Here are some things that I’ve done, seen, and taken pictures of, since I went on my “blog hiatus” last November:
USC vs. Notre Dame at the L.A. Coliseum, November 29, 2008:
Planetary conjunction over Denver, December 1, 2008:
Toby in front of our fireplace, December 21, 2008:
Pretty pictures of the Superstition Mountains, December 25 and 26, 2008:
I am a Tweet. Click my icon to view the source at Twitter.com. Any #hashtags or Twitter names (e.g., @brendanloy) are also links.
As noted in my official blog-launching post at midnight this morning, I’m returning to the blogosphere today after a seven-month hiatus with a new blog under a new (old) name: The Living Room Times, the title of my old school newspaper. I’ll have more to say about that name, and its history, a little later.
But the name of this blog isn’t the only thing that’s changed from my previous bloggy efforts. I’m also introducing a bunch of changes and new features, to try and make this blog fulfill the purposes and plans I have for it. Above all, I’m trying to figure out how to keep it fresh, and a worthwhile place to visit, even though the demands of being a father, lawyer, husband and homeowner will make it impossible to blog full-length posts with anything approaching the regularity of the good ol’ days. Here’s some of what I’m come up with to bridge that gap, along with various other changes and features:
• FriendFeed and Twitter posts: As you can see above, my posts to FriendFeed (which are usually just links to articles, websites or whatnot that I find interesting, sometimes with a wee bit of commentary in the text of the link) and my Tweets to Twitter will be automatically imported into this blog, and displayed on the homepage as what I’m calling “mini-posts.”
It’s a good thing I’m restarting my blog. Clearly America needs me to help recover from our Long National Jon & Kate + 8 Divorce Nightmare.
I have various additional introductory blog posts scheduled to go online throughout the day today, but in the mean time, blogworthy stuff is happening in the world — and the cosmos. Specifically:
[This] morning, NASA’s LCROSS spacecraft will fly by the Moon only 9,000 km above the lunar surface. The purpose of the encounter is to put LCROSS in an elongated Earth orbit and position it for impact at the lunar south pole later this year. Live video streaming of the flyby begins at approximately 5:20 AM PDT on Tuesday, June 23, 2009. Click here to watch.
For those keeping score at home, 5:20 AM PDT is 6:20 AM Mountain Time, 8:20 AM Eastern Time, and 12:20 Greenwich Mean Time (the latter being, for reasons I’ll explain later, this blog’s time zone at present).
Anyway, tune into the webcast later this morning and watch!
Posts by guestbloggers will appear here, in The Guest Room. I will sometimes “promote” them to the homepage, and they’ll always be at least linked from the homepage.
If you are interested in being a guestblogger, shoot me an e-mail at irishtrojan [at] gmail.com.
Darkness crept back into the forests of the world.
Rumor grew of a shadow in the East,
Whispers of a nameless fear.
And the Blog of Power perceived:
Its time had now come.
* * * * *
I’m back, baby.
After more than seven months in the blogospheric wilderness, living off social-media crumbs (primarily FriendFeed and Facebook) and resisting the everpresent Call of the Blog, I’ve decided to get back in the saddle (or off the wagon, depending on how you look at it). I’ve accomplished what I wanted to accomplish by taking a break, and now it’s time for a fresh start. So here I am. (I’m guessing many of you didn’t think I’d stay away this long, eh?)
I’ve named this new blog after my old middle-school and high-school newspaper, The Living Room Times — and I’m launching it on the 10th anniversary of the final issue of its namesake. (Holy cow. That means it’s been ten years since I graduated high school. Wow.) I’ll have more to say about that later this morning.
I’ll also have more to say about the structure and features of the new blog, its odd subtitle, my plans for it, and so forth. But, for now, just a couple of quick points:
• This blog is best viewed in Firefox or Safari. There are some CSS layout problems in Internet Explorer, which I intend to fix eventually if possible, but for now, I’d recommend using a different browser.
• Here are the blog rules. The big change from my previous blogs is that I’m requiring commenters to register. This is an anti-spam and anti-troll measure, which I hope won’t have too much of a chilling effect on the 99% of you whose commentary I welcome with open arms.
You can register with a pseudonym if you like, just so long as you provide a valid e-mail address (which won’t be made public). Or you can log in using your existing Facebook, Google, OpenID, Twitter, AOL or Yahoo account.
Please let me know if you have any technical difficulties registering or logging in, or any other problems with the new site. I’m sure there will be a few kinks to work out in these initial days. You can e-mail me at irishtrojan [at] gmail.com.
Meanwhile, whether logged in or not, for the next little while, you can “comment” on this post — and on the launch of this blog — using the “live chat” window below, which was also present on the countdown page that I had on my homepage for the last 24 hours. I’m going to shut down the chat window before I go to bed, though.
Anyway, welcome, and stay tuned for more introductory posts and other new blog content throughout the day.
P.S. Oh, and for those watching the relaunch live, I promised fireworks, so here you go…
Pay no attention to the “2008,” or the people speaking Chinese 🙂
