September 03, 2004
Photo album
Photos - After a couple of days of procrastination I finally sat down tonight to work on some pictures. The boss at work reported that we had a good quarter so far and wanted us to get a head start on our three day weekend and enjoy it. Since I got home on the early side, Michelle was feeling rather generous and let me get started on the pictures once Timothy was put to bed. The album includes a picture of the screen door Christopher put on, pictures of the visit with Grandma and Ray, pictures of the girls' first day of school, and three unusual shots of the boys. Note Abby's toothless smile. I was also a little disappointed at how the girls' faces got a bit washed out. Note to self, do not use the powerful external flash as a fill flash in sunny outdoor pictures.
Why Weblog cont'd - Yesterday morning I excerpted a piece from the WSJ, promising to followup later, only to be too tired from that evening's YMCA workout. Do I think writing weblogs is a fad like CB's were in the 1970's? Yes and no. There are indeed already a bunch of abandoned weblogs out there. Millions of people, especially teens and early twenty somethings, started a weblog, only to let it lapse within a few months. In that respect it's probably not unlike the number of hard bound diaries that have less than 20 pages filled out.
The trend that I really think goes nowhere fast is using the camera in your cell phone to make an online photo-log. I'd bet the typical camera phone is used that way only a bit more than the typical SUV is taken offroad. Every once and a while I think we engineers just tend to think, if we build it, they will buy it. If convergence of devices into some picture taking, GPS enabled, game-playing, PDA-like, all singing and dancing cell phone is what the market wants, why don't combo TV/DVD/VCR units fly off the shelves?
Some webloggers are great writers, knowledgeable in their domain. Others weblog with the idea of meeting new people with similar interests, regardless of geography. Lately, I've gone the other way. I could care less if complete strangers find this page and would rather that they not. In a move to reduce that likelihood, I made an effort to remove all the sites' archives from the major search engines. It used to be fun a couple of times per week to see the search keywords that would land up in this domain. The site is meant to record things for ourselves, our family, and our friends. It's interesting that there isn't a lot of info out there about getting removed from Google, Yahoo, etc. but there are plenty of websites devoted to how to have a better rating with them.
There are a few other areas where the CB radio analogy breaks down. CB required an investment of equipment. Weblogs leverage technologies many people already have for web surfing and email. CB had a limited range. CB's had a rather random person on the other end. It was hard to build a list of people you wished to contact on a regular basis.
So in the end I think weblogs are here to stay until something better comes along. Many are already dead, but like somebody once said, 99% of everything is junk. (I'm being polite)
Trivia - Today is the one year anniversary of that little link oriented weblog on the lower right hand side of the front page. I did it in order to keep family news separate from links to other websites. So far I'm happy with the results. Keep the two separate.