However, blogging has changed over the years. Readers like focus. I’m also trying to get my entrepreneurial legs running, and while my politics and identity are no secrets, keeping a tight focus on work-related stuff on one site and everything else on this one makes sense. Don’t worry: whatever tone and personality readers have come to know me for will be just as there on the new site. There go all the WordPress, design, (some) photography and work-related thoughts. Here stay the personal stuff, politics, (most) photography and ranting. I also still have my moblog.

This decision wasn’t just a matter of business sense, too. I’ve found my productivity to actually go down because I have worried about the continuity and coherence of my posts qua each other. One day I’d post on one topic—three times, even—only to shift gears trying to write about something else, and failing. By moving professionally-oriented posts to the other site, I can ramble here without having to dilute any kind of instructional writing I’ve previously posted.

Oh yes: and the other site is eponymous.

Observant visitors would note that this is barely beyond a pallette and image swap for last year’s theme, Richmond, and they would be correct. There are a couple of improvements: the contrast is much more readable, and the typography to the best of my ability has been improved for readability. I’ve also fine-tuned the styles and made the site a little faster (by microseconds, but still).

The header font is Delicious, a free typeface from Ex Libris. I’ve chosen shades of purple as the accent colors, in keeping with my commitment to avoid shades of blue as a crutch color in design. This is also the first theme I placed in a production environment that doesn’t give a whit about compliance with Internet Explorer 6.

Over the years I’ve reviewed different things on this site. Most notably, I’ve written about albums and books. I’ve always included a simple line at the end of each post when applicable: “I have received a free review copy of this [album/book].” It seems that these days, that isn’t enough.

Even with the simple receipt of a free review copy, questions can remain about a reviewer’s integrity. I, for example, have a shelf full of books because I prefer to keep the materials I have reviewed. No one has accused me of whoring out reviews to stuff my bookshelf, but it is possible that someone can. Few reviewers can maintain objectivity in the face of freebies. It is incumbent on both parties to make clear that the material is not provided in exchange for a favorable review. It is provided for a review, and even then, the better reviewers know that not reviewing something at all is in better form over posting a negative review. Take, for example, what has gone on with the “mommyblogging” community.

Online publishing has become a very fulfilling hobby of mine. I’ve met awesome people, made friends with a few of them, and have expanded my perspectives thanks to them. Any reviews on this site are not in exchange for freebies; my opinions are not for sale. It’s unfortunate that those who do sell their opinions don’t readily identify themselves as doing so. The FTC may think this is fraudulent from a legal standpoint, but from an ethical perspective, among us who write, disclosures are the only things that prevent us from being paid shills for anyone. Money has its effects; making it clear for our readers when we get paid to write something—especially when that payment affects what we write—increases, not diminishes, our legitimacy and credibility.

I’ll be creating a separate disclosure page, to be included in my navigation links below the site title. It’ll be simple, but straightforward. Nutshell? My opinions are not for sale. My reviews are not for sale. I keep any and all review copies of anything that I write about unless it’s been agreed that I get rid of them. And yes, from hereon, if I review something, even if it’s something I own, I’ll let y’all know where it came from.

Richmond is a redesign based on principles offered by the 960 Grid System, minus the crufty markup and non-sensical class names for positioning and sizing. I have always been a markup freak, and while my work is far from perfect (gotta love those clearing line breaks!), I strive for it with every project. Buckling a few trends on the post Web 2.0 aesthetic of drop shadows, 3-d layered affects, handwriting fonts and visual cues for the illiterate, I concentrated on a more abstract aesthetic. While grunginess has been associated with vintage effects and material distress, I used the same brushes to aim for a fiery afterglow.

As an avid photographer with a desire to once more share his photos with the world, I chose to use a dark background to help my shots jump out of the page. My photos are generally shot on a vivid setting, and the colors stand out against the background of the site itself. For those who are first-time visitors as of 14 June 2009, here’s a screenshot of what it used to look like:

Screenshot of former theme, Chroma

Tagging posts has become de rigeur these days, too. It’s a practice with which I’m still uncomfortable. I prefer tagging photo posts, even the ones with narratives, but I find the frequency of tags in text posts to be counterintuitive. It also doesn’t help to have fifteen hundred posts over six years of writing.

I’ve spent most of this night switching category assignments for posts that date all the way back to the beginning. I’ve come across posts I regret, to an extent. Other posts are those that link to now-unavailable resources, blogs long gone to the aether, and news articles that have been filed away forever.

I’ve always had, and always will, have problems with the ephemerality of the online medium. I am working on a series of posts discussing this topic, but for now, as I sit at home going through my archives, I feel like I’m hanging out with an old friend, one whom I haven’t met in a very long time. It’s a strange sensation, like looking at a photo of myself from college.

