Lincoln/Coverdale

My love/hate relationship with blogging continues without resolution. I’ve been busy as hell lately and when I’m busy, taking a moment to share a random thought just isn’t high on my list of priorities. There is also the problem of putting too much information online. Although, I am a firm believer that much of the interesting content on the web comes from regular folks with stories to tell, I want to exercise some control over how much of me ends up online. In a perfect world, we would all be producers as well as consumers of this content. It’s not a perfect world and I’m not a perfect person. I don’t think I really have any passion for blogging; I have passion for certain topics (e.g., Civil War-era America and Whitesnake). When I’m engrossed in one of these topics and I happen to have nothing to do and a computer is nearby, I might post something. More often than not, I’d rather just have a beer and a conversation.

I actually had the intention of taking my blog down tonight (er…this morning), but I just can’t seem to do it. For a brief moment, I convinced myself that in the name of www-integrity (a name I may have just made up) I should not just delete content that can be found through a web search because knowingly enabling a 404 is a sin. There is more to it though. I think this is the third blog I’ve started. I’d rather not have a fourth. So, rather than abort yet another attempt, I’ll let this thing hang around. When and if I feel I have something to add, I’ll do so.

I’ve been looking over the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure in preparation for the USPTO exam (i.e., the Patent Bar). Check out this gem from 608.01(i)(c):

For fee calculation purposes also, any claim depending from a multiple dependent claim will be considered to be that number of claims to which direct reference is made in that multiple dependent claim.

I’m very afraid.

I’ve been dinking around with blog software for a few days now. I started with Simple PHP Blog because it does not require a database backend (I’m a sucker for simplicity). Unfortunately, themes are short in supply and it’s templating system doesn’t seem mature enough for me to write my own in short order (I could take the time, but it’s bad enough that my days are spent developing web). The themes are also deficient in standards compliance. It bothered me enough that I knew I would spend hours rendering the code compliant and still be unhappy that the layout looks like crap. And then I found WordPress. I had heard of it before, but I didn’t know that the code could be freely downloaded for personal hosting. Not only is it rich in features, it boasts W3C compliance which calms my nerves enough to allow me to, you know, actually post stuff.

It seems to be a pattern in my life that I get excited about a project and spend lots of time reading up and preparing. I’ll buy materials and get advice from people and when I’m right at the point where I should be starting the project, I retreat. I make up all kinds of self-defeating excuses and avoid failure by avoiding effort. (I don’t know if it’s encouraging or sad that I am consciously aware of this.) Here’s a list of projects or ideas from the past few weeks that could go nowhere:

• this blog
• finishing my basement
• taking the Patent Bar exam
• learning how to program the iPhone
• reading Canterbury Tales in Middle English

I’d call 3/5 between now and August a success.

Edit: I totally forgot to include “writing a Facbook application” in the list above.