One of the most interesting blogging-related queries you can do on Google, Why I blog gives a great deal of insight into both our online culture and the nature of our individual needs for self-expression.

I've been questioning my own blogging needs a great deal lately, as a result of having not blogged very much in the last few months. It's not the other way around, deliberately weaning myself off the blog or anything; rather it's that many of the outlets satisfied by blogging over the last five years are being satisfied in other ways.

As Fury's audience has both broadened and become more focused (more people, but falling into sharper distinct buckets (eg work people, friends, google searchers, family, and randoms) I have more trouble self-justifying posts I think about writing. I don't necessarily want to talk to people at work about random dermatological issues (not that there are any, really. Just a hypothetical example). I don't want to talk about upcoming vacations because now that I own my own house, I somehow feel that a cyberstalker breaking in and stealing from me is a greater violation than if they broke into a place I rented, and as the holidays approach, I'm reluctant to have the more personal aspects of my life become kitchen-gossip when my family comes together for Christmas next week.

All in all, I'm coming to terms with the fact that most people who I read online have either migrated toward the livejournal model intended to disseminate relevant life stuff to friends for whom it is actually relevant, or those more highbrow bloggers who have, whether they've noticed it or not, excised their literal personal life from their online presence, showing themselves only through inductance, choosing to pass on this interesting thing on the web, or providing social commentary on this other thing that happened to someone else.

I'm not sure where I fit. Fury has always been about a lack of focus, and whenever I try to narrow the blog, even if it's by splitting it, readers have said the wandering nature is one of the more appealing things about the blog.

So, in the spirit of wantering, I leave you without a conclusion. I hope you'll comment with whatever thoughts this meander sparks in you. I'm still working on the next iteration of Fury, which will be as drastic an information-architecture redesign as it is a visual shift. I'm hoping to make a good balance between the 'inverse-chronological log of compositions' and the more static structured heirarchical site. Think of it as the stage that follows the path from archive-by-month to categories to multiple-categories (or tags). Anyhow, hopefully I'll be able to stop rambling soon and once again produce meaningful work.

Till then, it's your turn...

Photos and stories of twenty injured Iraq war veterans

It's easy to forget that for each of the 1250 US soldiers who have been killed in Iraq, there are several times more who come back missing limbs, blind, paralyzed, or with metal shards that have torn through their brain. As amazing as the pictures are, the stories these people tell about their own actions and mindsets are even more stunning. I'm really surprised this got sponsorship, but I'm very glad it did.

This comic brings to mind the immortal words of Homer Jay Simpson who said, "To alcohol the Internet: The cause of -- and solution to -- all of life's problems!"

80 gigs doesn't store what it used to. Now that I'm finally getting around to building a real home network, workflow and backup system, I'm trying to find better backup mechanisms than going to Fry's and getting Maxtor's latest X00 gigabyte firewire drive.

Turning to tape backup, I came across a shareware tool that claims to allow you to use your DV or Digital-8 camcorder to backup 10-16 gigs on a DV tape. I hadn't considered using my camcorder as a digital tape drive, but now I'm gonna check if Dantz makes a driver to let me use my camera as a backup device with Retrospect. Further updates to follow.

I'm at Rachel's parents' house in rural New York outside of Rochester, with a large contingent of family (and bulldogs) below. For the moment I'm hiding out in the upstairs bedroom, taking a quick break to check email and blogs and, apparently, to write a quick post.

We're coming back to California tomorrow. In the last few days we've played in a 34-person poker tournament (I came in 5th), had Thanksgiving at Rachel's aunt's new beautiful home, visited with more relatives than I'll ever remember, but enjoyed meeting each one, lusted after the inexpensive homes and land while lamenting our lack of teleportation for commuting purposes, raked leaves for Rachel's grandparents, had some snow, raked soggy leaves for Rachel's parents, been french-kissed by an english bulldog, taken a whole slew of photos, played Monopoly for the first time in over a decade, and been offered a free horse with full tack.

