On the Return to Blogging
I've had blogs, oh I've had blogs. One in particular was the top anti-panda blog 5 years running. But among all of the rants-blogs, thought-blogs, and single-class-blogs, I've never had a space that I could use responsibly to work through my ideas. This blog is yet another attempt at that idealistic balance between a work-space and a presentation space. Let us dream of a space where product meets production.
A Quick Statement to the New Blog
And so, new blog, you stare back at me with your empty lack of posts and clean white design with a look that says "Is it me? Am I to be the one blog that survives the others?" But you and I need to face the facts. Right now you are little more than the eleventh hamster in a lineage of ten dead hamsters. You are the trial-pet, the experimental goldfish. You are the fur burdened gerbil that, history tells us, will not survive 5 months under my ever-distracted gaze. That means you need to make it past October. Please let us make it past October.
On the Name/Design
On the one hand it fits me well. Potent Potables. It's a quirky way of going about the whole "rhetoric as a drug" thing without being too sure of itself. After all, it's rooted in a rarely appreciated joke from the depths of celebrity jeopardy. What's more, it builds nicely in line with one of my favorite Berthoff quotes, one that took a late night study session with my orals team to figure out.
But I can also see the inherent risk and cowardice in this move. Risk because naming one's blog in the name of a drinking metaphor based on a light joke doesn't exactly speak of professionalism. Cowardice because the title is not my invention, nor the tagline, meaning that I have worked to cordon myself off from criticism on both accounts. These conflicts come in addition to the problems of it's humorous appeal, which, as I have written about previously, has the dangerous tendency to bring on a level of assuredness of the worst degree: our irrational savior.
Design-wise, I like simple color palettes, so the white-on-black gets me there. I also like the narrow central column and picture of myself in such a surprised pose. I hate these bevels everywhere though, especially down that right sidebar. But even through all my attempts to mess with it in the design interface, there seems to be nothing I can do.
At the beginning I want this thing clean, like one of those giant paper tablecloths they use in mid-tier Italian restaurants, fully prepped for a horde of children to mar it's canvas with their four crayon toolkit.
(Edit: I then added the background of scotch barrels. I'm not married to it as a theme, and it comes out a little too overtly, but in the end I think it makes it feel warmer. I'll keep it for now.)
Cheers. Clink.