I have had a file on my computer since 2001 entitled “I am beginning to write a novel.” It starts like this:
I am beginning to write a novel. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do. Just to begin something with no end in sight. To follow some path until it comes to an end, and then look back on where I’ve been. It won’t be a screenplay, or a play, although I’ve wanted to try my hand at those, too. The forms would be too constricting, I think, for me right now. I just want to get out there and run.
Of course, I’ve had to transfer this file from computer to computer in the almost-decade since I started writing it. It began as a sort of scratch pad for my thoughts during a period of unemployment (when I actually thought of trying to write a novel) and I’ve added to it on and off ever since. Well, truthfully, the last time I wrote in it was 2005, but I opened it up again today and added a whole bunch of new stuff.
When I first started this blog in 2000, I expected that I’d be able to use it as a sort of semi-public diary. I wanted to explore my thoughts about important issues like faith, politics, work, relationships. But it hasn’t really worked out that way. Sadly, along with many others, I’ve begun to contract my onine self just a bit over the past few years. I’ve talked a little bit about it here, this fragmentation of the blogging self into the personal and the professional, for instance. And now there are microblogging services like Twitter and self-contained social networks like Facebook. Between all of them, some have said, they’ve killed the personal blog.
I wish I could use this space to air out my thoughts a bit more, but I realize that it’s probably not going to happen again. In the meantime, I have a text file on my computer called “I am beginning to write a novel.” It’s becoming a novel, alright (currently at almost 60,000 words!). Except it’s where I tell the truth.
Here’s a wonderful story. Terry Fallis is one of the founders of Thornley-Fallis Public Relations, one of the most social media-savvy PR firms around. Terry wrote and self-published a political satire last year called The Best Laid Plans. Not only did he publish it himself, but he used the book’s web site to market and promote it. As befits an innovative PR practitioner, he used all the social media tools at his disposal, making the whole endeavour a truly DIY affair.
About a month ago, Terry was nominated for the 2008 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, in the company of such literary luminaries as Douglas Coupland and Will Ferguson. The happy ending came this morning, when he found out that he had won. Bravo, Terry!
Tagged as:
pr,
publicrelations,
selfpublishing,
socialmedia
by James McNally on April 1, 2008
in Blogging
As if updating my blogging software wasn’t enough of a hassle, it turns out that for most of today, my site was unreachable. It was the bad hangover of what looks to have been a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack. Wow, that makes me feel kind of important. Over the weekend, some malicious freaks hit my site over 100,000 times. These were page views, but the number of unique visitors was suspiciously low. The weird thing is that I had no trouble viewing the site until this morning, when the attack seemed to be over.
If you had trouble getting the site to load today, I apologize. And I’m glad you’re reading this now. No, not you, malicious freaks. You guys can go away and not come back. kthxbye.
Tagged as:
denialofservice,
hackers
by James McNally on March 31, 2008
in Blogging
Well, a few hours of updating, uploading and customizing later, I have a freshly upgraded copy of WordPress 2.5 running Consolation Champs. I had to also update my current theme, Cutline, and then re-add all my customized header images, which also needed to be resized. So, these things never go as smoothly as advertised. A few familiar things are looking unfamiliar, but overall, it was fairly painless. Let me know if anything looks strange to you (other than the strange header images, which are strange all the time).
Tagged as:
wordpress