Quite a busy Thanksgiving holiday! Anyhow, I'm told I'm missed downstairs and I need to get back. How was your Thanksgiving?

98% of the teenage population does or has tried smoking pot. If you're one of the 2% who hasn't, copy & paste this into your journal.

---

I call bullshit. In a room full of 50 18-year-olds, only one of them hasn't experimented with marijuana? If the assertion itself weren't absurd, it would seem extremely unlikely that such a meme could actually spread if each person who reads it only has a 2% chance of being qualified to propogate it.

Best evidence shows that the actual number of teen pot experimenters is closer to 42.5%. While one way of looking at it is that they were only off by half, it's just as easy to say that this meme under-reports the number of teens who don't try pot by a factor of twenty-six times.

I'm happy that my membership in this 'elite' club isn't as significant as the meme would imply.

Rachel and I are hosting our housewarming party in a few hours, and it's the biggest party either of us has ever had. From an evite of about 140 people we'll probably have about 100 guests, including most of my family, a whole lot of coworkers, and friends I've had for ages. It's like every part of my life is converging into our new house for one night only.

I read an article a few weeks ago (damn I wish Google Desktop Search worked with Firefox so I could google it and give you a link, but I just don't have enough context to find it on my own) about the 'successful New York party' and the importance of a diverse range of age, occupation, political views, and socioeconomic background. Tonight is probably the biggest gathering of people I know and cherish that I've ever seen, and should certainly warm our house.

Rachel's really smart. She clued in really early on how much has to go in to a good-sized shindig, and has been doing crazy amounts of work in getting all the ducks in a row -- damn those wandering ducks! -- and I hope I've been her able-bodied helper goose. Just in the last few days it's started settling in how this is as big a production as the move itself was. Now, each time someone IMs me or drops by my desk asking "So, are you ready for tonight?" I feel a little dumber at how long it took me to grasp what everyone else knows. I mean there's putting together a movie night for 10 of your friends when the biggest problem is where to order the pizza from, and then there's the kindo f party where we're just one small step down from having to find a band. And if I'd thought about getting that 50s bluegrassy + Theramin band we saw last year at an SFMOMA event, we probably would have. After all, an eclectic gathering needs eclectic music.

Anyhow, that's all I've time for right now. Tomorrow we get to continue the fun with a large contingent of the family going to the Cal-stanford game though, especially since Craig can't make it this year, we Cal fans are going to be seriously outnumbered. True we have the home-field advantage, but we'll be sitting inthe Stanford section. (I've never heard anyone yell "Take off that blue shirt!" before...)

That's it for now. Much to do... So much!

I love that my friends have weblogs. I love it because I keep in touch with friends who might otherwise slip out of mind for weeks at a time. I love it because reading about each others' lives helps us keep the common experience so important to keeping relationships alive across distance and time. I love it because there's nothing like sitting in a cabin on a cruise ship coming into port (and cellphone range), logging in to Bloglines on my Treo, and seeing a close friend's blog post with a title like this: There's really nothing like vomiting on your own toes in a BART station to make you feel like an alcoholic. Then, for completeness, the very next post was from Ammy's blog: And then there was the flu.

Blacksheep insists that she was 'with alcohol' and not 'with virus' but I'm going to ask her how she feels today. To top it all off, at the time of reading these posts I was 'with seasickness' but not to so large a degree that my own blog needed adding to the annals of upchuckiness.

This morning Microsoft MSN launched the public beta of their new search engine, touted as having the largest index of any web search engine, at 5 billion pages.

A few hours earlier Google upped their official number of indexed pages to 8 billion, and Microsoft had to hastily reword their press releases.

It seems the folks at Microsoft are a bit miffed.

I'm just stunned. But life goes on. Pray that this can't happen again. With significant gains in the house and the senate, who's to say the next constitutional target won't be the 22nd amendment.

Wow. Um... Yeah, that's all I've got right now. Wow, and not the good kind.