all you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to

Um, I met Chipper Jones this weekend. I don't really know what else to say.


Title quote: J.D. S.

put your shoulder to the wheel

I love this blog. I'm obsessed with it. It's simple; uses Wordpress format; has its own domain name. 1000 Awesome Things takes one simple thing a day, declares it awesome and has a little spiel about it. For example, today's entry was "Kids who dress themselves." That is pretty awesome. So, the author includes things like that to things like "Driving home from a long trip and getting all your radio stations back." Simple. It is also a blog-turned-book (to the left), which a lot of blogs are doing...re: good blogs are doing. I don't know if people go into the blog hoping it turns in to a book or what, but ones like this one and 1001 Rules for my Unborn Son do. (1001 uses Tumblr, btw. A blog platform I really like).

The Huffington Post even put out an article/poll of its opinion of the best blog-turned-books this past year. Another favorite is the I Can Has Cheezburger, obviously. Here people simple send them pictures of their pets (mainly cats) and the slap sayings on them of what they think the cats are thinking. I'm refusing to go to the blog as I write about it because it consumes a good two hours of my day. And I end up laughing out loud in a quite office.

UPDATE: I went to the blog. But I only spent 20 minutes looking at pictures and managed to keep my laughing to a quiet snicker. I win!


Post Secret is also a blog that has made the transition, possibly most successfully. It's creator, Frank Warren, has done something really great. People simply send in a postcard with a secret written on it. (He uses Blogspot, btw).


Other blog/books on the list include the very famous Julie & Julia one, Stuff White People Like (a fav), and a few about hipsters. Not sure how they become so blog-worthy, but more power to them.

Viva la blogs!


Title quote: Aesop

o visionary world, condition strange, where naught abiding is but only change

Graphics/design element:

I would love to be a graphic designer. To be able to draw and bring those drawings to life on a computer. But I'm not a drawer...more of an abstracter (?). So, that being said, I wish I could incorporate more of my designs on my site. I love how graphics pop on a blog, but when it's all said and done, I want them to be my graphics.

Since I'm also in typography, I have design/typeface/graffiti/chicken on the brain. I need a snack. So I would love to even have the background be something I've designed; I feel like that can be a very haphazard design...look interesting but knows it's going to be covered. I think backgrounds also have a lot of white (or negative) space and the designer gets to focus more on the border images.

I definately want my blog to be graphic rich, but I want beyond graphics. I also want Flash. Can we do Flash on a blog? That would be legit.


Title quote: James Russell Lowell

artists are here to disturb the peace

Navigation:

One thing that that has been bugging me is that I don't know how to link a picture. I got using links in text down, but I'm not sure how to do much else with them. I think this will open up more possibilities with navigation, make my page more fun and make it easier to navigate.


Another thing I worry about (but don't really have to with this being a blog) is always having a "home" button. In the olden days, I remember you always had to click back to go back. Now, there is usually a frame on the top or left hand side that always has the main pages ready for you to click.

Point being, this area of my blog is the least of my creative worries.


Title quote: James Baldwin

art is what you can get away with

Content:

Although this blog's initial purpose was for class and assignments, I still hope to add some personal touches and make it interesting (not that class assignments are interesting. well...). I want my blog to be a platform for experimentation: video, audio, still-motion, hypertext narrative, photo and photo editing, embedding...you name it.

The New Yorker put out an article (albeit four years ago) of its top five blogs. As fast paced as the blogging world is, these blogs (which have obviously been updated since the article came out) all seem on par with our class (aka, doable). A few of them use wordpress, a suggested platform for our other blog.

I have a blog here (don't mind the HUGE gap in time between my last two posts) that contains personal content. Not like "personal" information, just stupid ramblings, fun things I've done, what I'm doing in school, what I'm reading and any issues I want to talk about. The theme is "ELI", opposed to art or movies or photos or cats. I use tumblr, a platform I really like. They have a lot of cool themes and are constantly coming up with new, cool things to do on your page (like have a sideshow).

