FAQ

Why did you decide to remove the NOFOLLOW tag on URLs in comments?

See my article on it here. Mainly because I don’t receive that many comments to begin with and I feel pretty good about akismet’s ability to filter spam. Most of the people who provide URLs are not specifically trying to sell stuff online. If this demographic changes, I may reconsider.

More on Comments: Why don’t I see my comment?

When you comment for the first time, your comment will not appear until I manually approve it. Once I approve it, future comments by you should appear instantly.

You keep talking about your podcast/literary site/ebook, but I can’t seem to find anything. Are you just talk and no action?

Well, no, but I do talk a lot. But my ebook stuff/creative writing is under pseudonyms, although I will link to it when I come to some finishing point. I often end up switching gears to work on something that takes priority. Sometimes I realize that certain tasks precede others. For example, a few months ago I was all gungho about podcasts. But I realized that podcasts are something you do only after the piece of writing is totally in final form and never to be edited again. As a result, I have switchd to moving writing pieces into a “final state” before I even worry about podcasts. The same is true for my literary site, which I’ve delayed until I solve certain ebook problems (and catch up on my creative writing projects). It’s all a tug of war, but in the last two months (as of Sept 2006), I’ve made lots of progress.

What do you look like?

Take a look at the flickr photos of me.

Can I reprint/link to your articles?

Sure! As long as you link back to me. All the content here has a creative commons Attribution license.

What’s the deal with your pseudonyms?

I generally put my creative output under several pseudonyms. At the moment, I have only one pseudonym on the web, although in summer 2006, I expect to have 3 separate pseudonyms, maybe more. The reason is simple: to make it difficult for casual surfers (future employers, etc) to reach a wrong impression about me. I have oodles of projects, and it’s easy to fall into the trap of judging who I am on the basis on one isolated essay or project. Many have observed that blogging is dangerous; it poses risks both to your personal life and your professional life. That is especially true when you are a relatively unknown blogger and fiction writer. At some point, identities will be unmasked and true anonymity will be hard to maintain. I can accept that, and I can also accept that whatever I write could potentially be read by spouses, children, the FBI(!) or employers. Rather than spend so much time trying to censor or edit my remarks, I’d prefer just to write away and thrive on my own obscurity.

For the record, I occasionally link to my pseudonymous posts, so loyal followers of this weblog might be able to deduce which pseudonym belongs to me.

That said, it’s worth pointing out that my mind evolves. Find something I wrote two years ago, and you may find it misguided, replete with typos or general misinformation. I write quickly, and only later do I go back and revise some things. In many ways, this blog is a gigantic rough draft, a work-in-progress. Sometimes I am writing to be read by others; at other times I simply wish to record observations for a particular time or discoveries I made on the way to my self-education.

If you want to see “representative work samples” that seem relatively polished, check out the links under my biographical sketch.

I want to send you an email. How can I be sure that you won’t quote my email in a future blog post?

I generally won’t identify people by name on this weblog unless the person gives me permission. If something is not for public viewing or discussion, just let me know.

Why is your blog layout so boring?

Don’t worry. When I find the time, I’ll make it look super.

Can you link to me/look at my website/read this essay?

I am not yet a famous writer/weblogger. I rarely receive email because of this weblog. I’m pretty stingy about who/what I link to, but I’ll definitely look over the essay/site if you suggest it to me. Chances are that I’ll be more inclined to add your site to my feed reader than link to you on my weblog. If you are crazy enough to follow this weblog for any length of time, I’m guessing that we probably share several common interests and thus worth getting to know.

What is this blog anyway? Are you a litblogger? A videoblogger? a podcaster? A technogeek? A linux freak? A programmer? Why don’t you just blog about one thing?

This is not easy for me. I have lots of interests and flit from one to another. My interests tend to outpace my aptitude. Make sure to check the other places where I post (RSS feeds on the right side)

Can you publicize this Houston event for me?

Feel free to forward things, but my weblog is not well-read enough locally to justify the effort to post something here. I recommend spacetaker.org or upcoming.org .

Who are you anyway?

See my bio page.

I am a former student/amour/friend/teacher/work colleague and would love to make contact with you.

By all means, drop me an email! I love hearing from old friends, and even hearing from an old enemy can occasionally be fun. Please email before telephoning, unless you are very a)desperate, b)neurotic or c)want to give me money.

I’ve written a book/symphony/film and was wondering if you can blog about it.

Generally I give preference to personal friends and acquaintances. Also, I will shamelessly promote writers who are self-producing and/or have creative commons licenses. A lot depends on whether I have the time to look over your work first.

One of your posts has crazy/unreadable characters? What’s the problem?

I think the encoding issue is related to migrating to a new server. Or maybe it involves my recent software upgrade. Send me the link in question, and I look into it. As of January, 2006, I have written more than 1300 posts, so it’s hard to keep track.

What happened to your other weblogs? Why do some of your links not work?
For the moment, some of my weblogs are offline. Truthfully, though, I mainly update the idiotprogrammer weblog. I should get around to bringing back the other weblogs relatively soon.