faq

I call this an FAQ out of tradition, but really it's just "questions" -- some of these questions have NEVER been asked, much less frequently.

Q: Is this a blog? A: not really.. the defining characteristic of a blog is a collection of posts ordered by date.. i try to organize this website by topic, so that visitors can go straight to what they want to read about.

of course, there is RecentChanges? if you want a date ordering, but many of the Changes are revisions to old entries, rather than new entries.

also, i try not to post too much that is only relevant for a short time - most of the content is meant to be read whenever.

Q: Do you have a blog? A: short answer: technically yes, but it's very low-traffic and uninteresting: http://www.livejournal.com/users/bshanks

A: long answer: i think id only have a "real" weblog if my family or friends asked me to post u\pdates about what ive been up to recently--- o/w why waste the time?

i do have a brief weblog. There's not much there, and it's for infrequent, factual updates on me rather than personal stuff. as i explained there,

"the lj community might be somewhat curious why i am maintaining an account here but not posting anything interesting. i thought i'd use this site as a way to put "updates" on my life that might interest people online whom i collaborate with (mainly, "i'm real busy now", and "i'm back" sort of things). this way i don't have to clutter the individual communities with my personal kibble, and i don't have to cross-post.

maybe someday i'll use it for more, who knows. right now, though, if i have anything to say that isn't chronologically scoped, i prefer to use wikis, because i think they make it easier to cross-index and organize information."

also, i post a lot on communitywiki when i have the time (and btw you and everyone else should check out meatballwiki and communitywiki), and when a post doesnt belong anywhere else i have a sort of mini-blog on my homepage there -- but the topics are not generally personal stuff, but rather just stuff that i think they'd be interested in. (http://communitywiki.org/BayleShanks, the section labeled "Diary-like stuff" -- although i also have a "my soapbox" section on that page, which is different because i WANT people to read the soapbox stuff, but the diary stuff is only there "fyi")

so basically i dont have a personal weblog, although i do have the livejournal weblog which is more "professional" than personal and intended to be very low traffic and to the point.

however whenever i do something that nonnerds would be interested in, its usually with katherine and theres usually a picture, and the picture is usually posted on katherine's website (which is a photoweblog, i guess).