1979 motto of the Vancouver alternative scene rock band The Modernettes.
Get Modern or get fucked.
A year and one month ago I started this blog with complete ignorance on what a blog was. The blog was attached to a simultaneously new web page, both designed by Doug Jasinki and Chris Botting at Skunkworks Creative Group Ltd.. That Doug Jasinski is also a lawyer brought with it some extra advantages in the wording of my profile.
Without knowing that it was a primitive version of a blog/wiki I had been a member some years before of the American Hosta Society Electronic Round Robin. It was the furious flaming in the forum postings that convinced me that my new blog should be what I call a "one sided" blog.
I was unsure on what the content of my blog was to be until I noticed my attraction to Bill Richardsons's CBC Radio show Bunny Watson. Alas! This radio program has been discontinued, but my memory of the program's quirky bringing together of apparently random facts through association has been my inspiration for my blog since. It is because of my blog's randomness that I have resisted classifying it into categories.
My new blog went along for a few weeks and was somehow noticed by Tim Bray who immediately advised me on two very necessary features. One was the RSS feed and the other the individual address links to every day's postings. I asked Bray what an RSS feed was and he told me, "Don't ask me, just tell your folks to install it." Looking into other blogs also convinced me on a self-imposed structure of:
1. No ranting.
2. No politics.
3. No religion.
4. No reviews of contemporary films.
5. No nude photographs. (I broke this rule once)
6. No blogs related to the day's news events except the deaths of interesting people whose pictures I have in my files.
7. No profanity except as quotes today and here
A large chunk of my blog has to do with my relationship to my granddaughter Rebecca Stewart (now 9). Slowly her sister Lauren (4) is beginning to share blog time.
Rebecca is not the only frequent visitor of my blog. My two daughters have told me that they have been afraid to ask me questions about my past or that there simply never seemed to be the time for them. They enjoy finding about themselves through my recounting of our past as a family.
I have been a freelance writer for 15 years and being able to write for Vancouver publications has all but disappeared. The incresing trend in using handout photographs (the same ones appear in most magazines and newspapers) has been paralleled by one of "modified" press releases made to look editorial. As newpsapers find it hard to increase their ad space there are many cuts in feelance hiring. For a while I was angry and frustrated.
This pent up anger has been released in my blogs on music, theatre and dance. I preview favourite artists and shows. I write what I want in the format that I want. No editor tells me I have to cut my word count. With this pent up anger gone my spirits are up and I can seek work calmly in the difficult market of photography.
My Epson 1640 SU flatbed scanner sits to the left of my monitor. It is a friendly companion that has served me well in my blogging. It has helped me make sense and put an order in my head of my extensive 30 year-old film files. When I don't have a photograph to fit into that day's blog I often find objects in my house that magically come to life when I place them on my scanner.
My wife Rosemary was at first aprehensive on my daily disappeances to sit in front of my computer. But after several valuable sales of my photographs found by search engines in my blog, including a recent one of Jane Jacobs to the Rockefeller Foundation she sees it as almost all good. So do I.
It would seem that my horizons in the blogging world are expanding. It was only yesterday,
at Moosecamp that I discovered a range of stuff I was completely ignorant about. I may not understand it yet, but there it is in my head ready to find future associations. Stuff like Drupel, WordPress and Moo Cards.
