Bit of a dry spell

It occurred to me today that I hadn't made an entry to this random journal for quite a while. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Perhaps I just had nothing useful to say for seven months. Many a blog will fill up pages and pages with seven months of nothing to say. At least I've saved Google a few seconds of indexing.

It's the festive Winter Solstice season, which turns a greedy fellow like myself to thoughts of composing a Christmas Want List. On the top of this year's list is the DVD box set of the first five Marx Brothers movies. I've been getting my Marx fixes from old VHS off-air tapings for years now, so the new copies will be welcomed. I've heard that they didn't bother with a restoration, though. Bummer. If Santa comes through, I'll post a review come Boxing Day (give or take seven months).

Fifteen minutes for the Alma Mater

My old high school was mentioned by Jay Leno in his opening monologue recently. On Friday, 30 April, he used the following joke.

Angry parents protested outside the Queen of Peace High School in North Arlington, N.J. yesterday because they were upset that the spring musical at the school this year is Cabaret. It's a play that deals with issues of homosexuality. Well, thank God they're picketing. The last thing you want is kids in the theater department being exposed to is anything gay.

Naturally, my first thought had nothing to do with the topic at hand. There's still a bizarre little thrill associated with having some obscure part of your life exposed to millions of people on television. I've been seeing Pizzaland for five years in the opening credits of The Sopranos, and it's still pretty cool, since I spent an inordinate amount of my teen years eating there. I especially liked the theatre angle of the QP story, since virtually all of my good memories of high school involved the drama club in some way.

Eventually, though, I got past the Warholian nature of the Tonight Show reference, and started thinking about the reality behind it. Parents protesting a high school show? Cabaret? In what century do these parents live, and what can we do to get them to join us here in the 21st?

After a little fact-checking, I discovered that the protests were nothing more than a few small-minded people, and that the attendant publicity made for packed houses. The actors took the protests in stride, and had a good show. More power to them.

Does the Subject become the Title?

I expect email to be a primary form of entry, so I'm hoping this works out well.

I'm adding HTML markup to the text, while sending it as a text email. I don't know if that will fly.

In a few weeks time I should have a decent Supplemental Guide to blogger.com ready for publication.

this is from the pager - i expect that blog entries from here will be short and sweet

Metablogging

For the first few entries, I need to experiment. Most of the blog entries will be about the blogging process itself, as I attempt through trial and error to find my own personal method.

I don't like blogger.com's post editor, at least with the version of Mozilla I'm currently using. Pressing the little bold and italic icons clear the text I had previously typed. This is the third time I've tried to write the Metablogging post.

I've resorted to the same method I always end up resorting to in web development -- typing in the HTML markup elements by hand. It's a control issue, and probably the same reason I ended up a programmer in the first place.

As a test of my linking abilities, here's a link to my home page at jimmyrussell.com.

The next blog entry will be a test of my "remote" capabilities. I walk around with a two-way Motorola pager hooked into Skytel. It has the ability to send outgoing emails, using a really tiny keyboard. Since blogger.com allows email updates, I'd like to see if I can update using the pager.

On the trailing edge

Okay, so I'm a bit late in jumping on the blogwagon. Usually I'm a bit ahead of the curve. I was surfing the web before there were pictures on it. I visited Yahoo before they had their own domain name. I've had my own vanity website for ages. Yet, I have managed to avoid creating a weblog, until today. Now that this intolerable situation has been rectified, I wonder what I will do with this site. There are plenty of directions I could take it. Professional interests (software development), avocations (music, community theatre), life, the Universe, everything. We shall see.