Wait, Stop the Clock

I started this blog back in January with the modest intent of evaluating software, which I think is best done simply by using it. Is Blogger better and easier than Wordpress or what? I've been making web pages for a long time now; starting with something I can't even remember the name of back in the 1990s (PageMill), then Dreamweaver, then our content management system, then we changed to Red-dot, then I gave up because it was such a horrible experience, then I started up with iWeb – which I actually like a lot and feel quite productive with (we can talk about that some time), then I felt guilty that we didn't have cool enough web pages and thought maybe a blog would be easier - whew! 

Suddenly, a lot of time has gone by and I've come full circle again. I've given Red-Dot another try. It's not as horrible as I remembered, but it's stiff and not much fun and doesn't seem to actually like to work with images, just those poor little slices of pictures that pass for photos. It must have been designed by word oriented people not image oriented thinkers. It's also a very formal and managed process. You write something then some one else has to "approve" it, then it gets posted, then you get to see it. My writing style, such that it is, is all about revision (I am, at heart, a video editor or as Bruner always interjects, no, you're a designer – I guess that's what friends are for, to tell you who you really are), but I like to see it posted, then read it, then revise it. For me, the form – how it ends up looking – is a real part of the work, not only the words. My sense of media is a merging of content with the shape of that content; design and meaning flowing together, one informing the other. It's not that easy to do with a CMS approach and it must not be that much fun either for those that have to do the approvals over and over. So much for the sense of live and immediate on the web. But blogging somehow has escaped that formalist approval process and even the administrators now have blogs made outside of our content management system. So it must be OK.

Anyway, that's not my point. The point is that a lot of time has passed. The semester has a speed and necessity all of its own. I get engrossed in something – the day, the week, student projects, helping, working, life – finally pause, look up and it's two months later. Guess I've been in the groove all that time. Isn't that what they call "the flow". Suddenly while working vast amounts of time have elapsed and you didn't even notice because you were having such a good time. Well, I was.

Now, when I've come back to this blog it turns out I've forgotten all the passwords and have had to struggle for a few days to think them back up. Freud would have been proud, I've recovered my memories or at least the quirky password I used and I'll try and get back into the swing of it all again. Though my viewpoint now feels slightly discontinuous. This must be what it's like to come out of a coma and join your family back in the world again – how would I know, huh.

gunther