May 20, 2008

Still thinking about HD. Meanwhile, 7th Son is a serialized audiobook or piece of podcast fiction. Nice bit of bending the new media to your purposes.

May 16, 2008

Still not blogging. Still only thinking about building HD. In the meanwhile, I give you a Displacer Moose. Just cuz.

May 11, 2008

Purging. I have talked about it before. It's sort of like running away. Something new. Abandon your old stuff, thoughts, habits and patterns and start anew. But I have never been anyone to totally toss stuff aside. Sure, I can empty out the closet and dispose of a handful of candle holders from my candle days, but I still have the iron monsters Marmy gave me. I can finally dispose of odds and ends, toys and memorabilia that holds no value but I still have a few Glad bags full of postcards, business cards, note paper and stickers from the past two decades. I can take down my personal sections, box up the blogs of the past, put away the CD covers but I still have a site up and a couple of sub-domains. I can purge but at some point I feel like I am getting rid of me.

We will ignore the sub-topic of me really wanting to do that as of late.

So, I have decided. I was going to get a new domain, and I still might, but I am resurrecting Hermit Dave. HermitDave existed sometime around 1998-1999, Ottawa and/or Edmonton. He existed as a sub-section of my friend's site Ndroid. "Ask HermitDave" went by the phrase, "No job, no friends, no life. Addicted to Coca-Cola. Who better to ask for advice?" It was how I felt being in self-exile and obsessed with finding meaningful work. I am sort of feeling that way again, in self-exile, very isolated from people I know and especially "myself" -- whatever that means. The main thing is that I have the "Dad would be proud" job. Guys at 40 shouldn't be worrying what their Dad would say about their state of employment but I have invested over a decade in that feeling so it's not going away anytime soon. That combined with Marmy working weekends while I finally have them off along with the accumulated stress of the wasted last 5 or 6 years (ummm, how about 20 ?) has me deep deep inside my head. Thisboyistoast was supposed to be a light touch, an escapist blog of link-loving and pop culture references. The dark recesses inside HermitDave's head are not for the blog.

So, I will not shut down TBIT but just add the layer of HermitDave onto the site. Or, once the dust is settled, move the fucker over to his own domain. I also intend on using the clean slate, empty page or empty DIV tag as a chance to re-learn web & design skills. First up? CSS. Kind of like I enjoyed watching Ed do, I will play with CSS and re-do the site time after time after time until a real design emerges. But all with learning in mind. Sure, I have said this before but since this has nothing to do with learning a skill for work, it shouldn't have self-imposed procrastination. I don't do ANYTHING at work that has to do with webpages so it shouldn't interfere.

Part of the realization for this was not only the re-opening of the HermitDave mindset but the more practical return to open blogging, not all categorized and minimized. I don't want to reformat the existing structure of TBIT or exile the current ones to Archives, like I did the blogger days, but I don't want to use the current style. Simple, limited categories are my current idea. There will still be QuickLinks of a sort but no categorization of them. The main categories should be Personal, Movies, Comics, Gaming and some more not set in stone. Time to have a voice again.

When? As always.... soon. May 11 08