Bits and Pieces

Beware of over-great pleasure in being popular or even beloved.
-- Margaret Fuller

Monday, September 27, 1999
One year ago: Do the Puyallup
Two years ago: Green Valleys of Silliness

Don't miss my account of our Cascade Loop highway road trip, now with pictures!

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Pitas.com is down today. I didn't remember that Andrew hosts it (or hosted it!) on dreamhost.com, so when that site was hacked over the weekend, the pitas weblog-hosting thing was damaged along with many other people's journals and sites.

The number of people doing weblogs has really grown! Some folks are expressing some of the same concerns that we've seen among online journal writers. It's impossible to read, or even to know about, all the weblogs out there.

Someone proposed listing one's favorite weblogs in one's entry in a weblog directory. This is equivalent to the "journals I read" pages that OLJ writers often have. I don't have one of these, because I read so many journals! And also because I know I don't like seeing one of these pages where I'm not listed (irrational, I know!). My subconscious thinks that all nations and all peoples should be reading my webpages, though I know that this is impossible.

Another way to point to other weblogs is to reuse their links, pointing to the weblog where one got the item from (evidence that you read and trust that log). But I usually like to find new stuff -- Anita's LOL is prompting me to do more wide-ranging surfing than I was doing before.

Anyway, it's interesting to see all these same issues come up in weblog-stuff. They are perennial controversies for OLJ folk.

(It's the journal cabal! they are against me! no, there isn't a clique! How dare you call my personal narrative site a journal! Darn those Archipelago snobs! and the Metajournals crowd... )

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In another popularity thing, I'm continuing with my Epinions efforts. (Imagine if you got paid every time a journal entry was read! We'd definitely see some self-promo then!) Do check mine out, and look at the other reviewers, also. Give the Epinions people some feedback on products or genres that you would find useful! Only stuff that you can buy, though.

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One thing I did manage to buy on my weekend trip was a bag of taffy from a shop in Leavenworth. It's an interesting type of candy! The same texture, but a bunch of different flavors. I liked how you could pick from all the barrels and bins to make up your own mixture. Licorice, a variety of berries 'n' creme types, chocolate mint, peanut butter, caramel... I like taffy! (The history of "salt water taffy.") The taffy-pulling machine in the store was hypnotic to watch! H---, Jack's daughter, didn't realize that in the olden days, you made taffy and pulled taffy at home. It was an occasion for a party or a get-together. I'm sure I remember such a gathering in a Louisa May Alcott book.