Going Inkless

     It's approaching a month since I last posted on this blog.  There are reasons.  As I've mentioned before, where there is silence, there is still activity you're not seeing...yet.      Among all of the usual summer things to do, I've been working at building the website that will display some of the short stories we (my husband and I) have been writing.  It's slow going, and every little piece is a puzzle I have to solve.  There has been frustration and discovery, and enormous satisfaction in the simplest accomplishments like getting the title to show up or getting a menu to work right.  I still feel a little like a fraud, not really knowing what I'm doing, but jumping in and making it work anyway.  The good news is that it shouldn't be much longer before I have the framework ready and can start managing the site instead of just building it.  So, please be patient while my attention is elsewhere.  I'm hoping it ...

a short trip...      In the course of planning and designing a website, I've started to wonder how the internet became a place.  It's a fairly new concept as a whole, and somewhere along the way as it has grown, we gradually decided to think of it as a place.  We chose terminology appropriate to that idea.  There are sites you find at an address.  You can go into a chat room or go to a page.  You can view a gallery or library.  You start out  and return to a home.  Every mailbox has a place it's @.  Yet all this real estate is in your head.  It's imaginary.  Of course, the information that makes up this imaginary landscape is kept somewhere.  Even the airy "cloud" you picture is a heavy, earthbound mass of silicon and wiring somewhere in the physical world, or rather several masses.  But that information is what constitutes the internet, not the machines it's stored on.  The internet is really an id...

     Benjamin Franklin built a time machine.      This is probably not true, but it can be fun to think about.  He was a pretty bright guy, inventive and open-minded.  He could have done it if he really focused on the project.  Instead, he spent his time writing, making social commentary, tinkering with other stuff, and flirting with French women.  He started libraries, fire departments and hospitals.  He invented a stove and swim fins.  He fought government corruption, stood up for the rights of women, slaves and the poor, and helped found a new nation.  That guy was all over the place.  Imagine what he could have done with all that energy focused on just one task.  Perhaps in another reality, he did just that, and he made it work.  I'd like to think that he'd have a good time cavorting through the ages, watching the way societies and technology change while people remain basically the same.  Being a...