change in look and feel very soon. 

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

Would any “first steps” in programming a new language/site/project be complete without having a “hello world” post. I didn’t think so!