So maybe I want this blog to kind of be the same. Obviously I'll have assignments, but it needs to be fun, too, or else people will move on to the next.


Title quote: Andy Warhol

by their own follies they perished, the fools.

I don't know if this is considered hypertext narrative, but I found another "example." This chicken is at the will of your command.

Title quote: Homer

i may be drunk, miss, but in the morning i will be sober and you will still be ugly

I hope this image is an indication of what I thought about Cathie Linz's site... If not, I could have made this site in 7th grade. Or if I couldn't have, I would have thought this site to be cutting edge back then. Not now. Basically it's just a pink background with a left-side border with links. No flash (I'm a sucker for Flash) and no real navigation. On her home page she talks about all her books right under the next. So, if you want to know what book prequels Big Girls Don't Cry, just scroll on down!

I guess the site does have the young love appeal to it (she is a romance novelist), though...not because it's hip or youthful, but because I was young when this type of site was popular. I could really go on all day about that aspect of it, but I won't.

According to her website, Cathie has been writing romance novels for 15 years, folks! She even has a recipe section, in case you need to cook while reading about fluffy cats and God knows what else.
Kathy has won some awards (from the Romantic Times?), and even gives some of her favorite links! If all of this hasn't bothered me enough already, her "home" button is this:


Oh Cathie...


Title quote: Winston Churchill

i don't want to achieve immortality through my work, i want to achieve it through not dying.

I don't know if I'm not searching correctly, but I'm having a hard time finding a interesting hypertext narrative. So, I'm settling. This one isn't so much "interesting," but it has depth. Meaning it has a lot of text, and it takes a lot of reading and clicking to get to the end.

I'm not really sure what defines hypertext narrative, other than a page with only a few links that takes you to a completely new page? And I guess it has to have some sort of story line, or sequence. So I'm interested in pushing the hypertext narrative boundaries and seeing what exactly falls under the HN umbrella.


Title quote: Woody Allen

nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love

So, my friend Morgan is a pretty cool chic. She's very artsy, driven, creative, yada... She is also insanely talented with her blog and all things online (for someone without a graphic design degree, at least). So, every month, she puts out "mix-tapes" on her blog. When you click on the mix-tape image for that month, it starts downloading all the songs on the "tape" to your computer. How cool is that? This is something I would love to learn how to do, just because you can never have enough music and you never stop learning about new good bands.


Title quote: Charlie Brown

hell is full of musical amateurs

To help promote a former internship/former UB student/great company, my "excellent online literary journal" is that of Adam Robinson's company Publishing Genius' Everyday Genius.

Although a lot of online journals entries still consist of writing, Robinson's journal goes so far as to include literary video musical posts (it's most recent entry to be a perfect example) and even video/stop-motion posts.

Anyway, shout out to Adam and his hard work...support his journal!

Title quote: George Bernard Shaw

for they are yet ear-kissing arguments

It is usually easier to find things you don't like than find things you do, write a bad review than write a good one, or for people to bond over a mutual hate rather than over something they have in common. Point in case: it was hard for me to find a "good" writer's blog, or harder I should say. Until I smelt bacon.

This is the blog I chose as my "good" writer's site. The author is Heather Lauer and the book is published by Harper's Collins, titled: Bacon, A Love Story: A Salty Survey of Everybody's Favorite Meat. Which is true, it is everybody's favorite meat. No arguments allowed.

Other than being obsessed with bacon, I thought the page was well designed. Lauer also has a blog on her site which pretty much covers everything bacon. She talks about contests, International Bacon Day (September 4th, I just missed it!) and posts a bunch of creative bacon photos.

Check it out, or don't and just go make a BLT.

Title quote: Mr. Shakespeare

i do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them.

Welcome. To my fancy pants blog. This is my homework face. I am doing homework. For my e-pub class. I am at the mac lab on a gorgeous Saturday afternoon. wtf. Also, it is football day. GO DAWGS!

Title quote by: Jane Austen