Things have changed, again

In 2004, I packed off my bags and moved to blogspot. My old one, at ayen.blogdrive.com, is still there. I'm too much of a packrat to take it down.

Things have changed again. I haven't been posting as often at blogger, owing to massive changes in writing schedules and venues that paid me for generating text.

I'd like to start again. Somewhere else.

Boulevard avenue will stay here. But subsequent thoughts, snippets, phrases, wails, and stories remembered in tranquility will be up on my new site -

ayenrivera.idlereads.com

hemingway

What I've been doing, it seems, with blog theme after blog theme, and tweak after tweak, is skinning. The ads were the first to go. I'd like to re-read my blog, to remember my attempts at sustained moments of thought, remembrance, lucidity, or lack thereof. But page elements get in the way - the author profile right beside the first post, one column is to eager to list the post categories (as though a reader who just got here is going to pick from that), and the background is plain white - like tons of other blogs and sites out there. This is a reading blog - for crying out loud - the posts should be lined up like pictures on a menu, ready to entice.

The theme prior to this one was no less impressive - one column of off-white with grey and black serif fonts, of the faded typeset variety, - looking like a page from an old newspaper that got rain-soaked, forgotten, dried up in time, and rediscovered.

The theme, now, it's just white and grey on sheer black. Easy on the eye and no links list on a side column to subconsciously baggage you with. It's not polished, yet, as some pruning needs to be done. But I'm relieved with this. Like a gardener at the end of the day, finally having patted the earth, the seeds grounded firmly under.

The categories are way below, which you'll find after - not before - you've scanned the four entries on the parent page - this page. I clicked on fiction in English and spent hours getting back into the grove and the absurdity of my own writing. It's like finding an old shoebox and gasping at the old toys still tucked in, unfound until now.

But the shark tips got me chuckling. It's good to be back. This blog theme, by they way, is called Hemingway.

Omit needless words

I write for other people. That's how I get paid, and the more I do it, the more it leans on me - like clothes you wear that tandem well, but you begin to tire of - that my sentences, they're long enough to try your patience. Just like that: a mouthful. Each and every time. Someone needs to clip his thoughts. Or take a lot more time clipping his sentences.

One column to rule them all

Information Architecture, so the web wide world says, is the art of finding out what you want your site to do, and then keep doing that one thing and that one thing only.

Sheet of paper. One column. Prop your feet up. Sip that coffee. The world can fend for itself.

Cleaning the attic

One Anne Rice biographer said of Rice as being in constant pychological evolution. It was written years before Rice converted to Catholicism, and that biographer would not have raised an eyebrow when, in recent years, Rice excommunicated herself from the Vatican corporation. She's not a Catholic anymore, in the same way a self-disciplined driver discontinues her membership from a motorists organization, but still adheres to the principles of defensive driving, taking care of your car, preparing for long trips, and being socially respectful to everyone on the road.

Rice, for as long as I've silently worshipped her vampire-lore-reinvigoration novel, "The Interview with the Vampire," had always been an atheist. What am I driving at? Blogging is a box I've kept stale for years now, not knowing what new items to throw in. I'm going to take this slow, and sift through my blog items (posts) of way back up to the latest, to see how depressing my online writing evolution has become, acting as my own detached biographer.