I gave Gus Sentementes (@GusSent) a phone interview yesterday and I was quoted in his article on WordCamp Mid-Atlantic. (WC MidAtl site.) I’m particularly obscure by today’s standards but I like to think that the years I’ve spent online have given me a perspective worth sharing on Saturday. I really like how the quote makes me look excited about finally meeting some of the people with whom I’ve connected over the years.

From now till then I’ll be toiling away at redesigning and laying out a plan for content on a far more regular basis than I have been of late. Things to expect:

• Regular photography posts, at least twice a week. Many of these will be scheduled in advance.
• Political commentary will be banished from the front page. It will be accessible by a link at the top nav.
• A series of pages featuring my portfolio of work, including case studies.
• Frequent lancing of sacred cows, with less snark and more reason.

I’ve been writing online since 2003. I have seen and participated in blogfights, championed causes, networked with others, made many friends and few enemies. I’ve spoken my mind and stayed quiet when I’ve had to. I’ve written on politics, posted pictures, shared tidbits of my life. Sometime in 2005, I chose to focus on a few other things other than the site; to this day it has never achieved the same level of exposure as it did before. Granted, there are far more sites out there now. The growth in the number of bloggers remains exponential, though the longevity of most blogs, I’m willing to guess, has shorted, but not at the same rate.

I was my biggest source of discouragement. I would sit down for a post and lose confidence in the value of my own ideas. The question that usually ended the posting activity was “hasn’t this been written before?” I realize now that the few who read my site, the few who stuble upon my domain, may not have read what I have. If the admission that a problem exists is the start of the problem’s solution, then my problem was that I had little confidence in my own work. I say was, because this is the day I start doing something about it.

I’ve spent the past year and few months going to the gym almost every night, gradually improving my health. It’s time I turn this site back into my mental gym. There will be a redesign, there will be a shift in topics and I may fork off any writing about national politics to a category not included in the front page, or to a separate site. (Following the 2008 election I set myself up on Red State, but I haven’t updated in a while, and I will write about my experience there soon enough.)

My mental gears haven’t felt this well-oiled in a very long time. There’s a yearning, a hunger that I know I’ve felt before, it’s frightening and familiar and exciting, and I want to bring all of you along for the ride.

A detail from my site's word cloud

It’s been an exciting year in politics, but now that we have a result and my commentary will move to a more activist tone, I’ve decided to do majority of my poli-blogging on RedState. I might write an occasional polemic at AIR if I get Misha’s blessing. I do this because I intend to make this site a portfolio for my design work. I also want it to showcase my photography. I want to write about the books that I have received from Eagle Publishing and books that I have bought myself.

I splinter my efforts not so much so to hide an aspect of mine as to meet the needs of an audience and to find an audience, too. Yeah, in general, this old school blogger is tehsuck, but this is MY online home. If I’m going to be obscure I could at least be happy doing so.

In keeping with my goal of changing what I write about here, I’m working on a redesign for this site that’s basically built from the ground up. It’s not as quick and dirty as my old designs. I am taking my time and, ever the iconoclast, I plan to buck a few growing trends observed by Nick La.

I have a few personal style guidelines I have in mind whenever get to designing my own site. For one, I never use any sort of image replacement techniques where text presented in an image is concerned. I tend to browse with images turned off and I find it easier to style alt texts through CSS. Try it some time; you might like it. This year, I think minimalism is dead. And finally, I’m not a big fan of Web 2.0-style gradients, even though Anthem Of Our Dying Days uses something very, very close to them in the background.

I will probably place a few sketches on my site between now and the design release. I think it’s time I approach this project the way *ahem* real designers *ahem* do.

Times change. Schedules change. People grow in different directions. This is a fact of life. I’ve dropped out of the loop, but honestly I have been happier as a result. I am in the best health of my life. I have built the best friendships a person can have.

I am also beginning to feel the itch. My creativity needs channeling, and I would like to pick up design work again. There are plenty of free WordPress themes out there, and I’m not in the mood to add another drop to that bucket. I have between two and three hours a night, three nights a week to do some work for someone willing to pay. Turnaround time may not be as immediate as some. My price may be higher than reasonable for many. That’s all fine. I don’t mind any of these issues. It helps vet my customers, and it helps them vet me. One client, one project at a time. That’s how I’d like to do it.

And so here comes the problem that faces me. I would like to reinvent this site. I want to write about beautiful things. I want to post my photos. I want this site to be about what I want to share, design-wise, because this is the brand name I have built for my design work. It’s also the site on which I’m quite well known for my conservative views. I feel that my politics, though, especially in an election year, would detract from the theme of what I want to do here.

So the question becomes: what do I do? Do I keep my politics away from this site by blogging at Red State for example? Or do I just go balls to the wall and let my clients know me fully? My life, my politics, and my creative work, in one package, take it or leave it?